Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts Read online

  ‘It’ll be more cheerful upstairs in the watchman’s sitting-room,’ Orsen murmured, and when they had climbed the iron staircase he began to outline his plans.

  ‘I mean to go round the whole place every hour but I want you to remain in this room, Bruce. You’re not to leave it whatever happens. You’ll stay by the door and keep the gallery outside covered with your gun and protect my back each time I go downstairs. If you see so much as a shadow—shoot instantly. Light will always drive back the powers of Darkness, at least temporarily, and the flash of your gun will give me sufficient respite to pronounce an adjuration.’

  At ten Orsen made his first round. Standing in the doorway of the sitting-room Bruce covered the gallery until his frail little friend had disappeared into the shadows, then relaxing, he returned to his seat by the empty grate. A quarter of an hour later Orsen noiselessly reappeared and Bruce started nervously to his feet, exclaiming: ‘Well?’

  ‘No; nothing.’

  Conversation was difficult. The awful silence seemed to close in round them forbidding even the sacrilege of a whisper. The sun had beaten down all day on the roof under which they sat and the heat was stifling. Both men were sitting in their shirt sleeves.

  The minutes dragged on and outside they could hear the gentle hum of traffic beating like the pulse of a giant. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece sounded loud and defiant and Bruce felt his hands growing clammy. Eleven came at last, and once again the little Swede went out into the eerie gloom beyond the friendly sitting-room while Bruce covered him from the doorway. Once again he returned with nothing to report.

  Time seemed to stand still. Bruce suddenly began to think of night-clubs—and dancing. Only a few miles away up-town, people were laughing and talking without a care in the world. They would later go home, tired and contented, to sleep in warm, comfortable beds whilst he sat waiting for some horrible unknown thing to come out of semi-darkness and maul him with ruthless savagery, finally casting him away like some broken plaything. He might never again feel the warmth of the Miami sun on his sea-wetted body! Never again feel the pride of having won a difficult lawsuit; never again know the intoxication of flying his Tiger-Moth, high over forest and plain to some gay week-end party.

  He shook himself. He was by no means a coward and if a gun or fists could have talked there would have been no fear in his heart, but the calm, clever little man opposite him sincerely believed in apparitions, had even told him stories of their awful power against humans, and although when he had first heard them, lounging comfortably in the bar of the S.S. Orion, he had laughed disbelievingly, tonight, sitting here in this place of monstrous shadows and unknown sounds, an icy hand seemed to clutch at his nerves drawing them taut as the strings of a violin. The minutes crept on. Suddenly Orsen began to fidget, long tapering fingers tapping on his knees, and Bruce watched him with quick apprehension; then a low whimpering sob broke the stillness of the quiet room.

  Instantly Orsen leapt to his feet and ran to the door calling aloud some Latin phrase from an ancient exorcism. Bruce grabbed his gun and followed. As Orsen stepped out on to the gallery the whole structure seemed to give way beneath him like an oubliette. The floor was falling at a sharp angle. He staggered. His legs gave way under him, and he was violently catapulted forward into space.

  At the same instant Bruce, still on the threshold of the, sitting-room, had seen that as the floor of the gallery tilted so the wall behind moved downward at right angles to it. Another moment and the slab of wall falling outward would fill the place where the gallery floor had been. In the dark cavity behind the falling wall Bruce glimpsed a shadowy shape. His finger closed upon the trigger of his automatic. The pistol spat and spat with lurid flame until the magazine was empty, its reports echoing like thunder round the dark warehouse. There was a coughing gasp and the slab of wall began to fall back again, bringing the floor of the gallery up with it.

  ‘Neils! Neils!’ Bruce yelled, peering into the semi-darkness. To his intense relief a cry came back to him. By the Grace of God, which he would have termed the Decree of the Lords of Light, Orsen had managed to clutch the single rail of the gallery as he was pitched outwards. It was a frightful moment as he clung there, suspended by one hand, eighty feet above the concrete floor below; but as the slab of wall fell back into place the floor of the gallery moved with it, carrying him up again to safety. Bruce, his face grey and streaming with sweat, pulled him into the sitting-room and for a few minutes they both stood there panting.

  When they had recovered they set to work investigating the hidden entrance. With the aid of a crowbar they managed to lever down the block of wall and with horror saw the flooring of the gallery automatically falling away as they did so.

  ‘That’s what happened to the unfortunate nightwatchmen!’ Orsen murmured grimly. ‘An eighty-foot drop! No wonder they remembered nothing and were bashed to pieces.’

  ‘Come on! Let’s see what’s in here,’ Bruce whispered, pointing to the black cavity the opening of the wall had left. As he stepped forward his foot touched something. Flashing his torch he bent down and saw that it was the body of a man. Together they dragged it out into the light. It was not a pretty sight. The victim had obviously harboured an intense distrust of soap and water; he was bleeding profusely from several bullet wounds and was quite dead.

  ‘I guess I must have killed him,’ Bruce said slowly. ‘I wonder what his game was.’

  ‘I wonder. Evidently he’s been coming and going to this secret room for some time and entering it by a trapdoor; then when your uncle’s people moved in he thought he’d scare them away by killing off your night-watchmen. He just had to wait for the poor wretches to begin their midnight round and then pull the lever. Too simple!’

  Suddenly the pathetic whimpering came again. Bruce felt the hair prickle on the back of his scalp but Orsen calmly switched on his torch and flashed it round the secret room. Its beam fell upon a child crouching, terrified, against some old sacks.

  ‘Angela Morgenfeld!’ Bruce gasped. In two strides he had reached her, and picking the frail, half-starved little thing up in his arms he cried: ‘Orsen, d’you realise—this is the millionaire’s kid daughter the gangsters snatched over two months ago!’

  He laughed then with mingled relief and excitement. ‘That racketeer I killed must have been coming in every night over the roof to feed her. And this poor poppet is your great Ab-human monster.’

  Orsen smiled. ‘I would rather have found her, though, than the most interesting psychic phenomena. But wait till we are back in England next month and I will show you a real ghost, sure as I am a Dutchman.’

  ‘You’re not, you’re a Swede!’ Bruce laughed. ‘But you don’t often slip up on the English language, and anyway I’ll be with you.’

  STORY II

  When I first left the cares of a business behind me and settled down to writing, the subconscious urge of years must have been released, for plots and characters simply tumbled over each other in my mind demanding expression far quicker than I could put pen to paper.

  In the year 1932, while my affairs were gradually adjusting themselves, I wrote three full-length thrillers: Three Inquisitive People, The Forbidden Territory, and Such Power is Dangerous: also a biography of Charles II, Old Rowley, and some fifteen short stories.

  So enthusiastic was I about my new occupation that I was willing to try my inexperienced hand on any subject. The vaguest suggestion from one of my friends resulted in the rapid hatching of yet another plot. This one was born at a dinner party given by Alan now Lord Sainsbury and his wife Doreen. They lived in a lovely house in Chelsea. He was interested in politics—she in the Ballet. He was a gourmet and she a most charming hostess. Conversation at their table was always good, which did not mean that it was necessarily serious. It was after one of these dinners that Doreen remarked in her lazy drawl:

  ‘I thought of the most lovely title for a story the other day. I am sure it has enormous possibilities, though I can
’t think what they are. Dennis, do write a story called:

  Orchids on Monday

  ‘I don’t ‘old wiv it, and what I says I means,’ Mr. Horatio Nelson Clegg’s husky voice was emphatic as he eyed his small companion. ‘Why can’t ’e come darn ‘ere?—that’s what I wants ter know—take ‘is pint wiv us like a reel pal and give us the strite abart the ‘ole business, ‘stead o’ sending ‘is stoopid messiges. ’E’ll make a mucker one day—you mark my words.’

  ‘ ’Ow come off it, ’oratio,’ the smaller man flicked over the pages of his little black book with a grimy finger. He spoke impatiently, his hair was ginger, and his eyes close set. ‘Come off it,’ he repeated in his cockney whine, ‘brains never was your strong point—’e’s a toff that what ‘e is, and ‘e can’t afford to be seen arand wiv chaps like us. ‘ E’s on the level—so what’s the odds?’

  Perhaps there was some truth in the suggestion about the limitations of Mr. Horatio Nelson Clegg’s supply of cerebral matter. His heavy jowl and low receding forehead were features which are rarely seen in senior wranglers or leading counsel, but he was a man who understood his own particular business. With the accuracy born of long practice he spat on the exact spot where he had spat several times before, closed one rheumy eye, and said hoarsely, ‘I never did ’old wiv ‘is way of doing things. Flowers is fer funerals.’

  * * * * *

  ‘Allan, darling, we can give Doreen a lift, can’t we?’

  ‘Of course we can.’ Allan Sybarite was already at the wheel of his car. He looked casually at the two girls on the pavement, then interest positively leapt into his eyes. So her name was Doreen—he had hardly been able to take his eyes off her all the evening, but the Wyburns’ party had been a large one; Virginia had taken him and he hardly knew a soul; he had found it impossible to get an introduction. ‘Where can I drop you?’ he asked.

  ‘Ninety-six Sloane Gardens.’ It was Virginia who answered, and he noticed with annoyance that she did not introduce him. As soon as the two girls were settled in the back she had begun to chatter to the other girl; they were both laughing softly.

  Allan let his clutch in and the car began to move; he was thinking quickly—what could be done? Sloane Gardens was only just round the corner. To suggest eggs and bacon at the ‘Bat’ flashed into his mind, but it couldn’t be done—curse this wretched journalism, the hours upset his whole existence; anyhow, it would be finished, thank God, in another six months.

  Allan was going into politics, and he was taking the business seriously. The influence of the Press on modern politics had become so powerful in recent years that he was putting in two years in Fleet Street. He considered that the knowledge he was gaining would prove far more useful than all the time he had spent in the school of economics.

  No, he must get back to Fleet Street directly he had dropped Virginia—the ‘Bat’ was out of the question. Reluctantly he turned the car into Sloane Gardens and stopped in front of number ninety-six.

  The girl hopped out, light as a fairy. ‘Thank you so much.’ She smiled into the darkness of the car, and the next moment she was running up the steps of the house.

  Virginia got out of the back and climbed in beside Allan; he did not attempt to drive on, but lit a cigarette.

  ’Who is she? he asked.

  ‘Doreen?—oh, she’s Doreen Eve,’ Virginia answered vaguely.

  ‘Tell me more,’ he said.

  ‘Well—she lives with her people—and dances, ballet and that sort of thing, you know.’

  He nodded. ‘I thought as much, all her movements are so light; a lovely figure, too.’

  ‘Oh, of course, she’s too, too lovely—everyone agrees about that.’ Virginia’s voice had just a trace of sharpness in it. She had been carrying on a mild affair with Allan for some time; she was not in the least in love with him and found him difficult and wayward, but he was amusing to go about with and she had not the least intention of letting anyone else have him if she could help it.

  Allan knew Virginia too well to expect any assistance from her in the matter of Miss Eve; he therefore drove her home at a highly dangerous speed, refused to come in for a last cigarette, and wished her good night with a brevity which was not due to rudeness, but abstraction.

  * * * * *

  With a practised eye Allan ran through the long damp sheets of copy which awaited him on his desk in Fleet Street. His present job was the unpleasant one of going through all that his colleagues had written after the matter came finally from the Press. He had to note errors of fact in articles, mistakes in composition, badly set type—all the thousand and one minor misfortunes that are apt to beset a great daily paper in its hurried nightly printing, despite the care of editors, sub-editors, and master compositors. His report must be in the office of the Sub-Editor before three-thirty, and then in the morning—woe to those who had been careless or blundered.

  Allan glanced swiftly down the ‘Personal’ Column, and suddenly a notice caught his eye.

  ‘ORCHIDS ON MONDAY, 96 SLOANE GARDENS, 11.30 P.M.’

  Ninety-six Sloane Gardens, that was the address of the delightful Doreen Eve. Allan tilted back his swivel chair. What could it mean, he wondered, as he gazed intently at the ceiling. ‘Orchids on Monday’, very queer—of course, orchids were eminently suitable to Doreen—could it be a message to some man that she was interested in—her choice of flowers for some occasion perhaps; such an advertisement could hardly emanate from her parents.

  ‘Advertisement.’ The word stuck in Allan’s mind. People advertised for things they wanted—Doreen wanted orchids on Monday—all right, Doreen should have her orchids.

  * * * * *

  ‘Orkidds hon Monday.’ Mr. Horatio Nelson Clegg sniffed contemptuously. ‘What next I’d like ter know—it was Disies we ‘ad larst time, “Disies hon Wednesday”, weren’t it? Meant we ‘ad to bash the flunkey at the harea door, and but for ’im the ‘ouse was empty. Strewth—why can’t ‘e tip us off proper ‘stead of all this rigmarole?’

  Neddy the Crack, Mr. Clegg’s companion, had out his little black book; he pushed aside the paper in which had appeared that intriguing notice under the personal column: ‘I ’as an idea,’ he remarked, ‘that Orkidds is—ground-floor window back of ‘ouse, no servants kept, but mind the dawg. No, it ain’t’, he went on quickly, ‘that’s Oxalis—’ere we are, “Orchids—wait thirty yards from front door, will let you in, family away, no men servants”. Now what yer grousin’ abart, ’oratio?—the bloke’s doin’ the necessary ‘imself this toime—it’s easy as fall in’ orf a lawg.’

  ‘ ’ave it yer own wye, Neddy, I ’opes yer right. Mr. Clegg drew the back of his large hand across his mouth as he set down the tankard of bitter. ‘All I ses is, I don’t ‘old wiv ’is wye of doin’ things—we’ll mistake ’ollyocks fer lilies one fine night and find ourselves in choke.’

  * * * * *

  Allan paced slowly up and down Sloane Gardens. In his hand carefully encased in tissue paper and cotton wool he held the orchids.

  He had telephoned to number ninety-six earlier in the day, and been told that Mr. and Mrs. Eve were away in the country—they would not be back for some days. He had rung off without giving any name and felt more certain than ever that the notice in the personal column had been inserted by the girl—who else could have done it? But why? that was the mystery. Allan had a wild but slender hope that she had put that notice in the paper out of sheer romance, just to see if some unknown young man—a young man such as himself, for example—should chance to read it and send her the flowers in token of his interest.

  The plan which he had decided on before he reached Sloane Gardens had the grand simplicity which scorns all detail. He would ring the bell—perhaps she would answer it herself if the servants had gone to bed; if not he would ask for her and say ‘Orchids on Monday’ as he handed her the flowers. She would be surprised, not altogether pleased at first perhaps, if she was expecting flowers from someone else—quickly he would mention Virginia
’s name—the Wyburns’ party, the lift that he had given her a few nights before—the amazing coincidence that he should have seen her message—then he would say that he simply could not resist the temptation to surprise her. They would both laugh—and once that happened Allan knew he could trust himself to do the rest. He would make a strategic withdrawal almost at once in order not to embarrass her if she had other plans; but the ice would have been broken—he could ring her up tomorrow; and he contemplated with sudden pleasure the fact that he was almost free of luncheon engagements for the coming week.

  There had been a slight hitch in his arrangements when he rang the bell at a quarter past eleven, for the maid told him that Miss Doreen Eve was out. That did not distress Allan unduly—she was at a theatre probably, the night was fine—he would stroll about for a while, keeping the house in view.

  * * * * *

  At eleven twenty-five a taxi drew up in front of number ninety-six. A tall man in evening dress got out first, then the lovely Doreen. As she took out her key she was quite unaware that three pairs of eyes were watching her with interest from across the street. A young man in evening dress, standing in the shadow of one of the plane trees, holding a spray of orchids in his hand, a beery-faced, burly gentleman who rejoiced in the name of Horatio Nelson Clegg, and beside him on some area steps a little red-headed man known to his familiars as Neddy the Crack.

  ‘Strewth—’e ain’t ’arf got a fairy this time,’ remarked the husky Mr. Clegg.

  ‘Yuss—e do find ‘em, don’t ‘e?’ Neddy agreed with a little smirk.

  The tall man entered the house with Miss Eve; moreover, the taxi was paid off. This was hardly Allan’s idea as to how things should have happened, but he determined to wait a little—perhaps the visitor would not stay long. His perseverance was justified; within five minutes the man came out. Allan noticed that he no longer wore a hat.