Edgar Wallace - The Joker

He told her the exact position of this house—described the nearest route. What would happen after, he did not know. There would be time to consider that. Something dreadful. To keep her away from Harlow—her lover perhaps. That was the first consideration. His seats were booked, the cabin reserved; he left in the morning by the early train. Why not by Ostend? These by-thoughts insisted on confusing him.

‘Could I telephone to Mr Stebbings?’

‘I’ll do that.’ He was almost jovial. ‘What you can do, young lady, is to help me pack these two cases. A lot of money, eh? All Harlow’s, all Harlow’s! A clever man!’

She nodded as she gathered up the bundles of bills.

‘Yes—very clever.’

‘A good fellow?’

She wasn’t sure of this; he thought she was dissembling a new affection. Obviously she was fond of Harlow. Otherwise, since she was a known friend of Jim Carlton she must express her abhorrence. He had escaped a very real danger.

She had forgotten that he had promised to telephone until the car, waiting all this time in the soaking rain, was moving down Kingsway. ‘I have a phone at my house,’ he said.

It is true that he had a telephone—a private wire into Mr Harlow’s library. But he was hardly likely to use it. Crouched up in a corner of the car, the suitcases at his feet, knocking at his knees as the machine slowed or accelerated, he talked about his wife, but he thought of the girl by his side. And he reached this conclusion: she was the one person in the world who could betray him. The one person in the world who knew that he had two large suitcases filled with money. It was necessary that he should forget bank managers and Harlow and certain members of the Rata’s staff, and so he forgot them. A bit of a girl to stand between him and a wonderful future. Picture galleries, sunlight on striped awnings, great masses of flowers blooming under blue skies, what time fog and rain clouds palled this filthy city and liquid mud splashed at the windows of the hired car.

They were nearing the house when he dropped the window and leaned out on the driver’s side.

‘The house is the fourth from the next side road. Stop before the gates; don’t go into the drive and wait for a few minutes before you drive away.’

He pushed three notes into the man’s hand: the gum-chewing driver examined them by the light on his instrument board and seemed satisfied.

‘Do you mind if we stop at the gate? It is only a little walk up the drive—my wife is so nervous; starts at every sound.’

Aileen did not object. When they alighted in the muddy road, she offered to carry one of the cases and he consented. It was heavier than she expected.

‘Harlow’s, all Harlow’s!’ he muttered as he walked through the ugly gates and bent his head to the drive of rain. ‘One of his “jokes”.

‘What do you mean by “joke”?’ she asked.

‘Harlow’s jokes…difficult…explain.’ The wind tore words out of his speech. She could see the house; square, lifeless. ‘To the left—we go in at the back.’

They were following a cinder-path that ran snakily through the bare stems of rose bushes. Ahead of her she saw a squat building of some sort. It was the furnace house of the greenhouses, he told her.

‘There are two steps down.’

Why on earth were they going into a hot-house at this time of night? He answered the question she had not put.

‘Safe…lock away…cases,’ he shouted.

The wind had freshened to a gale. A flicker of lightning startled her: lightning in December was a phenomenon outside her knowledge. Ellenbury put down the cases and pulled at a rusty padlock; a door groaned open.

‘Here,’ he said, and she went in after him.

He struck a match and lit an inch of candle in a grimy little storm-lantern and she could take stock of the place. It was a brick pit, windowless. The floor was littered with cinders and broken flower-pots. On a wooden bench was a heap of mould from which the green shoots of weed were sprouting. There was a rusting furnace door open and showing more ashes and cinders and garden rubbish.

‘Just wait: I’ll bring the bags.’

His heart was beating so violently that he could hardly breathe—fortunately for her peace of mind, she could not see his face. He staggered out and slammed the door, threw the rusty lamp on to the staple and, groping at his feet, found the padlock and fixed it. Then he stumbled up the two steps and ran towards the house.

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.

CHAPTER 21

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.