THE BODY IN THE CALLBOX

It was a room, second floor back, in Soho.

If that conjures up in your imagination a narrow box, meanly furnished, its wallpaper that had once been a Surrealist’s nightmare now—happily perhaps—shabby and faded, its floor bare but for a strip of cracked linoleum, then the picture you’ve formed in your mind isn’t far out. Add a battered iron bedstead, a dirty washstand in the corner, couple of rickety chairs, a glaring electric light bulb suspended overhead and the scene’s complete.

Not exactly the sort of room you’d wish on yourself for a long stay. Not that its occupants were habitually of the variety who stayed long in any room. They were transients. Ships that pass in the night. Here today and gone tomorrow. Could be this restlessness, amounting almost to a complex, on the part of many who rented this sort of room was merely the gratification of a repressed desire: on account of their long stretches spent in enclosed, barred spaces of narrow, restricted dimensions without being able to move on when they’d felt inclined.

As, for example, the present tenant of this second floor back, a character calling himself Louis Mayne. The smoke from his chain-smoked cigarettes had made the atmosphere so you could burn holes in it with a blowlamp. The fog was being added to by the cigarette drooping from the mouth-corner of a recent arrival, who wore a light-coloured snap-brim on the nape of his neck and sat astride one of the chairs. Louis sprawled on his bed, staring up at a peeling patch on the ceiling. He said:

“I tell you I’m goin’ to get him if it’s the last thing I do!”

The other leaned over the back of the chair pleadingly. “But listen, what’d be the good? You’ll only find yourself takin’ the eight o’clock jump. And for what?”

“Because while I was rotting on the Moor he took Lily away from me.”

“Aw, but Louis, there’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.”

“Maybe.” He spat out a bit of tobacco viciously. “But I don’t let anyone take from me what’s mine. Give us another drink.” His companion got to his feet and removed his and the other’s glass to the mantelpiece, which was adorned by a half-empty bottle of whisky and a soda-siphon.

“Well, I’m damned if I’d run my neck into a noose,” he said emphatically, as he mixed a drink and took it over, “for some skirt.” And added: “Who couldn’t have been so sweet on you, anyway.”

Louis glared at him balefully.

“She did care,” he said through his teeth. “Swore she’d wait till I got out. And then that smarming rat—” He broke off to take a gulp from his glass. Then he said: “An’ don’t be so sure I am taking such a helluva risk.”

“What d’you mean?”

For answer, Louis twisted round and lugged a revolver from under his pillow. It had a peculiarly long barrel. The other man stared at it, eyes bulging apprehensively.

“Where’d you get that?” he said hoarsely.

The answering grin was wolfish. “Never you mind. See this?” He patted the curious-looking barrel. “Silencer.” And pushed the revolver back under his bed.

His companion shook his head. “That won’t help you. I tell you they’ll get you for it.”

“I can take care of myself. But I’ll get him, you can bet your shirt on that.”

He gulped off his drink and lay back, staring up again at the patch on the ceiling, his eyes malevolent slits, his thin lips a twisted bitter line.

* * * *

Dusk was descending on Jermyn Street with the silence of a cat pouncing on a mouse as Jimmy Strange and Sandra came out of the ‘Mirrobar’ and turned down a side street towards the restaurant, where they had an appointment with a Lobster Thermidor. They walked quickly, for they were a little late, and the ‘Mirrobar’ cocktails had made them hungry, especially for Lobster Thermidor.

Jimmy was staring into Sandra’s eyes, which were bright starry in the twilight, when the sharp sound of breaking glass made him bring up his head with a jerk. It had come from a few yards in front of them, and he caught a glimpse of a dark figure hurrying off and disappearing into the shadows.

“What was that?” Sandra asked.

Jimmy didn’t answer. They were about to pass a callbox that stood on the kerb and he paused suddenly.

“Just a minute.” He turned to the telephone box and pulled open the door. As he stared down at the crumpled figure on the floor, he heard a voice, distorted and as if from far off, from the receiver, which was dangling at the end of its cord.

“Hello…? Hello…?”

With one movement he grabbed the receiver. It was a man speaking.

“Hello, who is it?”

It may have been only his imagination, coloured by the sight of the inert shape at his feet, but he thought the man sounded tense, anxious. Quickly he wrapped his handkerchief over the mouthpiece, muffling his voice.

“Hello?” he said.

“Is that you, Eddie?”

He hesitated a fraction. Then: “Eddie speaking.”

“You sound a bit funny. What’s wrong?”

“Sore throat.”

“Oh. Where you been?”

“I—er—was delayed.” He contrived to flash a reassuring look to Sandra, who, with an air of resigned bewilderment, waited a couple of yards away. He hoped she wouldn’t decide to come and inquire more closely into what he’d meant by suddenly shooting off to the telephone like that. She wasn’t used to seeing bodies lying around. The voice in his ear was saying;

“Well, anyway, I can’t see you tonight… And listen… I got bad news for you, Eddie… Louis is out.”

“Louis?” Obviously the name was supposed to carry some special significance.

“Came back from the Moor yesterday,” the other went on. “Remission of sentence.”

Jimmy said: “So he’s out?”

“Yes.” Then meaningfully: “Thought you’d better know.”

“Er—thanks.” Adding: “When are you meeting him again?”

“Got a game o’ snooker with him tonight. The Greek Street Rooms.”

“I see… What time?”

The voice said after a moment’s hesitation: “About nine. But I’m telling you keep off the grass.”

“You’re telling me,” was all Jimmy could think up in reply to that.

“Ring me tomorrow, see. Maybe we’ll fix up something.”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” And he rang off.

Thoughtfully, Jimmy replaced the receiver. He paused to survey the body by the dim light of the callbox. In appearance the man was youngish, dark. Jimmy bent and expertly extracted a wallet from an inside pocket. It contained little of interest—except a name and address, obviously the dead man’s: Eddie Hill, Flat B, Soho Mansions…

Jimmy replaced the wallet and, his foot crushing two or three slivers of glass on the floor, stepped out. He glanced up and down the darkening little street. The distant rattle and hoot of a taxi in Jermyn Street, but no one in sight—except Sandra. Quickly he moved to her, ignored her questioning look, took her arm and walked a short distance, then stopped.

“Just what would this little pantomime be in aid of?” she asked, her tone excessively sweet.

He lit a cigarette. He said: “Afraid, darling, you’ll have to toy with that lobster on your little lonesome.”

“Charming,” she mocked him. “But charming!”

“Listen,” he said, and she caught a grimness round his mouth that wasn’t there before. “Something slightly unfunny’s happened. So be a nice baby and don’t argue.”

“I suppose you couldn’t tell me what’s bothering you?”

He sighed. “Such an inquisitive girl.”

“Coming from you, that’s practically amusing.”

He said: “There’s a body in that callbox. It’s extremely dead.”

She gave a little gasp of horror. “But how—?”

“Remember you asked me what that breaking glass was? Someone had shot him”—he nodded over his shoulder—“while he was phoning. Used a silent revolver.”

She shivered. “How horrible…”

He put his arm round her protectively and drew her close.

“Not nice,” he agreed. “I’ll have to find a cop. No need for you to be mixed up in it, so let’s park you at the restaurant first.”

Their destination was only a few steps farther on. They reached it quickly. At the door she said:

“How long will you be, Jimmy?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “As long as it’ll take to put a cop on the job. But you go ahead. Have a whacking great drink and forget what’s happened.”

She eyed him steadily. She said:

“Which of us are you supposed to be trying to kid, darling? You know darn well if I see you again tonight or even this week I’ll be lucky.” She caught her breath in a little sigh. “I wonder if this is how we’ll look to each other when it gets to the last time I shall see you?”

“You know me, darling, the old bad penny every time.”

She nodded, her eyes still searching his face. “But suppose,” she said, “just suppose…one time when you turn up, I shouldn’t happen to be waiting?”

He regarded her for a moment, his expression puzzled. He said: “Suppose, just suppose…we cross that bridge when we come to it.” Then his seriousness vanished and he grinned. “You go on in and get yourself on the right side of that drink. And keep one warm for me.” He was gone.

Only a stray cat shot out of a doorway as he retraced his steps swiftly, and a lonely taxi cruised past. He glanced into the telephone kiosk to reassure himself the body was still there, and continued on his way to the corner of Jermyn Street. On a corner diagonally opposite he spotted a policeman. He went across.

“Got a little job for you.”

The constable was a hefty individual with a genial expression. “You have, sir? And what may that be?”

“Body in callbox down that street.”

“Dead, I presume?” was the matter-of-fact response.

Jimmy nodded.

“Oh, well, in that case perhaps I had better look into it,” said the other amiably, producing a handkerchief and carefully blowing his nose. “Bit nippy for the time o’ year, isn’t it?” he observed conversationally as he accompanied Jimmy over to the other corner and down the narrow street.

As they went, Jimmy told him briefly how he’d heard the noise of breaking glass, noticed someone hurry off and had found the body. He avoided any reference to Sandra, or to his discovery of the dead man’s identity.

“Was it a man or woman, sir, you saw running away?”

“Man.”

“No chance of identifying him if you saw him again?”

“No chance.”

“H’mmmmm…” They reached the phone box and the policeman yanked the door open. He stood gazing down at the huddled figure with pursed lips. Pawing his chin reflectively, he turned to make the sententious comment: “Looks dead all right…” He broke off with an exclamation.

There was no one there.

“Blimey,” he said unnecessarily, “the blighter’s hopped it!” And in a tone of pained resentment: “Without so much as a ‘good evening’ to remember him by.”

Which was the way of Jimmy Strange when occasion required it.

The taxi he had grabbed on emerging from the shadows, which had separated him from the cop and the callbox, drew up outside Soho Mansions and he got out. He surveyed the building with a speculative eye. It stood in a not particularly salubrious neighbourhood and was a smallish, shabby-looking block of flats. There were shops on one side, on the other a delicatessen and an all-night café, whose varied odours of cooking lay unappetizingly heavy on the evening air.

Jimmy found the entrance to the flats, the door of which was slightly open. He pushed, but the door stuck hallway, and he went into the ill-lit hall. There was no lift and he went quickly up the stone stairs. He located Flat B on the top floor. There was a long pause before the door opened in answer to his ring. The blonde who faced him was hard-faced, hard-eyed and hard-voiced. Without taking the cigarette from her mouth, she said:

“What is it?”

Jimmy had quite decided views on the subject of feminine pulchritude and this one, though she was pretty enough, didn’t make much of an appeal to him. Too tough, and he didn’t like ’em that way. Life was tricky enough as it was with guys handing out the tough business, without women acting that way. They should be so you could relax with them. He told himself he could relax with this little number as easily as with a boa-constrictor.

All the same, it wasn’t like him to be ungenerous, so he gave her his warmest smile. “Forgive me for troubling you,” he murmured, “but this would be Mr. Eddie Hill’s flat?”

“He isn’t in, anyway.”

“I see… I wonder if I might talk to you a little—er—more privately?”

She stared at him, then down at his foot, which he’d unobtrusively placed inside the door. Her blue eyes as they met his again were like bits of very hard stone. He grinned at her disarmingly.

“All right,” she muttered.

As she closed the door and followed him into a small sitting room she seemed to soften somewhat. She said: “I’ve been waiting for him. He’s late. I wish he’d hurry.”

He thought he detected a note of agitation in her voice. He studied her with a long appraising look from beneath lowered eyelids. He calculated she didn’t know Eddie was no longer of this world and he thought she probably hadn’t had any hand in pushing him off into the next. From contemplation of her drooping lipstick-smudged cigarette, he looked round the room. He said:

“Nice little place he has here.”

She said:

“You a friend of Eddie’s?”

“Sort of.”

She sat down, crossing her legs, automatically exhibiting them to their best advantage. He’d been thinking there was a suggestion of weariness about her and then his gaze travelled to her legs. They were definitely alluring and he enjoyed looking at them.

She caught his glance and her lip curved mockingly.

“Make yourself at home,” she said.

He smiled at her agreeably.

“I was thinking,” he said.

Which was perfectly true. She eyed him up and down through a puff of cigarette smoke. She said:

“What’s your name?”

“Smith.”

She said slowly:

“One of the mysterious type, eh?”

“No, just careful.”

“What you got to be careful of?”

He was silent for a moment. He took a cigarette from his case, lit it, and exhaled abstractedly. He said, elaborately casual: “Oh…quite a few things a chap should be careful of.” He paused, regarded the tip of his cigarette.

“Such as?”

He answered her almost reluctantly. “Such as being shot in the back, for instance.”

There was a little pool of silence. Then her voice low and grating:

“What are you getting at?”

He looked at her.

“Does Eddie mean much to you?”

She stood up and faced him. “What’s happened to him? What’s happened to Eddie—?”

“I found him in a callbox off Jermyn Street.”

“Dead?”

He nodded. With a convulsive shudder she closed her eyes and swayed slightly. He watched her impassively. She might be putting on an act, he didn’t know. If she was he had to admit she was doing a nice job. He said;

“Can you use a drink?”

She muttered something that he took to be ‘yes’, and indicated a cupboard. He crossed to it with alacrity, produced a bottle of Scotch, syphon and glasses. He poured her a good shot and she took a long gulp. While he was mixing one for himself he suddenly wondered how Sandra would take it if ever anything happened to him.

The thought came to him smack out of the blue and he dismissed it as quickly. Must be growing morbid! He grinned to himself and glanced at his watch. Sandra would still be at the restaurant. He hoped she wasn’t feeling too bad about him. He’d phone her soon as he got out of this place.

Over the rim of his glass he said to the girl:

“I suppose you wouldn’t have any ideas about it?”

She answered him slowly, forcing the words out as if they tasted of the bitterness that consumed her.

“Louis did it. It was Louis.”

Jimmy said softly:

“The one who’s just out of Dartmoor?”

She nodded: “I heard tonight. I was going to warn Eddie.”

He glanced at her interrogatively.

“Warn him?”

“I used to be Louis’ girl.”

He knocked back his drink. So that’s how it was. He’d walked into as cosy a setup of sordid passion and hate as maybe. With murder tacked on for good value. He thought depressingly how much more improving for his mind would have been the Lobster Thermidor—and Sandra. He sighed. Ah well, he was in it, might just as well get on with it and out of it, making it snappy all the way. He put down his empty glass and contemplated it regretfully.

She was saying:

“Where is Eddie?”

Almost absently he said:

“The police.”

She stood close to him.

“You’re a dick, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been called all kinds of names.”

“You’ll fix Louis for this, won’t you?” she said fiercely. “You’ll fix the swine—” She broke off suddenly and slumped into a chair, stared at the floor with wide dazed eyes. “Eddie! Eddie!” she moaned. “I knew he’d get you! I knew he’d get you…!”

He thought it was time for him to beat it. He felt a cynical repugnance for the way the whole damned box of tricks was working out. The idea of dog biting dog never did appeal to him. That the ruthlessness of the underworld was never more callously unleashed than when the crook revenged himself against one of his own fraternity he well knew. But it wasn’t that so much—he was equally aware you didn’t have to dig so deep to learn how savagely the law of the jungle prevailed. Just scratch society’s upper crust, any place you chose, and you’d find it wasn’t so far behind the underworld when it came to the claw-and-talon business. He knew, too, Eddie had probably asked for it, though that didn’t square up with this Louis wiping him out. What really ate into him was the fact that a sordid story of jealousy and revenge, climaxing in murder, had been played around a tough little piece both men would have got sick to the stomach of sooner or later, anyway.

So Louis would get his, and within half a dozen Scotches after they’d given him his necktie the blonde would be fixing her makeup for the next guy.

He tapped the ash of his cigarette and said to her, his voice sharp-edged:

“Come on, take it easy. If it’ll make you feel any better, the ex-boyfriend’s got it coming to him, so everything will be cosy.”

A little later he slipped unobtrusively into the restaurant off Jermyn Street and sat down in front of Sandra. Her eyebrows were raised in surprised inquiry, her lovely mouth curved in an incredulous smile. She said:

“This is nice. Will you be staying long?”

He grinned back of her. He thought how good it was to look at her, how adorable she was. His heart felt lighter, and when the waiter put a large Scotch at his elbow it fairly floated on air. He said:

“Was going to phone you, matter of fact. Then remembered you might be missing me so thought I’d drop in.”

“Thanks for the memory. I presume you called to say you’ve got to hurry on your busy way and to apologize—I hope—for ruining my evening. Correct me if I’m talking utter nonsense, won’t you, darling?”

He took her hand.

“Sorry, precious, but that’s how it is.”

“Oh well, it’s heigh-ho for another early night. I’m told this asleep before midnight thing is wonderful for one’s looks. Personally I can’t quite get the idea of looking wonderful if no one’s looking at you!”

“There should be a crafty answer to that,” he said, “only it escapes me for the moment.”

“I know, darling,” she commiserated mockingly; “it must be awfully difficult for you to think witty thoughts when your mind’s all caught up with dead bodies in phone boxes and revolvers that don’t go bang.”

He was regarding her intently. Then very earnestly he said:

“Come to think of it, that early-to-bed stuff’s really got something. You are growing more lovely lately. Your hair, your eyes, your skin— there’s a certain extra beauty about them that’s been hitting me almost without realizing it.” He stared at her again in critical admiration, nodding his head in comprehension. “That’s what it is,” he murmured. “Just sleep. Wonderful.” He drained his glass. “Wonderful,” he said.

She patted an ostentatious little yawn.

“You must croon a lullaby over me sometime,” she said. “Just now if you’ll sing for a taxi it’ll do.”

He saw her into a taxi and gave the driver the address, then turned and cut through a side street, down the Haymarket, heading for Whitehall. The subtle scent she used clung to him as he walked quickly. Automatically he dusted his shoulder with his handkerchief, a tender little smile playing round his mouth.

Just off Whitehall is a small hostelry known to its large and discriminating clientele as ‘The Policeman’s Lot’. A not inappropriate name for a pub but a tankard’s throw from Scotland Yard, and which is frequented by officials during off-duty moments snatched from that respected institution in need of alcoholic solace or stimulation before repairing to their respective beats or other duties.

On occasion, too, ‘The Policeman’s Lot’ was an agreeable rendezvous for gentlemen who ordinarily pursued lines of business not entirely compatible with that followed by the keepers of the law. It was not impossible to find a character notorious for his predilection for the theory and practical demonstration of safe-cracking rubbing shoulders with a detective-sergeant. In fact, the interesting spectacle might sometimes be witnessed of a gentleman newly released from a sojourn behind prison walls celebrating that event by a return of drinks with none other than the officer who had been directly responsible for his incarceration. Or an official might lend an ear to a whisper of information from a furtive mouth tipping him off about some projected nefarious activity, which, acted upon, would produce gratifying results—for the police—and a discreet reward for the informer.

Jimmy glanced at his watch as he turned into ‘The Policeman’s Lot’ and gazed round the crowded bar expectantly. The man he sought should be present. He sighted the familiar figure hunched over a corner table, a half-empty glass before him. His bowler hat was tilted off his furrowed dome, and his eyes, beneath shaggy ginger brows, held a faraway look. He might be deep in philosophic contemplation, or he might be merely thinking of his supper. Or again, he might be thinking of nothing at all.

Jimmy grinned and sat down beside him.

“I’ll have a Scotch,” he said. “Large.”

Inspector Crow jerked his head up with a start. He regarded Jimmy with an expression that was distinctly hostile.

“What the ruddy hell are you doing here?” he snarled.

“Having a drink with you.”

The Inspector’s complexion went slightly mottled, then he drew a long shuddering breath. He turned to the man next to him, an aesthetic-looking individual, and grunted: “Buy the—er—gentleman a drink.”

Sergeant Warburton’s mouth compressed in prim protest, but he rose obediently.

“Bring me another beer,” Crow bawled after him, draining his glass with a noisy gulp and wiping a large hand across his mouth. To Jimmy he said heavily: “So what?”

“So this,” said Jimmy, producing Eddie Hill’s wallet.

The other glared at it suspiciously.

“It won’t bite,” Jimmy reassured him. “It’s imitation crocodile.”

Crow shot him a dirty look, took it. Opened it. Face expressionless he said:

“Where’d you pick this up?”

“Where’d you think?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

Jimmy smiled amiably. Said: “You must have been a beautiful baby, but most awfully spoilt.”

“All right,” growled the Inspector, with, for him, remarkable patience. “Where-did-you-get-it?”

“Off the owner.”

Crow gave him a sidelong glance. “Hill’s dead,” he muttered.

“Yours truly tripped over the body.”

“In the callbox.”

“Somebody’s been telling you things,” Jimmy mocked him.

“Why’d you disappear after tipping off the constable?”

“On account of I don’t much care for cops. Except one,” he added with a sweet smile, expressly for the other’s benefit.

“You haven’t come here for me to take care of this,” the Inspector muttered. “Or to tell me you like the colour of my eyes.”

“I don’t,” said Jimmy emphatically. “They’re nasty little piggy eyes. Though I admit they suit you.”

Whatever horrific response Crow intended—and the veins round his neck swelled ominously—was interrupted by the return of Sergeant Warburton with the drinks. He handed Jimmy his, his nostrils a twitch with disapproval. Jimmy grinned at him affably, but the Sergeant turned his eyes away and sipped delicately at his lemonade.

Over his drink Jimmy said to Crow: “Here’s to crime, flattie—”

The other swallowed half a glassful, choked and spluttered: “Are you going to tell me what’s your game?”

“Same as yours.”

“What are you driving at?”

Jimmy sighed patiently. He said:

“You want to pinch Louis Mayne, do you or don’t you?”

“Louis Mayne?” Inspector Crow’s eyebrows drew together in puzzlement.

“That is the person who came out of prison yesterday,” volunteered Sergeant Warburton, pedantically. “Released before completing his full term, having obtained remission of sentence.”

“I know all about that,” Crow snapped at him. “Get on with your ruddy lemonade!”

“Very good, sir,” said the Sergeant, blushing slightly.

The Inspector turned to Jimmy.

“What the hell’s Louis Mayne got to do with Hill?”

“Nothing at all, except for the fact he rather neatly rubbed him out.”

“You seem damn sure Hill was murdered. Suppose it was suicide?”

Jimmy eyed with him affected surprise. “Self-evident as it is that the amount of intelligence reposing beneath that repellent bowler of yours could be balanced on a pin, even you’ll admit that committing suicide by shooting yourself in the back a shade far-fetched. Or,” he added agreeably, “perhaps you’d like to try it for yourself some time? You might succeed.”

The Inspector was breathing heavily. He was not, however, in the privacy of his own office where he could, and frequently did, blow up as loudly as he liked. With a superhuman effort he controlled himself to speak relatively calmly to the object of his simmering rage.

“Suppose it is murder, I’m still asking you where Louis Mayne comes into it.”

“Know anything about love? No, you wouldn’t. But there is such a thing knocking around. Even cheap crooks like Eddie Hill and Louis Mayne get tangled up in it. In this case Eddie pinched the other’s girl while he was in clink. Not unnaturally Louis takes a poor view of this, in fact he rather dwells on it, he’s got plenty of time to dwell on things where he is, so when he comes out—”

“He exacts his jealous revenge upon the man who had robbed him of his sweetheart,” put in Sergeant Warburton.

Jimmy grinned at him. “You took the very words out of my mouth.”

Crow scowled at the Sergeant and rubbed his great jaw reflectively.

“It adds up so far as it goes,” he admitted. “But you bet your bottom dollar Louis will’ve fixed himself a nice little alibi. We’d have a hard job proving he even knew this Eddie Hill.”

“Could not the young woman involved be interrogated?” suggested the Sergeant.

“What the hell good would that do?” rasped the other. “Some floozie’s word against his, that’s all.” He went on in aggrieved tones: “I wish you’d shut your trap when I tell you; can’t you see I’m thinking?”

Jimmy said:

“No need to go straining yourself. Better leave it to me.”

The Inspector eyed him sourly.

“What’s your idea?”

“Louis will be playing snooker at the Greek Street Rooms around nine o’clock tonight—”

“How the hell d’you know?” the other began.

“Mind your own business,” Jimmy cut in curtly, “and try and concentrate on what I’m telling you now.” He lit a cigarette, blew out a long spiral of smoke and proceeded. “We’ll work to a simple formula. It’s great charm is it’s so simple even you can’t make a mess of it.” He brushed aside Crow’s angry growl and went on. “All you have to do is march into this Greek Street place at the time mentioned, interrupt our friend’s game and ask him politely to come clean about Eddie Hill. Louis will, of course, come the injured innocent and probably ask you to please repeat the name it’s so unfamiliar to him.”

“Then?” grunted Inspector Crow.

“Then…you give him a quick look-over and find the evidence.”

“But what evidence?” queried Warburton sceptically. “Surely you do not expect he will be carrying the revolver with which he perpetrated the alleged crime?”

“Why d’you rattle on as if you’ve just swallowed a ruddy dictionary?” Crow barked at him, and the Sergeant went back to his lemonade. The other peered at Jimmy from beneath beetling brows. He said:

“Is that what we’ll find on him—the gun he shot Hill with?”

Jimmy shook his head slowly.

“I imagine he’s smart enough to have disposed of that, just in case. Though you’ll be able to check where he got it—routine stuff.” He examined the tip of his cigarette pensively. “No gun. But something else, and dear Louis won’t be smart enough to talk himself clear of that.”

He stood up suddenly, knocking the Inspector’s elbow so that the remains of his beer slopped over. Jimmy mollified his muttered protests.

“Sorry if I startled you out of your slumbers.” He licked his lips. “My, my, how this chin-wagging dries up the larynx. I think a little throat-spray is indicated. What are you using, Gorgeous? More beer? And my winsome Sergeant Warburton? Come now, throw discretion to the winds and knock back another lemonade.”

And with an odd little glint of amusement in his eyes, Jimmy made his way to the bar.

* * * *

It was ten minutes past nine and in a shadowy corner of the smoke-hazed room a lean-faced man was scribbling a note.

Only one of the tables was in use and the sounds of the snooker game in progress together with the voices of the two players came to him as he folded the piece of paper and eased himself out of his seat.

Louis Mayne was saying as he vigorously chalked his cue:

“Hell, am I out of practice! Haven’t even potted a red yet.”

His companion muttered commiserations and made his stroke. Louis watched, cigarette-end stuck to lower lip, his prison pallor accentuated by the greenish light over the table. The shot failed and he said perfunctorily:

“Bad luck.” He moved forward. “Now let’s show what I can do.”

He bent, then suddenly raised his cue and glanced over his shoulder. “Who was that just went out?” he frowned.

“Dunno. Why?”

Louis shrugged.

The other said: “Noticed him when we came in, sitting there. Been waiting for someone who hasn’t turned up, I expect… Good shot.”

“Not good enough,” Louis muttered, scowling. Then at his companion’s startled exclamation, his head came round with a jerk.

“Strike a light, Louis! Cops—!”

“Take it easy,” he said, through the side of his mouth. “They got nothin’ on me.”

He eyed the approach of the newcomers with sneering indifference. The leading figure lumbered up to him, heavy jaw stuck out aggressively.

“Louis Mayne?” Inspector Crow rasped.

“What of it?”

“Want to talk to you about Eddie Hill.”

The hard eyes were expressionless. “Who?”

“Hill. Eddie Hill.”

“Never heard of him.”

Crow said:

“In that case you wouldn’t know he was found, earlier this evening, in a telephone box near Jermyn Street, shot dead?”

“You got big enough ears. You heard what I said.”

The Inspector’s eyes glittered balefully. Came a delicate cough from Sergeant Warburton as with deliberate unconcern Louis began to chalk his cue.

“You needn’t bother with that,” Crow said, “Get your coat on.” He added over his shoulder: “Give him a hand, Sergeant.”

“Very good, sir.”

Louis waited, smiling thinly, while Sergeant Warburton fetched his jacket from the peg. Slowly he rolled down his shirtsleeves, fixed his cuffs and then allowed the other to help him slip the coat on.

“Thanks!”

“Would you care for me to search him, sir?” asked Warburton primly,

“If His Lordship doesn’t object,” the Inspector grated.

“Go right ahead,” Louis sneered. “You won’t find any gun on me, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

And then he was staring at the object the Sergeant had taken out of his pocket. With a grunt of incredulity Crow took a step forward, his hand simultaneously digging into his own pocket. It dug vainly and his mouth opened and closed like a great fish.

Warburton was saying with prim composure:

“A notecase, sir. Bearing the name, ‘Eddie Hill’, and address, ‘5, Soho Mansions’—”

By exertion of tremendous effort Inspector Crow managed to pull himself together sufficiently, at any rate, to grab that mocking rectangle of imitation crocodile. He shook it vigorously in Louis’ face, whose eyes continued to bulge at it.

“So you’d never heard of him, eh?” he ground out between his teeth, contriving to cover up his own confused astonishment at the sight of the thing by bringing into play his full powers of vindicated accusation.

“I—I don’t know where it came from—”

“No doubt Eddie made you a present of it when you weren’t looking,” Crow snorted with heavy sarcasm. “Just before you shot him in the back!”

“I tell you, I—” Desperately the other tried to find words to talk his way out of the trap. But, as Jimmy Strange had prophesied, he couldn’t make it. Like a cornered rat he could only gape at the wallet as if mesmerized. To him it meant the shadow of the gallows falling across him. His companion didn’t help much either by leaning across the billiard-table and crying out wildly:

“I warned you not to, Louis—I warned you!”

“Shut up!” Louis snarled at him. Then tried to make a dive for it.

But Sergeant Warburton, anticipating the move, tripped him neatly and sent him sprawling full-length. As he lay, the breath knocked out of him, the bracelets snapped and the game was over.

As they prepared to move off, Inspector Crow suddenly bent with a grunt and picked up a folded slip of paper from the floor. He must have jerked it out of the wallet when waving it at Louis. Unfolding it he read, his ginger eyebrows jutting forward in outraged bristles, his breathing growing stertorously apoplectic:

“For Sourpuss with love.”