XVII
No one can tell with certainty how a great disaster will affect a man. Gertstein, chewing a cold cigar, and with hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, strode with rolling gait about the room while Labar told in carefully selected phrases the truth about his wife. The little man, whose interviews with the inspector hitherto had been marked by temperamental outbursts, was now as cold as ice. Labar had expected either a breakdown or a vast explosion of passion. This frigid acceptance of a great blow surprised him. He mentally contrasted the emotion that the financier had shown when the robbery had taken place.
“You tell me that Adèle has gone away with this lover of hers—this crook?” said Gertstein, as indifferently as though he was discussing the weather.
“I am afraid there is no doubt of it,” agreed Labar. He was wondering whether the indifference was real or assumed. For the life of him he could not come to a decision.
“And that she has forged my name and attempted to kill you.”
“I have told you the circumstances as I know them, Mr. Gertstein. Your wife has brought herself within the scope of the criminal law. Whether she has still kept up a liaison with Larry Hughes it is beyond my province to decide. Personally I think her late actions have been caused by pure unreasoning panic.”
“That side of it is my affair. She is my wife,” declared the millionaire sternly. “Now we come to your side.” He dragged a chequebook from his pocket, and seating himself at a writing-table, poised a pen. “How much is it?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Labar, with suave interrogation.
“How much?” repeated Gertstein, impatiently.
The inspector felt his patience oozing away. It was one thing for Larry Hughes to try to buy him off. For Gertstein to assume, in this matter of fact way, that it was only a question of price annoyed him. After he had tried to save the little man’s feelings, too.
“I am not to be bought,” he announced gruffly.
The other applied a match to his cigar with cold deliberation. “I have been long enough in this world to know that every man is to be bought if the price can be paid,” he said.
“You have still something to learn,” retorted Labar acidly.
“As you like.”
Gertstein fell again to pacing up and down the room. He had taken two turns when he came again to a halt. “As one gentleman to another,” he said, “I want you to give me your advice. I can see that I have done you an injustice, and I apologise.”
Labar noted the change of tone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gertstein,” he said with sincerity, “but I’m the wrong person to give advice. So much depends upon your own feelings about your wife.”
“Yes. I see. An old fool and a young woman. Well you can leave my feelings about Adèle out of the question. I’ve kept my eyes shut—wilfully shut. If she broke her neck tomorrow I wouldn’t care. You could shut her up in prison for life and it would not hurt me.” He spoke with level and dispassionate evenness. “But my name is my concern, and my wish is that it shall not be dragged in the dirt. I have been a nobody, Mr. Labar. I was born in Petticoat Lane, and my father was an old clothes dealer. What I am now I have made myself. I have friends among the highest in this and other lands. The name of Gertstein might have been among the peers of the realm had I wished. I have built it up. And it is because that woman bears my name that I will not fold my hands and watch it become the sport of every muck rake in the world. I would sooner see her dead at my feet.” His bitterness appeared the more strange and deadly to Labar, because he seemed to have complete control of himself. It was as though he was speaking on behalf of some other person. The inspector shook his head slowly.
“I can do nothing,” he said. “I must do my best to arrest her, and if that happens she must be tried.”
“I suppose so,” said Gertstein, thoughtfully. He muttered something to himself in Yiddish which Labar did not catch. “There is no way out. But if it could be, Mr. Labar, that she should not be tried? She might”—his voice dropped—“she might die. If for instance, she was arrested and the opportunity presented itself, she might prefer to die. I could write her a letter—”
The inspector held up a protesting hand. The millionaire had made his meaning sufficiently obvious, and hardened though he was, Labar was repelled by the suggestion.
“In plain words you wish me to allow her to commit suicide if she should fall into my hands.”
“You are a hard man,” protested Gertstein. “Cannot you see that so justice would be done? You will have done all that is consistent with your duty. You will have saved her and me the degradation of the gaol. You will have made a friend who could do much for you.”
“Again, I am sorry. All this is futile, Mr. Gertstein,” said Labar, and his lips set in a hard line. “I cannot swerve from my duty as I see it. You may rely upon me to save you as much as I can. But while I take my pay I do my job.”
“Very well. You will let me know what happens.”
With relief Labar saw that he had reached the end of the matter for the time. He rose. “Of course. Believe me, I hate this. There is one more thing. I suppose you don’t recall a man in your service named Stebbins?”
Gertstein’s small beady eyes fixed themselves steadily on the detective’s face. “I don’t know the names of half my servants,” he observed.
“Ah, then I must find out from the butler or the housekeeper or someone.”
The millionaire shook his head. “That is not fair, Mr. Labar. You can scarcely expect me to lift a finger to help you now. I cannot permit you to interview any of my servants, or rather I shall forbid them to answer any questions.”
This was an unexpected twist, although at the bottom of his heart Labar saw logic in the other’s attitude. “But this is childish,” he protested.
Gertstein rolled the butt of his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Childish it may be,” he agreed. “For my part I refuse to have anything more to do with your investigations. I am not going to help in dragging my own name in the mud.”
It was clear that he was in no mood to alter his decision, through any argument that might be advanced. Labar took his leave without further pressure. There might be some trifling inconvenience from the ban, but he could not see that it was likely to interfere seriously with his plans. What, however, might prove embarrassing, was the fact that Gertstein himself now had an object in frustrating the work of the Criminal Investigation Department. Labar wondered how far he would go. There was something about the little man’s manner that made the detective sure that he would not content himself with folding his hands and accepting whatever occurred.
This sort of speculation, however, could wait. There were other things that couldn’t. One of these was Mr. Stebbins, the odd-job man who had been engaged at Streetly House on the recommendation of Hughes. Labar was a very weary man, but, if as he suspected, Stebbins was one of the keys to the mystery, it was of importance that he should be looked up before the inspector would be able to call it a day. Larry would no doubt learn of Mrs. Gertstein’s disclosure and he was likely to act fast to get the fellow out of the way.
Malone had gone home when the inspector reached Grape Street. So it was to another sergeant that Labar gave the mission of seeking out Stebbins, while he himself spent half an hour going through the statements that had been collected from the Streetly House servants, to see whether, after all, his memory was at fault, and that he had seen the man. But there was nothing at all in the records. Labar yawned drowsily. This kind of thing had to be done, but its tedium bored him. He could put up with fatigue and hardship while it was a matter of action. But pinned to a desk, poring futilely over papers was silly. He let his hands drop to his arms on the desk and fell sound asleep.
It was after midnight that he was awakened by a discreet plucking at his sleeve. He yawned and brought his feet to the floor with a crash. Moreland, the Flying Squad inspector, was at his elbow.
“What’s the trouble?” grunted Labar. “Hello, Moreland. Why aren’t you tucked up in your little bed like all the other loafers?”
“Cut it out, Harry,” snapped Moreland. “Pull yourself together. There’s a bit of a row on. Lucky I was on hand, or you’d have had one of your people croaked.”
The divisional detective inspector listened with grave face, as Moreland recited some of the evening’s happenings.
The Flying Squad man, with a couple of his subordinates, had happened, in the course of another case on which he was engaged, to be in the dining-room of a little Soho restaurant, when the sergeant who had been sent out to find Stebbins, entered with a man who was unknown to Moreland. They had sat down at a table where a third man was already eating, and Moreland saw the sergeant introduced. Without hesitation the hand of the diner immediately sought a water carafe and aimed a terrific blow at Labar’s sergeant. The blow had missed, but in a second the place was in an uproar and the two were rolling across an overturned table grappling with each other.
Moreland had dashed across the room in time to knock up a pistol, which exploded. To add to the confusion, an agitated Italian waiter had switched the light off. Only such light as could penetrate through the windows from the street illuminations reached the room. There was a chaos of struggling men for a while, and ultimately one wriggled free. Revolver in hand he gained the doorway with the detective in close pursuit. Firing wildly, he fled through a small by-street and through the open door of a house which let cheap rooms. At the top of the narrow stairs he paused, and defied the detectives, who by this time were reinforced by many uniformed police, to come nearer. Moreland had taken charge of affairs and, deciding that it was inadvisable to risk lives by a frontal attack, had left the house with a cordon drawn around it, and after a word with Labar’s man had decided to fetch the divisional inspector himself.
Most of this he related hurriedly while they were racing towards the scene of the affray as fast as a taxicab could take them. Labar had no difficulty in surmising with fair accuracy the blanks in the story.
Their cab was halted at the entrance to a narrow street where a belt of uniformed men held back a thin crowd. They descended and pushed their way through, and the detective sergeant who had brought about the episode joined them.
“Well, Marr?” said Labar. “I suppose that’s Stebbins up there?” He jerked his head to the dismal three-storeyed house where most of the eyes were focused.
“That’s the man, sir.”
“How did you locate him?”
In a few quick succinct sentences Marr told how he had tried to gain some information at Streetly House, and been told in the most polite manner that no questions would be answered. Then he had waylaid the servants’ entrance and made himself friendly with such of the servants as passed in or out. He learned that on the day of the robbery Stebbins had complained of illness and had gone home. Since then he had not resumed his job at Streetly House, but he was known to be occasionally meeting one of the maids. Marr pressed his inquiries until he found one footman who had been on friendly footing with Stebbins, and who on occasion had been with him to eat at a Soho restaurant which the other frequented. Taking a long chance Marr had induced the footman to accompany him to the restaurant, where as luck would have it they found their man.
“Lucky for you that Mr. Moreland was there,” commented Labar.
“He was fighting drunk, sir,” explained the sergeant.
“Drunk or sober, we can’t wait here all night,” declared the inspector. “Find out if there’s a skylight to the place. If so, two or three men had better try to get through other houses and take him from the rear. I’m going to see whether he’s in a mood to talk to. We can’t have one man hold us up like this.”
“You’re not going up those stairs, Harry,” said Moreland. “It’s sheer suicide.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful,” said the other. “If he’s drunk and in the dark it’s odds against him touching me. Besides, I may persuade him to see reason.”
“You’re a headstrong fool,” asserted Moreland with emphasis. “I guess I’ll have to come along too, and dry-nurse you.”
“No, you don’t. You stay here and watch points. One man is quite enough. No sense in doubling the target.”
The Flying Squad man grumblingly saw common sense in this. All the same as Labar quietly stole up to the narrow doorway and crept within, he collected two or three men and with them posted himself, so that a swift and sudden rush could be made after his friend if necessary.
It was almost pitch-black within. Labar felt his way along the wall till he came to the foot of the stairs and then paused to listen. He could detect no sound in the house. He dropped to his hands and knees and stealthily ascended the first step, registering a mental oath as it creaked under him. He remembered that he had failed to retrieve the pistol that he had lent to Dr. Ware. Well, that would not matter much. He was not relying on gunplay.
Inch by inch he crawled to the first landing and moved up the second flight. Not till he had reached the third flight, however, could he detect the sound of a man’s hurried, irregular breathing. He flattened himself as closely as he could to the outline of the stair and waited, listening, for a second or two. Then he raised his voice sharply.
“Now then, my man, if you’ve had enough of this tomfoolery we’ll finish the business. You don’t want to be hung for murder, do you?”
He could in imagination visualise the figure at the top craning forward with ready weapon striving to pierce the darkness below. He instinctively braced himself for a shot.
A thick voice answered him. “You go away. Don’t drive me too far. I don’t want to do anybody any harm, but I won’t be took.”
It was something gained, at any rate, that the other had hesitated to shoot. That lonely vigil at the top of the darkened stairs had either sobered him or shaken his nerve. The inspector slowly wormed himself a step higher.
“Don’t be a silly ass, Stebbins. It won’t do you any good to kill me. Think what you’d feel like when they came to pinion you in the condemned cell.” He crawled cautiously to a further step. “Think of the hangman adjusting the straps, and the parson reading the burial service.”
“I can hear you moving,” said the voice above, and Labar fancied that there was irresolution in the tone. “Don’t you try no monkey business now.”
“You’ll have a white cap over your face,” went on Labar, “and they’ll take you out in a little procession—”
“Shut up,” said the voice ferociously. “You can’t frighten me.”
“I don’t want to frighten you,” said Labar. “I don’t think you’re the kind of man to be frightened. You’ve got sense—not like some of those other fellows. Suppose you give me that gun and let me look after you. You’ll trust me, won’t you?”
There was no obvious reason why Stebbins should trust a detective who was trying to arrest him, but Labar did not feel that this was a time at which the other would consider the point deeply. He was concerned chiefly to hold the man in talk till such time as he was near enough to make a dash. If he could tackle the fellow round the knees, the steep flight of stairs would do the rest.
“And who the blazes are you?” demanded Stebbins.
The inspector mounted another stair. “I’m Divisional Detective Inspector Labar,” he said. “I’m anxious to do the fair thing by you.”
“What do you want me for?”
“I’ll tell you all about that later on.” Labar’s voice was coaxing. “Come on now. You throw me down that gun and we’ll have a talk.”
There was a pause. Labar was sure that he was almost within reach of his man, but his eyes could tell him nothing. It might be fatal to make a miscalculation.
Something fell behind him and clattered down the stairs. “There you are,” said the voice. “I’ll give in.”
The detective pulled himself to his feet, and groping forward felt an ankle. He moved up two or three steps and thrust his arm through the other’s arm. “I knew that you had common sense,” he declared amiably. “Half a moment till I strike a match. It’s as dark as the pit in here. We don’t want to break our necks.”
Together they emerged from the front door just as Moreland was thinking of organising a rescue party of one, and as the crash of glass behind them told of a smashed skylight.