Edgar Wallace - The Joker

‘I am almost at the end of my theories—what is yours, Elk?’

‘Beer,’ said Elk absently, as they mounted the steps of the club.

‘Looks like he’s gettin’ ready for a quick money stunt,’ said Elk, as they made their way to the coffee-room. ‘But, Lord, you can never follow the minds of people like Ingle!

And he’s an actor too—that makes him more skittish. As likely as not he’s goin’ to give lectures on “My Five Years of Hell”—they all do it.’

Jim shook his head helplessly.

‘I don’t know what to make of that film craze of his.’

‘Decadence,’ said Elk laconically. ‘All these birds go wrong some way or another, I tell you.’

The waiter was hovering at their elbow.

‘Beer,’ said Elk emphatically.

It was a bitterly cold night, and in spite of the briskness of their walk Jim had been glad to get into the comfort of his club. He had no intention of returning to Scotland Yard that night, and was in fact parting with Elk at the door that looks out upon Pall Mall when the club porter called him.

There was an urgent message for him and, going into the booth, he spoke to one of the chief inspectors.

‘I have been trying to get you all the evening,’ said the officer. ‘One of the park-keepers has found the place where he thinks Mrs Gibbins was thrown into the canal. I’m on the phone to him. He suggested you should meet him outside the Zoological Society’s office.’

‘Tell him that I’ll come right along,’ said Jim quickly, and returning to Elk, conveyed the gist of the message.

‘Can’t these amacher detectives find things in the Lord’s bright sunlight?’ asked Elk bitterly. ‘Half-past nine and freezing like the devil: what a time to go snooping round canals!’

Yet he insisted upon going along with his companion.

‘You might miss something,’ he grumbled as the draughty taxi moved northward. ‘You ain’t got my power of observation and deduction. Anyway, I’ll bet we’re wasting our time. They’ll show us the hole in the water where she went in most likely.’

‘The canal is frozen,’ smiled Jim. ‘In fact, it’s been frozen since the day after the body was found.’

Mr Elk growled something under his breath; whether it was an uncomplimentary reference to the weather or to the tardiness of park-keepers, Jim did not gather.

It was not a keeper but an inspector who was waiting for them outside the Zoological offices. The discovery had been made that afternoon, but the keeper had not reported the matter until late in the evening. The inspector took a seat in their taxi and under his direction they drove back some distance to the place where a bridge crosses the canal to Avenue Road. Here the Circle roadway is separated from the canal by a fifty-foot stretch of grassland and trees. This verge, in summer, affords a playing ground for children, and has, from their point of view, the attraction of dipping down in a steep slope to the banks of the canal, which, however, is separated from the park by a row of wooden palings, wired to form an unclimbable fence. The playground is reached from the road by a broad iron gate running parallel with the bridge, and this, explained the park inspector, was locked at nights.

‘Occasionally somebody forgets,’ he said, ‘and I remember having it reported to me on the night after this woman’s disappearance, that the gates were found open in the morning.’

He led the way cautiously down the steep declivity towards the fence which runs by the canal bank. Here is a rough path and along this they trudged over ground frozen hard.

‘One of our keepers had to make an inspection of the fence this afternoon,’ the officer went on, ‘and we found that the palings had been wrenched from one of the supporting posts. Afterwards somebody must have put them up again and did the job so well that we have never noticed the break.’

They had now reached the spot, and a powerful light thrown along the fence revealed the extent of the damage.

A wire strand and one of the palings had been broken, and the officer had only to push lightly at the fence to send it sagging drunkenly towards the canal. He put his foot upon it and with a creak it lay over so that he could have walked without any difficulty on to the canal bank.

‘Our man thought that the damage had been done by boys, until he saw the hat.’

‘Which hat?’ asked Jim quickly.

‘I left it here for you to see, exactly as he found it.’

The superintendent’s light travelled along a bush, and presently focused upon a crushed brown object, which had been caught between two branches of the bush. Jim loosened the pitiable relic, a brown felt hat, stained and cut about the crown. It might easily, he saw, have been dragged off in a struggle, and against the autumnal colouring of the undergrowth would have escaped notice.

‘Here is another thing,’ said the park officer. ‘Do you see that? It was the first thing I looked for, but I have no doubt that you gentlemen will understand better than I what it signifies.’

It was the impress of a heel in the frozen ground. By its side a queer, flat footmark, criss-crossed with innumerable lines.

‘Somebody who wore rubbers,’ said Elk, going down on his knees. ‘There has been a struggle here. Look at the sideways thrust of that heel! And—’

‘What is this?’ asked Jim sharply.

His lamp was concentrated upon a tiny, frozen puddle, and Elk looked but could see nothing but its grey-white surface. Kneeling, Jim took out a knife from his pocket and began to scrape the ice; and now his companion saw what had attracted his attention: a piece of paper. It was an envelope which had been crushed into the mud. When he got the frozen object into the light it was frozen to the shape of the heel that had trodden upon it. Gently he scraped away the mud and ice until two lines were legible. The first was at the top left-hand corner and was heavily underlined.

‘By hand. Urgent.’

Only one line of the address was legible, but the word ‘Harlow’ was very distinct.

They carried their find back to the superintendent’s office and before his fire thawed it out. When the letter had become a limp and steaming thing, Jim stripped the flap of the envelope and carefully withdrew its contents.

‘DEAR MR HARLOW,

‘I am afraid I must disappoint you. I am in such a position, being an ex-convict, that I cannot afford to take the slightest risk. I will tell you frankly that what I have in my mind, is that this may be a frame-p up organised by my friends the police, and I think that it would be, to say the least, foolish on my part to go any farther until I know your requirements, or at least have written proof that you have approached me.

‘Yours sincerely,

‘ARTHUR INGLE.’

The two men looked at one another.

‘That beats the band,’ said Elk. ‘What do you make of it, Carlton?’

Jim stood with his back to the fire, the letter in his hand, his brow wrinkled in a frown.

‘I don’t know…let me try now…Harlow asked Ingle to meet him: I knew that already. Ingle promised to go, changed his mind and wrote this letter, which has obviously never been opened by Harlow, and as obviously could not have been delivered to him before the interview, because, as I know—and I had a cold in the head to prove it—these two fellows met opposite the Horse Guards Parade and went joy-riding round the park for the greater part of an hour.

Supposing Harlow is concerned with the slaying of this wretched woman—and why he should kill her heaven knows!—would he carry about this unopened letter and leave it for the first flat-footed policeman to find?’

He sat down in a chair and held his head in his hands, and presently: ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, his eyes blazing with excitement. At least, if I haven’t got the whole story, I know at least one thing—poor Mrs Gibbins was very much in love with William Smith the platelayer!’