Elk 02 The Joker (12 page)

Ten minutes passed and then Mr Harlow came slowly into the room. The door closed with a click behind him and he stood before her on the very spot where Mrs Edwins had conducted her cold survey.

‘My housekeeper came in, didn’t she?’

‘Yes’. She wondered what was coming next.

‘My housekeeper’ - he spoke slowly - ‘is the most unbalanced female I have ever known! She is the most suspicious woman I have ever known; and the most annoying woman I am ever likely to know.’ His eyes did not leave her face. ‘I wonder if you know why I sent for you?’

The question took her aback for the moment.

‘Don’t say to write a letter,’ he smiled. ‘I really wanted no letter written! It was an excuse to get you here alone for a little talk. And the fact that you have not gone pale and that you display no visible evidence of agitation is very pleasing to me. If you had, I should have opened the door to you and bid you a polite good night.’ He waited for her to speak.

‘I don’t quite understand what you want, Mr Harlow.’

‘Really? I was afraid that you would - and understand wrongly!’

He strode up and down the library, his hands under his coat tails, his head lifted so that he seemed immediately interested in the cornice.

‘I want a view - an angle. I can’t get that from any commonplace person. You arc not commonplace. You’re not brilliant either - forgive my frankness. You’re a woman, perhaps in love - perhaps not. I don’t know, but a normal soul. You have no interest to serve.’

He stopped abruptly, looked at her, pointing to the door. ‘That door is locked,’ he said. ‘There is nobody in the house but myself and my housekeeper. The telephone near your right hand is disconnected. I am very fond of you!’

He paused and then nodded approvingly.

‘A little colour - that is annoyance. No trembling - that may come later. Will you be so good as to press the bell - you will find it…yes, that is it.’

Mechanically she had obeyed, and almost immediately the door opened and a tall manservant came in.

‘I want you to wait in the servants’ hall until this young lady has gone, Thomas - I have a letter I wish posted.’

The man bowed and went out. Mr Harlow smiled.

‘That disproves two statements I made to you - that the door was locked and that we were alone in the house. Now I think I know you! I wasn’t certain before. And of course I’m not fond of you - I like you though. If you feel inclined to call up James Carlton, the telephone is through to the exchange.’

‘Will you please tell me,’ she said quietly, ‘what all this means?’

He stood by the desk now, his white fingers beating a noiseless tattoo.

‘I know you, that is the point,’ he said. ‘I can now speak to you very plainly. Would you, for a very large financial consideration, marry a man in whom I am greatly interested?’

She shook her head and he approved even of the refusal.

‘That is splendid! You did not say I was insulting you, or that you could not marry a man for money - none of the cliches of the film or the novelette! You would have disappointed me if you had.’

Aileen made a discovery that left her doubting her own sanity. She liked this man. She believed in his sincerity. A crooked dealer he might be, but upon a plane which was beyond her comprehension. In the less lofty regions in the levels of human intercourse he was beyond suspicion. She felt curiously safe with him and was worried, as one who was in the process of changing a settled opinion in the face of a prejudiced habit of thought.

He had the face of a materialist - the blue of his eyes was (Jim had told her) common to great generals and great murderers. The thick lips and fleshy nose were repellent, Yet she lived consciously in a world of men and women - she did not look for god or hero in any man. None was wholly good; none was wholly bad, except in the most artificial of dramas.

‘I wonder if I know what you are thinking about?’

She mistrusted him now, having a sense of his uncanny power of mind-reading.

‘You are saying “I wonder if he is as great a scoundrel as people like Carlton say?” How shall you measure me? It is very difficult, not because I represent greatness, but because the canvas on which I work is immense. Miss Rivers, I hoped that you were heart-free.’

‘I think I am,’ she said.

‘Which means that you are not. I wanted you to marry somebody I love; the sweetest nature in the world. Something I have created out of confusion and chaos and shining lights and mysterious sounds. I talk like a divinity, but it is true. For years I have been looking for a wife.’ He leaned forward over the desk and his voice sank. ‘Shall I tell you something?’

And though she made no sign, he read her interest aright.

‘If you had said “yes”, my day would have been done. I am selfishly relieved that you declined. But if it had been “yes”, all this would have crumbled into dust - all the splendours of the Splendid Harlow! Dust and memories and failure!’

For a moment she thought he had been drinking and that she had not detected his condition before. But he was sober enough and very, very sane.

‘Strange, isn’t it? I like you. I like Carlton - unscrupulous but a nice man. He is waiting outside this house for you. Also a fellow-lodger of yours, a Mr Brown, who followed you here.’

She gasped at this.

‘He is a detective. Carlton is scared for you - he suspects me of harbouring the most sinister plans.’ His chuckle had a rich music in it. ‘Maybe I can help you some time. I’d love to give you a million and see what you would do with it.’

He held out his hand, and she took it without hesitation.

‘You haven’t told me whom I was to marry?’

‘A man with a golden beard,’ he laughed. ‘Forgive my little joke!’

She went out of the house bewildered and stopped on the step with a cry of wonder. Jim Carlton was standing on the sidewalk; and with him was Mr Brown, her fellow-boarder.

Mr Harlow waited until the door had closed upon his visitor and was stepping into the lift when his yellow-faced housekeeper appeared noiselessly from the direction of the servants’ hall.

‘What did that girl want?’ she asked.

‘Liberty of action,’ he replied.

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about half the time,’ she complained. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t a spy.’

‘Nothing would surprise you, my dear woman,’ he said, his hand on the grille of the elevator.

‘I don’t like the look of her.’

‘I, on the contrary, like the look of her very much.’ He was resigned to the conversation. ‘I asked her to marry.’

‘You!’ she almost screamed.

‘No.’ He jerked his head to the ceiling and broke in upon her violent comment. ‘I’m not mad. I am very clever. I can face truth - that is the cleverest thing any man can do. I’m going up to Saul Marling.’

Her shrill voice followed him up the elevator shaft.

‘Fantastical nonsense…wasting your time!’

He closed the door of Marling’s apartment behind him and sank into a deep chair with a groan of relief. The bearded man, his face shadowed by a reading shade, looked round, chin on palm.

‘She has a tantrum today,’ he said, nodding his head wisely. ‘She was quite rude when I complained about the fish.’

‘The devil she was!’ Harlow sat upright, was on the point of rising but thought better of it. ‘You must have what you wish, my dear Saul. I will raise Cain if you don’t. What are you reading?’

Marling turned over the book to assure himself of the title.

‘The Interpretation of Dreams,’ he read.

‘Freud! Chuck it in the waste-paper basket,’ scoffed Harlow.

‘I don’t understand it very well,’ admitted his companion.

‘The man who can interpret other people’s dreams can interpret other people’s thought,’ said Harlow. ‘I have been dreaming for you, Saul Marling. I dreamt a wife for you, but she would have none of it.’

‘A wife!’ said the startled Marling, his hand trembling in his agitation. ‘I don’t want a wife - you know that!’

Mr Harlow lit a cigar.

‘Yes - but she doesn’t want a husband - I know THAT. Dreams, huh?’ He laughed to himself, the other man watching him curiously.

‘Do you ever dream?’ he asked with a timidity which was almost pathetic.

‘I? Lord, yes! I dream of jokes.’

Marling could not understand this: this strong man had talked about ‘jokes’ before, and when they were elaborated they had not amused anybody but Mr Harlow.

It is a peculiar trait of the English criminal that he never describes his unlawful act or acts by grandiloquent terms. Crime of all kind, especially crime against the person, is a ‘joke’. The man who holds up a cashier has ‘had a joke with him’; the confidence swindler ‘jokes’ his victim; a warehouse theft would be modestly described in the same way.

Mr Stratford Harlow once heard the term employed and never forgot it. This cant phrase so nearly covered his own mental attitude towards his operations; a good joke would produce the same emotions of mind and body.

Once he had written to an important rubber house offering to take its entire stock at a price which would show a fair profit to the seller. The house and its affiliated concerns smelt a forced buying and the price of rubber rose artificially.

He waited three months, buying everywhere but from the united companies and one night their stores illuminated the shipping of the Mersey.

That was a very good joke indeed. Mr Harlow chuckled for days, not because he had made an enormous fortune - the joke had to be there or the money had no value.

‘I don’t like your jokes,’ said Marling gravely.

‘I shouldn’t tell you about them,’ said Mr Harlow, suppressing a yawn; ‘but I have no secrets from you, Saul Marling. And I love testing them against your magnificent honesty. If you laughed at them as I laugh, I’d be worried sick. Come along to the roof for your walk and I’ll tell you the greatest joke of all. It starts with a dinner-party given in this house and ends with somebody making twenty millions and living happily ever after!’

It required a perceptible effort in Aileen to produce the paper she had found in the grate of Mr Harlow’s library.

She had the unhappy knowledge that whilst this big man had put her in her place, she hadn’t stayed there. She had gone down into deplorable depths. He might be anything that Jim believed, but on his own plane he had a claim to greatness.

When she reached that conclusion she felt that it was time to hand the paper to her companion.

‘I’m not going to excuse myself,’ she said frankly. ‘It was an abominable thing to do, and I won’t even say that I had you in my mind. It was just vulgar curiosity made me do it.’

They stopped under a street lamp and he opened the paper and read the message.

‘Marling!’ he gasped. ‘Good God!’

‘What is it?’

The effect of those scribbled words upon her companion astounded her. Presently he folded the paper very carefully and put it in his pocket.

‘Marling, Ingle, Mrs Gibbins,’ he said, in his old bantering mood. ‘Put me together the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle; and connect if you can the note of this Mr Marling, who wishes to retain his writing materials; your disreputable uncle who has developed a craze for film projecting; fit in the piece which stands for Mrs Gibbins and her beloved William Smith; explain a certain letter that was never posted and never delivered, yet was found in a frozen puddle - I nearly said puzzle! - and make of all these one intelligible picture.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she asked helplessly.

He shook his head.

‘You don’t know! Elk doesn’t know. I’m not so sure that I know, but I wish the next ten days were through!’

FOR SOME reason which she could not explain to herself, Aileen was irritated.

‘Do you realise how horribly mysterious you are?’ she asked, almost tartly. ‘I always thought that the mystery of detectives was an illusion fostered by sensational writers.’

‘All mystery is illusion,’ he said grandly.

They had reached Oxford Street.

‘Have you ever been to the House of Commons?’ he asked her suddenly.

She shook her head.

‘No.’

‘Then come along. You’ll see something more entertaining than a film or a play, but you will hear very little that hasn’t been said better elsewhere.’

The House was in session, though she was only dimly aware of this, for she belonged to the large majority of people to whom the workings of Parliament were a closed book. Jim, on the contrary, was extraordinarily well informed in political affairs and favoured her with a brief dissertation on the subject. The old hard and fast party spirit was moribund, he said. The electorate had grown too flexible for any machine to control. There had been surprising results in recent by-elections to illustrate a fact so disconcerting to party organizers. The present Government, she learnt, despite its large majority, was on its last legs. There was dissension within the Cabinet, and rebel caves honey-combed the Government party.

In truth she was only faintly interested. But the approach to the Commons was impressive. The lofty hall, the broad stairway, the echoing lobby with its hurrying figures, and the mystery of what lay behind the door at one end, brought her a new thrill.

Jim disappeared and returned with a ticket. They passed up a flight of stairs and presently she was admitted to one of the galleries.

Her first impression was one of disappointment. The House was so much smaller than she had expected. Somebody was talking; a pale bald man, who rocked and swayed slowly as he delivered himself of a monotonous and complaining tirade on the failure of the Government to do something or other about the Basingstoke Canal. There were only a few dozen members in the House, and mainly they were engaged in talking or listening to one another, and apparently taking no notice of the speaker. On the front bench three elderly men sat, head to head, in consultation.