The Ringer/Chapter 4

NORMAL girl is neither wholly saint nor wholly materialist. Bread and butter and the comfort of a bed are indispensable requisites for the Joans of Arc and the Guineveres who have existence in a world largely dominated by its animal needs; and the first thought of Mary Lenley when she awoke in the morning was not of the paper photograph, not even of the dainty lady who had so impertinently obtruded herself into her life, but the most important fact that she had returned home too late on the previous night to buy butter. There was a shopping centre in the Lewisham High Road, and she left the kettle over a low-burning gas-ring and hurried out to replenish her larder.

It was eight o'clock, and few of the shops were open. Weary-looking youths were polishing the window of the big outfitters on the hill, and shapeless women in nondescript attire were emptying the débris of the previous day into the huge zinc barrels that stood at the side of the road waiting for the leisurely dustman. The dairies, however, had been open for hours, and she made her purchase and was turning back (her mind on the heating qualities of a low-turned gas-stove) when she saw two men approaching her. The first she recognised at once as Alan, and, for no reason that she could fathom, she went red. The second man looked what he was—a doctor, a dapper man, grey at the temples, with a ridiculous little beard, who gesticulated violently as he talked. A doctor he must be—no other excuse existed for his glossy hat and his well-fitting frock-coat.

Alan saw her and checked his pace, but she had a pound of butter in one hand and a paper bag full of eggs in the other, and she was suddenly panic-stricken at the thought that, in the hurry of dressing, she had left untied that which ought to have been tied, and with a hurried "Good-morning," she passed them.

Even Dr. Lomond, Acting Divisional Surgeon, absorbed as he was in the exposition of his theories, was sufficiently interested to turn and look after her.

"That's a pretty girl," he said. "Who is she?"

"Miss Lenley," said Alan shortly. "You were saying"

"Lenley? Is that one of the Warwickshire Lenleys?"

The doctor, when he was not argumentative and not pursuing his inquiries into the delightful sphere in which he accidentally found himself, was inclined to be a fervent investigator of family trees.

"I knew a John Lenley of Leamington, and there are some Lenleys who have a place near Banbury."

"I don't think she is any of these," said Alan, a little impatiently. He was inwardly cursing the presence of the doctor, which prevented his turning round and accompanying the girl the rest of her way.

"Then probably she's a Sussex Lenley. There was a Felix Lenley who had a big house at Petworth and a shoot in Suffolk, fifteen—twenty years ago. Dear me! How time flies! Yes, a very pretty girl. One of the loveliest I've seen."

"You were offering me your valuable views on police work, doctor," said Alan, a thought resentfully.

It is a fact characteristic of large-minded men that they are susceptible to the minor irritations of life. Alan Wembury possessed a breadth of vision which marked him out as a man destined to hold a high place in his profession. In justice to him it may be said that it was a long time before Dr. Lomond's "but whys?" began to get on his nerves. Some people stop learning at an early stage, but Dr. Lomond was apparently one of those enthusiasts who never passed a new discovery without turning it over with his stick. Moreover, he was full of information, for he took his duties as police surgeon very seriously.

"You say there is no romance in police work," he said. "Well, I'll give you an incident that stimulated my imagination more than anything I can remember. I was passing the Sports Club the other afternoon," he went on, "when I saw one of the loveliest girls—in a sense as pretty as Miss—what's her name again?—Miss Lenley—coming out of that wretched shebeen! I intended telling you before; I think you ought to know this. Probably I see a whole lot of things that never come under your notice. We doctors are observant people. What is more—I hope you won't mind my saying this—we have a mind better trained to the great essentials than the average policeman."

He stopped to take breath, and Alan seized the opportunity.

"Untrained and deficient in mentality as I am, I know Mrs. Milton was at the Sports Club on Thursday afternoon," he said dryly, "partly because I spoke to her there, being on the premises myself, and partly but any further explanation is unnecessary."

The doctor's cherubic face fell for a moment, then suddenly he brightened up.

"Perhaps you know this?" he asked triumphantly. "Just after the woman came from, the door, a man rushed out of the club, looked up and down, and tore away as fast as he could run""

"That was me," said Alan calmly, and chuckled again at the doctor's discomfiture.

"I was too far away to see you," Lomond admitted, "but I am not so certain that there wasn't romance behind that scene. There is romance in everything, and it makes work about twenty times lighter if you have the gift to sort it out from the dust and dirt of life. I don't blame you for not seeing it. Why, there are police officers in Poona, Agra, Quetta, even, who have got so hardened to the game that they regard it very much as the road-mender looks upon his own work...."

The seeker after romance, to Alan's unspeakable relief, left him at the corner of Shardloes Terrace, for he had to take farewell of his chief, the aged Dr. Young, whom asthma was driving to a health resort in the Pyrenees. The old man sitting at the window looked up with a snort as his assistant came dancing in.

"Well, what do you think of Wembury!" he growled. "Good fellow? I saw your almost friendly good-byes."

"Yes, a good fellow," hesitated Lomond, smoothing his grey hair. "Ye-es. Rather limited, as most of these policemen are, by a lack of imagination. It is no use saying 'Pah!' to me, my dear Young. The absence of this divine gift is fatal to every police force in the world. That is why crime is steadily on the increase""

"Nothing of the sort," snapped the old doctor. "You've got your ideas out of books, my man! Police work is different. In stories and these fool plays any half-witted policeman could pick the criminal in the first chapter. You know all the characters; you're introduced to 'em, their peculiarities are described, and the more innocent they look the more guilty they are. But police work! You drag a man out of the river—no papers, no means of identity, laundry mark on his linen—and that's all. You don't know who were his friends or his enemies, you've just got to go along from house to house and make inquiries. The laundryman thinks the marks identify Mr. B. You find Mr. B. is alive and probably drunk! It may be Mr. C. Mr. C. left his lodgings a month ago, but it is believed he had a married sister in Rochester—or was it Hertford? The Hertford and Rochester police plod around for a month and find that Mr. C.'s married sister is a cousin who hasn't seen him for years, but she knows that he was married to a woman who ran away from him and is now living in Toronto. Then the Royal Canadian Police take up the hunt, and months later the officer in charge gets a long letter. The wife has been found; she says her husband was a gambler, and had a friend living at Greenwich, and so on and so forth. That's police work—knocking at doors and asking to see Mrs. This, That, and the Other. Maybe there's romance in Flanders Lane, but you'll have to wash the dirt off before you find it!"

"I shall find it," said Dr. Lomond with conviction.

"You'll be wearied to death of it long before I'm back from St. Jean," said Young breathlessly. "If you think that police work is fascinating melodrama, there's a shock coming, my boy! It's a job that smells of stale booze, and the most you can hope for in the way of excitement is an occasional cracked head. I've been in this division twenty-seven years, and I can count the thrills on my two thumbs."

Lomond's smile was both tolerant and superior.

"At any rate, for the next two months I shall be realising my ambition—which is to be associated with the police practice of a great city. Now in India..."

Old Young listened with growing impatience to the stories of dacoits, of evil men who live in the dark bazaars of Poona; of queer native crimes that remain undiscovered and unpunished; of feuds handed down from father to son, from uncle to nephew.

"That's all very well," he interrupted testily, "but Poona is Poona, and London is London, and—there's a pretty girl if ever there was one!"

For the second time that morning Lomond saw the face of Alan Wembury's friend.

"Who is she—Mary something?" he asked.

"She's romance!" said the sardonic old man. "Mary Lenley—she works for Meister""

"And Meister is""

"A crook lawyer." Dr. Young delivered the libel in a matter-of-fact tone. "You ought to meet him. Wembury thinks he's the biggest receiver in London."

"'Fence' is the word, isn't it? I've been reading""

"Never mind what you've been reading," interrupted the impatient surgeon. "This is real life. Yes, he's a fence. Negotiable property is passed to him—bank-notes, realisable jewels—stuff that a little man couldn't handle. It is either taken to him direct or else planted. When he goes to consult his client (suppose the thief is caught) the thief tips him off where the stuff is hidden. From the crook's point of view it is a good arrangement. Meister gets the stuff and pays for the best defence at the Central Criminal Court, and, more than this, keeps the crook's relations whilst he's 'inside'—that is, if the loot is big enough. He's a rich man."

"And that girl works for him?"

Dr. Young grunted.

"Yes. Her brother is 'inside' too. It's a tragedy. The Lenleys were big people in Somersetshire, but the old man let the boy run wild. When George Lenley died he left nothing but a bad name and a few thousand pounds' worth of bad debts. He fell into Slicey Quarry and broke his neck one night when he was full of old port—I know the place well: I'm a Somerset man. The boy and girl hadn't a friend in the world. They came up to London, the girl kept house and Johnny loafed around and naturally got into bad company. He did two burglaries and was caught on the second. It was a rum thing that Wembury took him—Wembury is a farmer's son and was born in the shadow of Lenley Court; he played with the children—Johnny is about his age. There is romance —the nearest you'll get to it."

In Dr. Lomond's eyes was a look of infinite sadness.

"'Tragedy' is the better word after all," he said.

When Mary reached Flanders Lane she was astonished to discover unusual signs of activity. The black door of No. 9 was open, and two workmen were moving in a large square grille of steel. One of the men stood aside with a grin to let her pass.

"That's not a bad job to be done in twelve hours, miss," he said, and she gathered from his pride that he was responsible for this rough steel structure.

"Whatever is it for?" she asked in astonishment.

"I don't know, miss: to put on a window, I think," said the man.

The housekeeper gave her a little further information.

"Meister's been like a lunatic since last night," she grumbled. "What with the telephone going and people coming and going, he kept me up till one o'clock, and now I've got to get a room ready for that low man Haggitt."

Astonished, the girl went up to the big room and found Mr. Meister sitting at his desk, an unlighted stump of a cigar between his teeth. He was unshaven and he had dressed in haste, for the vivid stripes of his pajamas showed beneath his waistcoat. He greeted her with a sickly smile, but his simulated joviality did not deceive her for a moment. Something had happened to disturb his equanimity—something so tremendous as to throw him off the rails.

"I'm having a few alterations made," he said. "The police advise it—we're too near to the Lane. It occurred to me that I should have better protection for my papers than I have got."

He glanced apprehensively at the large window overlooking the leads. Evidently the workmen had been there, for the raw brick of the wall was exposed.

"They're a terrible lot." He shook his head plaintively. "An ungrateful lot. Haggitt is the best of them. A blackguard, of course, but he's got grit. Haggitt would tackle a man as big as a house. It's a queer thing about these Cockneys, they are fearless."

"Haggitt is the man with the gold-rimmed spectacles, isn't he?" He nodded.

"Yes. It is only right that one should help him to make an honest living. I always say that the first duty of the law is to reform rather than to punish. That is how I see it."

The open window was responsible for the unusual freshness of the atmosphere—by the side of his desk she saw three black bottles, empty. Mr. Meister was afraid of something, terribly afraid. His heavy lips trembled, his plump hands moved restlessly over the table, he gave her the impression of an organ player who was not quite certain of his notes. The iron grille, the new bolts she had seen on the door—what was it? Not the Flanders Laners; he held them in the hollow of his hand. No revolting pensioner would dare. None of those who might at some period or other require his assistance would take the risk.

She found herself catching something of his terror, until, with a start, she shook off the shadow which lay upon the house and addressed herself to the work which was waiting. She was in the middle of a letter to a firm of lawyers when Mr. Meister came out of the trance into which he seemed to have fallen on her arrival.

"Mary." It was not the first time he had called her by her Christian name, and whilst she did not welcome the familiarity, there was a paternal quality in the word, as he spoke it, which partly disarmed her. "Take this letter." He licked his dry lips, his dull eyes fixed upon her as she sought for her pencil, and then, impatiently: "I can't raise my voice: come over here."

She pulled a chair up to the desk and sat down. He was staring past her, his fingers drumming a maddening tattoo upon the blotting-pad.

"Sit nearer."

She moved the chair closer to the desk: in the room was a deep silence. She could hear the rasp of his breath.

"There's a letter to write to Staples," he said. "And make a note that Haggitt is here: he sleeps downstairs.... I told you that before."

Stealthily the plump and tremulous hand was moving towards hers: she did not see the movement until the hand closed over hers. She tried to pull free and half rose. It was then that he released her with a laugh that was three parts nervousness.

"Not frightened of me, are you, Mary?" he stated more than asked.

"I'd rather you did not do that," she said.

The girl was astounded, shocked a little, and a little amused. She had never regarded Mr. Meister in the light of an admirer. And he did not look like a Lothario at the moment. His baldish head was moist, his chin, a plump hillock of flesh, was grey with stubble. The point of one pajama collar protruded raffishly under his chin.

"Feel sort of lonely, that's all," he said pathetically. "You're the one person in the world I can trust."

"Mr. Meister," she asked, anxious to change the subject, "why are you putting up the bars to the window—really?"

He shrugged his plump shoulders.

"Why am I living in this hell hole?" he asked. "If you build a house in a wolf country, do you leave your door open at nights? I ought to have done this before."

"You're not—worried about—anybody—particularly?"

Before he could answer the door opened and Haggitt strolled into the room. Mary rather liked him on second scrutiny. He was a lathy man with the sharp, inquisitive features of the Cockney crook. The gold-rimmed spectacles lent a certain benignity to his pointed features. About his waist was a green baize apron, in his hand a whisk broom.

"Look here, Meister"" he began, saw the girl and smirked as respectfully as he knew how.

"Knock when you come into my room," Meister's face was as black as thunder. "And I've got a handle to my name."

"Show me where it is and I'll turn it," said Sam Haggitt calmly. "Music always was a speciality of mine. What I want to tell you is this: you can speak a good word to the Queen of Sheba and make her wise to the fact that I'm no maid-of-all-work. A bit of sweepin' I don't mind, but I take no orders from any woman, livin' or dead or like your perishin' housekeeper, neither one thing or the other""

"Go out now," snapped Meister. "I'll talk to you later. And, Haggitt, I want to see Peter when he comes."

"Peter?" Mr. Haggitt's astonishment took visible shape. "Not the Nose?" he asked incredulously.

The lawyer's eyes narrowed: he was suddenly shaken with suppressed fury.

"Get this right, Haggitt," he said harshly. "I brought you in here because I wanted to give you a chance to go straight—do you understand that? If you imagine that I've asked you to stay in my house for the pleasure I get out of discussing my business, it is time you woke up! I'll tell you this much, that Peter does odd jobs for me, and that's enough for you."

"Peter the Nose!" said the incredulous Mr. Haggitt. "Well, bless my soul! I shouldn't have thought you'd have had him here except to poison him, the dirty little rat!"

Mr. Meister's fat hand waved him out of the room. For a second Haggitt hesitated, as though he were anxious to pursue the subject of the despised Peter in defiance of his master's wishes. But apparently he thought better of it, and, whistling softly, he made his leisurely way from the room.

"Am I allowed to ask who is Peter?" said Mary with a smile.

For a moment she thought that he was about to visit his unspoken wrath upon her, but he swallowed his anger with an effort.

"I have to know and see all kinds of trash," he said, with surprising mildness. "Peter is sometimes useful to me in my profession. It is very essential that I should be on the inside of things, you understand, Mary? I must know the strength of my clients' cases, and they lie most—abominably!"

"What is a 'nose'?" she asked curiously.

Again Mr. Meister shrugged his shoulders.

"It is the thieves' name for a police informer. Whether Peter is that, I don't know. Very likely he is. You must have seen him here before; a little man with sandy hair."

She nodded, remembering the pale, pathetic figure who interviewed Mr. Meister at long intervals. She had thought he was one of the lawyer's innumerable clients.

The arrival of the workmen interrupted both the conversation and all possibility of dictation, if Mr. Meister had seriously intended dictating, which was doubtful. The grille, which was carried in with some labour, was to be fixed on the inside of the window and hinged to stout jambs which were to be fitted in the wall so that it could be opened from the inside like a door. The grille folded back against the wall during the daytime, and closed across the window, and at night was to be fastened by two patent locks, affording ample protection against intrusion through the window.

One of the workmen took Mary's typewriter into the tiny room which was used as a dressing room, and Mr.Meister disappeared upstairs, presumably to dress. The room in which she worked was in the front of the house, and had the one window which commanded a view of the opposite sidewalk. Presently she saw two men coming from the direction of Creek Bridge. The first wore an overcoat which had evidently been made for somebody much larger than he, and she recognised the pallid, irregular features of Peter the spy, and stopped her work to observe him more closely. As he shuffled along, he was met by a typical Laner, a round-shouldered man, his hands thrust in his pockets, his eyes concealed by the big peak of his cap. She saw the Laner turn and snap something at the little man, who passed on unconcerned. Evidently Peter and his peculiar functions were known to Flanders Lane, and the insult which had been flung at him was one to which he was accustomed, for he showed no perturbation or resentment.

Peter passed out of her view as he crossed the road to the house. And then she was conscious that, following him at a respectful distance, was a shabbily dressed stranger. The man stopped opposite the house, then turned and walked slowly back the way he had come. She had a fleeting glimpse of the emaciated face, and then he too passed out of sight.

Mary shivered. There was something about Flanders Lane and its habitués which filled her with a vague feeling of terror. "Wolves," Mr. Meister had called them. It was a description which seemed to fit. Merciless, remorseless figures of fear, who seldom showed in the day, she had seen these strange men slinking to the mouth of their bolt-holes as she passed at night, almost imagined the glare of their animal eyes. Once she found herself speculating upon the kind of life they lived, the environment in which they existed: it was not a speculation to be followed; she knew too much about them.

She went on with her work, and presently Mr. Meister's bell rang. She returned to the big room to find the men had gone, leaving their work unfinished, and that Mr. Meister had in the interval made himself presentable and was, if anything, a little more nervous and irritable than he had been when she left him.

"Gone to their dinner," he almost howled. "I offered them double pay to go on working! This thing has got to be fixed by to-night, if I have every workman in London on the job! The swine! The slugs!"

He paced up and down the room, gesticulating wildly, like a man half demented. Suddenly he spun round on her.

"You think I'm scared, eh, Mary? You think I'm frightened.... They come here with lies just to catch me. They think if they keep me on the jump I'll pay better. But they're wrong—as wrong as hell! I've battled with them all my life. They've tried to show me points and put strokes on me, but I've beaten 'em! They're brainless; they haven't the intelligence of an animal—just the low cunning of wolves and the scent of wolves. They think they smell good meat in me, but I'll show them—I'll show them!"

He wiped the froth from his lips, blinked at her quickly, and then, in a calmer tone:

"Flanders Lane will tell you anything for the sake of making a sensation! They'll believe anything in Flanders Lane if it's fantastic enough."

He was out of breath, trembling in every limb, and was staring at her, an odd mixture of panic and struggling self-assurance. What made her choose that moment to tell him of the interview she had had with Mrs. Milton, she could not for the life of her understand.

"Mr. Meister," she asked suddenly, "do you know a Mrs. Milton?"

If she had struck him in the face he could not have cringed more horribly. He seemed to shrink and dwindle before her eyes. From a man, he became something obscenely horrible, mouthing at her, uttering little grunts and squeaks of distress, until, in her alarm, she was making for the door to call Haggitt.

"Wait, wait!" he whispered huskily. "Wait—Mrs. Milton—who told you? Eh, who told you? Sit down."

He pointed a trembling finger at the chair.

"Sit down, will you, when I tell you! Now—why did you ask? Somebody's put you up to this. You know Wembury, don't you?"

"I know Mr. Wembury, but he has nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Milton," she said. "I'm sorry if I have annoyed you, but she came to my flat last night."

"Mrs. Milton—a pretty woman, brassy-haired, eh? Lip stick and powder?"

He was ghastly pale but calm, and when she nodded to the unflattering description:

"Ah! What did she want?"

Briefly Mary told him of the interview, suppressing only the covert threat which the woman had uttered against her employer.

"Is that all she said?"

Mary hesitated.

"Yes," she said at last.

"Nothing about me?"

Mary was silent for a moment.

"She suggested that if I told her the names of all the people who came here, I might—I might save your life."

His face twitched.

"She said that? Then she thinks so, too—my God! She thinks so, too! Tell her. She's a wise girl. I'd like to do something for Cora. She doesn't want to get him into any worse trouble, and she's right. You'll do it, Mary, from now on. Find out where she lives. Send every day a list of the people you've seen. You understand? It is part of your work."

She was open-mouthed with astonishment.

"Do you want her to know?" she said incredulously.

He nodded.

"Yes. She's right. Cora was always a clever one, and she knows him better than I."

"Knows whom, Mr. Meister?"

But he did not answer her question.

"It's a lie. She's heard it too and believes it. He's as artful as a burnt cat, that man. Probably he's tired of her, wanted to get her out of the country, and passed that rumour round."

And then it flashed upon the girl what all this fear was about.

"The Ringer!" she asked breathlessly.

Mr. Meister gaped at her.

"Heard about him, have you?" he said dully. "I suppose you have—you couldn't come in and out of Flanders Lane without hearing of the—The Ringer. I wonder somebody doesn't write a story about him."

He was trying hard to be composed and flippant, but the strain was visible.

"Why shouldn't they! He's a picturesque criminal, isn't he? The only man in the world who can disguise himself so that the proverbial mother wouldn't know him—just like a man out of a book! God! I helped that fellow! I've been his best friend—I have, I swear I have!"

Mary had the impression that he was trying as much to convince himself as to convince her.

"But surely the police" she said.

"The police!" Meister snapped his fingers. "Brains like Wembury's against brains like his! Why, the police are beaten from the start!"

Again he paced the room in silence, then, without a word, went out, slamming the door behind him, and the girl tried for the next half hour to concentrate her thoughts on her notebook and the work which lay at her hand. She did not see Meister for the rest of the day. She guessed, from the sounds overhead, that he was in his room.

Haggitt brought her lunch, and it seemed that this man, who had spent a considerable portion of his life in prison, and was at that moment a convict on licence, had taken kindly to his new and more honourable profession.

"How do you get on with Meister!"

He had an easy, friendly way with him that was irresistible. Mr. Haggitt possessed a personality, and he was so blissfully unconscious of his impertinence that Mary found it difficult to be anything but amused even when he drew up a chair and sat down to watch her eat, commenting upon the superiority of her portion and the difficulty he had to make the "Queen of Sheba" set aside her choicest cut.

"That woman couldn't be cheerful at her uncle's funeral," he said in despair, "not even if he'd left her all his money and a new Ford. How long has she been here, miss?"

"About six months, I believe. She replaced another old woman who left just after I came."

"Never seen anything like her. And yet she's not the jay you'd think she was. She pretends to be deaf, but she's as sharp as mustard."

"How do you like your new work, Mr. Haggitt?"

"It's passable, miss, passable," said Haggitt, taking off his spectacles and polishing them with his green baize apron. "It's not as monotonous as bird""

"'Bird'?" She frowned.

"'Bird' is prison, miss," said the unabashed Haggitt, in no sense ashamed of his disreputable past. "I've known many a 'bird' that's more comfortable. Ever been to Canada, miss?"

"No," said the girl in surprise.

Haggitt replaced his spectacles carefully.

"They tell me it's a pretty good country. I thought of going out and starting a farm or somethin'. I used to do a bit of potato diggin' when I was down in Dartmoor."

"I believe it is a wonderful life," smiled Mary, "but it costs a lot of money to buy a farm, surely?"

"H'm!" said Mr. Haggitt, whose frankness stopped short at discussing finance.

He had dreamt of Canadian prairies, of waving cornfields, of a snug homestead, where he could sit in the shade of the stoep on a summer day and watchsomebody else cutting the golden sheaves. In Mr. Haggitt's dreams the vulgarity of doing a little cutting himself never intruded. He was an optimist, and optimism is largely founded on the faith that other people will do the work.

When she left that night she thought she saw the gaunt-looking man watching the house from a doorway on the opposite side of the road. She hurried through Flanders Lane with an uneasy feeling that she might conceivably be the object of the watcher's observation.

It was raining and there was a rumble of thunder in the distance as she hurried into her flat and closed the door behind her with a sense of thankfulness that at last, for another day, she had shaken herself free of her ugly environment.

She went into Johnny's room as usual, came out and locked the door, and then, going into the tiny hallway to put out the empty milk bottle, for the first time saw the letter. It had evidently been pushed under the door and had escaped her notice when she had come in. She picked it up wonderingly, and turned it over in her hand. It was addressed to "Miss Lenley" in big, sprawling letters, evidently the hand of a woman who was not too well educated.

The letter was signed "Cora Milton." Then it was that Mary remembered the lawyer's instructions, and taking pen and paper, she sat down to describe the suspiciouslooking people whom she had seen in the vicinity of the house that day, and for some extraordinary reason she put "Mrs. K." first.