A Scream in Soho (13 page)

“But I haven't the faintest idea where to pick McCarthy up,” Mascagni protested. “He's like a blasted jumping-jack; here, there, and everywhere.”

“That is your business,” the other informed him coldly. “You will prosecute it to the very utmost of your ability—if you are wise. Until eleven o'clock.”

There was no more. Flo. Mascagni could hear the other hang up his receiver, then the line went dead. Returning to the club room, he picked three of the older men of his gang, tough-looking specimens, who, he knew, could be depended upon to not only use cunning, but could put up a real fight if necessary.

“The rest of you clear out of here sharp at closing time and make yourselves scarce.”

For a moment or two he stood thinking, then slipping upstairs again to the telephone, dialled a certain number. A low, seductive female voice answered his call.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“It's me—Flo.,” he told her. “I can't take you out dancing to-night as I promised, Tessa. He's found me a job to do, dam' him.”

“He? Who?” she asked, but without exhibiting the disappointment in her voice that he had expected to hear.

“The Big Shot. The one I told you about who's been finding the big dough lately.”

“The one whose name you don't know?” she asked.

“I know the name he's travelling under,” he answered. “But it's not his real one. The swine is a German. Don't talk about him, he seems to have ears that reach everywhere!” he added viciously.

“You sound as if you don't like him, Flo.,” she said.

A wicked laugh came from Mascagni.

“Like him! I like him so much that if I could see a chiv in his throat I'd laugh for a fortnight! But I want his dough, Tessa, and he's bad medicine to fall out with. But one of these days I'll show him something that he won't forget in a hurry.”

“Why?” she asked laconically.

“Why?” he echoed. “Because he thinks he's everything and the rest don't matter! Gives his orders as if you were a dog, and his threats at the same time. I suppose I've got to stick him while I want him, but one of the best days I'll ever know will be the one when I'll either see him dead or with handcuffs on. And one will be about the same as the other.”

A low, musical laugh came to him over the line.

“You love him not, Flo.,” she said.

“I love him not!” Mascagni answered grimly. “And one day he'll know it. Well, I've got to get going. I'll phone you to-morrow.”

“Leave it till the evening, Flo.,” she said. “I shall be free then.”

“What do you mean by ‘free then'?” he asked jealously. “What are you doing the rest of the day?”

But no answer came to him, and for the second time that evening he heard the receiver hung up on him. He was still muttering curses when he joined the three he had selected for the night's work and left the
Circolo Venezia
.

As he passed through the outer bar the wild-looking Signor Paolo Vanadi was holding forth luridly upon some subject or other. Pausing for a moment to throw one contemptuous stare at the quartette as they went through, he jerked a thumb towards them.

“Rats!” he observed, that all might hear. “Rats on two legs instead of four! The only difference is that the four-legged ones have more courage!”

Receiving no answer of any sort of kind to this jibe, he spat deliberately upon the highly-polished shoes of the gangster bringing up the rear, then went on with his impassioned harangue.

Chapter XV

The Packet Changes Hands

At five to eleven to the minute, Fasoli cleared his place, then closed and barred the front doors of the
Circolo Venezia
. His unusual earliness brought savage expostulations from some of his patrons, of which he took no notice whatever. Strangely enough, the one he had expected most trouble with, Paolo Vanadi, he had none at all, for at about the time he commenced picking up the dirty glasses, that gentleman, having drunk himself into an almost lunatic state, simply disappeared.

Having closed, Fasoli did not hang around his bar cleaning up as usual, but got to that upstairs room, and sat waiting by the telephone. At two minutes to eleven it rang. The same cold voice which had addressed Mascagni earlier in the evening came to his ears.

“I shall be there, at the rear door, in precisely three minutes,” it informed him. “Have the packet ready that Mascagni handed over to you for safekeeping to-day. I have no wish to stay there longer than is necessary. Is Mascagni there?”

“No, signor, but I expect-a heem ever-a minute. Eet ees notta eleven yet, signor. Mascagni good-a boy,” he observed, almost timidly. “Somet'ing onexpec' keep-a heem late. Trust Flo. to carry-a da orders out.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when there came a peculiar, low-noted whistle from the back yard.

“Mascagni ees 'ere now—signor. I 'ear hees wheestl—a.”

Putting back the receiver he hurried to the back door, unlocked it, and opened it cautiously. Mascagni entered alone.

“He 'as just-a rung up,” Fasoli informed him. “Weel be-a 'ere in two, t'ree minutes.”

“The best I wish him is that he'll break his bloody neck getting here,” Mascagni growled. “He's after the packet—you'd better have it ready. His Highness doesn't like being kept waiting—blast him.”

Fasoli glanced at him queerly, and for a second looked as though he was about to make some observation. But evidently he thought better of it and made again for his back door.

“Lock eet after me,” he requested. “And open up when he com'.”

Outside his door he listened while Mascagni shot the bolts. Suddenly, but at some distance away, there rose upon the still night air the sound of a fierce brawl, topped by altercation in a high-pitched hysterical voice. With a certain amount of relief Fasoli recognized the voice—it was that madman, Paolo Vanadi, fallen foul of the police again! Had it not been for the money he spent so liberally during his periodical visits, Fasoli could have wished that he could have remained in their hands for the rest of his existence. The brawl was still at its height as he made his way across a small yard which would have been a veritable deathtrap to any stranger who had endeavoured to negotiate it in this inky blackness, but the wine-shop keeper passed with the utmost certainty through the obstacles towards a ramshackle shed which stood in a corner of the yard. Into this he disappeared, and as he did so the sound of the faraway brawl ended with a suddenness which suggested that the unruly Vanadi had been laid low at last—possibly with a police truncheon.

Scarcely had Fasoli disappeared than a back gate which led into an alley was opened cautiously, and two other persons entered the yard. The one who led the way must have had the eyes of a cat to avoid accident, or else, like Fasoli, was so well acquainted with the place that he could cross it blindfold. A moment later he tapped in a peculiar way upon the door; without hesitation Mascagni unlocked and opened.

The first person to enter would have been promptly recognized by Inspector McCarthy, even by such portion of his face as could be seen, as the man who had supped in Signora Spadoglia's the night before—the one he had mentally christened, and thought of, as the “man with the ice-blue eyes.” At the present moment those strange-looking members were not so much the colour of ice as of chilled steel. He was garbed in totally different fashion to the night before, wearing rough tweeds and a heavy overcoat of the same material, the collar of which was turned up to his ears. The soft felt hat which topped the lot was snapped down in front to cover those strange eyes, but the moment he entered the room he pushed it back clear of them and fixed Mascagni with a stare so steady that it seemed peculiarly malevolent in its intensity.

But it was the person who accompanied and, by the way, the one who had led the way across the case- and cask-strewn yard, who was certainly the most noticeable of the two at that moment. He was, literally, a dwarf of certainly not more than four feet high, but with the shoulder-spread of a man two feet taller. To add to the queerness, indeed unnaturalness, of his appearance, his head and hands would have been in proper proportion upon a man of the latter height, yet his feet were tiny.

He was dressed in a chauffeur's uniform of dark grey, and carried a pair of leather gauntlets in his left hand. In features he was as repulsive as even a man of his unusual proportions could be. The whole of his face was heavily pock-marked, while his nose was of that natural order of snub which appears to have no bridge whatever, and just juts from the face in one wide-nostrilled point. His ears were huge and splayed out at right angles to his face, while his mouth, for sheer cruelty, would have done justice to a man-eating shark. The moment he had knocked upon the door and Mascagni had opened it, he dropped back behind the man who was apparently his master, and effaced himself in a corner by the door.

“Well,” the newcomer asked, in that abrupt, harsh voice which seemed natural to him, “have you anything to report?”

Mascagni shook his head sullenly.

“No,” he answered. “I and three of my men have hunted everywhere I could think of to pick up traces of him, but we've had no luck. He's not in Soho to-night, that I'm certain of.”

“He was in the West End at two o'clock today,” the other said frowningly. “That I know for positive fact.”

In the same sullen way Mascagni shrugged his shoulders. “He may be still for all I know,” he returned. “All I've got to say is that I've hunted Soho for him, and can't find him, nor have I struck anyone who's seen him to-night. I might have gone on further, only you wanted me here at eleven o'clock, and it takes time to go the rounds.”

There was a certain note of surly defiance in the Soho-Italian's voice as he spoke; a note which the other was not slow to pick up. The steely light in the pale eyes intensified ever so slightly, though by no other sign did he show annoyance or, for the matter of that, interest.

“Perhaps I am wrong,” he said quietly, and, indeed, amiably, “but you sound somewhat disgruntled, Mascagni?”

The tone in which the words were spoken gave the gangster courage to get something off his chest which had lain dormant there ever since his projected programme with Tessa Domenico had been upset by this man's peremptory orders.

“If that means that I'm sore, you can take it as right,” he spat, his native viciousness showing for the first time to the man who watched him with that unblinking stare. “It's all dam' fine you ordering this and that, and speaking to me as if I were some dog in the gutter. But don't forget one thing…”

“And what is that?” the other interrupted, in a strangely quiet voice.

“That it wasn't me who killed the woman in Soho Square last night—it's not me McCarthy's after.”

“No?”

“No! You can tell me that I had a cut in it as much as you like, and my answer to that is that I knew nothing about it until I saw it done, and if I had known, I wouldn't have been where I was. You can bet on that.”

“What is the difference, in so far as the law is concerned, between one murder and another?” the man with the icy eyes queried almost pleasantly. “Who killed the owner of the coffee-stall?”

“Not me,” Mascagni snapped quickly. “I wasn't mug enough for that.”

“I think that if ever you stand in the dock for complicity in either charge, the mere fact that you did not actually commit the murders with your own hands will not stand you in very good stead. You are an accessory, as the English law puts it, both before and after both crimes.”

Mascagni scowled. “When I stand in the dock for it,” he snarled, “you can bet every penny you've got that you'll be there with me. Take that from me.”

“
Ach
, so? That is the way of it, is it?” The speaker moved with a long gliding stride towards Mascagni, who promptly backed away from him and dropped his hand into his right coat pocket. “Be warned, fool, do not attempt to pull that weapon you have there if you value your own worthless and useless existence. To repeat your own phrase, you can take it from me that you would be a dead man, before you could as much as point it. You will be well advised to remove that hand before—before something extremely unpleasant happens to you.”

One quick look Mascagni took into those unmoving eyes, then slowly his hand came out of the pocket—empty.

“That is better, much better. Now, you listen to me. The first movement that you make in any direction, which I consider inimical to either myself or my plans, will be your last. That you are too big a cur to ever whisper a word that might land you where you should have been long ago, in a felon's dock, I am perfectly certain. However, here and now I give you fair warning, which is something I do not generally trouble myself to do where rats of your breed are concerned. Make one false step—and you know the consequences.”

A tap, the same peculiar knock as that which had admitted them, came upon the door.

“Open it, Ludwig,” he ordered curtly.

Without a word the dwarf did so, and Fasoli hurried into the room and quickly closed and bolted the door after himself. One quick glance he shot at the two standing there, then took a flat, oilskin-wrapped packet from the inside of his shirt, and handed it over.

“What you wanted, signor,” he said, utter subservience in his voice.

“I wrap eet in-a da piece oilskin,” he said fawningly. “Eet damp—da blue colour she com' off onna da fingers.”

“Thanks.” Carefully and deliberately the man with the icy eyes unwrapped the oilskin and examined the contents, then as carefully rewrapped it and placed it in his breast-pocket. From a notecase he took two wads of treasury notes, the smaller of which he handed to Fasoli, whose eyes gleamed at the sight of the money.

“I t'ank you, signor; I t'ank you,” the wine-shop keeper almost grovelled, clutching at the notes.

The second packet he flung upon the floor at Mascagni's feet. “The pay you were promised,” he said coldly. “Let it remind you, Mascagni, of a very important fact: that I
keep
my promises—pleasant, and unpleasant.” He made an abrupt gesture towards the door. “Get out,” he ordered curtly. “Get out—before I change my mind as to the method of dealing with you.”

Without a word Mascagni picked up the packet of notes, and thrust them in his pocket, then crossed to the door, avoiding the glare in the eyes of the other. Fasoli, scenting the imminence of stark tragedy, opened the door hurriedly, and Mascagni slouched through it without a word. Five minutes later his other guests left, and, it was with a sigh of intense relief that he locked and bolted the door, for the last time he hoped, that night.

“
Madonna mia!
” he muttered, as the last sound of their departure reached him from the yard. “I do not like that one! I am afraid of heem.”

It was as the pair moved stealthily along in the blackness of the alley at the rear of Fasoli's that the icy-eyed man spoke again.

“I will drive the car home, Ludwig,” he said quietly. “I think it will be wiser for you to do a little job to-night, and not risk leaving it till later. A job,” he added, “which is one after your own heart. You understand?”

“
Ja
, Herr Baron,” the dwarf chuckled. “One after my own heart, indeed!”

A moment later, he had disappeared into the impenetrable gloom which was Greek Street in the black-out.

His master kept along towards Oxford Street at a pace which suggested that those strange eyes of his had something of the feline power of seeing in the dark in them. Only once he paused as though he heard some movement not far away from him, stood listening a moment, then went on again.

As he did so someone, moving with the stealth of a creature of the wild, kept a little behind him upon the other side of the road, though certain it was that if his game was shadowing, he could have seen nothing of his quarry. At one corner this unseen second person stopped as though in a quandary, then felt his way into a narrow alley which ran from Greek Street towards the rear of its business premises. A second later he had barely time to flatten himself against the wall when a car shot along the alley without lights of any sort, its mudguards almost brushing against him. It turned into Greek Street, and before the shadower could get to the corner its lights were switched on after it swung again into Oxford Street, running in an easterly direction. But one light was not on—that which should have illumined, even if ever so faintly, the rear number plate.

“Lost him,” the shadower exclaimed ruefully. “I should have been prepared for something of this sort.”