Terror keep
of one. I’m thinking about sending for my Rolls to take her a drive
round the country. You’re not jealous?”
Anger and amusement struggled for expression, but Margaret’s sense of
humour won, and she laughed long and silently all the way to her
office.
Soon after this Mr. Ravini disappeared. So also did Olga. Margaret saw
them coming into the hall about eleven, and the girl looked paler than
usual, and, sweeping past her without a word, ran up the stairs.
Margaret surveyed the young man curiously. His face was flushed, his
eyes of an unusual brightness.
“I’m going up to town to-morrow,” he said. “Early train… you needn’t
’phone for a cab: I can walk down the hill.”
He was almost incoherent.
“You’re tired of Larmes Keep?”
“Eh? Tired? No, by God I’m not! This is the place for me!”
He smoothed back his dark hair and she saw his hand trembling so much
that the Luck Stones flickered and flashed like fire. She waited until
he had disappeared, and then she went upstairs and knocked at Olga’s
door. The girl’s room was next to hers.
“Who’s that?” asked a voice sharply.
“Miss Belman.”
The key turned, the door opened. Only one light was burning in the
room, so that Olga’s face was in shadow.
“Do you want anything?” she asked.
“Can I come in?” asked Margaret. “There’s something I wish to say to
you.”
Olga hesitated. Then:
“Come in,” she said. “I’ve been snivelling. I hope you don’t mind.”
Her eyes were red, the stains of tears were still on her face.
“This damned place depresses me awfully,” she excused herself as she
dabbed her cheeks with a handkerchief. “What do you want to see me
about?”
“Mr. Ravini. I suppose you know he is a--crook?”
Olga stared at her and her eyes went hard.
“I don’t know that I am particularly interested in Mr. Ravini,” she
said slowly. “Why do you come to tell me this?”
Margaret was in a dilemma.
“I don’t know… I thought you were getting rather friendly with him… it
was very impertinent of me.”
“I think it was,” said Olga Crewe coldly, and the rebuff was such that
Margaret’s face went scarlet.
She was angry with herself when she went into her own room that night,
and anger is a bad bedmate, and the most wakeful of all human
emotions. She tossed from side to side in her bed, tried to forget
there were such persons as Olga Crewe and George Ravini, tried every
device she could think of to induce sleep, and was almost successful
when…
She sat up in bed. Fingers were scrabbling on the panel of her door;
not exactly scratching nor tapping. She switched on the light, and,
getting out of bed, walked to the door and listened. Somebody was
there. The handle turned in her hand.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“Let me in, let me in!…”
It was a frantic whisper, but she recognised the voice--Ravini!
“I can’t let you in. Go away, please, or I’ll telephone…”
She heard a sound, a curious muffled sound… sobbing… a man! And then
the voice ceased. Her heart racing madly, she stood by the door, her
ear to the panel, listening, but no other sound came. She spent the
rest of the night sitting up in bed, a quilt about her shoulders,
listening, listening…
Day broke greyly; the sun came up. She lay down and fell asleep. It
was the maid bringing tea that woke her, and, getting out of bed, she
opened the door.… Something attracted her attention.
“A nice morning, miss,” said the fresh-faced country girl brightly.
Margaret nodded. As soon as the girl was gone she opened the door
again to examine more closely the thing she had seen. It was a
triangular patch of stuff that had been torn and caught in one of the
splinters of the old oaken door. She took it off carefully and laid it
in the palm of her hand. A jagged triangle of pink silk. She put it on
her dressing-table wonderingly. There must be an end to this. If
Ravini was not leaving that morning, or Mr. Daver would not ask him to
go, she would leave for London that night.
As she left her room she met the housemaid.
“That man in No. 7 has gone, miss,” the woman reported, “but he’s left
his pyjamas behind.”
“Gone already?”
“Must have gone last night, miss. His bed hasn’t been slept in.”
Margaret followed her along the passage to Ravini’s room. His bag was
gone, but on the pillow, neatly folded, was a suit of pink silk
pyjamas, and, bending over, she saw that the breast was slightly torn.
A little triangular patch of pink silk had been ripped out!
CHAPTER VII
/When/ a nimble old man dropped from a high wall at midnight and,
stopping only to wipe the blood from his hands--for he had come upon a
guard patrolling the grounds in his flight--and walked briskly towards
London, peering into every side lane for the small car that had been
left for him, he brought a new complication into many lives, and for
three people at least marked the date of their passing in the Book of
Fate.
Police headquarters were not slow to employ the press to advertise
their wants. But the escape from Broadmoor of a homicidal maniac is
something which is not to be rushed immediately into print. Not once
but many times had the help of the public been enlisted in a vain
endeavour to bring old John Flack to justice. His description had been
circulated, his haunts notified, without there being any successful
issue to the broadcast.
There was a conference at Scotland Yard, which Mr. Reeder attended;
and they were five very serious men who gathered round the
superintendent’s desk, and mainly the talk was of bullion and of
“noses,” by which inelegant term is meant the inevitable police
informer.
Crazy John “fell” eventually through the treachery of an outside
helper. Ravini, the most valuable of gang leaders, had been employed
to “cover” a robbery at the Leadenhall Bank. Bullion was John Flack’s
specialty: it was not without its interest for Mr. Ravini.
The theft had been successful. One Sunday morning two cars drove out
of the courtyard of the Leadenhall Bank. By the side of the driver of
each car sat a man in the uniform of the Metropolitan Police--inside
each car was another officer. A City policeman saw the cars depart,
but accepted the presence of the uniformed men and did not challenge
the drivers. It was not an unusual event: transfers of gold or stocks
on Sunday morning had been witnessed before, but usually the City
authorities were notified. He called Old Jewry station on the
telephone to report the occurrence, but by this time John Flack was
well away.
It was Ravini, cheated, as he thought, of his fair share of the
plunder, who betrayed the old man--the gold was never recovered.
England had been ransacked to find John Flack’s headquarters, but
without success. There was not an hotel or boarding-house keeper who
had not received his portrait--nor one who recognised him in any
guise.
The exhaustive inquiries which followed his arrest did little to
increase the knowledge of the police. Flack’s lodgings were found--a
furnished room in Bloomsbury which he had occupied at rare intervals
for years. But here were discovered no documents which gave the
slightest clue to the real headquarters of the gang. Probably they had
none. They were chosen and discarded as opportunity arose or emergency
dictated, though it was clear that the old man had something in the
nature of a general staff to assist him.
“Anyway,” said Big Bill Gordon, Chief of the Big Five, “he’ll not
start anything in the way of a bullion steal--his mind will be fully
occupied with ways and means of getting out of the country.”
It was Mr. Reeder’s head which shook.
“The nature of criminals may change, but their vanities persist,” he
said, in his precise, grandiloquent way. “Mr. Flack does not pride
himself upon his murders, but upon his robberies, and he will signify
his return to freedom in the usual manner.”
“His gang is scattered----” began Simpson.
J. G. Reeder silenced him with a sad, sweet smile.
“There is plenty of evidence, Mr. Simpson, that the gang has
coagulated again. It is--um--an ugly word, but I can think of no
better. Mr. Flack’s escape from the--er--public institution where he
was confined shows evidence of good team work. The rope, the knife
with which he killed the unfortunate warder, the kit of tools, the
almost certainty that there was a car waiting to take him away, are
all symptomatic of gang work. And what has Mr. Flack----”
“I wish to God you wouldn’t call him ‘Mr.’ Flack!” said Big Bill
explosively.
J. G. Reeder blinked.
“I have an ineradicable respect for age,” he said in a hushed voice,
“but a greater respect for the dead. I am hoping to increase my
respect for Mr. Flack in the course of the next month.”
“If it’s gang work,” interrupted Simpson, “who are with him? The old
crowd is either gaoled or out of the country. I know what you’re
thinking about, Mr. Reeder: you’ve got your mind on what happened last
night. I’ve been thinking it over, and it’s quite likely that the
man-trap wasn’t fixed by Flack at all, but by one of the other crowd.
Do you know Donovan’s out of Dartmoor? He has no reason for loving
you.”
Mr. Reeder raised his hand in protest.
“On the contrary, Joe Donovan, when I saw him in the early hours of
this morning, was a very affable and penitent man who deeply regretted
the unkind things he said of me as he left the Old Bailey dock. He
lives at Kilburn, and spent last evening at a local cinema with his
wife and daughter--no, it wasn’t Donovan. He is not a brainy man. Only
John Flack, with his dramatic sense, could have staged that little
comedy which was so nearly a tragedy.”
“You were nearly killed, they tell me, Reeder?” said Big Bill.
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“I was not thinking of that particular tragedy. It was in my mind
before I went up the stairs to force the door into the kitchen. If I
had done that, I think I should have shot Mr. Flack, and there would
have been an end of all our speculations and troubles.”
Mr. Simpson was examining some papers that were on the table before
him.
“If Flack’s going after bullion he’s got very little chance. The only
big movement is that of a hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns which
goes to Tilbury to-morrow morning or the next day from the Bank of
England, and it is impossible that Flack could organise a steal at
such short notice.”
Mr. Reeder was suddenly alert and interested.
“A hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns,” he murmured, rubbing his
chin irritably. “Ten tons. It goes by train?”
“By lorry, with ten armed men--one per ton,” said Simpson humorously.
“I don’t think you need worry about that.”
Mr. J. G. Reeder’s lips were pursed as though he were whistling, but
no sound issued. Presently he spoke.
“Flack was originally a chemist,” he said slowly. “I don’t suppose
there is a better criminal chemist in England than Mr. Flack.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Simpson with a frown.
Mr. Reeder shrugged his shoulders.
“I have a sixth sense,” he said, almost apologetically, “and
invariably I associate some peculiar quality with every man and woman
who--um--passes under review. For example, Mr. Simpson, when I think
of you, I have an instinctive, shadowy thought of a prize ring where I
first had the pleasure of seeing you.” (Simpson, who had been an
amateur welter weight, grinned appreciatively.) “And my mind never
rests upon Mr. Flack except in the surroundings of a laboratory with
test tubes and all the paraphernalia of experimental chemistry. As for
the little affair last night, I was not unprepared for it, but I
suspected a trap--literally a--um--trap. Some evilly disposed person
once tried the same trick with me; cut away the landing so that I
should fall upon very unpleasant sharp spikes. I looked for sawdust
the moment I went into the house, and when that was not present I