Freeman Crofts – Inspector French’s Greatest Case (страница 2)
I’m afraid I’ve talked too much about French, but it’s really because I think a lot of him. However, with your permission I’ll call him now. I give a shout that would wake the dead, and he appears.
‘Yes, what is it?’ he asks.
‘Speak to these good folk, will you?’ I say.
He approaches the microphone in a hesitating way and, clearing his throat, begins deprecatingly: ‘Well, I’m very glad to be able to talk to all these kind friends, and to say it’s a proud day in my life when—’
I stop him. Goodness knows where he would otherwise get to. I ask him to tell how he solves his cases.
This is more in his line. He gives a little laugh, and starts off in his normal voice.
‘Huh, yes, I can do that. The answer is that I don’t—not always. But I’ll tell you ladies and gentlemen how I make things look pretty well: I just don’t mention the failures. Sir Mortimer and the boys at the Yard may know about them—as a matter of fact, they do; but you don’t. That’s my thoughtfulness for you, of course: I don’t want to worry you with anything that’s not just absolutely so.’
‘But,’ I tell him, ‘you know you usually do succeed. They would like to hear your methods.’
‘Well,’ he explains, ‘I have two principal ways. Either I get a good clue or I have a stroke of luck. And you may take it from me that the luck’s the best way. It saves endless trouble and difficulty.’
The stream of his inspiration seems to come to an end, and I start him off again.
‘You’ve been in one or two tight corners,’ I suggest. ‘You might tell them about your worst five minutes.’
He warms to it. ‘At the Yard we do get occasional nasty turns, but of course they’re all in the day’s work. Since you’ve asked me, I think my worst was in the case I just heard you speak of—Did you know the door wasn’t shut? I mean the case in which two financiers were murdered on an abandoned yacht off Newhaven, and a lot of diamonds were missing. You may remember it. Well, a man called Nolan was my suspect, though I couldn’t prove his guilt. But I thought there was just a chance that I might be able to make him commit himself. So I laid a trap for him. I pitched him a yarn that made him think he’d left a clue on his launch, in the hope that he’d try to destroy the launch and we could take him in the act.
‘The launch was lying in Newhaven Harbour, and the next night Sergeant Carter and I took cover on the wharf and settled down to watch. It was a wet night, and we got our fill of it. But it was worth it. About three in the morning we saw Nolan creeping down and slipping aboard. We followed him as close as we dared. He disappeared into the little engine-room. I crept after him to the door and peeped in. He was working with a torch, and you can imagine my feelings when I watched him take the missing diamonds from a hiding-place and put them in his pocket. This, of course, was all the proof I could have wanted. But then things grew nasty. He flooded the place with petrol and put a canister on the floor with a clock attached. So I thought it was about time to make a move.
‘As a matter of fact, it was past the time. Before I could do anything he had flashed his torch on me, and I found myself looking into the wrong end of a pistol. He spoke quite quietly. He said he had feared a trick, but that he had gone through with the thing on chance. He said that as long as I lived he was in danger of being hanged. Therefore he was going to kill me. If he could get away afterwards himself, he would; if not, we would die together.
‘You’ll understand that I could do nothing, for if I’d made a move he’d have fired, and if he’d fired, the whole place would have gone up in a sheet of flame. It was nasty, and no mistake.’
French pauses, and I prompt him again.
‘Tell them how you escaped.’
‘Ah, that was where my bit of luck came in. Carter was behind me, and Nolan didn’t see him. So Carter nipped on deck, lowered himself over the side, and shot Nolan through the porthole. He got him in the hand, but the flame from the gun didn’t get in, so there was no fire. But Nolan was desperate, and in spite of his wound he went for me all out. I tripped over a pipe and fell with my side against the motor. I broke some ribs, but managed to hold off Nolan till Carter got back and pulled him off.’
‘And after that you think you can be killed! French, my dear fellow, you’re a humbug!’
He grins, and indicates pointedly that he is now due at the Yard. So I have to let him go.
FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS
1935
The back streets surrounding Hatton Garden, in the City of London, do not form at the best of times a cheerful or inspiring prospect. Narrow and mean, and flanked with ugly, sordid-looking buildings grimy from exposure to the smoke and fogs of the town and drab from the want of fresh paint, they can hardly fail to strike discouragement into the heart of anyone eager for the uplift of our twentieth century civilisation.
But if on a day of cheerful sunshine the outlook is thus melancholy, it was vastly more so at ten o’clock on a certain dreary evening in mid-November. A watery moon, only partially visible through a damp mist, lit up pallidly the squalid, shuttered fronts of the houses. The air was cold and raw, and the pavements showed dark from a fine rain which had fallen some time earlier, but which had now ceased. Few were abroad, and no one whose business permitted it remained out of doors.
Huckley Street, one of the narrowest and least inviting in the district, was, indeed, deserted save for a single figure. Though the higher and more ethical side of civilisation was not obtrusive, it was by no means absent. The figure represented Law and Order, in short, it was that of a policeman on his beat.
Constable James Alcorn moved slowly forward, glancing mechanically but with practised eye over the shuttered windows of the shops and the closed doors of the offices and warehouses in his purview. He was not imaginative, the constable, or he would have rebelled even more strongly than he did against the weariness and monotony of his job. A dog’s life, this of night patrol in the City, he thought, as he stopped at a cross roads, and looked down each one in turn of the four dingy and deserted lanes which radiated from the intersection. How deadly depressing it all was! Nothing ever doing! Nothing to give a man a chance! In the daytime it was not so bad, when the streets were alive and fellow creatures were to be seen, if not spoken to, but at night when there was no one to watch, and nothing to be done but wait endlessly for the opportunity which never came, it was a thankless task. He was fed up!
But though he didn’t know it, his chance was at hand. He had passed through Charles Street and had turned into Hatton Garden itself, when suddenly a door swung open a little way down the street, and a young man ran wildly out into the night.
The door was directly under a street lamp, and Alcorn could see that the youth’s features were frozen into an expression of horror and alarm. He hovered for a moment irresolute, then, seeing the constable, made for him at a run.
‘Officer!’ he shouted. ‘Come here quickly. There’s something wrong!’
Alcorn, his depression gone, hurried to meet him.
‘What is it?’ he queried. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Murder, I’m afraid,’ the other cried. ‘Up in the office. Come and see.’
The door from which the young man had emerged stood open, and they hastened thither. It gave on a staircase upon which the electric light was turned on. The young man raced up and passed through a door on the first landing. Alcorn, following, found himself in an office containing three or four desks. A further door leading to an inner room stood open, and to this the young man pointed.
‘In there,’ he directed; ‘in the Chief’s room.’
Here also the light was on, and as Alcorn passed in, he saw that he was indeed in the presence of tragedy, and he stood for a moment motionless, taking in his surroundings.
The room was small, but well proportioned. Near the window stood a roll-top desk of old-fashioned design. A leather-lined clients’ arm-chair was close by, with behind it a well-filled bookcase. In the fireplace the remains of a fire still glowed red. A table littered with books and papers and a large Milner safe completed the furniture. The doors of this safe were open.
Alcorn mechanically noted these details, but it was not on them that his attention was first concentrated. Before the safe lay the body of a man, hunched forward in a heap, as if he had collapsed when stooping to take something out. Though the face was hidden, there was that in the attitude which left no doubt that he was dead. And the cause of death was equally obvious. On the back of the bald head, just above the fringe of white hair, was an ugly wound, as if from a blow of some blunt but heavy weapon.
With an oath, Alcorn stepped forward and touched the cheek.
‘Cold,’ he exclaimed. ‘He must have been dead some time. When did you find him?’
‘Just now,’ the young man answered. ‘I came in for a book, and found him lying there. I ran for help at once.’