Edgar Wallace: The Joker

She entered the cab between laughter and tears, for her elbow really did hurt more than she was ready to confess.

‘Rivers—Aileen Rivers,’ he mused, as the cab went cautiously along the Embankment. ‘I’ve got you on the tip of my tongue and at the back of my mind, but I can’t place you.’

‘Perhaps if you look up my record at Scotland Yard?’ she suggested, with a certain anger at his impertinence.

‘I thought of doing that,’ he replied calmly; ‘but Aileen Rivers?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I can’t place you.’ And of course he had placed her. He knew her as the niece of Arthur Ingle, sometime Shakespearean actor and now serving five years for an ingenious system of fraud and forgery. But then, he was unscrupulous, as Mr Harlow had said. He had a power of invention which carried him far beyond the creative line, but he was not averse to stooping on the way to the most petty deceptions. And this in spite of the fact that he had been well educated and immense sums had been spent on the development of his mind, so that lie might distinguish between right and wrong.

‘Fotheringay Mansions.’ He fingered his grimy chin. ‘How positively exclusive!’

She turned on him in sudden anger. ‘I’ve accepted your escort, Mr—’ She paused insultingly.

‘Carlton,’ he murmured; ‘half-brother to the hotel but no relation to the club. And this is fame! You were saying?’

‘I was going to say that I wished you would not talk. You have done your best to kill me this evening; you might at least let me die in peace.’

He peered through the fog-shrouded windows. ‘There’s an old woman selling chrysanthemums near Westminster Bridge; we might stop and buy you some flowers.’ And then, quickly: ‘I’m terribly sorry, I won’t ask you any questions at all or make any comments upon your plutocratic residence.’

‘I don’t live there,’ she said in self-defence. ‘I go there sometimes to see the place is kept in order. It belongs to a-a-relation of mine who is abroad.’

‘Monte Carlo?’ he murmured. ‘And a jolly nice place too! Rien ne va plus! Faites vos jeux, monsieurs et mesdames! Personally I prefer San Remo. Blue sky, blue sea, green hills, white houses—everything like a railway poster.’ And then he went off at a tangent. ‘And talking of blueness, you were lucky not to be hit by the blue Rolls; it was going faster than me, but it has better brakes. I rammed his petrol tank in the fog, but even that didn’t make him stop.’

Her lips curled in the darkness. ‘A criminal escaping from justice, one thinks? How terribly romantic!’

The young man chuckled.

‘One thinks wrong. It was a millionaire on his way to a City banquet. And the only criminal charge I can bring home to him is that he wears large diamond studs in his shirt, which offence is more against my aesthetic taste than the laws of my country, God bless it!’

The cab was slowing, the driver leaning sideways seeking to identify the locality.

‘We’re here,’ said Mr Carlton; opened the door of the taxi while it was still in motion and jumped out.

The machine stopped before the portals of Fotheringay Mansions.

‘Thank you very much for bringing me home,’ said Aileen primly and politely, and added not without malice: ‘I’ve enjoyed your conversation.’

‘You should hear my aunt,’ said the young man. ‘Her line of talk is sheer poetry!’

He watched her until she was swallowed in the gloom, and returned to the cab.

‘Scotland Yard,’ he said laconically; ‘and take a bit of a risk, O son of Nimshi.’

The cabman took the necessary risk and arrived without hurt at the gloomy entrance of police headquarters. Jim Carlton waved a brotherly greeting to the sergeant at the desk, took the stairs two at a time, and came to his own little room. As a rule he was not particularly interested in his personal appearance, but now, glancing at the small mirror which decorated the upturned top of a washstand, he uttered a groan.

He was busy getting the grease from his face when the melancholy face of Inspector Elk appeared in the doorway.

‘Going to a party?’ he asked gloomily.

‘No,’ said Jim through the lather; ‘I often wash.’

Elk sniffed, seated himself on the edge of a hard chair, searched his pockets slowly and thoroughly.

‘It’s in the inside pocket of my jacket,’ spluttered Carlton. ‘Take one; I’ve counted ‘em.’

Elk sighed heavily as he took out the long leather case, and, selecting a cigar, lit it.

‘Seegars are not what they was when I was a boy,’ he said, gazing at the weed disparagingly. ‘For sixpence you could get a real Havana. Over in New York everybody smokes cigars. But then, they pay the police a livin’ wage; they can afford it.’

Mr Carlton looked over his towel. ‘I’ve never known you to buy a cigar in your life,’ he said deliberately. ‘You can’t get them cheaper than for nothing!’

Inspector Elk was not offended. ‘I’ve smoked some good cigars in my time,’ he said. ‘Over in the Public Prosecutor’s office in Mr Gordon’s days—he was the fellow that smashed the Frogs—him and me, that is to say,’ he corrected himself carefully.

‘The Frogs? Oh, yes, I remember. Mr Gordon had good cigars, did he?’

‘Pretty good,’ said Elk cautiously. ‘I wouldn’t say yours was worse, but it’s not better.’ And then, without a change of voice: ‘Have you pinched Stratford Harlow?’

Jim Carlton made a grimace of disgust. ‘Tell me something I can pinch him for,’ he invited.

‘He’s worth fifteen millions according to accounts,’ said Elk. ‘No man ever got fifteen million honest.’

Jim Carlton turned a white, wet face to his companion. ‘He inherited three from his father, two from one aunt, one from another. The Harlows have always been a rich family, and in the last decade they’ve graded down to maiden aunts. He had a brother in America who left him eight million dollars.’

Elk sighed and scratched his thin nose.

‘He’s in Ratas too,’ he said complainingly.

‘Of course he’s in Ratas!’ scoffed Jim. ‘Ellenbury hides him, but even if he didn’t, there’s nothing criminal in Ratas. And supposing he was openly in it, that would be no offence.

‘Oh!’ said Elk, and by that ‘Oh!’ indicated his tentative disagreement.

There was nothing furtive or underhand about the Rata Syndicate. It was registered as a public company, and had its offices in Westshire House, Old Broad Street, in the City of London, and its New York office on Wall Street. The Rata Syndicate published a balance sheet and employed a staff of ten clerks, three of whom gained further emoluments by acting as directors of the company, under the chairmanship of a retired colonel of infantry. The capital was a curiously small one, but the resources of the syndicate were enormous. When Rata cornered rubber, cheques amounting to five millions sterling passed outward through its banking accounts; in fact every cent involved in that great transaction appeared in the books except the fifty thousand dollars that somebody paid to Lee Hertz and his two friends.

Lee arrived from New York on a Friday afternoon. On the Sunday morning the United Continental Rubber Company’s stores went up in smoke. Nearly eighteen thousand tons of rubber were destroyed in that well-organised conflagration, and rubber jumped 80 per cent in twenty-four hours and 200 per cent in a week. For the big reserves that kept the market steady had been wiped out in the twinkling of an eye, to the profit of Rata Incorporated.

Said the New York Headquarters to Scotland Yard: Lee Hertz, Jo Klein and Philip Serrett well known fire bugs believed to be in London stop See record NY 9514 mailed you October 7 for description stop Possibility you may connect them United Continental fire.