Elk 02 The Joker (20 page)

He had to sit on the steps for a long time before he was sufficiently calm to go in. Listening at the door before he opened it, he crept into the hall, closed the door without a sound and tiptoed to his study. He was wet through and shivering. The suitcases were shining like patent leather.

He took off his drenched overcoat and rang the bell. The maid who presently appeared was surprised to see him.

‘I thought, sir - ’ she began, but he cut her short.

‘Go up to my room - don’t make a noise - and bring me down a complete change. You may tell your mistress that I shall not be up for some time.’

Poking the meagre fire, he warmed his hands at the blaze.

The girl came back with a bundle of clothes, announced her intention of making him a cup of tea and discreetly retired.

Mr Ellenbury started to change when a thought occurred to him. He might have to change again. His trousers were not very wet. And round about the pit was very muddy. He had thought of the pit in the car. Fate was working for him.

He put on his dressing-gown and took down from a shelf two volumes which he had often read. The Chronicles of Crime they were called - a record of drab evil told in the stilted style of their Early Victorian editor. They were each ‘embellished with fifty-two illustrations by “Phiz”.’

He opened a volume at random.

‘…when a female, young, beautiful and innocent, is the victim of oppression, there is no man with common feelings who would not risk his life to snatch her from despair and misery…’

This little bit of moralising was the sentence he read. He turned the page, unconscious of its irony.

Maria Marten - shot in a barn. There was another woman killed with a sword. He turned the leaves impatiently; regretted at that moment so little acquaintance with the criminal bar. There was a large axe - where? Outside the kitchen door. He went down the kitchen stairs, passing the maid on her way up. Just outside the kitchen door, in the very place where he had seen it that morning, he found the axe. He brought it upstairs under his dressing-gown.

‘You may go to bed,’ he said to the maid. He drank his tea and then heard the ring of the telephone in the hall. He hesitated, then hastened to answer it.

‘Yes this is Ellenbury,’ he strove to keep his voice calm, ‘Miss Rivers? Yes she called at my office soon after six with a letter from Mr Stebbings - no, I haven’t seen her since…’

He heaved on his wet overcoat and went out into the storm.

How very unpleasant!…why couldn’t they let him go away quietly…an old man - white-haired, with only a few years to live? Tears rolled down his cheeks at the injustice of his treatment. It was Harlow! Damn Harlow! This poor girl, who had done nobody any harm - a beautiful creature who must die because of Harlow!

He dashed the weak tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, lilted off the padlock and threw open the door.

The candle had burnt down to its last flicker of life, but in that fraction of light, before the wick sank bluely into oblivion, he saw the white face of the girl as she stood, frozen with horror. Ellenbury swung his axe with a sob.

WHEN Mr Elk went into the office of his friend that afternoon, he found Jim engrossed in a large street plan that was spread out on the table. It had evidently been specially drawn or copied for his purpose, for there was a smudge of green ink where his sleeve had brushed.

‘Buying house property?’ asked Elk.

Jim rolled up the plan carefully and put it into his drawer.

‘The real estate business,’ Elk went on, ‘is the easiest way of getting money I know. You can’t be pinched for it, and there’s no come-back. Friend of mine bought a cow field at Finchley and built a lot of ready-to-wear villas on it - he drives his own Jaguar nowadays. I know another man - ’

‘Would you like to assist me in a little burglary tonight?’ interrupted Jim.

‘Burglary is my long suit,’ said Elk. ‘I remember once - ’

‘There was a time,’ mused Jim, ‘when I could climb like a cat, though I’ve not seen a cat go up the side of a house, and I’ve never quite understood how “cat burglar” can be an apposite description.’

‘Short for caterpillar,’ suggested Elk. ‘They can walk up glass owing to the suckers on their big feet. That’s natural history, the same as flies. Where’s the “bust”?’

‘Park Lane, no less,’ replied Jim. ‘My scheme is to inspect one of the stately homes of England - the ancestral castle of Baron Harlow.’

‘He ain’t been knighted, has he?’ asked Elk, who had the very haziest ideas about the peerage. ‘Though I don’t see why he shouldn’t be; if - ’ he mentioned an illustrious political figure - ‘was in office, Harlow would have been a duke by now, or an earl, or somethin’.’

Jim looked out of the window at the Thames Embankment, crowded at this rush hour with homeward-bound workers. It was raining heavily, and half a gale was blowing. Certainly the fog which had been predicted by the Weather Bureau showed no sign of appearance.

‘The Weather people are letting me down,’ he said; ‘unless there’s a fog we shall have to postpone operations till tomorrow night.’

Elk, who had certain views on the Weather Bureau, expressed them at length. But he had also something encouraging to say.

‘Fog is no more use to a burglar than a bandaged eye. Rain that keeps policemen in doorways and stops amacher snoopin’ is weather from heaven for the burglar.’

Rain was falling in sheets on the Thames Embankment when the police car, which Jim Carlton drove, came through the arched gateway, and at the corner of Birdcage Walk he met a wind that almost overturned the car. He was blown across to Hyde Park Corner.

No. 704, Park Lane was one of the few houses in that thoroughfare which was not only detached from other houses but was surrounded by a wall. It could boast that beyond the library annexe was a small garden, in which a cherry tree flourished. A police sergeant detailed for the service appeared out of the murk and took charge of the car. In two minutes they were over the wall, dragging after them the hook ladders which had been borrowed during the afternoon from fire headquarters.

The domed skylight of the library was in darkness, and they gained its roof with little trouble. Here Jim left Elk as an advanced post. He had no illusions as to the difficulty of his task. All the upper windows were barred or secured by shutters; but he had managed to secure an aerial photograph which showed a little brick building on the roof, which was probably a stair cover and held a door that gave entrance to the floors below.

Jim drew himself up to the level of the first window, the bars of which made climbing a comparatively easy matter, and, detaching the hook of the ladder, he reached up and gripped the bars of the window above. Fortunately he was on the lee side of Greenhart House and the wind that shrieked about its corners did not greatly hamper him.

In ten minutes he was on the flat roof of the house, walking with difficulty in his felt-soled shoes towards the square brick shed. Now he caught the full force of the gale and was glad of the shelter which the parapet afforded.

As he had expected, in the brick superstructure there was a stout door, fastened by a patent lock. Probably it was bolted as well. He listened, but could hear nothing above the howl of the wind, and then continued his search of the roof, keeping the rays of his torch within a few inches of the ground. There was nothing to be discovered here, and he turned to the stairway. From his pocket he took a leather case of tools, fitted a small auger into a bit, and pushed it in the thickness of the door. He had not gone far before the point of the bit ground against something hard. The door was steel-lined. Replacing the tool, he pulled himself up to the roof of the shed, and he had to grip the edge to prevent being blown off.

The roof was of solid concrete, and it would need a sledge-hammer and unlimited time to break through.

Possibly there was an unguarded window, though he did not remember having seen any. He leaned across the parapet and looked down into the side street that connected Park Lane with the thoroughfare where he had left his car. As he did so, he saw a man walk briskly up to the door, open it and enter. The sound of the slamming door came up to him. It was obviously Harlow; no other man had that peculiar swing of shoulders in his walk. What had he been doing out on such a night? Then it occurred to Jim that he had come from the direction of his garage.

He heard a clock strike eleven. What should he do? It seemed that there was no other course but to return to the waiting Elk and confess his failure; and he had decided to take this action when he heard above the wind the snap of a lock being turned; and then the voice of Harlow. The man was coming up to the roof, and Jim crouched down in the shadow of the shed.

‘…yes, it is raining, of course it is raining, my dear man. It is always raining in London. But I have been out in it and you haven’t! Gosh, how it rained!’

Though the words themselves had a querulous tone, Mr Harlow’s voice was good-humoured; it was as though he were speaking to a child.

‘Have you got your scarf? That’s right. And button your overcoat. You have no gloves, either. What a lad you are!’

‘I really don’t want gloves,’ said another voice. ‘I am not a bit cold. And, Harlow, may I ask you again…’

The voice became indistinct. They were walking away from the listener, and he guessed they were promenading by the side of the parapet. Unless Harlow carried a light he would not see the ladder. Jim went stealthily to the back of the shed and peered round the corner. Presently he discerned the figures of the two men: they were walking slowly towards him, their heads bent against the wind.

Quickly he drew back again.

‘…you can’t have it. You are reading top much and I won’t have your mind overtaxed by writing too much! Be reasonable, my dear Marling…’

Marling! Jim held his breath. They were so near to him now that by taking a step and stretching out his hand he could have touched the nearest man.

The lights in the street below gave him a sky-line against the parapet, and he saw that Harlow’s companion was almost as tall as himself, save for a stoop. He caught a glimpse of a beard blown all ways by the gale…The voices came to him again as they returned; and then a sudden scraping sound and an exclamation from the financier.

‘What the devil was that?’

From far below came a faint crash. Jim’s heart sank.

Harlow must have brushed against the hook ladder and knocked it from the parapet.

‘You pushed something over,’ said the stranger’s voice.

‘Felt like a hook,’ said Harlow, and Jim could imagine him peering down over the parapet. ‘What was it?’ he said again.

This was Jim Carlton’s opportunity. He could steal round the side of the building, slip through the door which he guessed was open, and make his escape. Noiselessly he crept along, and then saw a band of light coming from the open doorway. Against such a light he must be inevitably detected unless he chose a moment when their backs were turned.

But they showed no inclination to move, and stood there for a time discussing the thing which Harlow had knocked from the stone coping.

‘It’s very curious’ - the big man was talking - ‘I don’t remember there was anything when we came here this morning. Let us go down again.’

The opportunity was lost. Even as Jim stood there listening he heard the feet of the men descending the stairs, the crash of the door as it was closed. He was left on the roof without any means of making his way to solid earth.

To communicate with Elk was impossible without inviting discovery. He took a note-book from his pocket, wrote a hurried message and, tearing out the sheet, wrapped in it a copper coin. He dropped it as near as he could guess in the vicinity of the place where Elk would be, for he heard the tinkle of the copper as it struck the ground. A quarter of an hour he waited, but there was no sign from below. He tried the door again, without even hoping that it would afford him an exit. To his amazement, when he turned the handle the door opened. Had Harlow, in his hurried departure, forgotten to lock it? That was not like Harlow.

Jim pushed the door farther open and looked down. A dim light was burning in the room below, and he had a glimpse of a corner of the secretaire and a stretch of red carpet. Noiselessly he descended the stout stairs, which did not creak under his weight, and after a while, coming to the bottom, he peered round the lintel.

The room was apparently empty. A big desk stood near the curtained window; there was an empty lacquer bed in one corner, and, before him, a door which was ajar. The only light in the apartment came from the reading lamp on the desk - he crossed the room and, pressing the lamp switch, put the room in darkness.

A light on the landing outside was now visible round the edge of the door. He peeped out and could see no sign of life. Before him was a stairway which led down to the lower floors of the house. Something told him that his presence in the house was known. On the left of the landing was another door, and the first thing he noticed was that the key was in the lock. Whoever had opened and entered that loom had gone in such haste that the key had not been removed. Jim saw his opportunity and in a flash, he leant over, gripped the key and snapped the lock tight. As he did so he heard a smothered exclamation from the room and grinned as he tiptoed down the stairs.

The lower landing was in darkness, and he could guide himself by his torch, testing every step he took, until he came into the dimly lighted vestibule, which, only a few days before, had been crowded with men and women, whose names were household words. He could heat nothing, and, walking swiftly to the door, grasped the handle. In another second he was flung back as though he had been struck by some huge invisible force.

He lay on the ground, breathless, paralysed with the shock. Then he heard the opening of a door upstairs, and somebody whispering. To touch that door handle, heavily charged with electric current, might mean death. The power which made the door a death trap for any burglar who succeeded in entering Harlow’s house, must come off an existing connection, he thought. He saw the two white buttons jutting out of the wall, though only one light was visible in the hall. He pressed the top button back, but the hall light was not extinguished. This must be the connection.