A Scream in Soho (7 page)

Regan shook his head wearily. “Don't ask me, Inspector,” he returned. “You know as much abaht that as I do.”

Taking a small penknife from his pocket, McCarthy wiped the blade clean, then carefully scraped some of the glutinous, and still moist in parts, blood from Regan's coat. Spreading it carefully upon a sheet of white paper he got from the mortuary attendant, he took it back to the doctor and requested him to make a test with that of the man in female clothing.

“I've the idea, Doc,” he said, “that the body of this man was already in the bottom of the car that Regan was pitched into, and the blood from this one will be found to be the same that he's covered with.”

“Leave it here,” the D.S. said brusquely. “I'll do the lot at the same time. And if there's anything else you can think up to keep me stuck at it here all day, don't hesitate to rush it along. My time is of no account whatever,” he added sarcastically.

“I'll not forget,” McCarthy said, with a grin, and, first seeing his battered assistant arrayed in an ancient rain-coat six sizes too big for him, led the way towards the door.

Taking a last glance back at the figure upon which the disgruntled doctor was now engaged in stripping of its misleading apparel, something struck him concerning it which, until that moment, had not.

The shaven head without the wig intensified tremendously the Teutonic caste of the dead man's face, even masked in make-up as it was. There, unquestionably, was your Prussian of the officer class. During his many visits to the Continent upon police business he had seen dozens who might have been blood brothers of the dead man. He had little doubt that, when the face was eventually cleaned off, the scars of student duelling affairs would be found bitten into it.

“Espionage, right enough,” he murmured. “But in what connection, and who was sufficiently antagonistic to what you were up to, to make a slaughterhouse end of you, such as they have done?”

Chapter IX

The Inspector Gets Yet Another Shock

It was, McCarthy's watch told him, a little after seven o'clock when he left the mortuary, followed by Regan, still a little shaky upon his feet. Away to the east, light was beginning to disperse the gloom of the black-out, and for the first time the inspector was thankful for the resumption of normal time. Otherwise it would have meant another groping journey back to Dean Street; quite bad enough in those narrow thoroughfares, even with a torch.

They pushed along in silence, McCarthy feeling in no mood for talking after the recent major surprise discovery, and, apparently, Mr. Regan still less so—unless his particular silence was to be put down to an observance of the golden rule of speaking when he was spoken to. By the time they arrived in Regent Street it was quite daylight.

“We'll turn down as far as Glasshouse Street, Danny, and cut through to my crib that way,” the inspector said suddenly. “It'll have to be a hasty breakfast, because I'm due in Soho Square before eight o'clock.”

At Glasshouse Street the pair turned, cutting through Brewer Street and working in a northerly direction. The streets were comparatively empty—Soho, like its much richer neighbour, Mayfair, not being given to early rising. An odd milk-cart or two were about, pushed by men who seemed about as half-awake as the district they were serving, and paper boys were here and there to be seen scurrying along, only stopping to push the morning sheets under doors, or through letter boxes. Suddenly, that strange sixth sense which seems to be the heritage of both criminals and the men who hunt them, alike, warned him that he was under observation. From some point or other he was being watched by some unseen person! Or was it Regan? That, too, was possible—in the circumstances. Although particularly careful to show no sign that he realized the fact, his eyes sought everywhere in the narrow street to pick up the person who was interested in one or the other of them, but for the life of him he could not. He was quite certain that they were being watched, but whoever was at this shadowing business was certainly an adept.

At the corner of Lexicon Street, at which point he turned to cut through into Dean Street, he gave another seemingly casual, but in reality exceedingly keen glance about him, but could still see no one. Nevertheless, the feeling was stronger than ever upon him that they were under surveillance.

It was as they turned into Dean Street, itself, and crossed the road towards his lodging, that, without the slightest warning, a car shot out of nowhere, for all he could tell, and travelling at an entirely illegal pace, made straight at them. But for a lightning-like grab at Regan, which sent that already shaken person sprawling upon the pavement, and an equally sudden lurch to one side upon his part, it would have unquestionably run them down, and, by the size of the car and the speed it was travelling, with quite fatal results. As it was, its near-side mudguard caught him a glancing blow with such force as to send him in an entirely inelegant, and certainly undignified, dive upon the top of Regan. Before he could get to his feet again, it had accelerated to a still higher speed, shot around Carlisle Street into Soho Square and was gone. Its rear number-plate, he noticed, was so thickly plastered with mud as to be quite undecipherable. Which, as there had been no rain in the last forty-eight hours, told its own story.

He was helping Regan to his feet when, for the first time, he noticed that the occurrence had been watched by a trio of L.C.C. workers engaged in hosing down the gutters from a hydrant a little higher up the street. He was known to them, as he was to most of the denizens of this cosmopolitan quarter.

“Lor' lumme, Inspector,” the hose operator exclaimed, “them there bleeders didn't 'arf mean puttin' paid to you! They came straight at you from about fifty yards back.”

“It certainly looks as though they were displeased with me for something or other,” the inspector said, with his infectious smile. “Though perhaps it may have been a quite unintentional skid,” he suggested.

“There was no skid about that,” the hose-man informed him, very positively. “They came straight at y', like I'm tellin' you. It might have been a skid if we'd had the hose down that far, but the road's as dry as a flint down there.”

“You didn't happen to spot the number on the front plate, I suppose?” McCarthy asked.

Hose-man shook his head. “It was all plastered up,” he answered. “If I'd only 'ad me nut screwed on right I'd have hosed it clean, though it wouldn't have been much good at the rate they was going.”

“Didn't happen to spot the driver as anyone you knew, I suppose?” McCarthy asked.

The other shook his head.

“No, Inspector,” he said. “To tell y' the truth it 'appened so sudden, I was took all of an 'eap.”

“There was three of them in the car,” one of his mates averred. “One of 'em was that dirty crook, Mascagni. He was crouching back in a corner trying' to 'ide 'isself, but I spotted him.”

“You're quite sure of that?” McCarthy asked quietly.

“Certain, Inspector. I'd take me oath on that.”

“Well, well,” McCarthy said softly. “Our esteemed friend Floriello Mascagni doesn't like us any more, Danny. We've done something to upset him, it seems.”

“'E never did 'ave no time for me,” the pickpocket growled. “I ain't flash enough for him.”

“Perhaps he'll find some for me,” McCarthy said grimly. “Or, rather, I'll find some for
him
, before he's so much older,” he corrected himself. “And, somehow, I don't think Floriello will like that.” He slipped his arm through that of the considerably shaken Regan. “Come on, Daniel, we won't allow this little episode to put us off our appetite, and I've got to be in Soho Square before eight.”

But it seemed that there was yet another minute or two to be filched from the rapidly shortening time at the inspector's disposal. He was almost at his own door when a police ambulance, which had been flying down Dean Street towards Shaftesbury Avenue, pulled up beside him with a jerk. In the front of it, beside the driver, was the sergeant who had gone through the house in Soho Square with him, a few hours before.

“Do you know the latest, Inspector?” he hailed in a state of great excitement.

“The latest?” McCarthy questioned back. “The latest of what?”

“Old Joe Anselmi has been found stiff in death in his own back yard, not three-quarters of an hour ago. Some of the neighbours saw the body lying there from their upper windows and notified us. The doctor who ran the rule over him says that he was killed somewhere between midnight and one o'clock this morning as far as he can tell. We know it must have been after half-past eleven, because he was seen going to his yard at that time.”

“Joe Anselmi,” McCarthy repeated, as staggered a man as he had been in many a long day. “Then—then it couldn't have been he that pushed that coffee-stall out of Soho Square last night, just at the time that that scream was heard.”

“That's a certainty,” the sergeant snapped, then went on irately: “If the blasted fools had only notified me that he had done so I'd have known something was wrong, because Anselmi had his permit for the coffee-stall to stand where it did, revoked five days ago, owing to the black-out. It hasn't stood there this week.”

“So that's how the body was got out of Soho Square last night,” McCarthy said thoughtfully.

“Must have been,” the sergeant agreed; “there was no other way it could have been managed. And now,” he continued, a certain sly look in his eyes, “all y' have to do now, Inspector, is find the body.”

“That's been done,” McCarthy told him. “I've just come away from the mortuary. Oh, and by the way, Sergeant, for your later guidance I'll just tell you that that scream came from a man, and not a woman. Tell me,” he continued quickly, before the sergeant had time to do more than open his mouth in astonishment, “how was poor old Joe killed?”

“Stabbed,” the sergeant answered tersely. “And they did it as though they liked doing it, the murdering swine,” the sergeant growled. “They made a terrible mess of him. If ever I want to see a man swing—or maybe it's
men
—it's whoever killed Joe Anselmi. He was a decent man.”

“He was all that,” McCarthy said quietly. “And you'll get your wish, Sergeant. Stand on me, you'll get it before you're so much older. Many's the feed old Joe has stood me when I was a kid about these streets; I reckon hanging his murderers is up to me.”

It was not until McCarthy had finished his hastily eaten breakfast—a meal for which the sergeant's news had taken all his appetite—that he turned to the well-nigh ravenous Mr. Regan, who was getting on with it as might a man who never expected to see food again.

“Now, Danny,” he said, “as I've told you before, time is precious with me this morning, so begin talking. Out with it—from the moment I left you in Oxford Street until they knocked you cold in Park Lane. Give me the lot, with all the detail you can remember.”

***

When Inspector McCarthy left “Danny the Dip,” that worthy proceeded to put his whole heart and soul into the business before him. To start with, he had unquestionably been upon criminal-pursuit bent when Inspector McCarthy had landed upon him like a bolt from the blue, and he was well aware that the inspector knew just what he was at, as well as he, himself, did. As far as his own mean little mind would permit him, he was not ungrateful for the let-off.

Had “Danny the Dip” been called “Danny the Rat” it would have been no misnomer, for no old buck-rat in his sewer was more cunning than this particular member of the submerged tenth. What his eyes could not tell him, his ears could, and it would indeed have been a clever person who could have deceived either organ.

Along Oxford Street his quarry proceeded, moving, to judge by the sound he made, at the same leisurely pace, and, doubly secure in the total darkness of the black-out, “Danny the Dip” followed. He knew his Oxford Street as well as he did any other main thoroughfare of the metropolis; to him in light or fog of the worst possible pea-soup variety, they were all as open a book as the stairs to his third-floor back-bedroom. At the corner of Marylebone Lane, leading through to Wigmore Street, the man stopped and appeared to be waiting until a constable whose solid tread told his trade unmistakably came up with him. For a moment or two they stood conferring; the man evidently making some enquiry.

For a moment or two the unpleasant thought crossed the pickpocket's mind that the man had discovered that he was being followed and was making some complaint about it—the inspector had said that he was a fly bird, and one who couldn't be taken liberties with. Mr. Regan did not like this conference a little bit; even the safeguard that he was on a job for Detective Inspector McCarthy did not remove a momentary qualm.

But after a moment or two his quick ears told him that the two had moved apart; the policeman proceeding at the regulation pace upon his beat, while the other slightly quickened his steps in the direction of a telephone-booth which Dan knew stood at a little distance along Marylebone Lane. Into this the man went and, assisted by the beam of a torch he carried, dialled a number and remained there a full three minutes.

Leaving the box, he returned to Oxford Street and, at an even slower pace than before, proceeded to cross the road and move in the direction of the Marble Arch. Promptly his shadow followed on, making no more sound than a cat stalking a bird. At the corner of Park Lane the man made a sudden stop. After a moment or two, he lit a cigarette; the light of his match giving Danny a chance to make sure he was on his right mark; then he crossed slowly over to the park corner of the lane and there stood waiting—the glow of his cigarette was as good as a friendly lamp-post to his shadower.

Some five minutes passed without his quarry moving, which halt was as blood and tears to “Danny the Dip,” for across at the corner of the Edgware Road, his almost cat-like eyes showed him a faint haze of light which told him that the coffee-stall which usually stood there was still in full swing. The very thought of it augmented the pangs of hunger which, rat-like, were gnawing at him to a terrible extent. So much did his discomfiture increase that, seeing no sign of movement on the part of his quarry, he determined to take a chance. He had no fear of being knocked down by any traffic at this time of the morning, and in the circumstances, so, keeping his eye upon the glowing end of that cigarette, he made a quick dash to the stall, spent two of his shillings in sandwiches, and was about to take a chance upon a hastily gulped cup of coffee when the light disappeared.

Grabbing up his bag of sandwiches and his change he rushed across the road to the point at which he had last seen the light; there was nothing of strategy about his movements, all he wanted to do was pick his man up again. Hurrying around the corner and wolfing at his food as he went, he almost ran smack into the object of Inspector McCarthy's interest. He had simply drawn back into the shadow of one of the park trees, and at the moment that Danny came up with him, lighted another cigarette.

He took not the slightest notice of the figure which hurried past him. Going on a bit, and in something of a quandary, Danny crossed the road as far as the corner of North Row, from which point he kept his eye fixed upon the glow of the cigarette end, and wished the man would make up his mind to move in some direction or other.

Presently the light commenced to move along Park Lane, in the direction of Piccadilly; the smoker appearing to travel in the same calm, leisurely manner that he had before. Inwardly, Danny blessed that glowing cigarette tip; it was as good as a lighthouse to him. Letting him get a little distance ahead of him, he, too, crossed the road, and in the same soundless way followed up behind.