Edgar Wallace - The Joker

It stopped in front of him and the door opened.

‘Will you come in, Mr Ingle?’ said a low voice; and without a word he stepped inside, pulling the door close after him and sank down on a soft seat by the side of a man who, he at once recognised, was that Splendid Harlow, whose name, even in Dartmoor, symbolised wealth beyond dreams.

The car, gathering speed, turned into the Mall, swung round towards Buckingham Palace and across the Corner into Hyde Park. It slackened speed now, and Stratford Harlow began to talk…

For an hour the car moved at a leisurely pace round the Circle. Sleet was falling. Ingle listened like a man in a dream to the amazing proposition which his companion advanced.

He, at any rate, sat in comfort. Inspector Jim Carlton, following in an aged convertible was chilled and wet, and the highly sensitive microphone which he had placed in Harlow’s car failed to transmit the talk it was so vital he should hear.

Arthur Ingle arrived home at his flat soon after eleven. The cleaner had gone and he was glad; dull clod and unimaginative as she was she yet might have read and interpreted the light that shone in his eyes or have sensed the exultation of his heart.

Brewing himself some coffee, he sat down at his desk and in to make notes. Once he rose and, entering his bedroom, turned on the light above his dressing-table and stared at himself for five minutes in the glass. The scrutiny seemed to afford him a certain amount of satisfaction, for he; smiled and returned to his notemaking.

That smile did not leave his lips; and once he laughed out loud. Evidently something had happened that afforded him the most exquisite happiness.

CHAPTER 8

‘Could you please come and see me in the lunch hour?—A.R.’

JIM CARLTON looked at the ‘A.R.’ blankly before he placed ‘A’ as indicating Aileen—he was under the impression that she spelt her name with an ‘E’. It had been delivered at Scotland Yard by a messenger half an hour before he arrived. Literally he was waiting on the mat when she came out; and she seemed very glad to see him.

‘You will probably be very angry that I’ve sent for you about such a little thing,’ she said, ‘and you’re so busy—’

‘I won’t tell you how I feel about it,’ he interrupted, ‘or you’ll think I’m not sincere.’

‘You see, you are the only policeman I know and I don’t know you very well, but I thought you wouldn’t mind. Mrs Gibbins has disappeared; she didn’t go home last night nor the night before.’

‘I’m thrilled,’ he said. ‘And her husband fears the worst?’

‘She hasn’t a husband; she’s a widow. Her landlady came in to see me this morning. She’s dreadfully upset.’

‘But who’s Mrs Gibbins?’

‘Mrs Gibbins is the charwoman at Uncle’s flat. Rather a wretched-looking lady with untidy hair. I’m rather worried about it because she’s a woman without friends. I called up my Uncle’s flat this morning and he was almost polite, and told me that she didn’t arrive yesterday morning and she hasn’t been there today.’

‘She may have met with an accident,’ was his natural suggestion.

‘I’ve telephoned to the big hospitals, but nothing has been heard of her. I want you to tell me what I can do next. It’s such a little matter that I’ll listen meekly to any rude comment you care to think up!’

He was not interested in Mrs Gibbins; the case of a lonely woman who disappears as from the face of the earth was so common a phenomenon in the life of any great city that he could hardly work up enthusiasm for the search. But Aileen was so concerned that he would have been a brute to have treated her request lightly; and after lunch, the day being his own, he went to Stanmore Rents in Lambeth, a little riverside slum and made a few inquiries at first hand.

Mrs Gibbins had lived there, the slatternly landlady told him, for five years. She was a good, sober, honest woman, never went out, had no friends, and subsisted on what she earned and a pound a week which was paid to her quarterly by some distant relation. In fact, she was due to receive the money on the following Monday. Her chief virtue was that she paid her rent every Monday morning and gave no trouble.

‘Do you mind if I search her room?’

The landlady wished that and showed him the way; it gave her a nice feeling of authority to be present during the operation.

Jim was shown into a small back room, scrupulously clean, with a bed and a sort of home-made hanging cupboard that had been fixed in one corner and was shrouded by a cheap curtain. Here was the meagre wardrobe of the missing charwoman: a skirt or two, a light summer coat that had seen its brightest days, and a best hat. He tried the chest of drawers and found one drawer locked. This he opened with the first key on his own bunch, to the awe and admiration of the landlady. Here was proof of the woman’s affluence—a post office bank-book showing Ł87 to her credit, four new Ł1 Treasury notes, and a threadbare bag with a broken catch.

Inside this were one or two proofs of the vanity of the eternal feminine—a greasy powder-puff, a cheap trinket or two, and between lining and outer cover a folded paper of some sort.

It had not got there by accident, he saw, when he carried the bag to the light, for it was carefully sewn into the lining. He took out his pocket knife and, picking the stitches, extracted what he thought was one sheet of paper, lightly folded. When he opened the paper out he found there were two sheets.

The landlady ducked her head sideways in an effort to catch a glimpse of the writing, but Jim was aware of this manoeuvre.

‘Do you mind going downstairs,’ he asked politely, ‘and seeing if you can find in your ash-can—’

‘Dustbin,’ corrected the lady.

‘Whatever it is, the envelope of any letter addressed to Mrs Gibbins?’

By the time she returned from her profitless task the papers had disappeared, and Jim Carlton was sitting on the narrow window ledge, a cigar between his teeth and he was examining the threadbare carpet with such intentness that the landlady was certain that he had discovered some blood-stains.

‘Eh?’ He woke from his dream with a start. ‘You can’t find it? I’m sorry. What was it I asked you to get? Oh, yes, an envelope. Thank you. I found it in the bag.’

He relocked the drawer, and with another glance round the apartment came down the treacherous stairs.

‘You don’t think she’s drownded herself, sir?’ asked the landlady tremulously.

‘No. Why? Did she ever threaten to commit suicide?’

‘She’s been pretty miserable for some time, poor dear!’ The woman wiped a tear from her cheek, and the fascinated Jim observed that the spot where the apron had been rubbed was perceptibly cleaner.

‘No, I don’t think she has—committed suicide,’ he said. ‘She may turn up. If she does, will you send me a telegram?’

He scribbled his name and address on a blank that he found in his pocket and gave her the money for its dispatch.

‘I know there’s something wrong,’ insisted the tearful lady. ‘Foul play or something. She bought some stuff to make up into a dress; I’ve got it in my kitchen—it only came the night before last.’

She showed him the package, which was unopened.

‘My niece was coming in yesterday morning to show her how to cut it out,’ continued the woman, ‘but, of course, Mrs Gibbins didn’t come home, and my niece lives over in Peckham, and it’s a long drag here—’

‘Yes. I suppose so,’ said Jim absently.

He walked down the noisome street, got into the car that was waiting at the end, and went slowly back across Westminster Bridge to his room.

Elk was not in and, even if he had been, Jim was not in the mood for consultation. He spread out on the table the papers he had taken from Mrs Gibbins’s bag and read them carefully, jotted down a few particulars and, refolding them, put them in his pocket-book. He passed the next hour dictating letters to the last people in the world one would have imagined would be interested in the disappearance of a charwoman.