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

Chapter Thirty

Security can be very irksome, especially when it is wedded to a lumpy bed

in an ill-ventilated room. The sergeant’s wife had given her the

second-best bedroom, which was, by most standards, a comfortable

apartment. Mary felt desperately tired when she put out the light, but

the moment her head touched the pillow all her weariness and desire for

sleep had left her. She lay for half an hour, counting sheep, making up

shopping lists, weaving stories, but grew wider and wider awake. At the

end of that time she got up, turned on the light and slipped into her

dressing-gown.

 

She thought the mere act of rising would make her sleepy, but she had

been mistaken. She was seized with a longing for her own comfortable

quarters at the hotel, and began to dress.

 

She could easily make an excuse to the sergeant’s wife, who had gone out

for the evening and would not be back till after midnight. There was no

telephone in the quarters, but Surefoot Smith had made her free of the

station, and she knew she had only to go downstairs and see the night

inspector and he would put her in touch with the detective.

 

She felt horribly ungrateful but, so far as she had been concerned, she

had come to this safe retreat without any enthusiasm. The danger from

Binny was probably exaggerated—Surefoot himself had told her that the man

could have no further interest in her now that the hue and cry was out.

 

Scribbling a note to her hostess—a note which contained more lame excuses

for her eccentricity than were necessary—she put on her coat and went

down to the charge-room.

 

The inspector to whom she had been introduced had gone out, visiting the

patrols. Evidently he had not impressed upon the sergeant-in-charge the

necessity for keeping a watchful eye upon the visitor, and he received

her explanation for her return to the hotel with polite interest, until

she mentioned the name of Surefoot Smith. Then he became very attentive.

 

‘He’s not at the Yard, miss. As a matter of fact, there’s been some

trouble there. We’ve had a special warning to look out for him.’

 

She opened her eyes in astonishment.

 

‘Look out for him?’ And then, quickly: ‘Has he disappeared?’ The sergeant

did not forget that reticence is the first duty of a policeman, and

became evasive. ‘Is it something to do with Binny?’ she insisted.

 

‘Well, yes.’ He hesitated before he became more communicative. ‘He’s the

man wanted for the murder of the old man in Regent’s Park. Yes, they’ve

got an idea at the Yard that Binny’s got him away somewhere. Rather a

queer idea that a murderer can get away an inspector of the CID, but

there you are!’

 

She sensed, without realizing, the eternal if gentle rivalry between the

uniformed and the un-uniformed branches of the Metropolitan Police.

 

‘How could an inspector be lured away? It sounds silly, doesn’t it?

Personally, I believe it’s all bunk, but there you are! We’re on the

lookout for both of them.’

 

She asked him to get her a taxi, and again he was reluctant. Sergeants in

charge of station houses have no time to find taxis for visitors; but she

was evidently a friend of Surefoot Smith’s and he stretched a point in

her favour, telephoned to a cab-rank, and five minutes later she was

driving through the rain to Scotland Yard.

 

She left just as the squad cars were going out in search of Surefoot, and

she interviewed the Chief Inspector. He offered her very little

information and a great deal of fatherly advice about going to bed. He

evidently knew nothing whatever of Surefoot’s plan to protect her, and

was a little embarrassed when she asked if she might stay at Scotland

Yard until some news was received.

 

‘I shouldn’t worry if I were you, Miss Lane,’ he said. ‘We’ve got police

barrages on all the roads for thirty miles round London, and I’m very

certain that Surefoot will turn up. He’s an erratic sort of individual,

and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him walk in at any moment.’

 

Nevertheless, she was determined to stay, and he had her taken to

Surefoot’s own room. It was a quiet room, and now that the first

excitement of the night was over she realized how tired she was and ho

foolish she had been to leave even an uncomfortable bed. She sat at the

table, resting her head on one palm, found herself nodding and, after a

while, passing into that uneasy stage of semi-consciousness which is

nearly sleep.

 

She woke with a jump as the Chief Inspector came in. ‘Young lady, you go

home,’ he said. ‘We’ve found Surefoot; so far as I can make out, he’s not

very badly hurt.’ He told her briefly what had happened.

 

‘Binny has escaped. Surefoot’s theory is that he’s breaking north. Have

you ever noticed that a fugitive from justice invariably turns north?

It’s a fact—at least, nearly a fact. Now you go home, Miss Lane, and I’ll

send an officer round to your hotel in the morning with the latest news.’

 

‘Is he coming back to London?’ she asked. ‘Mr Smith, I mean?’

 

The Chief smiled. ‘If he had half the intelligence he’s supposed to have

he’d got himself admitted to a nursing home. No. We’ve formed a sort of

headquarters barrage this side of Welwyn. Chief Inspector Roose is in

charge, and Surefoot is going across for a consultation. He’s all

right—your friend Mr Allenby is with him.’

 

He had a taxi called and she drove to her hotel. She must have been

asleep for two hours, she saw as she passed Big Ben and heard two o’clock

strike. She was wider awake than she had been at any period of the night.

 

The hall porter who admitted her was searching for her letters when she

stopped him. ‘Is there a place where I can hire a car?’ she asked.

 

He looked at her in astonishment. ‘Yes, miss. Do you want one tonight?’

 

She hesitated. The Chief had said that Dick and Surefoot were at Welwyn,

but he had not said where. At first she supposed that they had taken up

their quarters at the local police station—she was rather hazy as to what

a barrage meant. But there would be policemen on the road, stopping cars,

and they would direct her to where the two men could be found.

 

Why she should go at all was not quite clear even to herself. It was a

desire to be ‘in it’, to be close to the big events which touched her own

life so closely, to see with her own eyes the development of the story in

which she had been a character. She could find plenty of excuses; none

that she could have stated convincingly. ‘Yes, get me a car. Tell them to

come round as soon as they can.’

 

He gave her the key of her room and she went upstairs, and presently the

porter came up after her, bringing some coffee he had made, for by night

he was not only custodian but cook.

 

Leo Moran had been removed to his own flat, he told her, but mainly he

talked, with a certain amount of pride, about the reporters who had been

‘coming and going’ since the discovery of the gassed banker. She had

hardly finished her coffee before the car came and, dressing herself a

little more warmly, she went down and gave the driver instructions.

 

As the car drew out of the suburbs into the open country, Binny and his

flight assumed a new significance. She was not sorry for him. If she was

a little frightened, it was not of the man, but at the thought of the

vast machinery that her brain had put into motion. The moment she had

heard of that scrawled note on the back of the cheque she had solved the

mystery of Binny’s defalcations, and when she had heard that all the

forgeries were dated the seventeenth of the month—the day that the old

man invariably paid his tradesmen’s bills—she was sure.

 

And now, because she had remembered the shape and appearance of the key

of a kitchen door, because she had added cheques to key, eighteen

thousand London policemen were looking for this bald-headed man. That was

the frightening thing; not Binny and the menace of him, but the spectacle

of these great winding wheels moving to crush a malefactor.

 

To Mary Lane, Binny was hardly as much an individual as a force. She

thought the car was speeding a little dangerously on the wet road. Once

she distinctly felt a skid, and gripped the armrest tightly.

 

They could not have been more than a few miles from Welwyn when, rounding

a turn, she saw a car come into the road ahead, and went cold, for she

realized that, at the speed they were travelling, it was almost

impossible to avoid it. Her car swerved and turned giddily; she felt a

crash, and was thrown violently to her knees as the vehicle canted over.

 

She reached up at the