The Joker by Edgar Wallace (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📖
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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Bonn incident?’
‘Harlow says that they just talked about the Middle East and nothing else
during the few minutes the Foreign Minister vas in his house. And really,
sir, I don’t see how they could have had any very lengthy discussion;
they were not together more than a few minutes. Apparently Sir Joseph
went into a little room which Harlow uses for his more confidential
interviews and drank a glass of wine. They then talked about the
reception and Sir Joseph congratulated him on bringing the warring
elements together. It seems to have been, according to Harlow’s account,
the most uninteresting talk.’
The Prime Minister walked up and down the room with long strides, his
chin on his chest.
‘I can’t understand it, I can’t understand it!’ he muttered. And then,
abruptly: ‘Find Sir Joseph Layton.’ That terminated the interview for
Jim.
He was rattled, badly rattled, and in his distraction he could think of
only one sedative. He rang up Aileen Rivers at her office and asked her
to come to tea with him at the Automobile Club.
Aileen realised from the first that Jim was directly occupied by a
mystery that was puzzling not only the country but the whole of the
civilised world. But she understood also the reason he had sent for her,
and the thought that she as being of use to him was a very pleasant one.
As soon as he met her he plunged straight into the story of his trouble.
‘He may have been kidnapped, of course, and I should say it was very
likely, though the distance between Palace Yard and Whitehall Gardens is
very short; and Whitehall so full of police that it hardly seems
possible. We have advertised for the taximan who drove him away from the
House, but so far have had no reply.’
‘Perhaps the taximan was also kidnapped?’ she suggested.
‘Perhaps so,’ he admitted. ‘I do wish Foreign Ministers weren’t so
godlike that they have to travel alone! If he’d only waited a few minutes
I would have joined him.’ And then, with a smile: ‘I’m laying my burdens
upon you and you’re wilting visibly.’
‘I’m not,’ she affirmed.
She considered a moment before she asked:
‘Could I not help you?’
He stared at her in amused wonder.
‘How on earth could you help me? I’m being rude I know, but I can’t
exactly see—’
She was annoyed rather than hurt by his scepticism.
‘It may be a very presumptuous thing to offer assistance to the police,’
she said with a faint hint of sarcasm, ‘but I think what may be wrong
with you now is that you want—what is the expression?—a new angle?’
‘I certainly want several new angles,’ he confessed ruefully.
‘Then I’ll start in to give you one. Have you seen my uncle?’
His jaw dropped. He had forgotten all about Arthur Ingle; and never once
had he associated him with the Minister’s disappearance.
‘What a fool I am!’ he gasped.
She examined his face steadily, as though she were considering whether or
not to agree. In reality her mind was very far away.
‘I only suggest my uncle because he called upon me this morning,’ she
said. ‘At least, he was waiting for me when I came out to lunch. It is
the first time I have seen him since the night he came back from
Devonshire.’
‘What did he want to see you about?’
She laughed softly.
‘He came with a most extraordinary offer, that I should keep house for
him. And really, he offered me considerably more than the salary I am
getting from Stebbings, and said he had no objection to my working in the
daytime.’
‘You refused, of course?’
‘I refused, of course,’ she repeated, ‘but he wasn’t at all put out. I’ve
never seen him in such an amiable frame of mind.’
‘How does he look?’ asked Jim, remembering the unshaven face he had seen
through the window.
‘Very smart,’ was the surprising reply. ‘He told me he had been amusing
himself with some of the big films that had appeared since he went to
prison. He had hired them and bought a small projector. He really was
fond of the pictures, as I know,’ the girl went on, ‘but it seems a queer
thing to I have shut oneself up for days just to watch films! And he
asked after you.’ She nodded. ‘Why should he ask after you, you are going
to say, and that is the question that occurred to me. But he seems to
have taken for granted that I am a very close friend of yours. He asked
who had introduced me, and I told him your wretched little car on the
Thames Embankment!’
‘Speak well of the dead,’ said Jim soberly. ‘Lizzie has cracked a
cylinder.’
‘And now,’ she said, ‘prepare for a great shock.’
‘I brace myself,’ said Jim.
‘He asked,’ the girl went on, a twinkle in her eyes, ‘whether I thought
you would object to seeing him. I think he must have taken a sudden
liking to you.’
‘I’ve never met the gentleman,’ said Jim, ‘but that is an omission which
shall be rectified without delay. We’ll go round together! He will
naturally jump at the conclusion that we’re an engaged couple, but if you
can stand that slur on your intelligence—’
‘I will be brave,’ said Aileen.
Mr Arthur Ingle was only momentarily disconcerted by the appearance of
his niece and the man who had filled his mind all that afternoon. Jim had
met him once before, but only for a few seconds, when he had called to
make an inquiry about Mrs Gibbins. Now he was almost jovial.
‘Where’s friend Elk?’ he asked, with a smile. ‘I understood you never
moved without one another in these perilous times, when lunatic ministers
are wandering about the country, and no man knows the hour or the day
when he will be called up for active service! So you are Mr James
Carlton!’
He opened a silver cigar-box and pushed it across to Jim, who made a
careful selection.
‘Aileen told you I wanted to see you, I suppose? Well, I do. I’m a bit of
a theorist, Mr Carlton, and I have an idea that my theory is right. I
wonder if you would be interested to know what it is?’
He pointedly ignored the presence of the girl except to put a chair for
her.
‘I’ve been making inquiries,’ said this surprising ex-convict, ‘and I’ve
discovered that Sir Joseph is in all sorts of financial difficulties.
This is unknown to the Prime Minister or even to his closest friend, but
I have had a hint that he was very short of ready money and that his
estates in Cheshire were heavily mortgaged. Now, Mr Carlton, do you
conceive it as possible that the speech in the House was made with the
deliberate intention of slumping the market and that Sir Joseph was paid
handsomely for the part he played?’
As he was speaking, he clasped his hands before him, his fingers
intertwined; he emphasised every point with a little jerk of his clasped
hands and, watching him, the mist rolled from Jim Carlton’s brain, and he
instantly solved the mystery of those private film shows which had kept
Mr Ingle locked up in his flat for a week. And to solve that was to solve
every mystery save the present whereabouts of Sir Joseph Layton.
He listened in silence whilst Ingle went on to expound and elaborate his
theory and when the man had finished: ‘I will bring your suggestion to
the notice of my superiors,’ he said conventionally.
It was evidently not the speech that Mr Ingle expected. For a moment he
looked uncomfortable, and then, with a laugh: ‘I suppose you think it
strange that I should be on the side of law and order—and the governing
classes! I felt a little sore when I came out of prison. Elk probably
told you of the exhibition I made of myself in the train. But I’ve been
thinking things over, Carlton, and it has occurred to me that my
extremism is not profitable either to my pocket or my mind.’
‘In fact,’ smiled Jim, ‘you’re going to become a reformed character and a
member of the good old Tory party?’
‘I don’t know that I shall go as far as that,’ demurred the other,
amused, ‘but I have decided to settle down. I am not exactly a poor man,
and all that I have got I have paid for—in Dartmoor.’
Only for a second were the old harsh cadences audible in his voice. He
nodded towards Aileen Rivers.
‘You’ll persuade this girl to give me a chance, Mr Carlton? I can well
understand her hesitation to keep house for a man liable at any moment to
be whisked off to durance, and I fear she does not quite believe in my
reformation.’
He smiled blandly at the girl, and then turned his eyes upon Jim.
‘Could you not persuade her?’
‘If I could persuade her to any course,’ said Jim deliberately, ‘it would
not be the one you suggest.’
‘Why?’ challenged the other.
‘Because,’ said Jim, ‘you are altogether wrong when you say that there is
no longer any danger of your being whisked off to durance. The danger was
never more pressing.’
Ingle did not reply to this. Once his lips trembled as though he were
about to ask a question, and then with a laugh he walked to the table and
took a cigar from the box.
‘I guess I won’t detain you,’ he said. ‘But you’re wrong, Carlton. The
police have nothing on me! They may frame something to catch me, but
you’ll have to be clever to do even that.’
As they passed out of the building:
‘I seem to spend my days giving warnings to the last people in the world
who ought to be warned,’ said Jim bitterly. ‘Aileen, maybe you’ll knit me
a muzzle in your spare moments? That will help considerably!’
The outstanding feature of this little speech from the girl’s point of
view was that he had called her by her name for the first time. Later,
when they were nearing her boarding house, she asked: ‘Do you think you
will find Sir Joseph?’
He shook his head.
‘I doubt very much if he is alive,’ he said gravely.
But his doubts were to be dispelled, and in the most surprising manner.
That night a drunken black-faced comedian hit a policeman over the head
with a banjo, and that vulgar incident had an amazing sequel.
THERE is a class of entertainer which devotes its talents to amusing the
queues that wait at the doors of the cheaper entrances of London’s
theatres. Here is generally to be found a man who can tear paper into
fantastic shapes, a ballad singer or two, a performer on the bones and
the inevitable black-faced minstrel.
It was eleven o’clock at night, and snow was lightly falling, when a
policeman on point duty at the end of Evory Street saw a figure
staggering along the middle of the road, in imminent danger from the
returning theatre traffic. The man had obviously taken more drink than
vas good for him, for he was howling at the top of his voice the song of
the moment; and making a clumsy attempt to accompany himself on the banjo
which was slung around his neck.
The London police are
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