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

Chapter Four

IN FIVE MINUTES there were a dozen policemen round the cab, holding back

the crowd which had gathered, as crowds will gather at any hour of the

day or night in London.

 

Fortunately, a police surgeon had been at Marlborough Street attending to

a drunk, and he was on the spot within a few minutes.

 

‘Shot at close quarters by a very small-bore gun,’ was his first verdict

after a casual examination.

 

In a very short time the ambulance arrived, and all that was mortal of

Horace Tom Tickler was removed. A police officer started up the engine of

the taxi and drove it into the station yard for closer inspection. The

number had already been taken.

 

Scotland Yard had sent a swift car to find the owner, a taxi driver named

Wells.

 

Dick Allenby had not been specifically invited to the investigations, but

had found himself in conversation with Surefoot Smith at crucial moments

of the search, and had drifted with him to the police station.

 

The man had been shot in the cab; they found a bullet-hole through the

lining of the roof. The body, Smith thought, had sagged forward to the

ground and the legs had been lifted in the approved gang style.

 

‘He was probably still alive when he was on the floor. The murderer must

have fired a second shot. We’ve found a bullet in the floorboard of the

cab.’

 

‘Have you found the driver?’ asked Dick.

 

‘He’s on his way.’

 

Mr Wells, the driver, proved to be a very stout and thoroughly alarmed

man. His story was a simple one. He had got to the garage where he kept

his car a little before 2 o’clock. The door of the garage was closed and

he left the cab outside. This was evidently a practice of his, for the

cleaner came on duty at 6 o’clock and prepared the cab for the day’s

work. He could leave it outside with impunity, because taxis are very

rarely stolen; they are so easily identified and so useless to the

average car thief that they are very seldom ‘knocked off’. His garage was

in a yard off the Marylebone Road.

 

So far as he was concerned, he had a complete alibi for, after leaving

the cab, he had gone to the nearest police station to deposit an umbrella

and a pocket-book which had been left by a previous passenger. A

policeman had seen him leave the car, and to this policeman he had shown

the lost property, which he had afterwards deposited at the station. It

was a very lonely yard, and, unlike such places, was entirely without

inhabitants, the garages forming part of a building which was used as a

furniture store.

 

It was seven o’clock when Dick drove home to his flat at Queen’s Gate. It

was curious that the only impression left on him was one of relief that

Mary had not walked across the road to the cab and opened the door, as

she might have done, and made the hideous discovery. The car had been

parked outside the club twenty minutes before the discovery; the driver

had been seen to leave the taxi and walk towards Air Street.

 

The earliest discovery that had been made was that the taxi flag was down

and a sum of seventeen shillings was registered on the clock. This gave

the police approximately the period between the murder being committed

and the body being found.

 

Late that afternoon Surefoot Smith called on Dick Allenby.

 

‘Thought you’d like to know how far we’ve got,’ he said. ‘We found a

hundred one-pound notes in this bird’s pocket.’

 

‘Tickler’s?’

 

‘How did you know his name was Tickler?’ Surefoot Smith regarded him with

suspicion.

 

Dick did not answer immediately. ‘Well, the odd thing is, I recognized

him when I saw him. He used to be a servant of my uncle’s.’

 

‘You didn’t tell me that last night.’

 

‘I wasn’t sure last night; I wasn’t sure, in fact, until I saw the body

lifted out. I don’t know very much about my uncle’s business, but I

understand this man was fired for stealing, about six or seven years

ago.’

 

Surefoot nodded. ‘That’s right. I’d come to give you that bit of

information. I saw old Lyne this morning, but, bless you, Scotland Yard

means nothing to him. Your uncle, is he?’ He nodded again.

 

‘Congratulations!’

 

‘What did he say?’ asked Dick, curious.

 

‘If you think he broke down, I am here to put you right. All he could

remember about Tickler was that he was a scoundrel, and anyway we knew

that. A hundred one-pound notes! If there had only been a fiver amongst

them it might have been easy.’ He cleared a space on a crowded bench and

perched himself on it. ‘I wonder who the fellow was who took him for a

ride? American, I’ll bet you! That’s what’s worrying me—science coming

into crime!’

 

Dick laughed. ‘According to you, Surefoot, science is responsible for all

crime.’

 

Mr Smith raised his eyebrows inquiringly. ‘Well, isn’t it? What’s science

done? It’s given us photography to make forgery easy, planes to get

thieves out of the country, cars for burglars. What’s radio done? I’ve

had four cases in the last six months of fellows who used radio to rob

people! What’s electricity done? It helps safe smashers to drill holes in

strong-rooms! Science!’

 

Dick thought there was very little evidence of applied science in the

taxi murder, and said so. ‘It might have been committed in a horse-drawn

carriage.’

 

‘The driver couldn’t have left a horse,’ was the crushing retort. ‘I’ll

bet you this is the first of many.’ He reached out and put his hand on

the oblong steel box that lay on the bench near him. ‘That’s science, and

therefore it’s going to be used by criminals. It’s a noiseless gun—’

 

‘Was the gun last night noiseless?’ asked Dick.

 

Surefoot Smith thought a moment, and then: ‘Have you got any beer?’ he

asked.

 

There were a dozen bottles under one of the benches. Dick had many

visitors who required refreshment. Surefoot Smith opened two and drank

them in rapid succession. He was a great drinker of beer, had been known

to polish off twenty bottles at a sitting without being any the worse for

it—claiming, indeed, that beer intensified his powers of reasoning.

 

‘No,’ he said, and wiped his mouth with a large red handkerchief; ‘and

yet we have seen nobody who heard the shots. Where were they fired? That

cab could have been driven somewhere into the country. There are plenty

of lonely places where a couple of shots wouldn’t be noticed or heard.

You can go a long way in a couple of hours. There were rain marks on the

windscreen and mud on the wheels. There was no rain in London; there’s

been a lot just outside of London.’

 

He reached mechanically under the bench, took out a third and fourth

bottle and opened them absent-mindedly.

 

‘And how did you find my noble relative?’

 

‘Friend of yours?’ asked Surefoot. Dick shook his head. ‘Well, I can tell

you what I think of him.’

 

Mr Smith described Hervey Lyne in a pungent sentence.

 

‘Very likely,’ agreed Dick Allenby, watching his beer vanish. ‘I’m hardly

on speaking terms with him.’

 

‘This fellow Tickler—you had a few words with him, didn’t you, about

five years ago?’

 

Dick’s eyes narrowed. ‘Did Mr Lyne tell you that?’

 

‘Somebody told me,’ said Surefoot vaguely.

 

‘I kicked him out of my flat, yes. He brought rather an insulting message

from my uncle and supplemented it with a few remarks of his own.’

 

Surefoot got down from the bench and brushed himself carefully.

 

‘You ought to have told me all this last night,’ he said reproachfully.

‘It might have saved me a bit of trouble.’

 

‘I also might have saved myself four bottles of beer,’ said Dick,

slightly irritated.

 

‘That’s been put to a good use,’ said Surefoot.

 

He examined the odd-looking air-gun again, lifted it without difficulty

and replaced it. ‘That might have done it,’ he said.

 

‘Are you suggesting I killed this fellow?’ Dick Allenby’s anger was

rising.

 

Surefoot smiled. ‘Don’t lose your temper. It’s not you I’m up against,

but science.’

 

‘It certainly is a gun,’ said Dick, controlling his wrath; ‘but the main

idea—I don’t know whether you can get it into your thick head—’

 

‘Thank you,’ murmured Surefoot.

 

‘—is that this should be put to commercial use. By exploding an ordinary

cartridge, or nearly an ordinary cartridge, in this breech, I create a

tremendous air pressure, which can be just as well used for running a

machine as for shooting a jailbird.’

 

‘You knew he’d been in jail?’ asked Surefoot, almost apologetically.

 

‘Of course I knew he’d been in jail-two or three times, I should imagine,

but I only know of one occasion, when my uncle prosecuted him. If I were

you, Surefoot, I’d go to Chicago and learn something of the police

methods there—’

 

‘There ain’t any,’ interrupted Surefoot decidedly. ‘I’ve studied the

subject.’

 

As Surefoot Smith walked towards Hyde Park he observed that all other

events in the world had slumped to insignificance by the side of the

taxicab murder. Every newspaper bill flamed with the words. One said

‘Important Clue’; he wasted his money to discover that the clue was the

first news that a hundred pounds had been found in the