The Clue of the Silver Key - Edgar Wallace (read e book txt) 📗

Chapter Sixteen

SUREFOOT SMITH WAS one of those individuals who never seem to do any

work. He was to be seen at odd hours of the day, and sometimes in odd

places of the West End. It seemed that he was able to dispense with

sleep, for you were as likely to meet him at four o’clock in the morning

as at four o’clock in the afternoon.

 

He had a villa at Streatham.

 

‘He’s the type of man,’ Dick Allenby once described him, ‘who was

foreordained to live with a married sister.’

 

In addition, he had a room in Panton Street, Haymarket, and not the more

fashionable part of Panton Street either. In all probability this was his

real home, though the Streatham villa was not such a myth as his

colleagues chose to imagine it.

 

Thieves knew him and respected him; the aristocrats of the underworld,

who were his special prey, avoided him with great care, but not always

with conspicuous success. He was the terror of the little card-sharping

gangs; confidence men hated him, for he had put more of their kind in

prison than any two officers of Scotland Yard. He had hanged three men,

and bitterly regretted that a fourth had escaped the gallows through the

lunacy of a sentimental jury.

 

His pleasures were few. Beer was more of a necessity than a dissipation;

for how can one sneer at a man who consumes large quantities of malted

liquor necessary for his well-being and happiness, and find anything

commendable in the physical wreck who seeks, through copious potions of

Vichy water, to combat the excesses of his youth?

 

In the privacy of his Panton Street room, he worked out his problems in a

way peculiar to himself. He invariably wrote on white blotting-paper with

a pencil, and seldom employed any other medium except when he was called

upon to furnish a conventional report to his superiors. He invariably

covered both sides of his blotting-paper with writing which nobody but he

could read. It was a shorthand invented thirty years ago by a freakish

schoolmaster, and the only man who had ever learned it thoroughly was

Surefoot Smith. He had not only learned it, but improved upon it. It was

his boast that no human being could decode anything he ever wrote; many

had had the opportunity and tried, for after Mr Smith had finished with

his blotting-paper it was passed on to junior officers for a more proper

use.

 

He worked out Leo Moran’s movements chronologically so far as they could

be traced. One portion of the day previous to the murder had been clearly

marked. Moran had broadcast a lecture on banking and economics. Surefoot

Smith smiled at a whimsical thought. He would not die without honour, if

he was the detective who brought about the first execution of a

broadcaster.

 

After his lecture he had gone to the Sheridan Theatre; thence to Dick

Allenby’s flat. After that, home, where he had found a letter—Surefoot

Smith conceded him the truth of this—which sent him in search of Mary

Lane.

 

What had he been doing on the morning of the murder? Possibly the

accountant had called him up and told him that his leave was not granted.

Mr Accountant Smith had not said as much, but then between bank employees

there was a certain freemasonry, and one didn’t expect, or was a fool if

one did, that they would tell everything about their comrades, even if

they were comrades suspected of forgery and murder.

 

Surefoot Smith allowed also the element of self-preservation to enter

into the accountant’s evidence. He himself might not be free from blame;

the success of the forgery might be due in not a little measure to his

own negligence. Everybody had something to hide—and possibly the

accountant was no exception.

 

One thing was certain; the plane had been ordered at a moment’s notice.

That was not the method by which Moran intended leaving the country.

 

What was the stock to the transfer of which he had been so anxious to get

Mary Lane’s signature? Without a very long and careful search it was

unlikely that that question would be answered.

 

Jerry Dornford’s disappearance presented a problem of its own. His man in

Half Moon Street said he was not worrying; Mr Dornford often went away

for days together, but where, the man could not say, because Mr Dornford

was not apparently of a confiding nature. If the valet guessed, he

guessed uncharitably. Here was a man also without money, and almost

without friends. He had one or two who had country houses, but inquiries

of these had produced no result. The servant remembered the names and

addresses of a lady or two, but they could throw no light on the mystery.

 

Dornford owned an estate in Berkshire. Part of it was farmland, which

produced enough income to pay the interest on the mortgage; and if the

mortgagees did not foreclose it was because a sale would bring only a

portion of the money which had been advanced. There had been a house on

the property, but this had been sold to a local golf club many years

before, and all that remained of Gerald Dornford’s possessions were about

three hundred acres of pine and heather.

 

Here was a man who certainly could not afford two or three addresses.

 

The bullet had not been found, though the turf had been taken up, to the

distress of the park authorities, and the ground sifted to the depth of a

foot. There was a possibility that it might have passed at such an angle

that it fell into the canal or against the opposite bank. It all depended

on what angle the shot had been fired from. If Surefoot Smith’s first

theory held ground and the old man had been killed by a bullet fired from

a rifle on the upper floor of Parkview Terrace, the bullet should have

been found within a few feet of where the chair had stood. If it had been

fired from Dornford’s car, it could hardly have passed through the body

and reached the canal.

 

Smith was in constant touch with Binny, but the man could give no further

information. He had not heard the whiz of the bullet as it passed him,

not even heard its impact, and offered here a perfectly reasonable

excuse, that the noise of Dornford’s car would, had it coincided with the

shot, have deadened all other sound.

 

It was four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and Surefoot Smith, who had

spent most of the night on his feet, found himself dozing in his chair, a

practice which for some reason he regarded as evidence of approaching

senility. He got up, washed his face in the bathroom wash-basin, and went

out into the Haymarket, not very certain as to the way he should take or

in what direction he should continue his investigations.

 

He crossed Piccadilly Circus and was standing aimlessly watching a

traffic jam at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue, when somebody bumped

into him. His unconscious assailant was moving on with a muttered apology

when Surefoot crooked his finger in his overcoat.

 

‘What’s the matter with you, Mike?’

 

There was reason for his surprise. In twenty-four hours the appearance of

Mike Hennessey had changed. The big face had grown flabby; heavy pouches

were under his eyes; his unshaven face was a sickly yellow. Was it

Surefoot’s fancy, or did he turn a shade whiter at the sight of him?

 

‘Hullo!’ he stammered.’ Well…now…isn’t that curious, meeting you?’

 

‘What’s the matter, Mike?’ asked Surefoot.

 

It was his habit to suspect criminal intentions in the most innocent of

men, and his very question was accusative.

 

‘Eh? Nothing. I’m sort of walking about in a dream today…that play

coming off and everything.’

 

‘I’ve been phoning you all the morning. Where have you been?’

 

Mike started. ‘Phoning me, Mr Smith—Surefoot, old boy? I’ve been out of

town. What did you want me for?’

 

‘You weren’t at home, you weren’t at the theatre. Why were you keeping

out of the way?’

 

Mike tried to speak, swallowed, then, huskily: ‘Let’s go and have a drink

somewhere. I’ve got a lot on my mind, Surefoot, a terrible lot.’

 

There was a brasserie in a side street near the Circus, where beer could

not be legally supplied until six o’clock. Nevertheless they made for

this spot and the head waiter bustled up with a smile. ‘Do you want to

have a little private talk, Mr Smith? You don’t need to sit out here; the

place is like a morgue. Come into the manager’s office.’

 

The manager’s office was not a manager’s office at all, except by

courtesy. It was a very small private room. ‘I’ll bring you some tea, Mr

Smith. You’ll have coffee, won’t you, Mr Hennessey?’ Hennessey, sitting

with his eyes shut, nodded.

 

‘What’s on your mind?’ asked Smith bluntly. ‘Washington Wirth?’

 

The closed eyes opened and stared at him. ‘Eh? Yes.’ He blinked at his

questioner.’ I think…well, he won’t be in the theatrical business any

more, and naturally that’s worrying me, because he’s been a good friend

of mine.’

 

He seemed to find a difficulty, not only in speaking, but in breathing.

His chest puffed up and down, and then: ‘Is that what you wanted to see

me about?’ he asked jerkily.

 

‘That was just what I wanted to see you about. He was a friend of yours?’

 

‘A patron,’ said Mr Hennessey quickly. ‘I looked after him when he was in

town, I didn’t know very much about him except that he had a lot of

stuff—money, I mean.’

 

‘And you didn’t ask him where he got it, Mike?’

 

‘Naturally,’ said Hennessey, avoiding his eyes.

 

The head waiter came at that moment with a tray which contained two large

bottles of beer, a bottle of gin, cracked ice and a siphon. ‘Tea,’ he

said formally, put it down, and left them.

 

Surefoot Smith was in no sense depressed as he broke the law.

 

‘Now come across, Mike,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘I want to hear just who

this fellow Wirth is.’

 

Mike licked his dry lips. ‘I’d like to know where I am first,’ he said

doggedly. ‘Not that I could tell you anything, Surefoot—not anything for

certain. What’s my position? Suppose I thought he was somebody else and

said: “Listen—you either help me, or I’m going to ask questions.’”

 

‘Yes, suppose you blackmailed him?’ interrupted Smith brutally.

 

Mike winced at this. ‘It wasn’t blackmail. I wasn’t sure—do you get my

meaning? I was putting up a bluff. I wanted to see how far he’d go.’ And

then suddenly he broke down and covered his face with his big,

diamond-ringed hands, and began to sob. ‘Oh, my God! It’s awful!’ he

moaned.

 

Other men would