The silver key

Front matter

BOOKS BY

A KING BY NIGHT

EDGAR WALLACE’S MAMMOTH MYSTERY BOOK

Chapter I

THEY were all in this business—Dick Allenby, inventor and heir-at-law; Jerry Dornford, manabout-town and wastrel; Mike Hennessey, the theatrical adventurer; Mary Lane, small-part actress; Leo Moran, banker and speculator; Horace Tom Tickler (alas, for him!) was very much in it, though he knew nothing about it. So were Mr. Washington Wirth, who gave parties and loved flattery; old Hervey Lyne and the patient Binny, who pulled his Bath chair and made his breakfast and wrote his letters; and Surefoot Smith.

There came a day when Binny, who was an assiduous reader of newspapers that dealt with the more picturesque aspects of crime, was to find himself the focal point of attention and his evidence read by millions who had never before heard of him—a wonderful experience.

Mr. Washington Wirth’s parties were most exclusive affairs and, in a sense, select. The guests were chosen with care, and might not, in the manner of the age, invite the uninvited to accompany them; but they were, as Mary Lane said, “an odd lot.” She went because Mike Hennessey asked her,

Io Ae ELSES iO Palin Ran es Xe and she rather liked the stout and lethargic Mike. People called him “poor old Mike” because of his bankruptcies, but just now sympathy would be wasted on him. He had found Mr. Washington Wirth, a patron of the theatre and things theatrical, and Mr. Washington Wirth was a very rich man.

He was also a mysterious man. He was generally believed to live in the Midlands and to be associated with industry. His London address was the Kellner Hotel, but he never slept there. His secretary would telephone in advance for the Imperial suite on a certain day, and on the evening of that day, when supper was laid for his twenty or thirty guests, and the specially hired orchestra was tuning up, he would appear, a stout, flaxen-haired man in hornrimmed spectacles. The uncharitable said his flaxen hair was a wig, which may or may not have been true.

He was perfectly tailored, invariably wore white kid gloves. He spoke in a high, falsetto voice, and had a trick of clicking his heels and kissing the hands of his lady guests which was very Continental.

His guests were hand-picked. He chose—or Mike chose for him—the smaller theatrical fry: chorus girls, small-part ladies, an obscure singer or two.

Once Mike had suggested a brighter kind of party. Mr. Wirth was shocked.

“I want nothing fast,” he said.

He loved adulation—and had his fill of it. He was

LH E-siuVER KEY II a generous spender, a giver of expensive presents; people living on the verge of poverty might be excused a little flattering.

You could not gate-crash into one of Mr. Washington Wirth’s parties, invitations to which came in the shape of a small oblong badge, not unlike the badge worn by the ladies in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, on which the name of the invited guest was written. This the recipient wore; it served a double purpose, for it enabled Mr. Wirth to read and address each of his guests by her name.

Mary Lane was well aware that the invitation was no tribute to her own eminence.

“T suppose if I had been a really important guest I shouldn’t have been invited?” she said.

Mike smiled good-naturedly.

“You are important, Mary—the most important person here, my dear. The old boy was keen to know you.”

“Who is he?”

Mike shook his head.

“He’s got all the money in the world,” he said.

She laughed. Mary Lane was very lovely when she laughed. She was conscious that Washington Wirth, albeit occupied with the cooing attention of two blonde lovelies, was watching her out of the side of his eyes.

“He gives lots of parties, doesn’t he?” she asked. “Mr. Allenby told me to-day that they are monthly

192 WH Eo (Seba Ee Rae affairs. He must be rich, of course, or he wouldn’t keep our play running. Honestly, Mike, we must be losing a fortune at the Sheridan.”

Mike Hennessey took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the ash.

“T’m not losing a fortune,” he said. Then, most unexpectedly: “Old Hervey Lyne a friend of yours, Mary?”

She denied the friendship with some vigour.

“No, he’s my guardian. Why?”

Mike put back his cigar deliberately.

The band had struck up a waltz. Mr. Wirth was gyrating awkwardly, holding at arm’s length a lady from the Jollity who was used to being held more tightly.

“IT had an idea you were connected,” he said. ““Money-lender, wasn’t he? That’s how he made his stuff. Is Mr. Allenby related to him?”

There was a certain significance in the question, and she flushed.

““Yes—his nephew.” She was a little disconcerted. “Why?”

Mike looked past her at the dancers.

“Trying to pretend they enjoy it,’ he said. “They're all getting gold-mounted vanity bags to-night—you’ll get yours.”

“But why do you ask about Mr. Lyne?” she persisted.

‘Just wondering how well you knew the old man.

TH E“sd LV ER KEY 13

No, he’s never lent me money. He wants gilt-edged security and I’ve never had it. Moran’s his banker.”

Mike was one of those disconcerting men whose speech followed the eccentric course of their thoughts.

He chuckled.

“Funny, that, Mary. Moran’s his banker. You don’t see the joke, but I do.”

She knew Leo Moran slightly. He was by way of being a friend of Dick Allenby’s, and he was, she knew, a frequent visitor to the theatre, though he never came back-stage.

When Mike was being cryptic it was a waste of time trying to catch up with him. She looked at her watch.

“Will he be very annoyed if I leave soon? I have promised to go on to the Legation.”

He shook his head, took her gently by the arm, and led her up to where Mr. Wirth was being delightfully entertained by three pretty girls who were trying to guess his age.

“My little friend has to go, Mr. Wirth,” he said. “She’s got a rehearsal in the morning.”

“Perfectly understood!” said the host.

When he smiled he had white, even teeth, for which no thanks were due to nature.

“Per-fectly understood. Come again, Miss Mary Lane. I’ll be back from abroad in three weeks.”

14 THE SILVER KEY She took his big, limp hand and shook it. Mike escorted her out and helped her into her coat.

“Another hour for me and then I pack up,” he said. ‘He never stays after one. By the way, [ll bring on your gift to the theatre.”

She liked Mike—everybody liked Mike. There was hardly an actor or an actress in London who had not agreed to take half-salary from him. He could cry very convincingly when he was ruined, and he was always ruined when hard-hearted people expected him to pay what he owed them.

A lovable soul, entirely dishonest. Nobody knew what he did with the money which he had lost for so many people, but the probability is that it was usefully employed.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with our play,” he said, as he walked with her along the corridor to the elevator. “Maybe it’s the title—Cliffs of Fate —what does it mean? I’ve seen the darn’ thing forty times and still I don’t know what it’s about.”

She stared at him, aghast.

“But you chose it!” she protested.

He shook his head.

“He did,” he jerked his thumb back to Mr. Wirth’s suite. ““He said it made him feel a better man when he read it. It’s never made me want to go more regularly to the synagogue!”

He saw Mary depart, fussed over her like a brood hen. He liked Mary because she was real in a world of unreality. The first time he had taken her out to supper, he had offered her a few suggestions on the quickest method by which a young actress might reach stardom, and her name in lights, and she had answered him sanely and yet in a way that did not entirely wound his vanity—and the vanity of a fat man is prodigious.

Thereafter she went into a new category: he had many; she was the only woman in the world he really liked, though, it is said, he loved many. He strolled back to the hectic atmosphere of the supper room—Mr. Wirth was presenting the bags.

He was unusually gay: usually he drank very little, but to-night . . . Well, he had promised to drink a whole bottle of champagne if anybody guessed his age, and one of the three pretty girls had guessed thirty-two.

“Good God!”’ said Mike, when they told him.

As soon as was expedient, he took his patron aside.

“About time these people went, Mr. Wirth,” he said.

Mr. Wirth smiled foolishly; spoke with the refinement which wine brings to some.

“My deah, deah fellah! I’m quate keepable of draving myself to deah old Coventry.”

Certainly this was a new Mr. Wirth. Mike Hennessey was troubled. He felt he was in danger of losing a priceless possession. It was as though the

16 THE STEVE R KE Y owner of a secret gold mine from which he was drawing a rich dividend were hoisting a great flapping flag to mark its site.

“What you want,” he said agitatedly, “is something cooling. Just wait here, will you?”

He ran out, saw the head waiter, and came back very soon with a little blue bottle. He measured a tablespoonful of white granules into a wine glass and filled it with water; then he handed this fizzling, hissing potion to the giver of the feast.

“Drink,” he said.

Mr. Wirth obeyed. He stopped and gasped between the gulps.

By now the last guest had gone.

“All right?” asked Mike anxiously.

“Quite all right,” snapped the other.

He seemed suddenly sober. Mike, at any rate, was deceived. He did not see his friend to his car, because that was against the rules. Mr. Wirth, wrapped in a heavy coat the collar of which was turned up, his opera hat at a rakish angle over his eyes, made his way to the garage near the hotel, had his car brought out, and was getting into it when the watcher sidled up to him.

“Can I have a word with you, mister?”

Mr. Wirth surveyed him glassily, climbed into his seat and shifted his gear.

‘Can I have a word es

THE-SILVER KEY 1 ef

The car jerked forward. The little interviewer, who had one foot on the running board, was sent sprawling. He got up and began to run after the car, to the amusement of the garage workers; car and pursuer vanished in the darkness.

Chapter II

Tue trailer lost his quarry in Oxford Street and wandered disconsolately onward. A sort of homing instinct led him towards Regent’s Park. Naylor Terrace was a magnificent little side street leading from the outer circle. It was very silent, its small, but stately, houses were in darkness.

Mr. Tickler—such was his peculiar name— stopped before No. 17 and looked up at the windows. The white blinds were drawn down and the house was lifeless. He stood, with his hands thrust into his pockets, blinking at the green door that he knew so well, at the three worn steps leading down, and the hollow steel railway that masons had fixed into the stonework to allow the easy descent of a Bath chair.

Inside was wealth, immense, incalculable wealth, and a stupid old man on the verge of the grave. Outside were poverty and resentment, the recollection of the rigours of Pentonville Prison, a sense of injustice. Old Lyne slept on the first floor. His bed was between these two high windows. That lower window marked the study where he sat in the daytime. There was a safe in the wall, full of

THE-SILVER KEY: 1g useless old papers. Old Lyne never kept money in the house. All his life he had advertised this habit. A burglar or two had gone to enormous trouble to prove him a liar and had had nothing for their pains.

There he was, sleeping in luxury, the old rat, under featherweight blankets specially woven for him, under a satin coverlet packed tight with rare down, and here was he, Horace Tom Tickler, with a pinch of silver in his pocket.

But, perhaps, he was not there at all? That was an old trick of his to be out when everybody thought he was in, and in when they thought he was out.

He walked up and down the quiet cul-de-sac for nearly an hour, turning over in his mind numerous schemes, mostly impracticable, then he slouched back towards the bright streets and coffee stalls. He took a short cut through the mews to reach Portland Place, and the most astounding luck was with him.

A policeman walking through Baynes Mews heard the sound of a man singing. It was, if his hearing gave a right impression, the voice of one who had gone far in insobriety, and the voice came from a tiny flat, one of the many above the garages that lined each side of the mews. Time was when they were occupied exclusively by coachmen and chauffeurs, but the artistic and aristocratic classes had swamped these humble West End habitations, and more than half of the new population of Baynes

20 TE SLVR Ree

Mews were people who dressed for dinner and came home from parties and night clubs, their arms filled with gala favours, some of which made strange and distressing noises.

There was nothing in the voice to indicate anything more startling than normal inebriety. The policeman would have passed on, but for the fact that he saw a figure sitting on the step of the narrow door which led to the little flat above.

The officer turned his electric lamp on the sitter and saw nothing which paid for illumination. The little man who grinned up at the policeman was, as the officer said to his sergeant later, “nothing to write home about.’’ He was red-faced, unshaven, wretchedly shabby. His collar might have been white a week before; he wore no tie and his linen, even in the uncertain light of the lamp, was uncleanly.

“Kar him?” He jerked his head upward and grinned. “‘First time it’s ever happened. Soused! What a mug, eh? Gettin’ soused. He slipped me to-night, an’ I’d never have tailed him—but for this bit-of duck ve ee ard: him. -by accidents: soused |”

“You’re a bit soused yourself, aren’t you?”

The policeman’s tone was unfriendly.

“T’ve had three whiskies and a glass of beer. Does a man of the world get soused on that, I ask you!”

The voice upstairs had died down to a deep hum.

Ces eV ER KEY 21

At the far end of the mews a horse was kicking in his box with maddening irregularity.

“A friend of yours?”

The little man shook his head.

“IT don’t know. Perhaps; that’s what I got to find out. Is he friendly or ain’t he.”

The policeman made a gesture.

“Get out of this. I can’t have you loungin’ about. I seem to know your face too. Didn’t I see you at Clerkenwell Police Court once?”

This officer prided himself on his memory for faces. It was his practice to say that he could never remember names, but never forgot faces. He thought he was unique and his remark original, and was not conscious of being one of forty million fellow citizens who also remembered faces and forgot names.

The little man rose and fell in by the officer’s side.

“That’s right.” His step was a little unsteady. “I got nine munce for fraud.”

He had in truth been convicted of petty larceny and had gone to-prison for a month, but thieves have their pride.

Could a man convicted of fraud be arrested under the Prevention of Crimes Act because he sat in the doorway of a mews flat? This was the problem that exercised the mind of the constable. At the end of the mews he looked round for his sergeant, but that authority was not in sight.

A thought occurred to him.

“What you got in your pocket?”

The little man stretched out his arms.

“Search me—go on. You ain’t entitled to, but I'll let you.”

Another dilemma for the policeman, who was young and not quite sure of his rights and duties.

“Push off. Don’t let me see you hanging around here,” he ordered.

If the little man argued or refused, he could be arrested for “obstruction,” for “insulting behaviour,” for almost anything. But he did nothing.

“All right,” he said, and walked off.

The policeman was tempted to recall him and discover the identity of the singer. Instead, he watched Mr. Tickler until he was out of sight.

The hour was a quarter to two in the morning. The patrol marched on to the point where his sergeant would meet him. As for Mr. Tickler, he went shuffling down Portland Place, looking in every doorway to find a cigarette end or cigar: butt which might have been dropped by returning householders.

What a tale to tell if he could sell the information in the right quarter! Or he could put the “black” upon the singer. Blackmail gets easy money —if there is money to get. He stopped at a stall in Oxford Circus and drank a scalding cup of coffee.

He was not entirely without funds and had a bed to go to and money for bus fare, if the buses were running.

Refreshed, he continued his way down Regent Street and met the one man in the world he would willingly have avoided. Surefoot Smith was standing in the shadow of a recessed shop window, a stocky man, in a tightly buttoned overcoat. His derby hat was, as usual, on the back of his head; his round face, ruddier than Mr. Tickler’s, was impassive. But for the periodical puffs of smoke which came from his big briar pipe he might have been a statue carved out of red brick.

“Fey!”

Reluctantly Tickler turned. He had been quick to identify the silent watcher. By straightening his shoulders and adding something of jauntiness to his stride he hoped to prevent the recognition from becoming mutual.

Surefoot Smith was one of the few people in the world who have minds like a well-organized card index. Not the smallest and least important offender who had passed through his hands could hope to reach a blissful oblivion.

“Come here, you.”

Tickler came.

“What are you doing now, Tickler? Burglary, or just fetching the beer for the con men? Two a.m.! Got a home?”

HYes oir,”

‘““Ah, somewhere in the West End! Gone scientific. maybe. Science is the ruin of the country!”

Rights or no rights, he passed his hands swiftly over*Tickler’s person; the little man stretched out his arms obediently and smiled. It was not a pretty smile, for his teeth were few and his mouth large and lop-sided. But it was a smile of conscious virtue.

“No jemmy, no chisel, no bit, no gat.’ Surefoot Smith gave Mr. Tickler absolution.

“No, Mr. Smith; I’m runnin’ straight now. ’'m going after a job to-morrow.”

‘Don’t waste my time, boy,” said Surefoot reproachfully. ““Work! You’ve read about it. What kind of thieving do you do now? Whizzing? No, you're not clever enough.”

Tickler said a bold thing. The lees of wine were still sizzling within him.

“I’m a detective,” he said.

If Surefoot Smith was revolted he did not betray his emotion.

“Did you say ‘defective’ or ‘detective’ ?”’ he asked.

He might have asked further questions, but at that moment a pocket-lamp flashed twice from the roof of the building he was watching. Instantly the roadway seemed to be covered by the figures of overcoated men converging on the building. Surefoot

Smith was one of the first to reach the opposite sidewalk.

A loud rapping on the door told Mr. Tickler all he wanted to know. The place was being raided—a spieling club, or maybe worse. He was grateful for the relief and hurried on his way. At Piccadilly Circus he paused and considered matters. He was quite sober now and could review the position calmly; and the more he thought, the more thoroughly he realized that he had allowed opportunity to slip past him.

He turned and walked along Piccadilly, his chin on his chest, dreaming dreams of easy money.

Chapter III

Mary Lane looked at the plain gold watch on her wrist and gasped.

“Four o’clock, my dear!”

There were still twenty couples on the dancing floor of the Legation Club. It was a gala night, and they kept late hours at the Legation on these occasions.

“Sorry you’ve had such a tiring evening.”

Dick Allenby didn’t look sorry; he certainly did not look tired. There were no shadows under the laughing gray eyes, the tanned face was unlined. Yet he had not seen his bed for twenty-four hours.

“Anyway, you rescued me,” he said as he called a waiter. “Think of it! I was alone until you came. When I said Moran had been and gone I was lying. The devil didn’t turn up. Jerry Dornford tried to edge in on the party—he’s still hoping.”

He glanced across to a table on the other side of the room where the immaculately dressed Jerry Sat.

“IT hardly know him,” she said.

Dick smiled.

‘“‘He wants to know you better—but he is distinctly a person not to know. Jerry has been out all the night—went away just before supper and has only just come back. Your other party was dull, was it? Funny devil, this man Wirth. It was cheek of Mike Hennessey to invite you there.”

“Mike is rather a dear,” she protested.

“Mike is a crook—a pleasant crook, but a crook. Whilst he is at large it is disgraceful that there is anybody else in prison!”

They passed out into the street, and as they stood waiting for a cab Dick Allenby saw a familiar figure.

“Why, Mr. Smith, you’re out late!”

“Early,” said Surefoot Smith. He lifted his hat to the girl. “’Evening, Miss Lane. Shockin’ habit, night clubs.”

“T’m full of bad habits,” she smiled.

Here was another man she liked. Chief Inspector Smith of Scotland Yard was liked by many people and heartily disliked by many more.

The cab drew up. She refused Dick’s escort any farther and drove off.

“Nice young lady, that,’’ said Surefoot. “Actresses don’t mean anything to me—lI’ve just come from Marlborough Street, where [’ve been chargin’ three of ’em—at least they called themselves actresses.”

“A little raid?”

“A mere nothing,” said Surefoot sadly. “I expected to find kings and only pulled in prawns.”

“Pawns,” suggested Dick.

“Small fish anyway,” said Surefoot.

That he was called ‘‘Surefoot” was no testimony to his gifts as a sleuth. It was his baptismal name. His father had been a bookmaking publican, and a month before his child was born the late Mr. Smith, obsessed with the conviction that Surefoot, the Derby favourite, would not win, had laid that horse to win himself a fortune. If Surefoot had won, the late Mr. Smith would have been a ruined man. Surefoot lost, and in gratitude he had named his infant child after the equine unfortunate.

“T nearly came up to your workshop the other day and had a squint at that gun of yours—air-gun, ain’t it?”

“A sort of one,” said Dick. ‘Who told you about it?”

“That feller Dornford. He’s a bad egg! I can’t understand it—your gun. Dornford said you put in a cartridge and fire it, and Ure charges the gun.”

“Tt compresses the air—yes.”’

Dick Allenby was not in the mood to discuss inventions.

“You ought to sell it to Chicago,” said Mr. Smith, and made a clicking noise with his lips. “Chicago! Six murders a week and nobody pinched!”

Dick laughed. He had only returned from Chicago a month before and he knew something of the problems that the police had to face.

“These ride murders,”’ Surefoot went on. “I mean takin’ fellers out into the country in a car and shootin’ ’em. Would it be possible here? No!”

“Y’m not so sure.’’ Dick shook his head. ‘‘Anyway, it is nearly half-past four and I’m not going to talk crime with you. Come up to my flat and we'll have a drink.”

Surefoot Smith hesitated.

“All right; there’s no sleep for me to-night. _ There’s a cab.”

The cab stood in the middle of the road near an island.

Smith whistled.

“Driver’s gone away, sir.” It was the club linkman who offered the information. “I tried to get it for the lady.”

“He’s asleep inside,” said Smith, and walked across the road, Dick following.

Surefoot peered through the closed window of the cab, but saw nothing.

“FHe’s not there,” he said, and looked again.

Then he turned the handle and pulled open the door. Somebody was. there—somebody lying on the floor, with his legs on the seat.

“Drunk!” said Smith.

He flashed his lamp on the figure. The face was visible, yet indistinguishable, for he had been shot through the head at close quarters; but Smith saw enough to recognize something which had once been Mr. Horace Tom Tickler and was now just a dead, mangled thing.

“Taken for a ride!” gasped Surefoot. “Good God! What’s this—Chicago ?”

Chapter IV

IN FIVE minutes there were a dozen policemen round the cab, holding back the crowd which had gathered, as crowds will gather at any hour of the day or night in London. Fortunately, a police sergeant had been at Marlborough Street, attending to a drunk, and he was on the spot within a few minutes.

“Shot at close quarters by a very small-bore pistol,” was his first verdict after a casual examination.

In a very short time the ambulance arrived, and all that was mortal of Horace Tom Tickler was removed. A police officer started up the engine of the taxi and drove it into the station yard for closer inspection. The number had already been taken. Scotland Yard had sent a swift car to find the owner, a taxi driver named Wells.

Dick Allenby had not been specifically invited to the investigation, but had found himself in conversation with Surefoot Smith at crucial moments of the search, and had drifted with him to the police station.

The man had been shot in the cab; they found a bullet hole through the leather lining. The body,

32 THE SSTL VER REY

Smith thought, had sagged forward to the ground and the legs had been lifted in the approved gang style.

‘He was probably still alive when he was on the floor. The murderer must have fired a second shot. We have found a bullet in the floorboard of the cab.”

“Have you found the driver?” asked Dick.

““He’s on his way.”

Mr. Wells, the driver, proved to be a very stout and thoroughly alarmed man. His story was a simple one. He had got to the garage where he kept his car a little before two o’clock. The door of the garage was closed. He left the cab outside, which was evidently a practice of his, for the cleaner, who would come on duty at six o’clock and prepare the cab for the day’s work. He could leave it outside with impunity, because cabs are very rarely stolen; they are so easily identified and so useless to the average car thief that they are very seldom “knocked off.” His garage was in a stable yard off the Marylebone Road. ;

So far as he was concerned, he had a complete alibi, for, after leaving the cab, he had gone to the nearest police station to deposit an umbrella and a pocketbook which had been left by a previous passenger. A policeman had seen him leave the car, and to this policeman he had brought the lost property, which he had afterwards deposited at the station. It

THE SILVER KEY Re was a very lonely yard, and, unlike such places, was entirely without inhabitants, the garages forming part of a building which was used as a furniture store.

It was seven o’clock, and the West End was alive with market cars, when Dick drove home to his flat at Queén’s Gate. It was curious that the only impression left on him was one of relief that Mary had not walked across the road to the cab and opened the door, as she might have done, and made the hideous discovery. The car had been parked outside the club twenty minutes before the discovery; the driver had been seen to leave the taxi and walk towards Air Street.

The earliest discovery that had been made was that the taxi flag was down and a sum of seventeen shillings was registered on the clock. This gave the police approximately the period between the murder being committed and the body being found.

Late that afternoon Surefoot Smith called on Dick Allenby.

“Thought you’d like to know how far we’ve got,” he said. ‘“We found a hundred one-pound notes in this bird’s pocket.”

“Tickler’s ?”

“How did you know his name was Tickler ?” Surefoot Smith regarded him with suspicion.

Dick did not answer immediately.

“Well, the odd thing is, I recognized him when I saw him. He used to be a servant of my uncle’s.”

“You didn’t tell me that last night.”

“T wasn’t sure last night; I wasn’t sure, in fact, until I saw the body lifted out. I don’t know very much about my uncle’s business, but I understand this man was fired for stealing, about six or seven years ago.”

Surefoot nodded.

“That’s right. I’d come to give you that bit of information. I saw old Lyne this morning, but, bless you, Scotland Yard means nothing to him. Your uncle, is he?”” He nodded again. “Congratulations!”