A Scream in Soho (18 page)

The other gave him a cold smile—too chill and wintry to be propitious, the inspector thought.

“May I ask what you are doing here?” Hellner questioned.

“Now I should have thought that that would have been instantly apparent to a gentleman of your intelligence,” McCarthy countered brightly. “Still if you want it in so many words I was endeavouring to search the place, under the mistaken idea that yourself and the Signorina Domenico had gone out again.”

“We should have done so but for the blindest piece of chance,” Hellner informed him, in that pedantic English of his. “Fortunately for me, and definitely unfortunately for you, in assisting the ‘signorina,' as you call her, on with her coat, I chanced to glance into her mirror at a certain angle. That angle gave me a perfect view of yourself, concealed behind, and peeping out from the bathroom door. I could have shot you down there and then, McCarthy,” he went on grimly, “and, under other circumstances would most assuredly have done so. But as the lady happens to be already in a highly nervous condition, I had no wish to startle her into some hysterical action which might not have suited my purpose. One has to think of these things.”

Chapter XXI

The Tables are Turned

McCarthy nodded. “I see your point,” he said gravely. “It's a thousand to one she'd have screamed like the divil and probably brought people on to the scene that ye'd not be wanting here—not at the moment. And after all,” he proceeded as though arguing some point of interest quite detachedly, “it's only to be expected that a woman of that type
would
be in a high state of nerves when she knows that, not only is she connected with a wholesale murderer, but has been part and parcel, not to say an accessory before and after, the fact of one particular killing last night, which the police have already well in hand. Indeed, as the officer in charge of the case, I don't think there is a great deal of doubt that the gentle Tessa sent the telephone message that put Mascagni on the spot for that dirty little dwarf of yours to kill. Ludwig, d'ye call him?”

The pale eyes, watched so closely by McCarthy, seemed to become even fainter in colour if that were possible, and most certainly the look of menace in them deepened. But the man had evidently tight hold upon himself and never for one second did he betray anger or even exasperation.

“I think Inspector McCarthy can scarcely claim credit for information gained by listening-in to a private conversation?” he remarked.

“Not at all; not at all,” the inspector hastened to agree. “But it was mighty helpful and is going to save a lot of time, and money. It'll be a matter of a very few hours before Herr Ludwig will find himself behind bars, on his way to the gallows
via
the Old Bailey.”

“That is as maybe,” Hellner said acidly. “To quote your English saying, a lot of water will run under the bridges between this and then.”

“Don't you believe it, Herr Baron,” McCarthy said heartily. “We don't make many mistakes about murderers in this country, once we know that they are. And social status makes no difference. We'll hang you just as quickly for the murder of the spy who called himself ‘Madame Rohner,' and also for the wicked killing of Constable Harper at the back gate, as we will that misshapen chauffeur of yours.”

“Is that so?” the German asked quietly, and McCarthy glancing down noticed that his finger tensed upon the trigger.

“That
is
so,” he answered promptly. “Now that is a little bit of work I rather pride myself on,” he continued, “particularly when you consider the time I've had on the job. My first impression that you were the murderer was what I'd call a pure ‘hunch.' That's an American word, by the way; I don't know whether you've anything in German to exactly correspond with it. It merely means a sort of instinct. It was owing to that ‘hunch' that I followed you out of Soho Square, and later set a certain friend of mine to follow you up. And it was there, Herr Baron, that you made your first big mistake—if you don't mind my pointing it out.”

“Certainly not. One lives and learns.”

“I somehow have the feeling that you'll not be doing either for long,” McCarthy informed him, with a shake of his head. “Your first mistake was in not leaving Danny Regan just where your friends—men of Flo. Mascagni's gang, by the way—laid him out. It wouldn't have altered things actually, but it would have taken a little more time before I, personally, could have connected up the woman found dead on Hampstead Heath with the person killed in Soho Square. And equally,” he went on significantly, “before I connected the
pseudo
Madame Rohner with the person who had stolen plans of certain anti-aircraft dispositions from Whitehall that afternoon.”

That that was a totally unexpected shaft, and one which struck home, was very palpable to the inspector. For just an instant the pale eyes seemed to glaze and again that trigger finger tautened. But the man kept complete command of his voice when he put his next question.

“And how did that miracle of efficiency come to pass?”

“Perfume,” McCarthy answered laconically. “A certain odour was unmistakable in the room at Whitehall from which the plans were stolen. It hung heavily upon the air at the scene of the Rohner killing—where, by the way, you left a stiletto and a lace handkerchief behind you. That same scent was present unmistakably when the body was brought in to the mortuary by the Golders Green men. Not only that but there was a certain stain upon the underclothes of the—er—‘lady' which told me that she had most certainly handled and, indeed, carried the stolen prints about on her—him, I should say, of course. The inference was obvious—that the murder had been committed to get them.”

“I see that I have been underrating your intelligence, Inspector,” Hellner said quietly. “Go on.”

“When, still later, I found those same stains upon the finger-tips of the murdered Mascagni, it wasn't difficult to put that two and two together and make four of them. I already knew that Mascagni was mixed up in the business, from the mere fact that he was one of the gentry in the car that tried to put paid to myself and Danny Regan as we were coming back from the mortuary. You must have had a very good suspicion even then, Baron, that you were extremely prominent in my mind in connection with the murder.”

“For some reason not altogether explainable even to myself, I had,” Hellner answered, those unmoving eyes of his still fixed upon the soft and extremely deceptive ones of the inspector. “Please go on; this is most interesting.”

“You had another stroke of bad luck,” McCarthy proceeded. “After you left Fasoli's last night, you very nearly crashed a taxi of a highly-esteemed friend of mine who, as a matter of fact, was turning into Soho to pick me up. As, apparently, you treated his protest with that contempt you seem to have for less fortunate persons of a humbler state than yourself, he turned and followed you, Baron.”

“Followed me!”

“Followed you,” McCarthy repeated. “As far as Grosvenor Square, and then again to this place.”

“I saw nothing of him,” the Baron snapped.

“He took remarkably good care of
that
,” McCarthy informed him pleasantly. “As it happens he's by way of being an exceedingly shrewd chap who assists me no little from time to time, and he realized that he'd discovered the one join-up I'd been waiting for ever since a certain lady friend of yours had paid a call at Fasoli's in the afternoon.”

“
Ach, Himmel!
” burst involuntarily from the German.

That change McCarthy had been waiting for came suddenly into the expression of those eyes. The revelation that he had been followed to Grosvenor Square and watched there, with the obvious implication that the visit connected him definitely with the Baroness Lena Eberhardt, had, unquestionably, been a shattering blow, both to his vanity and to his sense of security.

“Women,” McCarthy said softly, “are the very divil in espionage, or any other kind of plotting for the matter of that. The dear things simply can't keep their teeth shut. Clever as they think they are, and cunning without a doubt, they almost invariably give the one lead away which sooner or later wrecks themselves and everyone concerned with them. My little friend, Tessa Domenico, will do just the same when they take her into the Yard for interrogation. I expect she will have been picked up by now. She'll squeal all she knows—you see if I'm not right, Hellner. And Fasoli—there's a poor kind of reed to lean upon when the going gets tough. The little birds warbling in the trees in Lincoln's Inn Fields can't get their notes out half as fast as Luigi Fasoli will spill all he knows.”

A low, animal-like growl came from the throat of the German.

“Curse you,” he began in little more than a hissed whisper. “Whatever happens, you, at least, will not be there to see it!”

“Get that idea out of your head entirely,” McCarthy snapped, tensing himself. “I'll be there, right enough, and I'll give you one last piece of information, combined with prophecy, for luck. Heinrich will
not
take that stolen stuff out of England to-night!”

Like lightning one of his hands flashed downwards and outwards, cutting the pistol away from his mid-section; instantly it exploded and he heard the heavy bullet tear its way into the frame of the door. Simultaneously his right hand whizzed up into the man's face with terrific force, laying it open to the bone. The blood streamed from the wound, for a second blinding Hellner and giving McCarthy just that fraction of time he needed to get a grip upon the wrist of the German's gun hand.

But he was to find that in this man he had an opponent that it took more than one blow, terrible as it was, to stop. Hellner's left fist crashed solidly into McCarthy's face, driving his head back against the door with almost stunning force. A moment later a knee in the groin gave him agonizing pain, but it also did something else upon which the other had certainly never counted.

It set the fighting Irish blood of the inspector ablaze with fury! Still gripping the man's gun-wrist, he lashed away at the bloodstained face with a viciousness which no man could have withstood for long. Hellner, as tall as McCarthy and every whit as powerful, dashed an iron-hard head into his face with shattering force—to be met the second time he tried it with an uppercut which nearly tore it from his shoulders. By sheer strength, McCarthy rushed his opponent back out of the door-way across the passage and up against the wall.

With the German trying to get a grip upon his throat, McCarthy dug him under the heart with that iron hand of his until the man's breathing became a short hard gasp which told its own story. But, although hurt, he was as deadly as a rattle-snake every second of the time.

But the blood he was losing was weakening him. It was pouring from his face in a torrent now, covering his own clothes, and McCarthy's, with the sticky fluid. In vain he tried to get a leg-lock and throw the Scotland Yard man, but only towards his own undoing, for McCarthy, expert at ju-jitsu as he was, nearly tore the limb from its socket.

Desperately he struggled to get the gun-hand free, but the inspector, realizing that if that happened his last moment had come, held on with the tenacity of a bull-dog. Again and again he lashed those wicked blows under the heart, but if they were slowing the man, he certainly was showing no sign of it beyond his gasping breath.

Then, with a sudden quick twist of his whole body, but still keeping his grip upon the wrist, McCarthy stooped quickly, whipped the man bodily to his shoulder, and sent him flying out, full length upon the floor. With the wrist held, the arm joint was wrenched completely out of its socket and the gun fell from limp, nerveless fingers.

But even then the other was not yet finished. One bloody hand shot out and gripped McCarthy by the ankle, and he endeavoured to pull the detective down upon the floor with him. And then it was that the Scotland Yard man got the hold he wanted.

Again stooping quickly, he got the cross-hold scissors grip upon the man's collar, drove his thumbs up under his ears, and pressed firmly. With a gasping sigh Hellner went limp all over, out to the wide, wide world!

Through every one of the German's pockets McCarthy went, searching him right down to his skin, but not a sign of the stolen dispositions could he find. Hellner must have passed them over to the Baroness Eberhardt during his hasty visit last night. At any rate that was the conclusion McCarthy came to, and devoutly hoped was the right one, since he was not carrying them upon him.

Pulling the unconscious man's hands behind him McCarthy started to look about him for something with which to secure him beyond any possible chance of freeing himself again. He found it in a strong silken coverlet which he ripped down and twisted into rope. Securely lashing Hellner's wrists together behind him, he then bound his ankles so that it was impossible to move an inch even if he managed to get up onto his feet. To make sure of that he lifted him, tossed him bodily upon one of the beds, ripped up a coverlet from another room and fastened him securely to it; in his unconscious state he did not dare to gag him in case the man choked to death. He was quite certain that with all the doors closed no one would ever hear him if he yelled his head off—these particular flats were not put up with breeze walls.

Hurrying through to the drawing-room he dialled the Yard and got through to Haynes just as that gentleman was leaving, presumably to keep his afternoon assignment.

“Bill,” he said quickly, “put out a drag for Tessa Domenico right away. She's in the West End somewhere, probably shopping. Whatever happens she must not be allowed to get back here.”

“Where's here?” Haynes asked pertinently.

Giving him the address, he further instructed that two men had better be put on assignment at the front entrance, in case the drag missed her.

“Now give orders to raid Fasoli's and pick Luigi up without further loss of time. Also every man known to belong to Mascagni's gang. Hold them for interrogation until I can get to the Yard.”

“Have you got those stolen papers yet?” the A.C. questioned avidly.

“I shall have by evening, Bill,” McCarthy informed him. “Don't let the thought of them trouble your mind. You keep that afternoon tea appointment.”

“Are you still set on that crazy idea, Mac?” Haynes asked troubledly.

“More than ever,” the inspector told him flatly. “Don't you let me down on that, whatever you do.”

Ringing off before the Assistant Commissioner could raise any further objections, McCarthy hurried downstairs, pausing only for a moment at Delaney's box.

“I'm keeping the key of that flat for a little while,” he informed that worthy who stared at his dishevelled and blood-stained condition in astonishment. “No one's to go near it. If they do you'll have trouble.”

Out to Withers' taxi he hurried and to say that the burly William's astonishment at his plight was great is to considerably under-state his feelings.