Edgar Wallace: The Joker

Mr Harlow had come back especially to Princetown to find out who he was. As he looked up he saw the girl walking quickly from the room and, rising, he strolled out after her, to find the lounge empty. Selecting the most secluded corner, he rang for his coffee and lit a cigar.

Presently Ellenbury came in, but for the moment Mr Harlow had other interests. Through the window he saw Miss Rivers walking across the square in the direction of the post office and, rising, he strolled out of the hotel and followed. She was buying stamps when he entered, and it was pleasing to discover that her voice had all the qualities he could desire.

Forty-eight has certain privileges; and can find the openings which would lead to twenty-eight’s eternal confusion.

‘Good morning, young lady. You’re a fellow guest of ours, aren’t you?’

He said this with a smile which could be construed as fatherly. She shot a glance at him and her lips twitched. She was too ready to smile, he thought, for this visitation of hers to be wholly sorrowful.

‘I lunched at the Duchy, yes, but I’m not staying here. It is a dreadful little town!’

‘It has its beauty,’ protested Mr Harlow.

He dropped sixpence on the counter, took up a local timetable, waited while the girl’s change was counted and fell in beside her as they came out of the office.

‘And romance,’ he added. ‘Take the Feathers Inn. There’s a building put up by the labour of French prisoners of war.’

From where they stood only the top of one of the high chimneys of the prison was visible.

She saw him glance in that direction and shake his head.

‘The other place, of course, is dreadful-dreadful! I’ve been trying to work up my courage to go inside, but somehow I can’t.’

‘Have you—’ She did not finish the question.

‘A friend—yes. A very dear friend he was, many years ago, but the poor fellow couldn’t go straight. I half promised to visit him, but I dreaded the experience.’

Mr Harlow had no friend in any prison.

She looked at him thoughtfully.

‘It isn’t really so dreadful. I’ve been before,’ she said, without the slightest embarrassment. ‘My uncle is there.’

‘Really?’ His voice had just the right quantity of sympathy and understanding.

‘This is my second visit in four years. I hate it, of course, and I’ll be glad when it’s over. It is usually rather—trying.’

They were pacing slowly towards the hotel now.

‘Naturally it is very dreadful for you. You feel so sorry for the poor fellows—’

She was smiling; he was almost shocked.

‘That doesn’t distress me very much. I suppose it’s a brutal thing to say, but it doesn’t. There is no’—she hesitated—‘there is no affection between my uncle and myself, but I’m his only relative and I look after his affairs’—again she seemed at a loss as to how she would explain—‘and whatever money he has. And he’s rather difficult to please.’

Mr Harlow was intensely interested; this was an aspect of the visit which he could not have imagined.

‘It would be dreadful if I liked him, or if he was fond of me,’ she went on, stopping at the foot of the hotel steps. ‘As it is, we have a business talk and that is all.’

With a friendly nod she passed into the hotel ahead of him. Mr Harlow stood for a long time in the doorway, looking at nothing, his mind very busy, and then he strolled back to his cooling coffee; and presently fell into discussion; about the weather and the crops with the nervous little man who awaited his coming.

They were quite alone now. The car parties had vanished in noisy confusion; the old gentleman and the stout old lady were leaving the hotel on a walking excursion as he had come in.

‘Is everything all right, Ellenbury?’

‘Yes, Mr Harlow,’ said the little man eagerly. ‘Everything is in perfect shape and trim. I have settled the action that the French underwriters were bringing against the Rata Company, and—’

Suddenly he was stricken to silence. Following the direction of his staring eyes, Mr Harlow also looked out of the window. Eight convicts were walking down the street in the direction of the railway station; Mr Harlow looked and pointed.

‘Not a very pleasant or an agreeable sight,’ he said. In his oracular moments his voice was very rich and pleasant. ‘Yet one, I think, to which the callous people of Princetown are quite accustomed. These men are being transferred to another prison, I imagine. Do you ever realise what your feelings would be if you had been, say, the leader of that gang, they used to be chained like wild beasts—’

‘For God’s sake, stop!’ said the little man hoarsely. ‘Don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it!’ His trembling hands covered his eyes. ‘I had a horror of coming here,’ he said, in a voice that was scarcely audible. ‘I’ve never been before…the car passed that terrible archway and I nearly fainted!’

Mr Harlow, one eye on the door, smiled indulgently. ‘You have nothing to fear, my dear Ellenbury,’ he said in a paternal voice. ‘I have in a sense condoned your felony. In a sense,’ he emphasised carefully. ‘Whether a judge would take the same view, I do not know. You understand the law better than I. This much is certain; you are free, your debts are paid, the money you stole from your clients has been made good and you have, I think, an income which is, shall we say, satisfactory.’

The little man nodded and swallowed something. He was white to the lips, and when he tried to lift a glass of water his hand shook so that he had to put it down again. ‘I’m very grateful,’ he said. ‘Very—very grateful…I’m sorry-it was rather upsetting.’

‘Naturally,’ murmured Mr Harlow.

He took a notebook from his pocket, opened it with the greatest deliberation and wrote for five minutes, the little lawyer watching him. When he had finished he tore out the sheet and passed it across the table.

‘I want to know all about this man Arthur Ingle,’ he said. ‘When his sentence expires, where he lives in London or elsewhere, his means and especially his grudge against life. I don’t know what it is, but I rather suspect that it is a pretty big one. I should also like to know where his niece is employed. Her name you will find on the paper, with a query mark attached. I want to know who are her friends, what are her amusements, her financial position is very important.’

‘I understand.’ Ellenbury put the paper carefully in a worn pocket-book. And then, with one of his habitual starts: ‘I had forgotten one thing, Mr Harlow,’ he said. ‘On Monday last I had a visit at my office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields from the police.’

He said the last two words apologetically as though he were in some way responsible for the character of his caller. Mr Harlow turned his pale eyes upon his companion, made a long scrutiny of his face before he asked: ‘in what connection?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Ellenbury, who had a trick of reproducing at a second’s notice all the emotions he described. ‘It was rather puzzling.’ He screwed up his face into an expression of bewilderment. ‘You see, Mr Carlton did not come to any point.’

‘Carlton?’ demanded Harlow, quickly for him. ‘That’s the man at the Foreign Office, isn’t it?’

Ellenbury nodded.

‘It was about the rubber fire. You remember the fire at the United International factory? He wanted to know if Rata had any insurance on the stock that was burnt and of course I told him that as far as I knew, we hadn’t.’

‘Don’t say “we,”’ said Mr Harlow gently. ‘Say the Rata Syndicate hadn’t. You are a lawyer acting for undisclosed principals. Well?’

‘That was all,’ said Ellenbury. ‘He was very vague.’