EBONY TORSO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 September 1939, Page 12

EBONY TORSO

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYRIGHT.

(By

JOHN C. WOODIWISS.)

CHAPTER XI. (Continued). “Then I thought of another stunt to lend colour to the supernatural business. I crept downstairs, and found a clothes-line post standing against the wall outside the scullery door, and we did one of our old music-hall tricks; I held the post while Dave shinned up and left the impression of his gloved hand on the pile of snow on the sill and slid down again.” “But why didn’t your feet leave marks on the snow?” asked Hopton. “I examined that back yard carefully, and I'll sweat’ there wasn't the sign of a boot mark.” “We did it from the door step, Inspector,” replied Galesbourne. “You’ll remember the step had been washed clear of snow. It was the absence of! footmarks that was going to baffle the! police; I argued.” “And you were right!” smiled thcdetective. “The effect was excellent.” “But to get on with the tale,” continued the snam padre. “I smuggled

Dave out of the front door and drove him back to the Vicarage. Then I hurried, back, went upstairs again, closed the bedroom door softly so that it locked, and started to knock and call. You know the rest; how Mrs Scutt, who had got back by this time, came running up, and how I at last forced the door open and found ‘poor’ Mr Scutt strangledi. That was the point where your police came in.” “Exactly.” smiled Sir Hallafd grimly. “But you’ve left one little detail unexplained; how did you avoid leaving Dave’s small footmarks on the linoleum? It was snowy outside, and his shoes must have been muddy.” “I thought of that, sir,” agreed the prisoner. “I carried him in from the car, under my cloak. Therefore the soles of his shoes were quite dry.” “I see,” agreed the Chief. “Go on.”

“Well, the first thing I felt sure would happen, was that the police would want to interview Mrs Clara Abershaw, so she duly disappeared from Kensington, and changed her name and clothes as soon as possible. I moved her to Ikey Frost’s place in Rotherhithe, and we made our headquarters there from that time on.” “Quite so,” nodded Hopton. "But a completely unforseen thing hoppened at that point, sir,” Galesbourne went on. “The excitement of what had happened in Scutt’s room sent Dave completely mad. He became savage and unmanageable, and I made things ten times worse by threatening to have him put away in an asylum unless he did as ne was told. He broke out of the Vicarage that night,'leaving a note to the effect that he would kill us all, one by one —the entire gang. “How he lived, and how he escaped arrest, Heaven only knows, but the next I heard of'him was through his scaring that woman in Ritson Lane and his attack on the policeman in Dexter Mews. He evidently regarded the police as his natural enemies. I got a shock when I went down to the scene of the crime and found you three gentlemen there. I knew the hunt was getting uncomfortably close to me. I’d hardly recovered-from that when 1 had another frignt; I mean the occasion when Inspector Hopton ordered Sergeant O’Mara to ring me up; got me out of the way and attempted to pump old Smith during my absence. You remembered how you answered a ’phone call while you were waiting at the Vicarage, inspector, and got a lot of gibberish across the wire?” “Yes,” nodded the Scotland Yard man. “Well, that was my little friend Red Dave, threatening my life in a code we used to sometimes talk in. He repeated that ghastly warning, at intervals, each day. A pretty unnerving expedience, Inspector.” “Undoubtedly," agreed Carlingford, to whom the comment W’as addressed.

“Well, we had our memorable chat, Mr Hopton, and then you left the Vicarage and I watched you go up the street, from my window. I saw you join Sergeant O’Mara, and decided to find out what your game was. I waited a few moments until you turned the corner, slipped on a coat and hat, and followed. I was so close, I actually heard me crash of that piece of coping. I’ve no doubt'that booby trap was meant for me, Inspector. Dave was up there watching the Vicarage, saw you leave, against the hall light, and mistook you for me. As soon as I saw what had happened, I hurried back home as quickly as possible, and waited a bit before going out again, ostensibly to post letters for the late collection, and, curiously enough, happened to run into the officers who were going to your assistance, after Dave nearly killed you in the ruined house.” , “Yes, I was surprised to see you there," Hopton admitted as he recalled the dramatic incidents. And what was your next move?" "I went back and thought the whole thing out. Inspector.” Galesbourne went on. "And I was faced with d pretty grim problem. A homicidal maniac was waiting to kill me, almost at my very door, and the police wore uncomfortably hot on my tracks. I made a quick survey of the situation, and decided I’d disappear at once . . . fake a suicide in the Thames which would lock pretty convincing after my alleged nervous breakdown. So I told old Smith, whom I daren’t leave for the police to question, and disappeared into the night. We went to join my wife at Ikey’s place, and I got one of his accomplices to dump my clerical togs and that pathetic farewell note on| the Embankment, and give the alarm ■ that he’d seen a man jump into the) river." “You staged that a little clumsily.' Galesbourne,” smiled Sir Hallard, tap-j ping the edge of the desk with his pencil. ]

“I was too rattled to take much pains by that time, sir,” the prisoner assured , him. “Still. I think we might have got away, if my wife hadn’t made that j fatal -slip and left Ikey’s address at , the Kensington post office. It was , that which did us.” i "Just one of those little slips, Hop- , ton." remarked the Commissioner, adI justing his monocle. “That’s true, sir,” agreed the detective reflectively. , “We settled down quite comfortably at Frost’s,” tne prisoner continued. “When to my horror, I saw Inspector ■ Hopton looking in at the window one day, and at once recognised him, in spite of his disguise.” “You needn’t trouble to repeat your clever stunt with the cupboard,” Hop•J .ton interjected. “What happened after j you left Frost to kill me with that poison gas?” “The arrangement was that I should return in an hour’s time and help Ikey to dispose of your body,” Galesbourne replied. “But I happened to meet one of his pals —the. man who’d helped me ■ over the suicide stunt, and he told me Ikey had been murdered. I knew perfectly well who was responsible for the crime, for I’d foolishly told ‘Red Dave’ about the naturalist’s place some days before he went queer. I suppose he must have found we’d quitted the vicarage and realised v/c'd made for Frost’s.” “This Red Dave seems to have been pretty shewd in spite of his madness,” comm'ented the Commissioner. “His reasoning powers weren’t much affected apparently” “He was a homicidal maniac with an imagined grievance against us all,” replied Galesbourne. “Apart from that I he was abnormally sane and cunning.” “Well, go on,” suggested Sir Hallard. “Our one hope now was to get back abroad, and I got my wife and old Smith in at a lodging-house in Kennington while I scoured Soho each evening in hopes of finding a chap I knew who could smuggle us out of England without too many questions being asked. I’d been busy doing that ( with Smith —when I came back that morning—and—you know what I i found, inspector'. Foi’ the first time during his long .

statement the man’s voice quivered with emotion, and he paused irresolutely in his narrative. “Yes, I know,” Hopton replied. “Red Dave was an expert knifethrower. I knew he’d done it in a moment, and from that time on my one idea was to get even with the little rat. Oh, I knew he was as mad as a March hare, but when he butchered my girl—my best pal in the world — oh, my God!” His voice tapered off and ended in a half-stifled sob. After a painful pause he went on again. “I was mad for a bit —don’t know what happened or where Smith went, and the next thing I remembered lucidly was ringing at Miss Ferrier’s bell. She was a friend of my wife,s and took me in for the sake of old times. I stayed there in hiding until you came and arrested me.”

“And that’s all?” inquired the Chief, sitting back in his chair and putting down the pencil. “I can’t think of anything else except that the vicar’s dog ‘Spot’ recognised I wasn’t his master and bit me. You can’t deceive animals, Sir Hallard.” “No,” agreed the Commissioner. “Anything else you want to ask, inspector?” “No, I think not, sir,” replied Hopton. \ , “Carlingford?” “Yes, sir,” answered the Divisional Detective-Inspector. “I’ve reason Ito believe the prisoner and his friends were responsible for the bomb explosion in my office at Lambeth Police Station.”

“Oh, yes, I can explain that,” replied Galesbourne wearily. “You remember I told you that Scutt got a pretty large sum out of me by blackmail?” “Um,” nodded Sir Hallard. “I imagined he was drinking it as fast as he received it,” continued the prisoner. “But after his death it turned out that he was using some of it to buy stolen property.” “Oh, he was a ‘fence,’ was he?" inquired Carlingford. “Dealing in stol-en-goods, eh?” “It appears he’d advanced a certain well-known burglar, whose name I can’t tell you lor obvious reasons, 35 quid on a very beautiful diamond which was part of the loot taken from Lady June Lanmore’s house in Knightsbridge, three months ago ”

“By George, is that where it came from?” Sii’ Hallard broke in. “One of the famous Lanmore stones, eh?” "You know about it, sir?” asked Galesbourne. “Go on,” answered the Chief without replying to the question. “Well, it seems Scutt was rather worried about the diamond." said the prisoner. “You see. he had no place to hide it in, and eventually he got the idea of cutting one of the screws short that held that Yale lock on his door, and putting the stone into a hole behind the dummy screw, so to speak.” “How do you know all this?” asked Sir Hallard. “Scutl wrote it in the account of the diamond’s hiding place, replied the prisoner. “But where did the cut-off screw disappear to—why didn’t the officers find it and above all, where did the new screw, which was picked up at the other side of the room, come from?” mused Hopton thoughtfully. “Im afraid I can't say,” Galesbourne smiled. “I've no idea.” (To be Continued.)