Chapter XXI

During the hours which Luke Maddison had spent in his prison house, it was curious that he should think so little on serious topics. He was face to face with death in its most hideous aspect--it was impossible to mistake Connor’s intention--and yet for the main part his mind was occupied by the veriest trivialities. If he thought of Margaret at all it was only in a detached and impersonal way and to find an explanation for her presence with the police at his flat that night. She must have had the key; the police went to her--but why?

Then he remembered his conversation with Hulbert’s servant, who had obviously been suspicious and must have communicated at once with the nearest police station.

He thought of the drive across London in that uncomfortable van, and spent quite an hour trying to locate exactly the building in which he was confined. Driving along the Embankment on his way to the City, he must have often seen the very wharf, the very building. He went to the City twice a week, to directors’ meetings, and he loved the Embankment in the early days of spring, when the green was bursting from the trees, and sunlight dappled the pavements with moving arabesques of shadow.

In such circumstances as his all a man’s past life should come before him. Luke made an effort to satisfy the convention, but grew bored after five minutes.

He wandered round and round his cell, feeling the walls in a grim spirit of humour, seeking for those loose bricks which inevitably occur in the prison houses of heroes. Not that he was any hero, he decided. He was a smash-and-grab man--liable, probably, to three years penal servitude, certainly to disgrace. He decided that it was not in any spirit of altruism that he wished to save Margaret’s name from being dragged into this sordid affair. It was because it would intensify his own sense of foolishness.

Exactly what would Connor do? He was almost curious to know.

There was a church clock close by; he heard it striking the quarters and the hours, and the last notes of three were still quivering on the air when he heard the sound of a key in the lock, the door was opened, and the two men who had been his captors invited him forth. Their tone was friendly, almost courteous.

He followed the first, and was followed by the second, into the room. Connor had evidently been sleeping on a folding bed. He sat on the edge of his untidy couch, rubbing his fingers through his hair and yawning prodigiously. On the table were four cups of steaming coffee and some sandwiches.

“Sit down, Smith. We’ve got to think out what we’re going to do with you,” said Connor, coming to his feet with a yawn.

He drew up a chair to the table and fell into it; pulled a cup of coffee toward him and took a sandwich.

“Help yourself to milk and sugar.”

He pushed a cup toward the prisoner. Luke was looking round the room interestedly. Stacked on a chair were four great bars of something white and crystalline, which he guessed was salt, and on the floor was a long length of heavy chain.

Connor followed the direction of his eyes.

“Want to buy a bit of salt?” he asked good-humouredly.

His question seemed to tickle his two companions, for they chuckled deeply.

“I am not in the salt business,” said Luke with a smile.

He sipped at the coffee; it was raw stuff, but the warmth of it was grateful, for the night was cold and he had grown chilly in the brick-lined room.

“What are we going to do with you, Smith, eh?”

Luke took a big gulp of coffee and leaned back in his chair with a laugh.

“You can listen to a very interesting story,” he said, “and you can also earn yourself a thousand pounds.”

He saw a faint ghost of a smile come to Connor’s face.

“Go on,” said that tousled man.

Then Luke told everything, but without referring to Margaret. He gave his name, his address, told how he came to meet Lewing, related the story of Lewing’s little fraud and of his meeting him on that night----

“But what were you running away from?” asked Connor.

This was difficult to explain, for Luke had perforce to leave out the motive for his strange action. He could neither tell of his marriage nor of Margaret’s staggering conduct; and without these facts he felt he was being unconvincing. Nevertheless, with this handicap, he struggled on to a finish. Connor shook his head.

“I’ve heard all about you, Smith--there never was a con man who couldn’t tell a tale. But if you’re a specimen of the Australian man I wonder you’re not starving! Drink up your coffee and have some more. I want to find a way of settling this business without unpleasantness.”

Luke finished the coffee and put down the cup.

“Now, I’ll tell one,” said Connor, and his voice was no longer pleasant or amiable. “You’ve been to the police and you’ve tried to double-cross me. And now you think you’ll get out of it with a silly story!… Squealer… police find you…”

Luke heard only scraps of the talk: he was desperately sleepy. His head sank forward on his breast, and though he strove with all his will-power to rouse himself, he could not so much as open his eyes. He did not even realize that he had been drinking laudanum----

“Hold him up,” said Connor.

One of the men caught Luke as he swayed sideways and lowered him to the floor. Connor pushed back the table and jerked his thumb in the direction of the salt. Two blocks were put on the floor under Luke’s legs, and with a knife one of the men scooped a deep depression in two of the corners. The other blocks were laid on top. Connor lifted the heavy chain, wound it carefully round and round the salt, fastening the last two links with a piece of wire.

They discussed their grisly work without emotion.

“… You want to be careful it doesn’t slip over his feet, Harry,” said Connor. “Tighten that chain a bit--not too tight or you’ll break the salt.”

At last it was finished and Connor straightened his back.

“Get that old plank to lay him on,” he commanded, and the bigger of the two walked to the door and pulled it open.

Connor saw him start back and his face wrinkle.

“Who’s that?” he asked sharply.

The man who was in the passage walked into the room at his leisure. Connor saw him and showed his teeth like an angry dog.

“Hullo, Gunner! What the hell are you doing round here?”

Gunner Haynes looked from Connor to the unconscious man on the floor.

“Ingenious but not original,” he drawled, his thin lips curling in contempt. “You’re dropping him in the river, of course, and the water will dissolve the salt, the chains will fall off, and the verdict will be ‘Death from misadventure.’ What a pity!”

“What’s the pity, Gunner?” asked Connor.

“That I happened to butt in,” said Haynes. “Who’s the victim?”

“There’s no victim,” said Connor loudly. “This poor fellow is ill and we’re taking him off to the hospital.”

The Gunner nodded.

“I thought you might be pickling him,” he said, shook his head and repeated: “Ingenious but not original. No marks of violence on the body, nothing to show that he didn’t drown, as people do drown, by accident. I’m sorry to have spoiled your amusement, but you’ll have to let him go.”

“Why?” asked Connor.

“Because,” said the Gunner deliberately, “I’m in it! You don’t catch me as accessory before, after, or in the fact of murder. It’s not my graft, Connor. Remove that interesting apparatus.”

Connor smiled. His hand dropped quite naturally out of sight below the level of the table.

“If you pull a gun on me,” said the Gunner, not a muscle of his lean body moving, “I shall shoot you through the stomach. It’ll take you five days to die, and it’s a very painful death by all accounts. I shall then go out and explain to the police why I shot you, and there will be no flowers from Scotland Yard.”

One of Connor’s assistants moved a step toward him.

“Look here, Gunner----” he began, mildly enough.

Haynes’s fist shot out so swiftly that the man could not counter the blow. He went down with a crash. The Gunner stood motionless, watching.

“Both hands in sight,” said Haynes. “Lay ’em on the table, Connor.”

He had no weapon in his hand, but none knew better than the livid man on the other side of the table how quickly the Gunner could draw, with what devilish accuracy he could shoot.

“What’s the fuss?” he growled. “This bird doesn’t mean a thing to you.”

“Unlace him,” smiled the Gunner. “I’m sorry to butt in, as I said before.”

“What did you come here for, anyway?” asked the other savagely.

The Gunner looked up at the ceiling.

“I forget exactly,” he said untruthfully. And then: “Who is this man?”

“Man named Smith. He squealed on me to-night, and then tried to carry it off with a tale about being a banker--he’s got a nerve! Luke something or other.”

Gunner Haynes bent down and peered into Luke’s face.

He recognized the sleeping man instantly.

“Luke something or other, eh? Where did you pick him up?” As he spoke he beckoned one of the men. “Take that chain off,” he said.

The man glanced uneasily at his chief, but Connor nodded.

“The trouble with you, Gunner, is that you will interfere with other people’s graft. If you want to know who he is, he did that job to-day in Bond Street.”

He related “Smith’s” biography; Gunner Haynes knew that he was speaking the truth. He was puzzled, but not greatly. He had lived too long on the seamy and shadowy side of life to be surprised at anything. Men had lived double lives before; but this was the kind of double life which Haynes thought belonged to the realm of imaginative novelists. A banker who amused himself in smash-and-grab raids was wildly fictional--but possible.

There might be, he thought, a woman somewhere in the background. Where women touched life, the inexplicable became almost daylight-clear.

“What are you going to do with him?” asked Connor, as the man stooped and with scarcely an effort lifted the unconscious Luke onto the chair.

The Gunner did not answer the question. Instead, he propounded one of his own.

“Have you any slush in this place?” he asked and saw a look of alarm come into the imperturbable face of the other.

“Slush?” said Connor quickly. “No--why should we? I don’t deal in that kind of stuff.”

“No forged French banknotes?” The Gunner shook his head in anticipation of the answer.

“What do you mean, Gunner?”

A smile lit up the saturnine face.

“You asked me why I came here, and I’m telling you. They’re raiding your place to-night. I only got to know it an hour ago. I thought I’d come along and tell you. I don’t know why, but that’s my nature--helping poor crooks!”

He saw the three men glance at one another, and the alarm in Connor’s face was patent.

“We had a parcel over from Paris the other day,” he said uneasily. “Harry, get it up.”

He looked at the huddled figure of Luke.

“You’re making a big mistake about this bird,” he said. “You let him get into the hands of the police, and he’ll put up a squeal that’ll make you deaf!”

Stooping, the Gunner put his arm about Luke Maddison and lifted him bodily. He turned and strode through the door, down the narrow passage, and into the untidy yard. He had already located Connor’s van, and he was on the point of hoisting his burden into its interior when he heard a stealthy scraping against wood. It was the sound that a man makes when he is climbing--somebody was getting over the gate.

He sat Luke on the ground, propped him against a wall, and went noiselessly toward the entrance of the yard. Stooping to get a skyline, he saw the head and shoulders of two men above the gate. It was enough; he need see no more.

Returning as quickly as he came to the place where he had left Luke, he lifted him and went cautiously and gingerly down the slope toward the water. There would be a boat here. Presently his keen eyes discerned the dim shape of it as it moved uneasily on the rising tide.

He had considered the possibility of leaving Luke to be discovered by the police, and had rejected that plan. He owed a debt to this man--he could not leave him to discovery and disgrace. If what Connor had said was true, Maddison, in his capacity of brigand, was as much wanted by the police as Connor himself.

He drew the boat to the broken stone causeway with the heel of his boot, and put Luke aboard by the simple process of laying him level with the edge of the wharf and rolling him onto the boat. It took a few minutes to balance him. As he himself stepped astride of the man, he heard the sound of voices in the yard, saw the flicker of electric lamps. Untying the painter, he pushed off with his hand, dragged an oar from under the reclining figure and paddled his way to midstream, keeping a sharp lookout for the river police.

He saw the launch coming downstream at full speed, and drove his boat into the shelter of two moored barges as the tiny steamer swung in a semicircle.

“A bit late,” muttered the Gunner.

He was free from detection now, unless he met another patrol, and finding the second oar, he pushed Luke down between the two seats and sitting, rowed steadily downstream.

In an hour there would be daylight; already the eastern sky was whitening. The Gunner knew a safe landing near Rotherhithe; the tide was turning and would, he judged, carry him to safety.

He judged wrong, and saw, before he had reached London Bridge, that he could not make his destination in the darkness. He took his decision quickly. Stooping over the side of the boat, he filled his hat with water and dashed it in the face of the slumbering man. Luke shivered and groaned, and the Gunner repeated his experiment. He heard the moaning voice of the man at the bottom of the boat.

“My head…”

“Keep quiet!” hissed Haynes. “I’m taking you to London Bridge Stairs.”

There was no answer, and the Gunner prodded with his heel at his uneasily moving cargo.

“Do you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you. What has happened?”

Haynes did not reply, but pulled at his oars, and in a minute Luke heard the jolt of the boat striking against the stone.

“Can you get up?” The Gunner’s hand gripped Luke’s wrist and drew him to a sitting position.

With the boathook he drew the little skiff against the steps and came to land. It took five minutes before Luke could follow him. His knees gave under him, and he wanted all the support that his companion could give him.

“Sit on the steps,” commanded the Gunner, and Luke obeyed. “Now try to stand.”

For five minutes Luke sat crouched up, his face in his hands, and then the Gunner’s voice aroused him.

“There are too many people passing over the bridge to please me,” he said. “We had better get up before it’s light.”

He assisted the half-unconscious man to rise to his feet. The Gunner’s grip was firm as they climbed the steep flight until they emerged flush with the footpath. The people who were hurrying across the bridge took little notice of them, and gripping his companion by the arm, the Gunner led him down toward Tooley Street. When he saw a slowly moving cab he hailed the driver and bundled Luke inside.

“My friend’s a bit under the weather,” he explained to the cabman with a smile. “Drive me to Lennox Street, Clerkenwell.”

There was a large block of model buildings in Lennox Street, and for years the Gunner had had his secret headquarters in a fairly large flat on the ground floor. It was a place to which he very seldom came, and of whose existence the police were ignorant. It was his _pied-à-terre_, jealously preserved for emergencies. He had slept there two nights before, and the woman who came in daily had made the bed. Upon this he laid Luke Maddison.

“They must have given you a pretty large dose,” he said. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

Luke shuddered.

“Coffee--ugh!”

“Gave it you in that, did they? That’s probably why you’re not dead.”

He pulled down the blinds before he lit the gas; then, going out into the little kitchen, he made coffee as only a man who had fended for himself on the Continent, and who had kept house in places as wide apart as Biarritz is from Munich, could brew that delicious beverage. When he came back Luke was sitting on the side of the bed, his head in his hands.

“A couple of aspirins ought to put you right,” said the Gunner, and went in search of the little white pellets.

Luke gulped down the medicine, and then for the first time became conscious of his benefactor.

“Aren’t you Gunner Haynes?” he asked.

Haynes smiled.

“That is my name.”

“Where is Connor?”

Again that cryptic smile.

“In jail, I hope,” said the Gunner. “Now, Mr. Maddison, are you well enough to talk?”

Luke looked up eagerly.

“You know me, then?”

The man nodded.

“I knew you the first time I saw you. There’s one thing I want to ask you--is it true, the story that Connor told? That you were in that smash-and-grab raid at Taffanny’s?”

Luke nodded.

“I drove the car. I hadn’t the slightest idea what they wanted me to do or what it was all about until it was too late.”

“So you’re the bearded man?” mused the Gunner. “That certainly is amazing. I’m not asking you to explain----”

“I’ll explain as soon as my head stops splitting,” groaned Luke.

It was after two that afternoon when he woke from an uneasy sleep. His head was still thick, his mouth tasted like a limekiln, but after a cold wash at the kitchen sink he was near to his normal self; and over a cigarette and a cup of tea he told the story from start to finish, and this time reserved nothing.

The Gunner listened in silence, making no comment until he had finished.

“Did you tell Connor this story?”

Luke nodded.

“Yes, except that naturally enough I didn’t speak about my wife and the--money. Why do you ask?”

Gunner Haynes pursed his lips.

“I don’t know. Connor is a pretty bad man. Your only hope is that he’s sent down for a stretch--by which inelegant word I mean a term of penal servitude. If he gets away with this police raid, supposing they find nothing on the premises--and like a fool I gave him plenty of warning--Connor is the sort of man who would investigate the most unlikely story if he thought there was a chance of money in it. And that is going to make your reappearance a rather difficult matter.”

He lit another cigarette and stared past his guest.

“Tell me why your wife hated you--you rather glossed over that part of your yarn.”

Luke was silent for a long time.

“I don’t think it’s very difficult to understand,” he said. “She thought I was responsible for the death of her brother. He shot himself.”

“But why did she understand that?” persisted the Gunner. “Allowing that Danty Morell is a very plausible gentleman, she would hardly take his bare word.” He thought for a moment, then asked suddenly: “When that boy shot himself did he leave any message behind?”

Luke shook his head.

“I heard of none--nor was anything mentioned at the inquest.”

“Who found his body?”

Luke considered.

“Morell was in the room and made the discovery.”

The Gunner nodded.

“And immediately after that Mrs. Maddison’s manner changed. Of course, you weren’t married then, but that is a fact, isn’t it? If that is a fact, it means that Danty carried some evidence to the young lady that was quite sufficient to make her play this trick----”

“I’m not blaming her,” began Luke.

He saw a flicker of amusement in the man’s eyes.

“You are?”

“Well, not exactly,” drawled the Gunner. “I’ve given up blaming people. There’s no profit in it.”

He flicked off the ash of his cigarette carefully into his saucer.

“You can’t make a sudden reappearance; you can’t even get to Ronda and be sure you’ll get away with it,” he said. “You’ve got yourself mixed up with two bad gangsters--Connor and Morell.”

He rose and paced up and down the small room, his eyes narrowed, his brow corrugated in thought.

“It’s Connor that’s worrying me. If he’s held for trial, that problem is settled. If he isn’t, and suppose you come back from Ronda, he’ll be able to trace all your movements. Have you got your passport?”

He saw Luke thrust his hand inside his shirt, and a look of blank dismay come to his face.

“I’ve lost it somewhere.”

Gunner Haynes’s lips clicked impatiently.

“If you lost it at Keel’s Wharf then you’re in the soup,” he said. “There’s only one thing to do and that is to get your passport back. There’s another thing: I want to see the letter that that boy wrote before he shot himself.”

Luke shook his head.

“I don’t believe he wrote a letter, and if he did it was certainly destroyed.”

Ten minutes later the Gunner left the house on his quest. His first call was at a police station near to Keel’s Wharf. He knew the inspector in charge, and between them was that curious camaraderie which it is so difficult for the “layman” to appreciate--the understanding between the criminal and his ruthless enemy.

In point of fact the Gunner met the divisional inspector as he was coming out of the station.

“I hear you’ve had trouble at Keel’s Wharf,” he said.

The inspector looked at him with a smile in his keen eyes.

“Is this hearsay or information, Gunner, or direct observation?”

“Come again,” said the Gunner, with elaborate innocence.

“Connor says you were on the wharf a few minutes before, and that if anybody was toting slush it was you. He said you came with a parcel, that he refused to entertain the deal, and that you got away by boat.”

Now the police do not always speak the truth. It is a lamentable statement to make. They have to deal with liars and cunning men. But the Gunner trusted the man to whom he was speaking.

“I was on the wharf, yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact I came to see him about another matter altogether--you know that forgeries are not in my line. I heard the raid and I got away by boat. I gather that you did not pull him?”

The inspector shook his head.

“No; there was nothing there. Connor and his friends seem to be doing an extensive trade in salt. Do you know anything about that, Gunner?”

“If I did I shouldn’t tell you,” said Haynes coolly. “So you didn’t drag Connor, eh? That’s a pity.”

The detective looked left and right and lowered his voice.

“If you particularly want him dragged, you’ll tell me what I can drag him on----”

Again the Gunner shook his head.

“You want me to give you a little information? I’m not that kind of bureau! Is Connor still at the wharf?”

The inspector nodded.

“I think I’ll call on him. I haven’t seen you, Pullman.”

He came to the wharf and found Connor in a very cheerful frame of mind. If he was at all disconcerted to see Gunner Haynes, he did not reveal the fact.

“You owe me four pounds,” said Connor. “That’s the price I paid for that boat which you pinched. You’re not staying long, are you? Because I’m expecting a lady visitor.”

“Who amongst your friends has this courtesy title?” asked the Gunner offensively.

“Nobody you know,” said Connor carelessly. “A lady named Mrs. Maddison--who has recently lost her husband.”