The Clue of the Silver Key by Edgar Wallace (ereader android .TXT) 📕
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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a fact which had not previously been revealed.
The antecedents of Wells had been investigated during the day and he had
been given a clean bill by a man whose chief desire was to find the most
damning evidence against him.
Smith was due at Scotland Yard for a conference at four o’clock. He hated
conferences, where people sat round and smoked and expressed extravagant
views on subjects they knew nothing about. But on this occasion, the
first time for many years, he arrived promptly and had the satisfaction
of finding that his four colleagues were as barren of ideas as he. They
knew—and this was no discovery—that there was a possibility that this
was a new type of crime which might become prevalent. Desperadoes had
before now stolen cars, but had confined their operations to minor
out-of-town burglaries.
There was one scrap of news. A policeman patrolling Portland Place from
one of the mews behind had identified the body as that of a man to whom
he had spoken at a quarter to two, and this tallied with Smith’s own
knowledge, for at two o’clock he had seen Tickler walking down Regent
Street from the direction of Portland Place.
Curiously enough, though a familiar phenomenon to police investigators,
the policeman had said nothing about the drunken man in whose voice
Tickler had been interested. Nor, in his report, had he given so much as
a hint of that part of the conversation which revealed his knowledge of a
man against whom he had had a grudge, and who might conceivably have had
as deep an animosity towards him.
‘This tells me no more than I know,’ said Surefoot, putting down the
report. ‘Except that it is not true that Tickler ever had nine months;
all his sentences were shorter. Who killed this poor little hound? He was
broke, or nearly broke. I saw him stop to pick up a cigarette from the
sidewalk just before he came up to me. Who picked him up in the stolen
cab, and why?’
Fat McEwan leaned back in his well-filled chair and blew a trumpet of
smoke to the ceiling.
‘If there were such things as gangs you could guess it in at once,’ he
said despairingly.’ But there are no gangs. This man wasn’t even a nose,
was he, Surefoot?’ Surefoot shook his head. Tickler had never been that.
‘Then why the dickens should he have been killed? Tell me that.’
This was a fair summary of an hour’s discussion. Surefoot Smith went down
to his little office entirely unenlightened. He found a number of
letters, and one that had been posted at Westminster and had been
delivered that afternoon. The envelope was dirty; his address was
scrawled in an illiterate hand. He tore open the envelope and took out a
sheet of paper, obviously extracted from a memorandum book of the cheaper
kind. In pencil were the words:
‘If you want to know who killed poor Mr Tickler you’d better go and have
a talk with Mr L. Moran.’
Smith looked at the letter for a long time, and then: ‘Why not?’ he asked
himself aloud.
There were a great many things about Mr Moran that he could never quite
understand.
FAITH NEEDS THE garnishing of romance as much as hope requires the
support of courage. Mary Lane had faith in her future, courage to brace
the hope of ultimate achievement.
Otherwise she was without the more important and disastrous illusions
which do so much to create rosy prospects and unhappy memories.
She knew that some day she would be accepted by the West End of London as
an important actress, that her name would appear in lights outside a
theatre, but she never dreamed vain dreams of sudden fame, though, in the
nature of things, fame is as sudden as the transition of a sound sleeper
to wakefulness.
Some day the slumbering public would open its eyes and be aware of Mary
Lane. In the meantime it was oblivious of her existence—all except a few
wide-awake dramatic critics. These very few, having a weakness for
discovery, continuously swept the theatrical sky in search of nth
dimension stars which would one day (here the astronomical analogy became
absurd) blaze into the first dimension. Occasionally they ‘found’; more
often than not they made themselves ridiculous, but covered their failure
with well-designed fun poked at themselves and their own
enthusiasms—which is one of the tricks of their business.
It was only a half-hearted discovery so far as Mary was concerned. She
was a brighter speck in the nebula of young actresses. She might be (they
said) a very great actress some day, if she overcame her habit of
dropping her voice, if she learned how to use her hands. Mary strove
diligently, for she was at the age when dramatic critics seem infallible.
She did not dream unprofitably; never lay awake at night, imagining the
eruption of an agitated management into the dressing-room she shared with
two other girls.
‘You’re understudying Miss Fortescue, aren’t you? Get into her clothes
quickly; she’s been taken ill.’
She did not visualize newspaper columns acclaiming the young actress who
had found fame in a night. She knew that understudy performances, however
politely received, are as politely forgotten, and that a girl who grows
famous in an evening steps into oblivion between Saturday and Monday.
On the second morning after Washington Wirth’s party, she had a brief
interview with Mr Hervey Lyne on the subject of her allowance. It was not
a pleasant interview. None of her interviews with Mr Lyne had ever been
that.
‘If you go on the stage you must expect to starve!’ he snarled. ‘Your
fool of a father made me his executor and gave me full authority. Two
hundred and fifty a year is all that you get until you’re twenty-five.
And there’s nothing more to be said!’
She was very pretty and very angry, but she kept her temper admirably.
‘Thirty thousand brings in more than two hundred and fifty a year,’ she
said.
He glared in her direction; she was just a blotch of blue and pink to his
myopic vision.
‘It’s all you will get until you’re twenty-five—and then I’ll be glad to
get rid of you. And another thing, young lady: you’re a friend of my
nephew, Richard Allenby?’
Her chin went up. ‘Yes.’
He wagged a skinny forefinger at her. ‘He gets nothing from me—whether
I’m alive or dead. Understand that!’
She did not trust herself to reply.
Binny showed her out and was incoherently sympathetic.
‘Don’t worry, miss,’ he said in his dull voice; ‘he ain’t himself this
mornin’.’
She said nothing, hardly noticing Binny, who sighed heavily and wagged
his head mournfully as he shut the door. He was by way of being a
sentimentalist.
Ten minutes later she was talking vehemently over the telephone to Dick
Allenby. His sympathy was more acceptable.
People used to say about Hervey Lyne that he was the sort of character
that only Dickens could have drawn, which is discouraging to a lesser
chronicler. He was eccentric in appearance and habit; naturally, so,
because he was old and self-willed and had a vivid memory of his past
importance.
Everybody who was anybody had borrowed money from Hervey Lyne, and most
of them had paid it back with considerable interest. Unlike the late
‘Chippy’ Isaacs, as mild and pleasant a gentleman as ever issued money on
note of hand, Hervey was harsh, unconscionable and rude. But he was
quick.
The young men of yesterday who had given champagne suppers and had bet in
thousands on their horses, were sometimes in difficulties to find ready
money, and generally they chose Hervey first because they knew their fate
sooner than if they applied to Chippy.
Hervey said ‘No’ or ‘Yes’, and meant ‘No’ or ‘Yes’. You could go into
Hervey’s parlour in Naylors Crescent and either come out in five minutes
with the money you needed or in two minutes with the sure knowledge that
if you had stayed two hours you would not have persuaded him.
He gave up lending money when the trustees of the Duke of Crewdson’s
estate fought him in the Law Courts and lost. Hervey thought they would
win, and had the shock of his life. Thereafter he only lent very
occasionally, just as a gambler will play cards occasionally—and then
for small stakes—to recover something of the old thrill.
His attitude to the world can be briefly defined: the galley of his life
floated serenely on a sluggish sea of fools. His clients were fools; he
had never felt the least respect for any of them. They were fools to
borrow, fools to agree to enormous and staggering rates of interest,
fools to repay him.
Dick Allenby was a fool, a pottering inventor and an insolent cub who
hadn’t the brains to see on which side his bread was buttered. Mary Lane
was a fool, a posturing actress who painted her face and kicked her legs
about—he invariably employed this inelegant illustration—for a
pittance. One was his nephew, and might with tact have inherited a
million; the other was the daughter of his sometime partner and might,
had she been a good actress, have enjoyed the same inheritance—would
enjoy it yet if he could arouse himself from his surprising lethargy and
alter his will.
His servants were complete fools. Old Binny, bald, stout, perspiring, who
pushed his invalid chair into the park and read him to sleep, was a fool.
He might have taken a kindlier view of Binny and left him a hundred or so
‘for his unfailing loyalty and tireless services’, but Binny hummed hymn
tunes in the house and hummed them a key or so flat.
Not that Binny cared. He was a cheery soul with large eyes and a
completely bald head. A bit of a sluggard, whom his thin and whining
wife—who was also the cook of 17 Naylors Crescent—found a difficult man
to get out of bed in the mornings. Valet, confidential servant,
messenger, butler, chair-pusher and reader, Binny, alert or asleep, was
worth exactly three times as much wages as he received.
Old Hervey sat propped up in his armchair, glooming at the egg and toast
that had been put before him. His thin old face wore an expression of
discontent. The thick tinted glasses which hid the hard blue eyes were
staring at the tray, and his mind was far away.
‘Has that jackass of a detective called again?’
‘No, sir,’ said Binny. ‘You mean Mr Smith?’
‘I mean the fool that came to ask questions about that blackguard
Tickler,’ stormed the old man, emphasizing every sentence with a blow on
the table that set the cups rattling.
‘The man who was found in the cab—?’
‘You know who I mean,’ snarled the old man. ‘I suppose one of his
thieving friends killed him. It’s the sort of end a man like that would
come to.’
Hervey Lyne relapsed into silence, a scowl on his face. He wondered if
Binny was robbing him too. There had been a suspicious increase in the
grocery bill, lately, Binny’s explanation that the cost of food had gone
up being entirely unacceptable. And Binny was one of those smooth, smug,
crawling slaves who wouldn’t think twice about robbing an employer.
It was about time Binny was changed. He had hinted as much that morning,
and Binny had almost moaned his anguish.
‘It’s going to be a fine day, sir, for your outing.’
He stirred the contents of the teapot surreptitiously.
‘Don’t talk,’ snapped the
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