The Angel of Terror by Edgar Wallace (black male authors TXT) 📕

just sit here and have a big think."

If she was uncomfortable before, she was really embarrassed now. The very sight of the door behind which old Jaggs sat having his "big think" was an irritation to her. She could not sleep for a long time that night for thinking of him sitting in the darkness, and "listening" as he put it, and had firmly resolved on ending a condition of affairs which was particularly distasteful to her, when she fell asleep.

She woke when the maid brought her tea, to learn that Jaggs had gone.

The maid, too, had her views on the "old gentleman." She hadn't slept all night for the thought of him, she said, though probably this was an exaggeration.

The arrangement must end, thought Lydia, and she called at Jack Glover's office that afternoon to tell him so. Jack listened without comment until she had finished.

"I'm sorry he is worrying you, but you'll get used to him in time, and I should be obliged if you kept him for a month. You would relieve me of a lot of anxiety."

At first she was determined to have her way, but he was so persistent, so pleading, that eventually she surrendered.

Lucy, the new maid, however, was not so easily convinced.

"I don't like it, miss," she said, "he's just like an old tramp, and I'm sure we shall be murdered in our beds."

"How cheerful you are, Lucy," laughed Lydia. "Of course, there is no danger from Mr. Jaggs, and he really was very useful to me."

The girl grumbled and assented a little sulkily, and Lydia had a feeling that she was going to lose a good servant. In this she was not mistaken.

Old Jaggs called at half-past nine that night, and was admitted by the maid, who stalked in front of him and opened his door.

"There's your room," she snapped, "and I'd rather have your room than your company."

"Would you, miss?" wheezed Jaggs, and Lydia, attracted by the sound of voices, came to the door and listened with some amusement.

"Lord, bless me life, it ain't a bad room, either. Put the light out, my dear, I don't like light. I like 'em dark, like them little cells in Holloway prison, where you were took two years ago for robbing your missus."

Lydia's smile left her face. She heard the girl gasp.

"You old liar!" she hissed.

"Lucy Jones you call yourself—you used to be Mary Welch in them days," chuckled old Jaggs.

"I'm not going to be insulted," almost screamed Lucy, though there was a note of fear in her strident voice. "I'm going to leave to-night."

"No you ain't, my dear," said old Jaggs complacently. "You're going to sleep here to-night, and you're going to leave in the morning. If you try to get out of that door before I let you, you'll be pinched."

"They've got nothing against me," the girl was betrayed into saying.

"False characters, my dear. Pretending to come from the agency, when you didn't. That's another crime. Lord bless your heart, I've got enough against you to put you in jail for a year."

Lydia came forward.

"What is this you're saying about my maid?"

"Good evening, ma'am."

The old man knuckled his forehead.

"I'm just having an argument with your young lady."

"Do you say she is a thief?"

"Of course she is, miss," said Jaggs scornfully. "You ask her!"

But Lucy had gone into her room, slammed the door and locked it.

The next morning when Lydia woke, the flat was empty, save for herself. But she had hardly finished dressing when there came a knock at the door, and a trim, fresh-looking country girl, with an expansive smile and a look of good cheer that warmed Lydia's heart, appeared.

"You're the lady that wants a maid, ma'am, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Lydia in surprise. "But who sent you?"

"I was telegraphed for yesterday, ma'am, from the country."

"Come in," said Lydia helplessly.

"Isn't it right?" asked the girl a little disappointedly. "They sent me my fare. I came up by the first train."

"It is quite all right," said Lydia, "only I'm wondering who is running this flat, me or Mr. Jaggs?"

Chapter XI

Jean Briggerland had spent a very busy afternoon. There had been a string of callers at the handsome house in Berkeley Street.

Mr. Briggerland was of a philanthropic bent, and had instituted a club in the East End of London which was intended to raise the moral tone of Limehouse, Wapping, Poplar and the adjacent districts. It was started without ostentation with a man named Faire as general manager. Mr. Faire had had in his lifetime several hectic contests with the police, in which he had been invariably the loser. And it was in his role as a reformed character that he undertook the management of this social uplift club.

Well-meaning police officials had warned Mr. Briggerland that Faire had a bad character. Mr. Briggerland listened, was grateful for the warning, but explained that Faire had come under the influence of the new uplift movement, and from henceforward he would be an exemplary citizen. Later, the police had occasion to extend their warning to its founder. The club was being used by known criminal characters; men who had already been in jail and were qualifying for a return visit.

Again Mr. Briggerland pointed to the object of the institution which was to bring bad men into the society of good men and women, and to arouse in them a desire for better things. He quoted a famous text with great effect. But still the police were unconvinced.

It was the practice of Miss Jean Briggerland to receive selected members of the club and to entertain them at tea in Berkeley Street. Her friends thought it was very "sweet" and very "daring," and wondered whether she wasn't afraid of catching some kind of disease peculiar to the East End of London. But Jean did not worry about such things. On this afternoon, after the last of her callers had gone, she went down to the little morning-room where such entertainments occurred and found two men, who rose awkwardly as she entered.

The gentle influence of the club had not made them look anything but what they were. "Jail-bird" was written all over them.

"I'm very glad you men have come," said Jean sweetly. "Mr. Hoggins——"

"That's me, miss," said one, with a grin.

"And Mr. Talmot."

The second man showed his teeth.

"I'm always glad to see members of the club," said Jean busy with the teapot, "especially men who have had so bad a time as you have. You have only just come out of prison, haven't you, Mr. Hoggins?" she asked innocently.

Hoggins went red and coughed.

"Yes, miss," he said huskily and added inconsequently, "I didn't do it!"

"I'm sure you were innocent," she said with a smile of sympathy, "and really if you were guilty I don't think you men are so much to blame. Look what a bad time you have! What disadvantages you suffer, whilst here in the West End people are wasting money that really ought to go to your wives and children."

"That's right," said Mr. Hoggins.

"There's a girl I know who is tremendously rich," Jean prattled on. "She lives at 84, Cavendish Mansions, just on the top floor, and, of course, she's very foolish to sleep with her windows open, especially as people could get down from the roof—there is a fire escape there. She always has a lot of jewellery—keeps it under her pillow I think, and there is generally a few hundred pounds scattered about the bedroom. Now that is what I call putting temptation in the way of the weak."

She lifted her blue eyes, saw the glitter in the man's eyes and went on.

"I've told her lots of times that there is danger, but she only laughs. There is an old man who sleeps in the house—quite a feeble old man who has only the use of one arm. Of course, if she cried out, I suppose he would come to her rescue, but then a real burglar wouldn't let her cry out, would he?" she asked.

The two men looked at one another.

"No," breathed one.

"Especially as they could get clean away if they were clever," said Jean, "and it isn't likely that they would leave her in a condition to betray them, is it?"

Mr. Hoggins cleared his throat.

"It's not very likely, miss," he said.

Jean shrugged her shoulders.

"Women do these things, and then they blame the poor man to whom a thousand pounds would be a fortune because he comes and takes it. Personally, I should not like to live at 84, Cavendish Mansions."

"84, Cavendish Mansions," murmured Mr. Hoggins absent-mindedly.

His last sentence had been one of ten years' penal servitude. His next sentence would be for life. Nobody knew this better than Jean Briggerland as she went on to talk of the club and of the wonderful work which it was doing.

She dismissed her visitors and went back to her sitting-room. As she turned to go up the stairway her maid intercepted her.

"Mary is in your room, miss," she said in a low voice.

Jean frowned but made no reply.

The woman who stood awkwardly in the centre of the room awaiting the girl, greeted her with an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry, miss," she said, "but I lost my job this morning. That old man spotted me. He's a split—a detective."

Jean Briggerland regarded her with an unmoved face save that her beautiful mouth took on the pathetic little droop which had excited the pity of a judge and an army of lawyers.

"When did this happen?" she asked.

"Last night, miss. He came and I got a bit cheeky to him, and he turned on me, the old devil, and told me my real name and that I'd got the job by forging recommendations."

Jean sat down slowly in the padded Venetian chair before her writing table.

"Jaggs?" she asked.

"Yes, miss."

"And why didn't you come here at once?"

"I thought I might be followed, miss."

The girl bit her lip and nodded.

"You did quite right," she said, and then after a moment's reflection, "We shall be in Paris next week. You had better go by the night train and wait for us at the flat."

She gave the maid some money and after she had gone, sat for an hour before the fire looking into its red depths.

She rose at last a little stiffly, pulled the heavy silken curtain across the windows and switched on the light, and there was a smile on her face that was very beautiful to see. For in that hour came an inspiration.

She sought her father in his study and told him her plan, and he blanched and shivered with the very horror of it.

Chapter XII

Mr. Briggerland, it seemed, had some other object in life than the regeneration of the criminal classes. He was a sociologist—a loose title which covers a great deal of inquisitive investigation into other people's affairs. Moreover, he had published a book on the subject. His name was on the title page and the book had been reviewed to his credit; though in truth he did no more than suggest the title, the work in question having been carried out by a writer on the subject who, for a consideration, had allowed Mr. Briggerland to adopt the child of his brain.

On a morning when pale yellow sunlight brightened his dining-room, Mr. Briggerland put down his newspaper and looked across the table at his daughter. He had a club in the East End of London and his manager had telephoned that morning sending a somewhat unhappy report.

"Do you remember that man Talmot, my dear?" he asked.

She nodded, and looked up quickly.

"Yes, what about him?"

"He's in hospital," said Mr. Briggerland. "I fear that he and Hoggins were engaged in some nefarious plan and that in making an attempt