The Clue of the Silver Key - Edgar Wallace (read e book txt) 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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fast.’
‘I’ll work fast enough,’ said the other grimly. He slipped the gun into
his pocket, picked up the scarf, and relied his prisoner’s ankles. He
then took off his fur coat and relieved himself of his woman’s garments.
From a theatre trunk he retrieved an old suit, which he put on.
Surefoot Smith watched him interestedly. ‘I gather you have some hard
work to do?’ he said.
‘Pretty hard,’ said the other, and added significantly: ‘The ground here
is fairly soft. You don’t get down to clay till you’ve dug six feet.’
If he expected to terrify his captive he was disappointed. ‘Why not let
me do it?’ said Smith. ‘You’re fat and out of condition. Digging my own
grave is a hobby of mine.’
For a second Binny seemed to be considering this suggestion. ‘No, I’ll do
it,’ he said, ‘fat or not fat.’
‘Why bother?’ Surefoot’s voice was almost airy. ‘As soon as I am missing
they’ll search here and in Wiltshire. I gather your object is to leave no
trace. You’re not sure now whether we could convict you for murder, are
you? If you kill a police officer you’re certain to be hanged. Every man
in Scotland Yard will turn out to find evidence against you. People who
were sleeping in their beds will swear that they saw you cosh me.’ He
libelled the best police force in the world without shame. ‘You might get
away with Hennessey,’ Surefoot went on, ‘and old Lyne and Tickler, but
you couldn’t get away with me. They’ll come along and search this ground,
which, if I remember rightly, is grass-grown, and unless you do a little
bit of artistic turfing they’ll find me and that will be the finish of
you.’
Binny paused at the door and turned with an ugly grin on his face. ‘I
used to know a copper who talked like you, but he talked himself into
hell, see?’
He went out and closed the door behind him.
Surefoot Smith sat, thinking very hard. He made an effort to break the
single link that bound the two cuffs together. It was certainly a painful
process, probably impossible. By drawing up his legs and separating them
at the knees he could reach the trebly knotted silk scarf. It was
difficult, but he succeeded in loosening one knot, and was at work on the
second when he heard the man returning along the bare boards of the
passage.
Binny was finding his task more difficult than he had anticipated. His
face was wet with perspiration. He groped in the trunk, took out a bottle
of whisky and, removing the top to a long drink.
‘Is it courage or strength you’re looking for?’ asked Surefoot.
‘You’ll see,’ growled the other, glaring down at the helpless man
malignantly. The butts of two automatics stuck out of his trousers
pockets. Surefoot eyed them longingly.
Binny was half-way to the door when a thought struck him, and he turned
back and examined the knots of the scarf. ‘Oh, you’ve undone one, have
you. We’ll see about that.’
Again he searched the trunk and found a length of cord. He slipped it
round the link of the handcuffs and knotted the cord firmly behind the
detective’s neck, so that his hands were drawn up almost to his chin.
‘You look funny—almost as if you were praying!’ remarked Binny. ‘I shan’t
keep you long.’
He went out of the room on this promise.
Sprawling there helplessly, Surefoot heard the hoot of cars as they
passed. He was, he knew, about a hundred yards from the main road, but it
was a road along which, day and night, traffic was continually passing.
The possibility that the Buckinghamshire police would search this little
cottage was very remote, unless somebody at Scotland Yard had a
brain-wave that this was the most likely place to which the prisoner
would be taken. But Scotland Yard might not even miss him. He was an
erratic man; when he was engaged in an important case he would absent
himself from headquarters for days together, leaving his chiefs fuming.
The search would not begin until Binny was well out of the country.
He watched the smoky oil lamp burning; the flame had been turned on too
high and one side of the glass chimney was smoked. Binny was out for a
getaway; he would leave no traces. Even the murder would not be committed
in the house.
Half an hour, an hour passed, and he heard the heavy feet of the man
coming for him, and knew that the hour was at hand.
SCOTLAND YARD HAD missed Surefoot Smith in the sense that the negative
reports which had been taken to his room had not been read or attended
to. The fact that they were negative would have justified the officer on
duty accepting the situation, but for the peculiar conscientiousness of a
young police officer who reported to the station at Cannon Row, which is
part of Scotland Yard, that a blue saloon car, driven by a woman, had
disregarded his stop signal at the junction of Westminster Bridge and the
Embankment, and had driven on the wrong side of the road. He called on it
to stop and, when that failed, had taken its number.
Ordinarily the question of a technical offence of this character would
have been left over till the morning, but whilst he was making his
statement a Member of Parliament came into the station to report the loss
of a blue saloon car, which had been taken from the front of his club in
Pall Mall. It had been standing on a rank, against all traffic rules, and
he had actually been a witness of the theft.
‘It was a man dressed as a woman,’ was his startling conclusion.
‘What makes you think that, sir?’ asked the inspector in charge.
‘As he got in, the top of the car, which has a very low body, knocked his
hat off. It was a bald-headed man with a yellow face like somebody
suffering from jaundice.’
The inspector sat bolt upright. All England was looking for a bald-headed
man with a jaundiced face, and in a few moments the wires were humming.
Again it was a traffic policeman who supplied information, and again it
was Binny’s anxiety to make a quick run out of London that betrayed him.
Near Heston, he had narrowly escaped collision with a bus at a main road
junction and the car skidded. The policeman walked across the road to
examine the licence of the driver, whose engine had stopped. The
policeman distinctly saw a stout woman driver, but before he could ask a
question the engine had been restarted and the car moved on. This must
have happened in the second period of Surefoot’s unconsciousness.
It was not until an hour and a half after the inquiry had been sent out
that the traffic policeman’s report was received. By this time a ‘hurry
up’ call for Surefoot had failed to locate him. Moreover, he had left on
his table at Scotland Yard a half-finished sheet of notes.
Now Surefoot never in any circumstances left his notes behind him; and
another significant fact was that he had not handed the key of his room
to the officer at the door, a practice which he invariably followed,
however hurried might be his departure.
His habit of taking a walk was common knowledge. He had been seen walking
towards Savoy Hill. The policeman on duty at the foot of the hill had
also seen him turn back. Then somebody remembered the blue car that had
been standing by the side of the road.
By the time these inquiries had been completed every detective in
Scotland Yard had been assembled on the instructions of the hastily
summoned chief.
‘He may be heading for the coast. What is more likely is that he’s on his
way to one of those houses of his,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Get the
Buckinghamshire and Salisbury police on the phone and, to make absolutely
sure, send squad cars right away to both places.’
One of the first people who had been interrogated was Dick Allenby. It
was known that Surefoot was a friend of his, and Surefoot was an
inveterate gossiper, who loved nothing better than to sit up till three
in the morning with a friendly and sympathetic audience. Dick Allenby’s
arrival at the Yard coincided with the departure of the first squad car
for Salisbury.
‘We may be chasing moonbeams,’ said the Chief Constable; ‘very likely old
Surefoot will turn up in about a quarter of an hour, but I’m taking no
unnecessary risks.’
‘But he’d never get bluffed,’ said Dick scornfully.
The Chief shook his head. ‘I don’t know. This fellow has had a pretty
hectic experience in America, and it won’t be the first person he has
taken for a ride in this country.’ Of one thing he was sure—that the
threat of a revolver would not have induced Surefoot to get into that
car. He looked at his watch; it was half-past one, and he shook his head.
‘I wish the night were over,’ he said.
From that remark Dick sensed all that the other feared.
Surefoot Smith had less than half a minute to do his thinking and to
decide on one of the dozen plans—most of them impracticable—that were
spinning in his mind.
The door opened slowly and Binny came in. He wiped his forehead on a big
handkerchief he took out of his pocket, and sat down. ‘You will come a
little walk with me, my friend,’ he said pleasantly.
He took the bottle from the table, swallowed a generous drink, and wiped
his mouth. Stooping, he untied the scarf that bound Surefoot’s ankles,
and the cord, and jerked him to his feet.
Surefoot Smith rose unsteadily. His head was swimming, but the terrific
nature of the moment brought about his instant recovery. Binny was
standing by the door, fingering his gun. He had fixed to the end of the
barrel an egg-shaped object, the like of which Surefoot had never seen
before, and he found himself wondering how Dick Allenby, who was
interested in silencers and who had asserted so often that a silencer
could not be used on an automatic, because of the backfire, would
reconcile this freakish thing with his theories.
Surefoot walked to the table and stood, resting his manacled hands on its
deal surface.
‘Saying a prayer or something?’ mocked Binny.
‘You don’t want anybody to know I’ve been here, do you? You don’t want to
leave any trace and that’s why you don’t kill me in this room?’
‘That’s the idea,’ said the other cheerfully.
‘If you had a few hundred people rushing in this direction and asking
questions, that would spoil your plan, wouldn’t it?’
‘What’s the idea?’ he demanded.
He took one step towards his prisoner, when Surefoot lifted the lamp and
flung it into the open hamper. There was a crash as the glass reservoir
broke, a flicker of light, and then a huge flame shot up towards the
ceiling.
Binny stood, paralysed to inaction, and in the next moment Surefoot had
flung himself upon the man. He drove straight at Binny’s face with his
clenched hands. The man ducked and the blow missed him. Something
exploded in the detective’s face; he felt the sting of the powder and
heard an expelled cartridge ‘ting’ against the wall.
He struck again, striving to bring the steel handcuffs on to the man’s
head. Binny
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