Chapter XXVII: Ragousa Talk

Lambert Stone was halfway down the stairs with Holbrook’s coat on his arm, when he heard the shot. The night porter had also heard the _plock!_ of a pistol fired with a silencer, and reached the huddled figure before Stone came running up. Together they lifted the unconscious reporter and carried him into the elevator.

“’Phone a doctor,” said Stone quickly, when they had laid him on the sofa in his sitting-room.

The bullet had struck above Bill Holbrook’s right eyebrow, and followed the eccentric course which bullets sometimes take, for it had emerged from the skin at a point above the ear, having completed a half-circuit of his head, without, so far as Stone could discover, penetrating the bone at any place. The wound was ugly enough, and the night porter had no doubt that the victim was dead, but Lambert Stone, who had passed his youth in a community where gun-play was a normal circumstance of life, diagnosed the injury with greater accuracy.

Fortunately, there was a doctor in the building, and his brief examination confirmed Lambert’s view.

“There is no fracture,” he said, busy with his needle, “and the longer this young man remains unconscious, the easier it will be to fix him.”

The dressing of the wound was nearly completed, when Bill opened his eyes and stared up into the face of his host.

“Nearly got me, I guess,” he said faintly.

“You didn’t see the shooter?”

“No… same as Brother John… got me from the car.”

Save for a racking headache, he was his normal self when Bullott came.

“I called at Laffin’s on my way,” he said. “He hasn’t left the house all evening--I know this because I’ve got a shadow watching him. You were there to-night--you told him something?” he challenged.

“Yuh,” said Bill.

“What was it--Ragousa talk?” asked Bullott, with a pretence at carelessness.

“Twenty-Third Degree, mostly. Why I did it, I don’t know; I should have been kicked--it was my weakness for sensation made me so darned talkative. I know why I was shot all right. What’s the time?”

“A quarter to twelve.”

“I’ve got to see that man,” he said. “I can go, can’t I, Doctor?”

“Unless it is very important,” hesitated the doctor, “I don’t think you should be moved.”

“It _is_ important,” said Bill emphatically, and sat up with a groan.

It was only when he swore that he would go to bed the moment he arrived home, and that he would get a nurse and a surgeon on the following morning to dress the wound, that the doctor agreed.

Midnight was chiming from a church clock when Bullott and Lambert Stone helped him out of the cab, and up to his room. A man was standing in the shadow of the doorway; Bill saw him the moment he reached the sidewalk; but it was not the Tinker.

“Got you, did they?” said a cheerful voice. “I somehow thought they’d go gunning for you when I heard you spilling your trouble to the doctor.”

It was Toby Marsh, and Bill stared at him incredulously.

“You heard? You weren’t in the doctor’s study.”

“I’m there every night,” said Toby Marsh, with a smirk. “You couldn’t keep me away from Laffin; we’re like brothers!”

Toby sat on the edge of the bed, the stub of an unlighted cigar between his white teeth.

“I ought to have been a reporter,” he said. “I’ve got more newsgetting ideas than any of the cubs I’ve met in my professional life. Lord! when I think of the scoops I could have got,” he said reminiscently. “I’ll tell you something, Bullott, as a guarantee of good faith, as the newspapers say. I did a two years’ course of deed-box work. That’s a new one on you? In that two years I broke into a hundred and twenty-three lawyers’ offices. It was a hobby, you understand; just an in-something-able curiosity--what’s the word? Thank you--insatiable. There’s no money in lawyers, but a whole fortune if I’d been ‘putting the black’.[2] I did other work, because a man’s got to live, and hobbies are expensive. But the documents I’ve read! The bundles of letters, tied up with red tape, what wives have said to their husbands and what husbands have said to their wives, the confessions and deeds of assignment--there’s a Cabinet Minister who’s been paying three thousand a year blackmail for the last twelve years; did you know it?” He mentioned a great name. “I’m a reporter, I tell you--I want to know. A lot of people think that a born reporter is a fellow who wants to write, but that’s not so, and Holbrook will tell you the same. A born reporter just wants to know, and he doesn’t care a darn whether he writes or whether he doesn’t.”

“I’ll swear you were not in that room,” said Bill vigorously. “It was fairly dark, but you couldn’t have been concealed----”

“I wasn’t within a mile of that room,” confessed Toby. “Nevertheless, I was there, if you understand, in the spirit.”

He was intensely amused, convulsed with internal laughter. Presently he took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and wiped them dry.

“When the weather goes cold, I’m finished as a source of information. But, barring this accident, I’m your special correspondent at headquarters.”

“You’d make a lot of money if you went straight,” said Bullott with reluctant admiration.

Toby Marsh’s nose wrinkled.

“You’re talking like a judge. ‘If your energies had been directed into proper and legitimate channels, you might have made an honest living, instead of which you are going down for nine moons with hard labour.’ No, sir, burglary is my long suit, and all the rest are recreations. I’d sooner open a burglar-proof safe, or burn out a fire-resisting lock, than I’d see my name over the finest story that was ever printed.”

“You’re a bad man, and will come to a bad end,” said Bullott.

“I shall end up as a churchwarden,” said the other calmly, “highly respected by the folk of a cathedral city, and admired by my neighbors. Maybe I’ll take dinner with a bishop every other Thursday--you never can tell. Or perhaps I’ll get a knighthood. The Prime Minister’s daughter will get locked up in a safe, and nobody can open it; somebody thinks of Toby Marsh; he arrives in the nick of time and saves the daughter amid loud applause. I saw a play like that. I have my dreams.”

Bill glanced at Bullott, who looked at his watch.

“You can save yourself a lot of trouble--he won’t come.”

“Who?” asked the startled inspector.

“Tinker,” was the reply, “the gentleman who was calling to spill the beans. I’ve been looking for him all night, and if I can’t find him, there isn’t a busy that ever strolled out of Scotland Yard disguised as a gentleman who could succeed. I’ve searched every dive from the Edgware Road to Whitfield Street. I’ve asked the nearest approach he’s got to a friend. I’ve been to his lodgings in Seven Dials--where all the coon-jazzers live--and there’s no sign or sight of him--hasn’t been seen since four o’clock this afternoon, when he had a cup of tea at Bony’s coffee-shop. Is it likely he’ll come?”

As though in answer to his question, came one heavy knock at the street door, and Bullott went down the stairs two at a time.

A shabby looking man stood on the doorstep, but it was not the Tinker.

“Name of Bullott?” he asked hoarsely.

“That’s my name.” The detective took a letter from the man’s hand. “Here, wait!” he called, as the messenger was making a rapid retreat, but he took no notice of Bullott’s instructions.

The letter contained one word--“Detained.” No signature, date, place or address. He went out into the street, but by this time the man who had brought the note was running, and it seemed that no useful purpose could be served by bringing him back.

“What do you think of this?” he asked, returning to his party. “Take it by the edge; I’m going to bring out the finger-prints.”

Bill took the note from his hand, and read the word.

“I suppose there’s no doubt that this is from the Tinker?”

“‘Detained’ is a word that the Tinker wouldn’t use,” said the irrepressible Marsh. “It doesn’t belong to the three thousand six hundred and twelve words that make up the lowbrow’s vocabulary. If you think the number is less, take any page in a dictionary and count the words that everybody knows.”

“That isn’t the Tinker’s writing, anyway--for the simple reason that he can’t write,” said Bullott, looking at the letter again.

He went downstairs and returned with a small phial half-filled with a fine violet powder, and shook a little on to the paper. This he worked round dexterously until the notepaper was covered with a violet film of dust. When he blew the residue into the fireplace, a thumb-print was visible in one corner.

“And that’s yours,” grunted Bullott, nodding at Bill. “The man who wrote this wore gloves.”

He treated the envelope in the same way, and here, as he expected, the prints were many, and, to his practised eye, the majority of them were thumbmarks made by the same individual.

“We may be able to trace the messenger, but the writer has left no sign.”

Bill sat up in bed, and reached for the cigarette box.

“The twenty-ninth of July, things are going to happen. That date intrigues me. And what did he mean by saying that somebody was shipping canned beef and flour to America--and rifles, too, if I remember rightly? Bullott, I’m keeping that appointment on Sunday night, and I’m going alone.”

“In which case you’ll return in company,” interrupted Toby promptly. “There’ll be an ambulance man, two doctors, a bunch of policemen, and may be the mortuary keeper. You’re referring to your appointment on the Epping Road… third milestone, if I remember? I thought so! Son, I admire your courage, but your intelligence is beneath contempt. There’s only one place for you in the course of the next week or two, and that is behind a steel wall, eating food that you’ve prepared yourself.”

“Do you really mean that?” asked Bullott seriously.

“You bet I mean it,” he said, “you bet I mean it!”