III
Other Eyes Watched Michael
Michael Pretherston was back at the Yard in time to catch his chief before he departed for the day.
Commissioner T. B. Smith, to whose recommendation this young scion of the aristocracy owed his promotion, was not helpful.
“If we took Kate on any charge it would not prevent the swindle going forward,” he said; “you may be sure she has mobilized all her resources and her little army is ready to the last button of the last gaiter. There is supposed to be a fellow watching her all the time, but he seems to have missed her rather cleverly. Anyway, I don’t think there is much to be gained from shadowing her, because she knows she is under observation and acts accordingly. But I have a word of advice to you, my young Hibernian friend, and that is to keep a sharp eye on your own precious life. Kate is afraid of you.”
“She didn’t give me that impression this afternoon,” said Michael sadly.
“Kate is a bluff; you mustn’t take any notice of what she says. You accept a friend’s advice and go very carefully to work. I am not so sure that you didn’t behave indiscreetly this afternoon.”
“That is impossible!” said Michael stoutly, and T. B. Smith laughed.
“The thing to have done was not to have recognized her and to have kept her under observation, pursuing your enquiries in the usual way.”
“If you can suggest any method by which I could have prevented her from recognizing me and recognizing the fact that I recognized her I will admit that I was wrong,” and T. B. Smith agreed.
“You may be right,” he said; “anyway, look after yourself.”
Michael promptly forgot his chief’s advice and spent his evening making a solitary reconnaissance of Crime Street. Crime Street does not appear upon any plan of London, but if you will look at any large survey of the Hampstead district, you will find in a somewhat irregular tangle of buildings within a stone’s throw of the Heath, a curious oval which is conspicuous on the plan, not only by its own symmetry but by the graceful lines of the thoroughfares which radiate therefrom.
This is Amberscombe Gardens. The centre of the oval is occupied by four houses, Numbers Two, Four, Six and Eight; the northern side of the gardens by five houses, Numbers One, Three, Five, Seven and Nine.
Into Amberscombe Gardens from the north run three roads, the first of which (opening into the oval between Numbers One and Three) being called The Approach; the second, dividing Numbers Five and Seven, called Bethburn Avenue; the third between Numbers Seven and Nine, Coleburn Avenue. On the south side of the oval the arrangement of the streets is very similar. Originally, the central space had been occupied by nine houses but these had been pulled down by the proprietors of the remaining four and a private garden, common to all four houses, had been laid out by the owners of these properties. So that on the southern side of the central oval, there were no buildings, but a wall bisected at regular intervals by plain garden doors which form such a common feature of London suburban residences.
In reality, the roadway to the north and south of the plot is all Amberscombe Gardens, but the oval which curves round to the north was, at the period this story covers, known to the police as “Crime Street,” and in this description the nine houses on both sides of the northern curve were involved.
Number One, the most modest of all the buildings, was in the occupation of Dr. Philip Garon, an American practitioner who made frequent visits across the Atlantic and invariably returned to deposit a very handsome surplus in the local branch of the London and Western Counties Bank. Dr. Garon was successful as a result of the sublime assurance of all oceangoing passengers, that the notice, conspicuously displayed in the smoking-room warning passengers not to play cards with strangers, did not apply to them.
Number Three, a pretty house smothered in clematis in the proper season of the year, with its white window sashes and its sober red front, was the town house of Mr. Cunningham, who, apparently, had no initial and no Christian name. He was known to his intimate friends as Mush, the derivation of which is a little obscure. Mr. Cunningham described himself as independent, which meant no more than that he was independent of the ordinary necessities of making an honest living. In a sense, he was by far the best known of the Colony, for Mush had served two terms of penal servitude, one in an English and one in a French prison. He had the reputation of being able to cut holes in steel safes with a greater rapidity than any other gentleman in his profession, and it is said, probably with truth, that he had improved upon the oxy-hydrogen jet and had introduced a new element which shortened the work by half.
The tenant of Number Five was a gentleman, benign of countenance and very good to the poor. He was called the Bishop by friends and foes alike. His real name was Brown and he had been concerned in more bank swindles than any of the other colonists, though he had only one conviction to his discredit and that a comparative flea-bite of nine months’ hard labour.
The owner of Number Seven was described as “Mr. Colling Jacques, Civil Engineer,” in the local directories. The official police “Who’s Who” noted that he was a wonderful pistol shot, and recorded, in parenthesis, that on the occasion of his arrest in connection with the smashing of the Bank of Holland, no weapon was found upon him. It was also added that there was no conviction against him in England, though he, too, had seen the inside of a French prison.
Number Nine was pointed out to sightseers, with a certain amount of local pride by the guide, as the home of Millet the forger, who had received on one occasion a fifteen years’ sentence, but had been released after serving two years, an act of grace on the part of the authorities which earned for him a certain unpopularity with his peers and was held to be not unconnected with the subsequent arrest of a few of his former associates, the suggestion being that Mr. Millet had turned King’s evidence.
At Number Two, on the “oval” side of the street, lived H. Mulberry, a respectable and methodical man, who went to his little office in Chancery Lane every morning of his life by the 9:15 and returned to his home at exactly 5:30 p.m. year in and year out. Mulberry was a begging letter writer on a magnificent scale. He had a wonderful literary style which seldom failed to extract the necessary emolument which he sought.
Number Four, a much larger house, indeed the second largest in Crime Street, was the habitat of “Señor Gregori, a teacher of languages.” Unfortunately for him, he had in the course of his thrilling career taught other things than the liquid tongue of Spain. For example, he had taught the Bank of Chile that their “unforgeable” notes which, it was boasted, defied photographic reproduction could be turned out by the tens of thousands and that the six tints in which a gold bond was printed offered no insuperable difficulty to a clever craftsman with an artist’s eye and a sense of colour.
In Number Eight lived the two brothers Thomas and Francis Stockmar of Austrian extraction, who were described as political refugees but were undoubtedly criminals of a peculiarly dangerous type. The Stockmars were dour, white-faced men with short bristling hair and were certainly the least presentable of all the colonists.
Number Six has been left to the last, for this was the most important house in Crime Street. It was a story higher than any other, built squarely, with no attempt at beauty. It is said that the third floor consisted of one room and that from its many windows it was possible to command, not only all the approaches to the northern side of the gardens, but those to the south; it has even been suggested that it was so planned, that, in case of necessity, the house could be converted into a fortress, from the third floor of which a last desperate stand might be made. This then was Number Six, the abiding place of Colonel Westhanger and his brilliant niece.
Michael Pretherston was no stranger to Crime Street. He had made many visits to this locality, and it had been at his initiative that the roadway of Amberscombe Gardens had been dug up one fine morning by a gang of road-breakers and there had been revealed that remarkable subterranean passage which connected the one side of the street with the other. The passageway led from the summer house in the gardens of the oval to a stable in Number Three.
The Colonists, however, swore stoutly that they knew nothing whatever of the existence of this passage and that it must have existed years before they came to the street. The civil engineer, Colling Jacques, pointed out to the district surveyor that the very character of the passage suggested that this was some storm water drain which had been laid down and forgotten by the contractor. Or else it had been laid down in error and the contractor had been either too lazy or too rushed to break it up. There were many other explanations, none of which was wholly acceptable.
Michael, swinging his stick, passed that portion of the road in which the passage had run and wondered with a reminiscent smile where the new tunnel was, for that there was a new one, he did not doubt.
Night was falling, and Dr. Philip Garon’s dining-room windows blazed with light. Mr. Mulberry’s, on the right, was more modestly illuminated. Mr. Cunningham’s house was in darkness, as also was “The Bishop’s.” There were lights in the bedroom at Number Seven but Number Six was black as also was Number Eight.
He saw Millet standing at his garden gate, smoking, and crossed the road toward him, realizing that the keen-eyed gentleman had already observed his presence. Millet, a florid man with a genial, almost fulsome, manner met him with a friendly nod.
“Good evening, Mr. Pretherston,” he said. “I hope you are not looking for trouble.”
Michael leant on the top bar of the gate and shook his head.
“I shouldn’t come here for trouble,” he said; “this is the most law-abiding spot in London.”
Mr. Millet sighed and murmured something about misfortunes which overtake mankind and added a pious expression of his desire to forget the past and to end his days in that security and peace which sin denies its votaries.
“Very pretty,” said Michael blandly, “and how are all our good neighbours? I was thinking of taking a house here myself. By-the-way,” he added innocently, “I suppose you don’t know any that are to be let?”
Mr. Millet shook his head.
“I am all alone here,” he said, “if you were really serious about wishing to live in this neighbourhood, I should be honoured to act as your host, Mr. Pretherston.”
“And how is Kate?” demanded Michael, ignoring the invitation.
“Kate?” asked the puzzled Mr. Millet; “oh, you mean, Miss Westhanger. I haven’t seen her for several days—I think it was last Tuesday afternoon I saw her last.”
“Yes, at 2:30 in the afternoon,” mocked Michael, “she was wearing a blue dress with white spots and a green hat with an ostrich feather. You remember her distinctly because she dropped her bag and you crossed to pick it up. You needn’t start the alibi factory working, Millet; I have nothing against Kate for the moment.”
Mr. Millet laughed softly.
“You will have your joke,” he said.
“I will,” said Michael with grim emphasis, “but it is going to be a long time developing. I haven’t seen the Stockmars lately either.”
“I never see them at all,” Mr. Millet hastened to state. “I have very little in common with foreigners. Whatever there is against me, Mr. Pretherston, I am a patriot through and through. I am proud to be English and I don’t take kindly to foreign gentlemen and never will.”
“Your patriotism does you credit, Millet,” said the detective dryly as he prepared to move on. “I wish you would be patriotic enough to give me a tip as to what game is on,” he lowered his voice. “You know all that is happening here and you might do yourself a little bit of good.”
“If I knew anything,” said the other earnestly, “I would tell you in a moment, Mr. Pretherston, but here I am, out of the world, so to speak. Nobody ever consults me and I am glad they don’t. I want to be left alone to forget the past—”
“Cut all that Little Eva stuff out, Uncle Tom,” said Michael coarsely.
Other eyes had watched Michael, from behind blinds, through unsuspected peepholes, a dozen pairs of eyes had followed him as he took his slow promenade along Crime Street.
Colonel Westhanger, a tall, grey man, stood in that big room on the third floor of his house, his hands folded behind him, his chin upon his breast, following every movement of the detective. Gregori, handsome and lithe, stood at his elbow, shading the glow of his cigarette in the palm of his hand.
“Colonel mio,” he said softly, “I would give much for an opportunity of meeting that gentleman in a nice dark passage, in one of those old Harrison Ainsworth houses which were providentially built over a river.”
“You will have your wish one of these days,” said the Colonel gruffly; “I don’t like that fellow. He is not one of the ordinary run of policemen. They are bad enough, but this fellow knows too much.”
He nibbled his white moustache, shook his head and turned away from the window as Michael took his farewell of the forger.
“Watch him on the other side,” he said, “and send one of the boys out to follow him.”
He descended the thickly carpeted stairs to the first floor, which was the living suite. The drawing-room in which he turned was a beautifully furnished apartment, and the girl who had been sitting at the piano, her nimble hands running over the keys, looked up as he entered.