The Joker by Edgar Wallace (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📖
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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he could not have imagined.
‘It would be dreadful if I liked him, or if he was fond of me,’ she went
on, stopping at the foot of the hotel steps. ‘As it is, we have a
business talk and that is all.’
With a friendly nod she passed into the hotel ahead of him. Mr Harlow
stood for a long time in the doorway, looking at nothing, his mind very
busy, and then he strolled back to his cooling coffee; and presently fell
into discussion; about the weather and the crops with the nervous little
man who awaited his coming.
They were quite alone now. The car parties had vanished in noisy
confusion; the old gentleman and the stout old lady were leaving the
hotel on a walking excursion as he had come in.
‘Is everything all right, Ellenbury?’
‘Yes, Mr Harlow,’ said the little man eagerly. ‘Everything is in perfect
shape and trim. I have settled the action that the French underwriters
were bringing against the Rata Company, and—’
Suddenly he was stricken to silence. Following the direction of his
staring eyes, Mr Harlow also looked out of the window. Eight convicts
were walking down the street in the direction of the railway station; Mr
Harlow looked and pointed.
‘Not a very pleasant or an agreeable sight,’ he said. In his oracular
moments his voice was very rich and pleasant. ‘Yet one, I think, to which
the callous people of Princetown are quite accustomed. These men are
being transferred to another prison, I imagine. Do you ever realise what
your feelings would be if you had been, say, the leader of that gang,
they used to be chained like wild beasts—’
‘For God’s sake, stop!’ said the little man hoarsely. ‘Don’t talk about
it, don’t talk about it!’ His trembling hands covered his eyes. ‘I had a
horror of coming here,’ he said, in a voice that was scarcely audible.
‘I’ve never been before… the car passed that terrible archway and I
nearly fainted!’
Mr Harlow, one eye on the door, smiled indulgently. ‘You have nothing to
fear, my dear Ellenbury,’ he said in a paternal voice. ‘I have in a sense
condoned your felony. In a sense,’ he emphasised carefully. ‘Whether a
judge would take the same view, I do not know. You understand the law
better than I. This much is certain; you are free, your debts are paid,
the money you stole from your clients has been made good and you have, I
think, an income which is, shall we say, satisfactory.’
The little man nodded and swallowed something. He was white to the lips,
and when he tried to lift a glass of water his hand shook so that he had
to put it down again. ‘I’m very grateful,’ he said. ‘Very—very
grateful… I’m sorry-it was rather upsetting.’
‘Naturally,’ murmured Mr Harlow.
He took a notebook from his pocket, opened it with the greatest
deliberation and wrote for five minutes, the little lawyer watching him.
When he had finished he tore out the sheet and passed it across the
table.
‘I want to know all about this man Arthur Ingle,’ he said. ‘When his
sentence expires, where he lives in London or elsewhere, his means and
especially his grudge against life. I don’t know what it is, but I rather
suspect that it is a pretty big one. I should also like to know where his
niece is employed. Her name you will find on the paper, with a query mark
attached. I want to know who are her friends, what are her amusements,
her financial position is very important.’
‘I understand.’ Ellenbury put the paper carefully in a worn pocket-book.
And then, with one of his habitual starts: ‘I had forgotten one thing, Mr
Harlow,’ he said. ‘On Monday last I had a visit at my office in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields from the police.’
He said the last two words apologetically as though he were in some way
responsible for the character of his caller. Mr Harlow turned his pale
eyes upon his companion, made a long scrutiny of his face before he
asked: ‘in what connection?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Ellenbury, who had a trick of reproducing at
a second’s notice all the emotions he described. ‘It was rather
puzzling.’ He screwed up his face into an expression of bewilderment.
‘You see, Mr Carlton did not come to any point.’
‘Carlton?’ demanded Harlow, quickly for him. ‘That’s the man at the
Foreign Office, isn’t it?’
Ellenbury nodded.
‘It was about the rubber fire. You remember the fire at the United
International factory? He wanted to know if Rata had any insurance on the
stock that was burnt and of course I told him that as far as I knew, we
hadn’t.’
‘Don’t say “we,”’ said Mr Harlow gently. ‘Say the Rata Syndicate hadn’t.
You are a lawyer acting for undisclosed principals. Well?’
‘That was all,’ said Ellenbury. ‘He was very vague.’
‘He always is vague,’ interrupted Harlow with a faint smile, ‘and he’s
always unscrupulous—remember that, Ellenbury. Sub-Inspector James
Carlton is the most unscrupulous man that Scotland Yard has ever
employed. Some day he will be irretrievably ruined or irretrievably
promoted. I have a great admiration for him. I know of no man
in the world I rate higher in point of intelligence, acumen
and—unscrupulousness! He has a theory which is both admirable and
baffling. Which means that he has the right theory. For rectitude is the
most baffling of all human qualities, because you never know, if a man
is doing right, what he will do next. I think that is almost an epigram,
Ellenbury: you had best jot it down, so that if ever you are called upon
to write my biography you may have material to lighten its pages.’ He
looked at his watch. I shall be at Park Lane at eleven o’clock on Friday
night, and I can give you ten minutes,’ he said.
Ellenbury twiddled his fingers unhappily.
‘Isn’t there a risk—to you, I mean?’ he blurted. ‘Perhaps I’m stupid,
but I can’t see why you do… well, why you take chances. With all your
money—’
Mr Harlow leaned back in the cushioned seat, amusement faintly visible in
his pale eyes.
‘If you had millions what would you do? Retire, of course. Build or buy a
beautiful house—and then?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the older man vaguely. ‘One could travel… ‘
‘The English people have two ideas of happiness: one comes from travel,
one from staying still! Rushing or rusting! I might marry but I don’t
wish to marry. I might have a great stable of race-horses, but I detest
racing. I might yacht—I loathe the sea. Suppose I want a thrill? I do!
The art of living is the art of victory. Make a note of that. Where is
happiness in cards, horses, golf, women-anything you like? I’ll tell you:
in beating the best man to it! That’s An Americanism. Where is the joy of
mountain climbing, of exploration, of scientific discovery? To do better
than somebody else—to go farther, to put your foot on the head of the
next best.’
He blew a cloud of smoke through the open window and waited until the
breeze had torn the misty gossamer into shreds and nothingness.
‘When you’re a millionaire you either get inside yourself and become a
beast, or get outside of yourself and become a nuisance to your fellows.
If you’re a Napoleon you will play the game of power, if you’re a
Leonardo you’ll play for knowledge—the stakes hardly matter; it’s the
game that counts. Accomplishment has its thrill, whether it is hitting a
golf ball farther than the next fellow, or strewing the battle fields
with the bodies of your enemies. My thrill is harder to get than most
people’s. I’m a millionaire. Sterling and dollars are my soldiers—I am
entitled to frame my own rules of war, conduct my forays in my own way.
Don’t ask any further questions!’
He waved his hand towards the door and Mr Ellenbury was dismissed; and
shortly afterwards his hired car rattled loudly up the hill and past the
gates of the jail. Mr Ellenbury studiously turned his face in the
opposite direction.
SOME EIGHT months later there was an accident on the Thames Embankment.
The girl in the yellow raincoat and the man in the black beret were of
one accord—they were anxious, for different reasons, to cross the most
dangerous stretch of the Embankment in the quickest possible space of
time. There was a slight fog which gave promise of being just plain fog
before the evening was far advanced. And through the fog percolated an
unpleasant drizzle which turned the polished surface of the road into an
insurance risk which no self-respecting company would have accepted.
The mudguard of the ancient Ford caught Aileen Rivers just below the left
elbow, and she found herself performing a series of unrehearsed
pirouettes. Then her nose struck a shining button and she slid
romantically to her knees at the feet of a resentful policeman. He lifted
her, looked at her, put her aside with great firmness and crossed to
where the radiator of the car was staring pathetically up a bent
lamp-post.
‘What’s the idea?’ he asked sternly, and groped for his notebook.
The young man in the beret wiped his soiled face with the back of his
hand, a gesture which resulted in the further spread of his griminess.
‘Was the girl hurt?’ he asked quickly.
‘Never mind about the girl; let’s have a look at your licence.’
Unheeding his authoritative demand, the young man stalked across to where
Aileen, embarrassed by the crowd which gathered, was assuring several old
ladies that she wasn’t hurt. She was standing on her two feet to prove
it.
‘Waggle your toes about,’ suggested a hoarse-voiced woman. ‘If they won’t
move, your back’s broke!’
The experiment was not made, for at that moment the tall young man pushed
his way to the centre of the curious throng.
‘Not hurt, are you?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I’m awfully sorry—really!
Didn’t see you till the car was right on top of you.’
A voice from the crowd offered advice and admonition.
‘You orter be careful, mister! You might ‘a’ killed somebody.’
‘Tell me your name, won’t you?’
He dived into his pocket, found an old envelope and paused.
‘Really it isn’t necessary, I’m quite unhurt,’ she insisted, but he was
also insistent.
He jotted down name and address and he had finished writing when the
outraged constable melted through the crowd.
‘Here!’ he said, in a tone in which fierceness and reproach were mingled.
‘You can’t go running away when I’m talking to you, my friend! Just you
stand still and show me that licence of yours.’
‘Did you see the blue Rolls?’ demanded the young man. ‘It was just ahead
of me when I hit the lamp-post.’
‘Never mind about blue Rolls’s,’ said the officer in cold exasperation.
‘Let me have a look at your licence.’
The young man slipped something out of his pocket and held it in the palm
of his hand. It was not unlike a driver’s licence and yet it was
something else.
‘What’s the idea?’ asked the policeman testily.
He snatched the little canvas-backed booklet and opened it, turning his
torch on the written words.
‘Humph!’ he said. ‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Not at all,’ said Sub-Inspector James Carlton of Scotland Yard. ‘I’ll
send somebody down to clear away the mess. Did you see the Rolls?’
‘Yes sir, just in front of you. Petrol tank
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