Edgar Wallace: The Joker

They went back into the panelled dining-room. The apartment interested Jim, for here was every evidence of luxury and refinement. The flat must have cost thousands of pounds to furnish. And then he remembered that Arthur Ingle had been convicted on three charges. Evidence in a number of others, which must have produced enormous profits, was either missing or of too shaky a character to produce. This apartment represented coups more successful than those for which Arthur Ingle had been convicted.

‘Do you know your uncle very well?’

She shook her head.

‘I knew him better many years ago,’ she said, ‘when he was an actor, before he—well, before he got rich! I am his only living relation.’ She raised her head, listening.

Somebody had knocked at the outer door.

‘It may be the charwoman,’ she said, and went along the passage to open the door.

A man was standing on the mat outside, tall, commanding, magnificent in his well-cut evening clothes. His snowy linen blazed and twinkled with diamonds; the buttons on his white waistcoat were aglitter.

It was part of the primitive in the man, so that she saw nothing vulgar in the display. But something within her shrank under his pale gaze. She had a strange and inexplicable sensation of being in the presence of a power beyond earthly control. She was crushed by the sense of his immense superiority. So she might have felt had she found herself confronted by a tiger.

‘My name is Harlow—we met on Dartmoor,’ he said, and showed a line of even teeth in a smile. ‘May I come in?’

She could not speak in her astonishment, but somebody answered for her.

‘Come in, Harlow,’ drawled Jim Carlton’s voice. ‘I’d love to have your first impression of Dartmoor; is it really as snappy as people think?’

CHAPTER 4

MR. HARLOW’S attitude towards this impertinent man struck the girl as remarkable. It was mild, almost benevolent; he seemed to regard James Carlton as a good joke. And he was the great Harlow! She had learnt that at Princetown.

You could not work in the City without hearing of Harlow, his coups and successes. Important bankers spoke of him with bated breath. His money was too liquid for safety: it flowed here and there in floods that were more often than not destructive. Sometimes it would disappear into subterranean caverns, only to gush forth in greater and more devastating volume to cut new channels through old cultivations and presently to recede, leaving havoc and ruin behind.

And of course she had heard of the police station. When Mr Harlow interested himself in the public weal he did so thoroughly and unconventionally. His letters to the press on the subject of penology were the best of their kind that have appeared in print. He pestered Ministers and commissioners with his plans for a model police station, and when his enthusiasm was rebuffed he did what no philanthropist, however public-minded, has ever done before.

He bought a freehold plot in Evory Street (which is not a stone’s throw from Park Lane), built his model police headquarters at the cost of two hundred thousand pounds, and presented the building to the police commissioners. It was a model police office in every respect. The men’s quarters above the station were the finest of their kind in the world. Even the cells had the quality of comfort, though they contained the regulation plank bed. This gift was a nine days’ wonder. Topical revues had their jokes about it; the cartoonists flung their gibes at the Government upon the happening.

The City had ceased to think of him as eccentric, they called him ‘sharp’ and contrasted him unfavourably with his father. They were a little afraid of him. His money was too fluid for stability.

He nodded smilingly at Jim Carlton, fixed the unhappy Elk with a glance, and then: ‘I did not know that you and my friend Carlton were acquainted.’ And then, in a changed tone: ‘I hope I am not de trop.’

His voice, his attitude said as plainly as words could express: ‘I presume this is a police visitation due to the notorious character of your uncle?’ The girl thought this. Jim knew it.

‘There has been a burglary here and Miss Rivers called us in,’ he said.

Harlow murmured his regrets and sympathy. ‘I congratulate you upon having secured the shrewdest officer in the police force.’ He addressed the girl blandly.

‘And I congratulate the police force’—he looked at Jim—‘upon detaching you from the Foreign Office—you were wasted there, Mr Carlton, if I may be so impertinent as to express an opinion.’

‘I am still in the Foreign Office,’ said Jim. ‘This is spare-time work. Even policemen are entitled to their amusements. And how did you like Dartmoor?’

The Splendid Harlow smiled sadly. ‘Very impressive, very tragic,’ he said. ‘I am referring of course to Princetown, where I spent a couple of nights.’

Aileen was waiting to hear the reason for the call; even though her distress and foreboding she was curious to learn what whim had brought this super-magnate to the home of a convict.

He looked slowly from her to the men and again Jim interpreted his wishes; he glanced at Elk and walked with him into the lumber room.

‘It occurred to me,’ said Mr Harlow, ‘that I might be in a position to afford you some little help. My name may not be wholly unknown to you; I am Mr Stratford Harlow.’

She nodded.

‘I knew that,’ she said.

‘They told you at the Duchy, did they?’ It seemed that he was relieved that she had identified him.

‘Mine is rather a delicate errand, but it struck me—I have found myself thinking about you many times since we met—that possibly…I might be able to find a good position for you. Your situation, if you will forgive my saying as much, is a little tragic. Association with—er—criminals or people with criminal records has a drugging effect even upon the finest nature.’

She smiled. ‘In other words, Mr Harlow,’ she said quietly, ‘you’re under the impression I’m rather badly off and that you would like to make life easier for me?’

He beamed at this. ‘Exactly,’ he said.

‘It is very kind of you—most kind,’ she said, and meant it. ‘But I have a very good job in a lawyer’s office.’ He inclined his head graciously. ‘Mr Stebbings has been very good to me—’

‘Mr –-?’ His head jerked on one side. ‘Stebbings—of Stebbings, Field & Farrow—surely not! They were my lawyers until a few years ago.’

She knew this also.

‘Quite good people, though a little old-fashioned,’ he said. ‘Then of course you have heard Mr Stebbings speak of me?’

‘Only once,’ she confessed. ‘He is a very reticent man and never talks about his clients.’

Harlow bit his lip in thought. ‘An excellent fellow! I have often wondered whether I was wrong in taking my affairs from him. I wish you would mention that to him when you see him. I understood you were working in the office of the New Library Syndicate?’

She smiled at this. ‘It’s curious you should say that; their offices are in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but next door.’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I see how the mistake arose,’ and added quickly: ‘A friend of mine who knows you saw you going into—er—an office; and obviously made a mistake.’

He did not tell her who was their mutual friend, and she was not sufficiently interested to inquire.

This time the knock at the door was more pronounced.

‘Will you excuse me?’ she said. ‘That is my cleaner, and she is rather inclined to tell me her troubles. I may keep you waiting a little while.’

She left him and he heard the sounds of a door opening, as Jim Carlton and Elk came back into the dining-room.

‘A very charming young lady that,’ said Mr Harlow.