The Joker by Edgar Wallace (books to read in your 20s .TXT) đ
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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going to the City. He had grown attached to Royalton House, he
discovered, and almost wished he could take it with him. It was ugly and
dreary and depressing. Even the vegetable garden seemed decayed.
Pale ghosts of cabbages drooped like aged and mourning men amidst the
skeleton stalks of their departed fellows.
Across the desolation came the gardener, his shoulders protected from the
drizzle by a sack.
âIâve got a load of stuff to fill the pit,â he said. âCame yesterday.â
The pit was an eyesore and had been for thirty years. It was a deep
depression at the edge of the kitchen garden and Mr Ellenbury had sited
many dreams upon it. An ornamental pond, surrounded by banked
rhododendrons. A swimming pool with a white-tiled bed and marble seats,
where, hidden from the vulgar eye by trellised roses, a bather might sit
and bask in the sun. Now it was the end of dreamsâa pit to be filled. He
stood on the edge of it. An unlovely hole in the ground, the bottom
covered with water, the rusty corner of a petrol tin showing just above
the surface. By the side was a heap of rubbish, aged bricks and portions
of brick, sand gravel, sheer ashpit emptyings.
âI will fill it inâI have promised myself that exercise,â said Mr
Ellenbury, forgetting for the moment that by tomorrow he would be filling
in nothing more substantial than time.
The slimy hole held his eyes. If he could put Harlow there and see his
big white face staring up from the mudâthat would be a good filling! He
felt his face and neck go red, his limbs tingling. Presently he tore
himself away and walked back to the house.
The car that Rataâs hired for him was waitingâthe driver bade him a
civil good morning and said the weather was the worst he had ever known.
Mr Ellenbury went in to breakfast without replying. The sight of the car
was suggestive.
There was another garage known to Mr Ellenbury where a car could be hired
and no inconvenient questions asked. Stated more clearly, there are many
people in London engaged in peculiar professions, to whom money was not
an important consideration. They could not buy loyalty, but they were
willing to pay for discretion.
Novaâs Garage had a tariff that was considerably higher than any other,
but the extra cost was money well spent. For when the police came to
Novaâs to learn who was the foreign-looking gentleman who had driven away
from a West End jewellerâs with the diamond ring he had bought and the
row of pearls that had disappeared with him. Novaâs were blandly
ignorant. Nor could they recognise the lady who had driven the rich
Bradford merchant to Marlow and left him drugged and penniless in the
long grass of the meadows.
In the afternoon the car came; the chauffeur was a burly man with a black
moustache who chewed gum and had no interest in anybodyâs business but
his own. In this Mr Ellenbury drove to the bank, taking his two
suitcases; and went into the managerâs room and checked the cable
advices.
âImmense!â said the manager soberly. He referred to the total. âAnd more
to come, I suppose? It is so big that it almost breaks loose from the
standards.â
âStandards?â Mr Ellenbury did not know what he was talking about.
âRight and wrong⊠like taking a foot-rule to measure St Paulâs.â
Ellenbury, something of a dialectician, could not resist the challenge.
âMoral conduct isnât a matter of arithmetic, but a matter of proportion.
You canât measure it with a yard-stick, but by its angle. Ten degrees out
of the perpendicular is as much a fault in a gate-post as in the leaning
Tower of Pisa⊠I make this American total a hundred and twelve
thousand.â
âAnd ten,â added the manager. âThe exchange is against us.â
Mr Ellenbury made five bundles of the notes and fitted them into the
suitcase.
âNow we will take the South African remittances,â said the manager,
painfully patient, a sigh in his every sentence, disapproval in every wag
of his pen. âI suppose youâre right, but it does seem to me that a manâs
offence against society is in inverse ratio to the amount of money he
pouches.â
âPouches!â murmured Mr Ellenbury in protest.
âPockets, then. When you reach the million mark youâve got to a point
beyond the comprehension of a jury. They look at the man and they look
at the money, and they say ânot guiltyâ automatically. There ought to be
a new set of laws dealing with propertyâstarting with penalties for
pinching a million; and working up to the place where you can indict a
government for wasting nine figures. And the jury should be made up of
accountants and novelists, whoâve never seen real money but think in
millionsâeighty-seven thousand nine hundred I make it.â
Mr Ellenbury performed a rapid calculation, consulting a little ready
reckoner.
âRight,â he said. âYou have strangely perverted principles, my friend.
Whether a man steals ten cents or five million dollarsââ
âBank of Yokohamaââthe manager sorted his papers. âThe yen is at 179,
thatâs a drop. Curious! Way down in the bowels of the earth a ledge of
rock slips over, a superheated packet of steam blows up, and the effect
on the money market is disastrous! There is a lot of earthquake in
Harlow: he has got into the Acts of God classâIâm giving you dollars for
thisâUS dollars.â
âQuite OK,â said Mr Ellenbury, checking the bundles that were handed to
him.
It was growing dark when he carried out his suitcases and placed them
inside the car. They were very heavy. It was strange how heavy paper
money could beâand how bulky.
He drove to his office in Theobaldâs Road and was glad that many years
before, when offered the choice between a small suite on the ground floor
and a larger one on the first floor, he had chosen the former.
He had sent his clerk home early. It was a Friday and the man had been
given a fortnightâs holiday and had had his salary in advance. Opening
the outer door with his key, he tugged the two suitcases into his private
room. Here was a brand-new trunk and a passport. A few weeks before,
Harlow had ordered him to procure a passport for a âMr Jackson,â whose
other name was Ingle. Ellenbury had a distaste for the petty frauds of
life, but as usual he had obeyed and duplicated the offence by applying
for a second passport, forwarding a photograph of himself taken twenty
years before and applying in a name which had not the faintest
resemblance to his own.
He sat down with the two bulging grips before him and with a feeling of
growing unease. Not that his conscience was troubling him. The bedridden
Mrs Ellenbury never once entered his mind; the injustice he was doing to
his employer, if it occurred to him at all, was a relief to his distress.
The weight and the bulk of the paper moneyâŠ
The Customs would search his suitcase at Calais or Havre, and the money
would attract attention. He might put it at the bottom of the trunk and
register it through. But the thefts of baggage on the French railways
were notoriously frequent. He might, of course, travel by the Simplon
Express or by the Blue Trainâhand baggage was subject to a perfunctory
examination on the train, and if he were bound for Monte Carlo the
carriage of such wealth might be regarded as an act of madness by the
Customs officials and excite no other comment.
But both the Simplon and the Riviera Express are booked up at this season
of the year and a compartment could not be secured by any influence. He
might fly but he feared that the Airport scrutiny would be even more
severe.
There remained only one alternative. To carry half the money in his
trunk, distribute as much as he could amongst I his pockets andâ post the
rest to himself at various hotels throughout France and Spain. And this
would be a long and tedious job. He went into the outer office and
brought back a packet of stout envelopes. He must not register
themâthese Latin post offices made the collection of a registered letter
a fussy business.
WITH A Bradshaw by his side, he began his task. He exhausted the
envelopes and went in search of another packet, but could find none of
the requisite stoutness. Extinguishing the lights, he went out to a
neighbouring store, replenished his stock and came back. Halfway through
the second packet, with the table piled with bulging envelopes, he was
writing:
Hotel Riena Christina,
Algecirasâ
When there was a tap on the green baize door and he nearly screamed with
fright.
Two grave eyes were watching him through the oval of glass that gave a
view into the office. Leaping to hi feet, his teeth set in a grin of
fear, he dragged open the door.
A girl stood on the threshold. She wore a long blue coat; there were
beads of rain on the shoulders and on the head scarf. In her hand was a
streaming umbrella. Mr Ellenbury had not noticed it was raining. She was
staring at the open suitcases, at the bundles of notes, the heaped
envelopes. Aileen Rivers had never seen so much money.
âWell!â Ellenburyâs voice was a harsh squeak.
âI tried to find your clerk,â she said. âThe door was openââ
Open? In his haste to continue his work Ellenbury had not closed the
outer doorâhad not even shut the door beyond the baize.
He recognized her.
âYouâre Stebbingsâs girl,â he said breathlessly. âWhat do you want!â
She took from her bag a folded envelope. Some leases of the late Miss
Alice Harlow had fallen in; and by some oversight, as Mr. Stebbings had
found, they had not been included in the legacy. He tried to read the
letter; tried hard to put out of his mind the all-important, the vital
happening⊠two grey eyes watching through a glass oval⊠watching
bundles of money in suitcases, in envelopesâŠ
âOh!â he said blankly. âI see⊠something about leases. Iâll attend to
that tomorrow.â
âMr Harlow knows,â she said. âWe telephoned to him early this afternoon
and he asked us to notify you and bring the particulars to his house
tonight.â
At this he jerked up his head. âYouâre going to Harlowânow?â he
stammered.
It was rather remarkable that she had been looking forward to the visit
all afternoonâvery remarkable. The desire might seem incredible (and
was) to the man who loved her.
Yet, when Mr Stebbings had said in his incomplete way, âI wonder if you
would mindââ she had said promptly, âNoâ;âtoo promptly, she thought.
Reduced to its ignoble elements, the lure of Stratford Harlow was a
perversity that could never be satisfied; the lure that brought timid
people to the edge of a volcano to shudder and wonder at the molten pool
that hissed and bubbled below. And something more than that, for he was
less terrible than terribly human.
âYes, I am going to Park Lane, now,â she said.
The mind of Mr Ellenbury was numb; he could not direct its working; it
was without momentum, static. âYou are going to him now.â
Harlow had gone out of his way to meet this girl at Princetown; had made
inquiries about herâwhere she lived, where she worked. He gave, as an
excuse, his interest in her uncle. Ellenbury could, from common
experience,
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