A Scream in Soho (17 page)

“Sich goings on,” she was commencing with a virtuous snort, when McCarthy cut her short.

“I know; I know,” he interrupted with a glance over the dingy hall. “Sich goings on have never been known in your respectable household before. Well, I believe y', madam, but there are thousands that wouldn't—including the lads of the ‘E' Division, Metropolitan Police.”

But, in spite of this jocosity McCarthy left the place in thoughtful, indeed, in an extremely grim mood.

Chapter XIX

McCarthy Paralyses His Superior Officer

It was somewhere in the region of midday that Sir William Haynes' phone rang out sharply; lifting the receiver he found that the man who happened to be uppermost in his thoughts at the moment was on the line to him—Detective Inspector McCarthy.

“I say, Mac,” he exclaimed. “They seem to have been going it very hot in Soho last night. Do you know that there's been a third murder there since midnight?”

“Indeed? Who is it this time?” McCarthy asked in a voice which suggested that the subject was a matter of complete indifference to him.

“You'll never guess in a hundred years,” the A.C. returned, almost excitedly.

“I'm not trying,” the inspector said calmly. “If it's Floriello Mascagni you mean, I could have told you that within a quarter of an hour of the time of the murder. And let me correct you upon another point, Bill. Old Joe Anselmi, who I take it is one of the three you mention, was murdered before midnight,
not
after. Not so very long before, possibly only ten minutes or so, but the first duty of an Assistant Commissioner of Police is to have his facts right.”

“You knew about Mascagni then?” the A.C. asked, somewhat snappily for him.

“Between you and I, Bill—or p'raps it's you and me, blest if I know—I was the first that knew anything about that particular bump-off; to be precise, I discovered the body and notified the police—when I'd done with it.”

“You discovered…”

“I discovered the body and notified the police,” McCarthy repeated. “And it wasn't any too pretty a sight. Nothing to be compared with the ‘lady' of Soho Square, of course, but you don't see that kind of butchery every day—the Lord be thanked.”

“Anything new in that direction, Mac?” Sir William asked avidly.

“Quite a number of things,” McCarthy answered placidly, “though they are not ready to be the subject of a full official report yet awhile. When they are I fancy they'll make nice juicy reading for the Sunday newspapers.”

“Where are you ringing from now?” the A.C. wanted to know.

“From a telephone-booth not far from Oxford Street,” McCarthy informed him. “I've been doing quite a little bit of running round this morning, Bill—long before you were out of your bed, I daresay. By the way, old sawbones turned up with most unusual alacrity at the mortuary after you'd rung him up. You must have used the honeyed tongue on him, Bill; he was as bucked as the divil.”

“Did he get anything useful out of his P.M., that's the big thing. Anything that is going to help us stop those plans getting out of the country, Mac?” he asked anxiously.

“We'll do that, all right,” McCarthy assured him. “I want you to lend a hand and without asking any questions, Bill. There's a certain dirty hole of a wine shop called the
Circolo Venezia
that I want watched. And when I say watched I don't mean that I want eight tons of human beef spread out all round it so that no one could mistake either who they are, or what they're at. I want clever youngsters put on to this game; chaps who don't look police, or act like them—that clear?”

“Perfectly. You won't give me any inkling of what's afoot?”

“I'll tell you this much, Bill. Those plans passed through that joint of Fasoli's last night, and in my opinion one man who had something to do with them was Floriello Mascagni. Whether it was through them that he was murdered, I can't say; but I'm quite certain of one thing, and that was that he was put ‘on the spot,' definitely. There's another angle of that crime looming up very strongly, and it looks very much to me as though a hunch, a quite unexplainable hunch I had is going to turn up trumps. However, you see to the Fasoli side of it, and if any of the big bugs of the H.O. or the War Office start worryin' your little guts about those plans tell them that you've reason for believing that they'll be back in official hands before the day is out.”

“That will put me in a most invidious position if they're not, Mac,” Haynes said worriedly.

“Forget it,” McCarthy responded lightly, “let your mind dwell upon the glory that'll be yours when you do hand 'em back.”

Without warning he made one of those sudden and disconcerting switches of his.

“By the way, Bill, have you been to the Baroness Lena Eberhardt's house lately? I should perhaps say how long is it since you paid her a visit?”

“What has that to do with it?” Sir William asked sharply.

“The business of the interrogated is to answer questions as simply and directly as possible, not ask others in return which are merely evasive replies,” McCarthy said whimsically.

“You shoot from one thing to another like a—a…”

“Gadfly,” McCarthy supplied. “I repeat the question, Bill, how long since you visited at the Baroness Lena Eberhardt's house?”

“Although I still don't see what that has to do with the business in hand, I'll answer you. I should think it's a matter of quite a couple of months since I had a cup of afternoon tea there.”

“Look at that, now!” McCarthy said softly. “The A.C. takes afternoon tea with the beautiful baroness in her mansion in Grosvenor Square. And I suppose,” he continued, “that during that, or any other previous calls you might have made, the possibilities are that you might have met some of her friends.”

“Of course I've met some of her friends—any amount of them. The baroness is one of the best known and most popular women in society—you'd have a hard job to go anywhere without meeting acquaintances of hers.”

“Ah, evasive again, Bill,” the inspector chided. “I wasn't speaking about her social acquaintances. I meant her own intimate friends, those to be met at her house.”

“I have met some who might be called her really intimate friends,” the Assistant Commissioner replied, the note of perplexity strong in his voice. “And I've met them at her house.”

“Ah!” came softly from McCarthy. “Now we're getting somewhere. And were any of them Austrian, like herself, Bill? I mean those who were lucky enough to light out prior to Hitler's precious
anschluss
, or even after?”

There was a moment's pause before Sir William answered.

“Some of them were, Mac. Look here, what's at the bottom of all this questioning?”

“Just give me the answers, Bill, and leave what's at the bottom of it to me,” the inspector returned smoothly. “Believe me I'm not wasting the breath I'll be wanting one of these fine days. You're quite sure,” he proceeded, “that they
were
Austrian, and not German, by any chance? I reckon to know my Continentals fairly well, but there are times when I've a devil of a job to tell the difference.”

The troubled note came into the A.C.'s voice again.

“So far as I can tell you, Mac, they were Austrians, but I may have been mistaken, of course. They certainly were introduced to me as Austrians, mostly of the class we're speaking of. I've no reason for doubting the baroness. Have you?” he shot swiftly.

“Me? The good Lord forbid that I should take any such liberty! What about her servants? Did any of them that you might have run across strike you as being of the true Teuton breed?”

Again there was a pause before Haynes answered.

“N-no,” he answered, on a long-drawn thoughtful note. “I can't say that any I've encountered did.”

“What about Heinrich?” McCarthy questioned. “Do you know which of 'em he happens to be?”

“Heinrich; Heinrich,” Haynes repeated. “Yes, I do happen to know that particular one. He's her butler—a confidential servant who she brought with her from Vienna.”

“Look at that, now,” McCarthy said again, in that soft, enigmatic way he had. “And is there anything about Heinrich which might lead you to think that
he
was of Teutonic origin?”

“Well,” Haynes answered thoughtfully. “Come to that, Mac, as far as build and general appearance goes he certainly
could
be German—of the old under-officer type that we got so familiar with in the war. But, of course,” he added hastily, “that doesn't say that he is German for a moment. I can't believe that a lady who hates the Nazis and all their works as much as she does would have a German for her
major-domo
, for that I understood was practically the man's position there.”

“It doesn't seem very likely—does it,” McCarthy said emolliently, in fact so much so, that it added considerably to the perplexity of mind of his superior officer.

“Look here, Mac,” he snapped. “Let's have done with all this. I hate to say it, but as your superior officer I demand to know what's at the bottom of all this questioning. You've something in your mind, and it's my business to know what it is. What is it that you're trying to say as far as the Baroness Lena Eberhardt is concerned?”

“Now, now, now,” McCarthy chided. “Temper, Bill, does no good to anyone and, in particular, clouds the judgment of those who sit in high places—like yourself. The question really at the bottom of my mind is when are you likely to take tea with the lady again? Now don't fly off the handle; just give the question your kind consideration and the questioner a civil answer.”

Across the line McCarthy heard the Assistant Commissioner choke down something. “I have an invitation to look in upon the baroness any time that I'm passing,” he said stiffly, and with obvious effort.

“The invitation extended to you again no later than yesterday perhaps?” McCarthy questioned.

“If it's any part of your business, that is so,” Haynes answered tartly.

“It's very much my business, Bill,” the inspector told him. “And what's more you needn't go all up stage and high hat about it. If you'll do what I want you to, you'll drop in for that same cup of tea quite unannounced this afternoon, keeping in your mind the suggestion I've made concerning Heinrich, the lady's butler,
major-domo
, or whatever you like to call him.”

That the Assistant Commissioner was paralysed with astonishment by the request was very palpable from the tone in which he answered it.

“You mean that?” he asked incredulously. “This isn't some…”

“This isn't anything but the proper prosecution of the job you've assigned me to,” McCarthy said seriously. “I've my own reasons, and very good ones, for wanting someone who has an official eye to run the rule over that particular man, and any others he gets the opportunity of sizing up. There's no one else at the Yard who can do it, without arousing suspicion, and that at the moment is the last thing I want. It's up to you, of course. You're the lad with the say so, not me.”

A certain note in the inspector's voice told the A.C. that, whatever there might be of what McCarthy called “phlahoolic” in his usual make-up, at the present moment he was absolutely serious.

“All right, Mac,” he said, though reluctantly. “Since you think it's necessary, I'll go. Though what the woman will think of my turning up in that way, I'm dam'd if I know. I'll have to invent some excuse about being in the immediate neighbourhood, and try to make it sound plausible. But I can tell you this,” he concluded grimly, “that if…”

“If everything doesn't turn out one hundred per cent good,” McCarthy cut in, “the good Lord help Patrick Aloysius McCarthy, for nobody else at the Yard will. I'll chance it. You be there, Bill, and for the love of Mike,” he went on incorrigibly, “don't forget any of the pretty little parlour tricks your mama taught you at her knee. Be a credit to the Force, and the Force will be a credit to you. And for all you know there may be other distinguished guests drop in to keep you company. You never can tell, as Mr. Bernard Shaw says.”

And before the Assistant Commissioner could find any suitable retort to this persiflage, McCarthy had rung off, leaving Sir William Haynes using language totally unfitted for an ex-officer and gentleman, not to mention one of the high executives of New Scotland Yard.

Chapter XX

McCarthy Strikes a Snag

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when Withers' cab pulled up again against the Hyde Park railings opposite that magnificent set of mansion flats. In his little box-office in the hall, ex-convict James Delaney was perusing the pages of an afternoon paper when a shadow fell across him which made him start. He started still more when he discovered the identity of the person who threw that shadow—Detective Inspector McCarthy!

“In?” the inspector questioned, with a jerk of his head upstairs.

“Out,” Delaney answered somewhat nervously. “Not expected back till about four-thirty. First floor, and first door to the right. It's right next to the lift.”

“I'll use the stairs,” the inspector said. “Lifts are an idle habit.”

Without another word he turned up a magnificent marble staircase. As he did so, out of the corner of his eye he saw Delaney hurriedly depart along the hallway.

The landing, off which a corridor little less in opulence than the hallway ran, was entirely empty. Not a sign of a living person was there to be seen, either at that level or on the stairs leading upwards. Taking a picklock from his pocket, he deftly inserted it in the keyhole of that door to the right of the elevator, gave a couple of cunning twists, then pushed it open and walked quietly in.

He found himself in an inner, small, but again ornately-furnished hall which led into a large drawing-room. Crossing to the front windows he saw that they looked directly down upon Park Lane. From the balcony outside he could have hailed Withers as easily as from the pavement.

He very quickly decided that this particular room would have no interest for him. It was too newly occupied to contain anything likely to be of use to him. But he looked about it and attended to one or two things which might prove serviceable later. From that he passed into a bedroom very nearly as large, and certainly quite as ornate as the drawing-room itself. Here had been placed those brand-new, expensive trunks which Tessa Domenico had removed from her lodging in Doughty Street that morning. They were still locked, and, apparently, had not been touched since the servitors of the flats had set them down. He would give them some personal attention as soon as he had been right through the flat; experience had told him that it was bad business not to know the lay of the land in any place where trouble might come upon you at any moment.

Out of this commodious sleeping apartment was a completely marbled bathroom which surpassed anything he had ever had the pleasure of taking his ablutions in, even in the most expensive hotels. It was double-doored; the one leading from the bedroom, and another opening into a dressing-room attached, which again opened on to an inner corridor which contained four doors.

Trying the first he came to, he discovered it to be that of another bedroom. Closing the door after him he went on to the next; it too was yet another, and even these palpably extra, or “spare,” rooms were furnished in a state to make an ordinary man stare. No question that if these particular flats were, as they were accredited with being, the most expensive in London, they certainly gave the person who leased them something for their money.

He was about to pass on to the third of the doors when a sound reached his ear which sent him tense and listening intently for all that he was worth. Although two rooms and a corridor separated him from it he was quite certain that he had heard the snap of the outer door lock, if not that of the one which led into that magnificent drawing-room. Retracing his steps quickly to the dressing-room he listened there a moment; it was all he needed to assure him that the occupants of the flat had quite unexpectedly returned, and that he was caught in an anything but enviable position.

Slipping back again into the corridor he searched for a service door of any kind which might afford an exit, but there was none. The dining-room of the flat, from which there probably was a service door, was entered from the drawing-room and lay back from the front. To get at it he would have to pass through the bedroom and drawing-room, the chances of which, without being observed, were absolutely a million to one against. While he was endeavouring to make up his mind as to his best line of action, Tessa Domenico sailed through into the bedroom, followed by her male companion, and rendered those chances absolutely
nil
.

On tip-toe McCarthy crept to the bathroom door, opened it noiselessly the tiniest bit to see just how the land lay. More than ever were things unpropitious, for while Tessa had thrown off the magnificent chinchilla coat she had been wearing and tossed it upon the bed with her hat, and was evidently about to repair the ravages of her toilet, the man with the icy eyes simply leaned lazily against the door through which McCarthy must necessarily pass to get out. Which, in the inspector's opinion, put the tin hat on things entirely.

That neither had the faintest suspicion that there was any third party in the flat became evident from the turn their conversation took. The man was as calm and as placid as he had been when he had walked out of Signora Spadoglia's restaurant the night before, but the tone of Tessa Domenico's voice proved that she was at least agitated, if some much stronger emotion was not dominating her at the moment.

“Where did you hear that they were hard at work following up his”—her voice trembled for an instant—“his, Mascagni's death?” she asked.

He took a cigarette from his case and lit it before replying.

“Did you not expect that they would?” he returned with complete casualness. “My dear Tessa, such are the strange ways of this country of yours that the police give just as much attention to the murder of a gangster as they would to that of the Prime Minister. The outcry in the newspapers will of course be less, but otherwise the
modus operandi
will be exactly the same.”

It struck instantly upon McCarthy, experienced as he was in the different gradations of the English tongue as spoken in cosmopolitan Soho, that this man was unquestionably German although speaking perfect, but pedantic, English. There was nothing colloquial in his phrasing. He reminded McCarthy both in his method of speech and his idiom more of that unconscious humorist, Lord Haw-Haw of Hamburg, than anyone he had ever heard. The only difference lay in a certain sinisterness which was behind this man's voice which the German broadcaster completely lacked.

“Speaking entirely personally,” he went on, “I think there is little to fear from the outcome of Scotland Yard's activities. They do not strike me as having anything of either genius or inspiration behind them. For your reassurance I may say that Ludwig has performed the act of, shall we say, elimination too often to leave behind him any trace whatever for them to take hold of. ‘Clue' is, I believe, the word I should have used.”

McCarthy watching her as she sat before her mirror, saw a shudder of repulsion run through the beautiful Tessa.

“I hate that horrible dwarf!” she exclaimed. “I am afraid of him.”

“Alliterative—and most unfair,” he observed. “You have nothing whatever to fear from Ludwig. As a matter of fact he performed you a signal service in removing what threatened to be a very considerable danger from your path.”

Had McCarthy been one of the animal species he would, to use that well-frayed term, have “pricked up his ears.” So that dwarf chauffeur had been the actual killer of Floriello Mascagni—at the instigation of this cold-blooded German, of course. Had that freak also been the murderer of the Rohner individual? McCarthy doubted it, certain evidences plainly to be seen in the doorway in which the gangster had been murdered, showed that he had been first struck by a well-flung knife. In the Soho Square case the situation must have been entirely different: whoever had killed Rohner had certainly grappled with him, and held him by sheer strength while the ghastly deed was committed. To judge by the physique of the female impersonator that would have been entirely out of the question in the case of the dwarf despite the strength of trunk and arms he undoubtedly was possessed of. Again in the case of Harper, McCarthy was certain that the wound which had given the unusually tall, and powerful, constable his quietus had been delivered direct by hand—the dwarf could scarcely have reached the point below Harper's shoulder where the death wound had been inflicted. Unless he was entirely mistaken the man who had committed the dual murders in Soho Square was standing but a few feet from him at that moment.

“All the same,” she said nervously, “I wish some other way had been found to get rid of Floriello.”

Again he shrugged those athletic-looking shoulders of his and glanced at her amusedly.

“And what other way could possibly have been so efficacious?” he asked, and his tone suggested that the whole matter was one of the most complete indifference to him. “Do you think that a gangster and blackmailer such as he was could have been bought off—for any length of time? He had threatened your life repeatedly in the event of your having the audacity to look with favourable eyes upon any other but himself. You had no doubt whatever in your mind that he meant those threats, and would most assuredly carry them out.”

“That is true enough,” she admitted. “He would have killed me sooner or later.”

He nodded his agreement. “Exactly; he had all the instincts of a wild beast, without the courage of one. Extermination was the only way to deal with him. He also had had the temerity to threaten me, though in a totally different connection. You, yourself, informed me that he was uttering threats against me no later than last night.”

“I repeated to you just what he said; that he meant it, I have no doubt whatever.”

“Nor I; he was that class of human rat. It so happens,” he continued, “that I am not the man to brook threats of any sort or kind from anyone. I gave him the very fullest opportunity to translate his vicious words into action last night at Fasoli's. I humbled him into the dirt where he belonged, but there was nothing coming from him.” He gave a short, hard laugh. “That sealed his fate as far as I was concerned. And now,” he said, “let us have an end of it. He was useful for a time and, having outlived that usefulness, has met the only fate possible to the useless of this world.”

He concluded with a gesture which McCarthy read as dismissing the subject of Floriello Mascagni once and for all, then with that slow step of his crossed the room and deposited the butt of his cigarette in a receptacle in the centre of the room. At the same moment the girl got up, lifted her hat from the bed and pulled it on again, eyeing herself in the mirror as she did so. The man, Hellner, Delaney had called him, lifted the chinchilla coat and held it for her. Evidently, McCarthy thought gleefully, the pair were off out again—the well-known Luck of the McCarthy's was doing its bit splendidly! In that noiseless way of his he backed out through the dressing-room and into that corridor in which were the four bedrooms, closing the doors cautiously behind him.

He did not move again until he heard for the second time that sharp sound of that outer door being closed after them, and even then it was only as far as the bathroom door to make sure that both had departed. For some minutes he stood listening intently, but not the slightest sound came to him. He might have chanced creeping as far as the drawing-room windows and taking a peep down but for the fact that the curtains of the ornate apartment were drawn, and a quick glance upwards on the part of either Hellner or the girl might upset his apple-cart completely. He determined first to continue his examination of those bedrooms; in one or other of them must be the man's luggage, since he had seen no sign whatever of it in the rooms he had already been through. Delaney had said something about it, but just what, had slipped his memory. He questioned much if Tessa's new belongings would hold anything to interest him.

One by one he completed his examination of the rooms, to find nothing of what he sought. Evidently Hellner's personal belongings had not yet arrived.

He was turning back into the corridor again when he caught sight of some inset panelling which might be quite easily the well-camouflaged entrance to a box-room. He was stooping to examine it when without the slightest warning that meticulously spoken voice he had been listening to but a little while before invited him to lift his hands, and quickly; at the same moment what was only too palpably the muzzle of a revolver or automatic pistol was jammed hard into the small of his back. The menace behind the quiet tone was all-sufficient to tell McCarthy that the quicker that request was obeyed the better.

But, almost involuntarily, McCarthy had swung round, to find the weapon speedily transferred to the pit of his stomach and himself staring into the utterly unmoving, though now narrowed ice-blue eyes. He now saw that that which had prodded him in the back was an automatic pistol, complete with its silencer, of a calibre to make short work of anyone it was discharged into. For just one split-second there flashed through the inspector's brain the thought that he would take a chance and attack, but the eyes so contemptuously regarding him were no longer blank and expressionless; there was that in their pale hardness which told McCarthy that this man would kill without the slightest compunction. The one hope he had was to play for a bit of time and seize upon whatever chance the other might give him—which was not likely to be much.

“Things,” he remarked pleasantly, and with his unquenchable smile, “seem to have come slightly unstuck.”

“Very much so, as far as you are concerned,” the other retorted in an equally equable tone.

“Perhaps,” McCarthy bluffed. “I think I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr.—or is it Baron?—Hellner?”

“That name will do as well as any other. To simplify matters we will agree upon Hellner—Baron Hellner. And you, I understand, are Detective Inspector McCarthy, of Scotland Yard.”

“
New
Scotland Yard,” McCarthy corrected in the same affable way. “Though it's a common error among foreigners.”