CHAPTER XVI

SENSATION OUT OF COURT

Storm returned to meet the lazily inquiring gaze of Inspector Teal. Teal was far too ponderous a man to be swayed by the emotions of the thin-flanked herd, but it was obvious that puzzlement was seething within his placid bulk--the symptom was the exaggerated precision with which his jaws chewed from side to side the plastic sweetmeat of Mr. Wrigley--and Storm was privately amused.

"What was his secret?" demanded the detective with assumed languor, when after some time the information had not been volunteered.

"Oh--Prester John sent you his love," Storm replied truthfully but uncertainly. "He didn't dare give it you in person!"

Mr. Teal's recumbent mountainousness heaved with an explosive grunt which registered unbelief.

They parted, for Storm had a luncheon engagement for which he did not wish to be unpunctual. He met Susan at the portals of the Regal, and thought that he had rarely seen her looking so beautiful. Being gloriously ignorant of the niceties of feminine apparel, he received from her dress no other impression than that it suited her to perfection. In her smart costume of plain bisque, relieved only by the daring splash of green where a flowing kerchief was knotted loosely at the throat of her white silk undertunic, she was piquantly beautiful. The bright sunshine lit up her smiling face, and its searching brilliance at once absolved her red lips and the faint flush of health on her cheeks from all accusation of artifice.

They made a striking couple.

Her loveliness was none of that pink-and-white fragility to which a certain type of Frenchwoman aspires--prettiness which is at one and the same glance irresistibly attractive and yet so obviously unfitted for any locale but the drawing-room and the Poiret gown. She was essentially a girl of the open spaces, with the lithe, free grace of carriage and the delicate browning of a clear skin which come only with a perfectly functioning body bred of, and to, the love of plenty of exercise in the eye of the sun and in the breath of the wind. And Storm fitted her perfectly, being a man good to look upon and finely built, and having a boyish love of laughter always lurking in his steady eyes to counteract the first impression of hardness you got from the squareness of his jaw and the vigorous set of his mouth. Outstanding at once by the lissom poise of his athletic figure, with just that indefinable air of restraint about him which is the infallible sign of a tremendously dynamic vitality controlled and directed by a dominant will.

He had meant to talk to her gravely, warning her of the dangers she was running, and pointing out the foolhardiness of her last night's adventure. She, for her part, had made up her mind to laugh at his fears and complain of his selfishness in keeping all the thrills for himself. He had meant to be firm: she had meant to be defiant. Somehow, neither programme produced according to schedule.

"Who was the man you recognized last night?" he asked her point blank, and her resolutions crumbled so weakly that she hated herself.

"The man we saw when we had that motor accident," she answered meekly. "Mattock, I think you called him."

Storm had known that, unless she was bluffing, it must have been one of three men, and he annoyed her afresh by the coolness with which he received the report.

"He's an enterprising man," he murmured, passing his cigarette case across the table. "One of these days there'll be trouble for James--you wager the haberdashery on uncle!"

"Aren't you interested?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Fairly! I know nearly everything there is to be known about Mattock. At the moment, I'm betting in my mind which'll die first--James Norman or Oscar Siegfried. That problem, however, is reserved strictly for office hours, and this is my lunch interval. What're you going to do about a job now Papa Hannassay is with the majority?"

"I don't know that I need one," she said surprisingly. "He's left me everything. I heard from the solicitors this morning."

Storm bit his lip.

"How much?"

The bluntness of his question made her stare at him. She found him unaccountably irritating that afternoon, and had half a mind to snub him, but she decided that that might be a failure. He had an amused way of laughing at people who stood on their dignity which was absolutely impossible to deal with.

"Ten thousand odd--if you're so desperately interested," she said frigidly, and was speedily disconcerted.

His eyes danced with quiet mockery.

"I am. Desperately interested," he assured her, and his smile swept pettiness out of existence. "Susan, don't be small! It's an important question, because I always understood old Pop Hannassay was rich."

"Don't be irreverent," she said severely. "_De mortuis_----"

"_Nil nisi ludicrum_. And how about the dead what die in their sins?"

She opened her bag and handed him the letter. He read it through carefully, and then made a note of the address of the solicitors.'

"Bylom, Craill and Bylom, Suffolk House, Lester Street, Strand. I'll see 'em this afternoon. Ten thousand! Jerusalem--a few years ago old Daddy--sorry, Susan!--Lord Hannassay was worth about half a million. You ought to be rich, instead of the unreasonably proud heiress to a paltry ten thousand!"

"How do you know all this?" she asked in wonder.

He was not disposed to enlighten her at that moment.

"There's damn little I don't know!" he boasted airily. "The snag is, it's going to take me all my time to remove just those little scraps of ignorance!" He looked at her for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, and then dropped a bolt from the blue: "When can you be married?"

Her face went blank.

He disregarded all the time-honoured laws governing the proper setting, manner and preliminaries for such questions. Twice he had made love to her--once, years ago, in his breezy, inconsequent manner in the kitchen of the Presidential Palace of Olvidada; for the second time, on that night when he had driven her home from Raegenssen's. And when he made love he was irresistible. On the whole, it was a proposition he should by rights have put forward long ago; yet, now that he had put it forward, the suddenness seemed alarming. It caused a queer constriction about her heart, and at the same time it brought to a head the vague and formless anger that had troubled her all day. He had been almost insulting--he broke every accepted canon for proposals. In fact, he did not propose at all: he took her for granted, and she was furious.

"Married to whom?" she asked with dangerous obtuseness.

"To me, of course."

The perplexed lift of her straight brows was perfectly done.

"I don't understand. Why should I marry you?"

His eyes held hers, and at the back of that clear gaze she saw a glint of comprehension and, coincidently, of good-humoured reproof which was maddening. Without batting an eyelid, he suggested a sympathetic elder amusedly tolerating the peevishness of a child.

"I really don't know," he said coolly. "It occurred to me you might like to. Besides, you love me."

The man's audacity stunned her. In her consternation it was some time before she could find suitable words wherewith to administer a stinging rebuke, and the effort was not diminished by the knowledge that he had spoken nothing but the truth.

"You flatter yourself," she said coldly, and he smiled.

"You flatter me," was his quick response. "Now, for the love of Mike don't boil over with rage--not till we've finished eating, anyway. Squabbling at meal times is so horribly bad for the digestion! You wouldn't like me to utter a loud shriek and collapse on the floor, clasping my diaphragm--a young man stricken down in his prime with dyspepsia--would you?"

Her retort had simply glanced off the armour of his confidence. The edge of it had cut rather less ice than would cover a sixpence. He might have done no more than ask her to go to the theatre with him, and agreed to wait for an answer until she had consulted her engagement book. He was--Good Lord! He was actually _humouring_ her!

"You're mistaken--you won't refuse ever to see me again," he said, and, looking up, she saw that his eyes were still upon her, and knew that he had read her thoughts. And then he switched from the subject with the abruptness of the turning off of a tap: "How's Terry these days? D'you remember the X Esquire case? Old Terry was in that, though it never came out."

He continued blithely to recount the story in that staccato, jerky way he had of speaking, and she had to listen in spite of herself.

He could be a delightful _raconteur_--he had the happy knack of coining spontaneous phrases which had the punch of mule kicks. Gradually, so gently that she never noticed it, he thawed her out of her attitude of barely polite attention. Coffee was on the table before she realised how the time was flying. And, as she took the final cigarette he offered her, light dawned. Why had she been snappy? Because she had had so little sleep the night before, and tiredness had frayed her temper at the corners. Why should she vent her bad temper on him? Because ... because she'd read in the morning paper about the fight in Billingsgate (and she'd never even asked him about it--what must he think of her for that?) ... and she'd had her eyes opened to the danger he was in--and because there was some of _her_, something infinitely precious, going with him into every peril he encountered.... _Because, for days, she had longed for him to want to marry her...._

Understanding of herself came as a shock, but it did not break her resolution--merely turned it in another direction. He must have his lesson. He must learn that methods which battered a Board of Enquiry into submission (she had had that anecdote retailed to her with great gusto by Bill Kennedy himself when that genial Assistant Commissioner dropped in for a nightcap with Terry) would not have the same effect upon her.

She was still strong in this decision when they prepared to leave, and, when he had paid the bill and was waiting for his change, he had this fact demonstrated to him.

"For the last time but----" He paused and studied the end of his cigarette meditatively. "But two--for the last time but two, Susan, when will you marry me?"

"Never," she said, and hoped she sounded inflexible.

His eyes danced. His optimistic egotism was unshakeable.

"Sure?"

"I've given you my answer," she said, straining to be haughty in the face of that sunny smile. "So please don't ask me the other two times."

"I shan't forget," he promised ambiguously. "But hear me, Susan! Unless you come and ask me to marry you before midnight you'll sleep in a Vine Street cell, probably!"

She stared.

"What for?"

"Safety," he said soberly. "It all depends on whether a certain gentleman now in custody gets clear as he's promised. Now think!"

That evening, before he went to dinner, he made his last arrangements for the guarding of Lew Mecklen. He made a personal inspection of the cell, "fanned" the gunman himself for additional assurance in case he should have succeeded in concealing a weapon, and appointed three men with over ten years' service to watch the man, with three others to relieve them at 2 a.m. He left a last warning.

"If Lew gets away, somebody's hopes of promotion'll be gone for ever! Anything that's sent in to him is to be kept from him until after I've seen it to-morrow morning. He's not to have the privilege of ordering anything whatever from outside--you can tell him all his money's gone to pay his hospital bill. Nobody is to be allowed to enter the cell--don't even go in yourselves, unless he looks like dying. That's all. If the Triangle scores again, I should say the Chief Commissioner'll crucify every man in C Division with his own hands!"

It was perhaps lucky for several people that Storm had exaggerated the brutality of Sir Brodie Smethurst.

The circumstances, as far as one can collate the depositions of those concerned, were as follows:

About nine p.m. that night Police Constable C811, who was standing at the corner of Marshall Street and Broad Street, was approached by a bulky ruffian whose dissonant caterwauling was clearly a public nuisance. On being requested to desist, the large one smote C811 with some strength and his boot, even upon the shins, and was promptly taken into custody. Leading his captive up Marshall Street, C811 met three other musicians who, linked arm in arm, were making the night air hideous with their attempts to harmonise _Rose in the Bud_ and _Annie Laurie_. C811 told them to shut up, whereupon the three ranged themselves in line before him, chorused a hearty _tu quoque_ plus a vulgar expletive, and switched over to a pathetic rendering, in comparative unison, of Tosti's _Good-bye_. They also were added to the bag, and the four were shot into the charge room of Marlborough Street Police Station, certified drunk and accused of being disorderly withal, and locked up to await judgment in the morning.

They had scarcely been removed to the cells when Police Constable C796 arrived, having in tow two troubadours looking distinctly the worse for wear, whom he charged with conducting a free fight in Regent Street in the course of which they smashed a shop window. They also were placed in durance vile.

Meantime, four husky specimens, who looked like farm hands in London for the day, had drawn up in line before the station entrance, teetering somewhat unstably on their heels, and had commenced to regale the man on duty at the door with _Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag_--a subtle jest which was not appreciated until later. After enduring their immelodious advice for some minutes, the doorkeeper descended the steps and invited the four bards to move on. The man who seemed to be the leader of the troupe failed to understand.

"Move on?" he hiccuped, swaying slightly. "Norra bi'vit _hic!_ Thish--thish, of'cer--thish"---he tapped the Law solemnly on the thorax--"_hic!_ thish commun'ty singin'. Finesthingin--_hic!_--England. Go 'way. Don' spoil gai'ty vnations." He turned to his waiting choir. "Nowthnboys--sh-show thish of'cer wotchen _hic!_ do. Now. Al'gether."

Whereon the welkin of Marlborough Street rang with a cacophonous interpretation of _Three o'Clock in the Morning_, the chronological inaccuracy of which ancient ditty they appeared to perceive, for they made of it an apologetically discordant dirge. After three more unavailing efforts to make them cease their serenade, or to inflict it on another thoroughfare, the door-keeper arrested them, and they were marched into the station still wailing the refrain of that touching ballad _Bye Bye, Blackbird_.

And now a problem arose. No police station has more than seven cells, and by then all those at Marlborough Street were occupied. Appealed to for instructions, the Divisional Inspector scratched his head, for more than one prisoner cannot be placed in the same cell except during riots. The four songsters, having been roughly searched and charged, were now lined up at one end of the charge room abiding the Inspector's decision on this knotty point, and their persistent warbling was not helpful.

"... When somebaaaady waits for meee (Shoogar's sweet, saow is sheee), Baaaye-baaaye, blackburrrd. Naowone used to laave 'rr understaaand meee, Naowone knows----"

"SHUT UP!" bellowed the frantic Inspector, whom this ghastly vocalism was rapidly driving to the verge of insanity, and added a virulent commination.

He telephoned to Vine Street, only to learn that the more aristocratic police station was already full. Unwisely, he chose to exercise his own authority without appealing to headquarters.

"... Make maaye bed 'n' laaaight the laaaight, Aiyull be home late to-naaight, Blackburrrd, Baaaye-baaaye!"

The lullaby howled on to an appallingly strident conclusion, and the chanticleers, without tarrying for applause, swept on to an ear-splitting prayer that they might be permitted to join their lost loves upon the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.

"If this doesn't constitute a riot, God knows what does," squealed the Inspector in anguish. "TAKE 'EM AWAY!!"

The four were sent to join their fellow-choristers in the bonny, bonny cells of Marlborough Street. Even that did not end the torment of C Division, for within the next half-hour they accumulated three more psalmists and two men who had endeavoured to capture a policeman's helmet. Towards ten o'clock, a man in a small two-seater car drove down Marlborough Street, turned his car at right angles across the road, and shouted to the constable at the station entrance to stand clear, explaining that he was going to drive right in. He even tried to carry out his threat, and when they went out to him they found that he was very drunk. What was more, he was the only one of the night's captures whom the Divisional Inspector knew by sight.

"You're James Mattock," he said reproachfully. "Jimmy, we thought you'd gone respectable."

Mattock shook his head, staggering a little. There was a fatuous grin on his face.

"James--sh--nothin'!" he protested loudly. "Lis'en. Tell you ... secret. I'm Queen 'f Sheba."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself--an old man like you," said the Inspector sadly. "Take him away."

With that the influx ceased, and when a humdrum burglar was brought in the Inspector sent him on to Vine Street, feeling that his own preserves were already overstocked. There were now sixteen men divided in between the six vacant cells, and that their lubrication had been thorough was proved by the fact that muffled yelps of carolling still came through the charge room door. It was impossible to subdue the uproar, and the reserve P.C., whose duty it is to make a round of the cells at half-hour intervals, was pleading to be allowed to use chloroform.

About two a.m., when the vociferation was become slightly hoarse and rather less enthusiastic, the reserve constable was making the round when from one of the further cells came a shuddering cry and the thud of a heavy fall. Running down the corridor, the constable found that it came from one of the cells where three men were herded together. One of them lay twitching on the ground, and the other two were watching him helplessly.

"'Ad a fit," one of them muttered; and, seeing the gaoler, added: "Fetch a doctor--Bert 'as these fits. 'Orrible, it is."

It was just at this moment, as far as one can gather, that a powerful lorry drew up by the kerb, almost opposite the station but on the other side of the road, and one of the men descended and lifted the bonnet as though to investigate a breakdown. The constable at the station entrance saw the incident, but thought nothing of it.

The reserve P.C., meanwhile, not knowing what to do, called the relief Inspector, and together they entered the cell.

Both were promptly killed.

The three man who were guarding Mecklen rushed down the passage at the sound of the shots and were faced by the three prisoners--the epileptic having made a miraculous recovery--and threatened with automatic pistols. They were brave men, these three constables. Or else, perhaps, they did not expect the three toughs to shoot. Be that as it may, they continued to advance, and were shot down in cold blood.

The prisoners now moved swiftly. They took the cell keys from the dead bodies and released the other prisoners, all of whom were armed. Already there was a tumult in the charge room, and the sixteen, with Mecklen, burst in upon a dozen or so officers, only two of whom had had the time or forethought to arm themselves. The two died in their tracks before they had time to fire a shot, and the others paused aghast. In another second the seventeen men were streaming across the road to the waiting lorry, the hind-most firing random bullets backwards to discourage pursuit. They piled in, and the lorry moved off, gathering speed, to the accompaniment of a final volley from the escaped prisoners. Before the pursuing constables, who were now armed, could return the fusillade, the lorry had turned a corner and disappeared.

The Flying Squad and all reserves of every Division were called out, and those first on the scene commandeered cars and taxis and dashed off in chase, but the seventeen, with their lorry, got clean away. As has been stated, the P.C. at the door had not taken much notice of the lorry, and its number plates had been so caked with mud as to be indecipherable from across the road, in the dim light. And, standing midway between two street lamps, at night, one big lorry looks very much like another--the doorkeeper was unable even to identify the make with certainty, although he thought it looked like a Rossleigh.

But the most remarkable feature of the crime was its execution. For one thing, it proved that the Alpha Triangle had an unusually accurate knowledge of police station routine. In the first place, ordinary "drunks and disorderlies," being apparently harmless and charged only with minor offences, are not perfunctorily "fanned." As was demonstrated at the subsequent inquiry, it would have been possible for a man not suspected of carrying arms to have concealed a small automatic pistol in a holster strapped to the small of his back, with little risk of it being discovered in a more or less formal search; and in the absence of definite information this theory is the one which is now universally admitted satisfactorily to account for the Triangle's success. Secondly, the locks of the cell doors, and those of the doors leading from the charge room to the cells, can only be opened by a special manipulation of the keys which is a police secret; yet the prisoners had clearly been well instructed in this trick beforehand by someone with an intimate knowledge of that secret, for there was no delay in liberating the occupants of the other cells.

The third curious point was that Mattock was found in his cell efficiently gagged and bound with strips of his own shirt. His explanation that he had been set upon and trussed by the two who shared his confinement, just before the prisoners made their escape, was accepted. Experts declared that he could not possibly have tied himself up so thoroughly, and no one had seen him in the affray; furthermore, the head waiter of the Leroy swore that Mattock had entered the bar late that evening, already more than a trifle "oiled," and had imbibed continuously until closing time. Mattock was fined for being drunk in charge of a motor-car, and was discharged on the other count.

It was a verdict which did not please Inspector Teal, for he could have sworn that the ghost of a wink trembled on Mattock's right eyelid as the clerk left the court.