Flowering Death Page 10

  *

  Spike had no difficulty in finding McGonagle, for McGonagle stepped along by his side immediately the head of Department Q7 turned into Livingstone Street from Queen’s Gate.

  “Greetings, Inspector,” murmured Spike with a grin. “Any old bones or bottles for sale to-day?”

  McGonagle, indeed, had assumed a remarkable disguise. His boots were thin and cracked. He was clad in tattered trousers, through the rents in which there could be observed uncleanly pink drawers. A black jacket which might once have adorned a stout cleric was stretched across his broad shoulders; and instead of a collar and tie he affected a white cravat, the ends crossed over his chest. His partially bald head was covered by a greasy cloth cap and his broad cheeks were almost hidden by grime. Only his protruding eyes, too clear and unafraid for those of a down-and-out, were liable to give away his identity.

  Otherwise his appearance was in complete accord with the surroundings. He seemed to be one of many idle, hopeless men who lounged about the streets, aimlessly watching the dust and light refuse swirl in the gutters.

  It was a desolate region in which the two representatives of Scotland Yard found themselves. Though the sun shone somewhere above, it was not visible, because of a heavy pall of smoke and river mist which hung over the tenements. And there was a clammy suggestion of chill in the atmosphere which Spike had not experienced in the vicinity of Whitehall and Fleet Street. Steamers and tugs hooted close at hand, and in Livingstone Street slant-eyed Orientals mingled with the slatternly throng of whites. There seemed to be children everywhere, and some of these children, it was apparent to Spike, were of no common origin. Their pasty white faces and queer eyes caused him to repress a sigh ... He saw shops with waving signs upon which great eastern characters were inscribed.

  “I’m glad,” said the Inspector, “that you were able to come so soon.”

  His companion was unwilling yet to enter into serious conversation. Almost for the first time in his career, Spike’s heart was affected by the sight of strangers’ sufferings. He pondered upon the depths of human misery; and then, quite suddenly, he realised that if he were to have his mind open for the investigation which was about to take place he must get rid of his new thoughts, he must work himself into a different mood before beginning to work upon McGonagle’s news.

  “Those pink drawers are a masterpiece,” he returned lightly. “Why is it, can you tell me, that men wear pink drawers and women pink corsets?”

  McGonagle glanced at the young man with suspicion.

  “How did you know that women wear pink corsets?”

  “Look at any draper’s window, my dear fellow. It is revoltin’.”

  The inspector knew Spike’s way. Another man would have been shocked by this apparent display of irrelevance; but McGonagle realized that when the head of Department Q7 was at his maddest he was preparing his mind to be receptive. He humoured him, therefore, and led the way steadily towards a certain alley.

  “I don’t think corsets arc revolting. They have a nice sheen —”

  Spike chuckled.

  “And you an old bachelor, Inspector! Who would have thought it!”

  “Begorra, now, Spike! You know me as well as you know anybody, and ... But wait! Here we are. This is the place.”

  The other nodded, suddenly thoughtful. His eyes rested on the ugly grey walls of the alley through which they were passing. They noted the high dirty windows, the contents of slush-buckets carelessly scattered on the cobbles, the mean faces whose owners regarded the strangers from behind torn curtains.

  “And so it was in plague-spots like this that Dr. McIntee carried on his work ... I’m beginning to have a great admiration, McGonagle, for that rather friendless old man. I wonder what his secret could have been?”

  “You believe he had a secret?”

  “Yes. And I might even hazard a guess as to its meaning.”

  The inspector did not demand an explanation of this startling statement. His friend would uncover his thoughts in good time. Doggedly he escorted Spike through the evil-smelling alley and began to cross a patch of dirty, grassy ground which was strangely damp. Spike observed the newly soldered crack in an overflow pipe ... Facing the two men there was the back of a gaunt building, ordinarily approached from a street on its farther side.

  “She is lying sick over there — on the top flat,” said McGonagle. “Have we chanced on something, do you think, Spike?”

  “Probably not, old scout. But it is just possible that she knows — his secret.”

  Spike lingered to pat the head of a hairy mongrel dog which lay still and tired on the first flight of stone stairs. Then he followed McGonagle’s clumping boots.

  They met no one on their passage upwards; but they were aware of hidden eyes at every corner-window. At a door painted yellow on the uppermost landing the inspector knocked.

  A middle-aged woman with heavy gross cheeks and iron-grey hair opened the door a foot. She was English, Spike thought; and he was slightly surprised by the general tidiness of her dress. But there was a raddled hardness about her expression, evidence of a faded youth in which there had been nothing calm or spiritual. Her coarse fingers curled round the yellow wood.

  “Nanny,” she said, “will not see men. She is ill. A doctor has been with her.”

  “Madam,” returned Spike, over McGonagle’s shoulder. “we must see Nanny. We are not — what you think. We have come from the old doctor who did not come back to see her yesterday.”

  The reconstruction of events made by the head of Department Q7 proved to be correct.

  “From him!” For a moment there was a kindly, hopeful gleam in the woman’s bright eyes. “Then you may save her?”

  Spike shook his head. He knew that he was a policeman and that, therefore, pity must not obtrude itself in his work. Before, it had seldom done so; but now, unbidden, it rose up dully in his breast.

  “No,” he said softly. “I’m afraid we shall not succeed in saving her — if what I think is true. We must, however, speak with her. What is your name?”

  The woman glanced at him with suspicion; but she opened the door wider.

  “What does it matter? They call me Mary the Milker in these parts. I keep house for — girls like Nanny.”

  At another time Spike might have expressed the profundity of his loathing for the ageing hag; but on this occasion he was dumb, and McGonagle looked at him queerly. As he stepped over the threshold, however, a little in advance of Spike, the inspector caught his breath. He forgot about his companion’s strange quiet.

  After the squalor and filth of the streets, the flat was like a jewel set in iron. The hallway was decorated with thick, colourful rugs, and there were expensive wraps, a fur coat and several dainty little hats upon the stand. The walls were bright with new pale yellow distemper. The paint and varnish work was fresh and clean.

  “The girl lies in this room,” said Mary the Milker, her hand upon an inner door. “She is sinking fast. Perhaps if she wants anything you will call me.”

  “Yes,” agreed Spike quietly. “But — I am a doctor. My friend and I will be gentle.”

  The inner door shut behind them, and McGonagle could scarcely refrain from crying out. Spike’s face was a frozen mask.

  Inside there was a faint, sweet scent — not the cloying scent one might have expected there, but a fresh perfume subtly suggestive of a rose garden. The room was furnished prettily, chairs and big broad couch being covered with bright-coloured chintzes. There were cushions, silken cushions of red and yellow. The carpet was a thick pile into which naked feet might sink with sensuous comfort. There were two pictures of sunlit landscapes, one on each long wall, and they both had the queer, tail-like signature of a Chinese artist.

  At the end nearer the window were muslin hangings; and behind this thin partition Spike and McGonagle could make out dimly a low bed. Lying there was a slim, silent figure.

  Quietly, scarcely making a sound, Spike strode forward and pulled back th
e muslin. Two inordinately bright, slanting eves gazed up into his without fear, and the head of Department Q7 could not trust himself to speak as he looked at the girl.

  She could have been scarcely more than twenty, and though her face was that of a Chinese, there appeared something about the lines of it that was beautiful. A pile of shining hair lay spread out upon the pillow.

  She was wearing only a thin suit of white silk pyjamas, and its low-cut lines showed the sweet curve of her tiny breasts. Her creamy throat rose up in smooth perfection. The remainder of her body was covered by one red silken blanket; and the dainty, immature outline of it, therefore, was distinct.

  Her cheeks were flushed and her coverings rustled with quick breathing. One glance told Spike that he could not help her.

  “Why,” she whispered in good English, “did the kind old doctor not come to me yesterday?”

  “He is dead,” replied Spike.

  Her long eyelashes, strangely dark in contrast with her hair, fluttered down. Eyes closed. For a long while there was silence, save for the soft whirr of some hidden insect’s wings. McGonagle, his broad, kindly face filled with wonder and anxiety, dared not move.

  The Chinese girl’s flushed cheeks grew suddenly pale. Her breathing became more calm, and Spike thought of a flower folding its petals in the evening. When she spoke however, the little flute-like voice was strong.

  “And so, sir, I shan’t — get better?”

  “I am afraid not ... Won’t you tell us something of the sympathetic doctor and about your trouble? What is your name, my dear?”

  His friend had never heard Spike’s voice so quiet and tender. Gone was his quick hardness. Gone were his blunt demands. In the space of a few minutes it would seem that his attitude to women had changed. McGonagle had witnessed his young colleague deal with harlots before this time; and he had his own ideas about Spike’s just treatment of the Hon. Nancy Sanders. But now there was a difference.

  The inspector, too, was affected by an overwhelming pity for this girl — a girl not much more than a child — who had been exploited and used by the gross woman called Mary the Milker. She might have done evil in the eyes of men; but she was far from her native country and she was still lovely with the loveliness of an innocent heart.

  “My name is Nan Li-San. They call me Nanny here. I was found by Mary, the woman you have seen, when I was lost and wandering in the streets as a little baby. She cared for me; and now I am paying her back. There are many men who visit me and who leave money with Mary. I am yellow, and yet there are Englishmen who come. I do not understand ... ”

  Spike’s lean hands were clenched until the knuckles gleamed white. He stood slender and straight above her, his eyes dull with a suppressed anger against certain of his fellows.

  “You took ill with a strange flower-disease, Nan Li-San?”

  She was growing very weak. He would have to be quick.

  “Yes. It was one of those men who put a certain liquid into my tea ... As he lay in my arms that night he told me what he had done. It was an — an experiment, he said. He wanted to know if he could infect me. He told me that if the flowers appeared he would send a doctor to cure me at once. This doctor, my lover said, was the only man in the world who could bring about a cure.”

  McGonagle shifted uneasily. Nanny’s eyes had a strange far-away look in them. A little vein throbbed and throbbed in the red, dark skin of Spike’s temple. There was still that soft whirring sound in the warm, perfumed room.

  “Go on, Nan Li-San — if it is not too much trouble.”

  “It is no trouble. It does not matter ... The flowers came. I was frightened; but what could I do? I told my — my lover. Next day the kind old doctor visited me. He removed the flowers from my feet and neck and gave me a certain liquid to drink. Next day, he said, he would return to give me an injection. He told me what I had drunk first was poison to cure the flower-disease, and that if I had not an injection on the next day I should die. I was interested, you see, in the remedy, and I asked him. He agreed that it was a dangerous cure, but that as long as the injection was given on the second day it was certain. He seemed proud to be the only man in the world to know of it ... He did not return, though I was keeping another two-yen piece for him when he did. I prayed for him to return. But every knock which sounded on the door was the knock of some man who wanted me ... The man whom I wanted did not come. And my — my lover did not come. Perhaps he is tired of me. Perhaps he wishes me to — to —”

  Her voice trailed away into an inaudible whisper. Spike’s cheeks were lined and drawn. McGonagle was beginning to understand.

  “Nanny!” whispered Spike. “Nanny!”

  The tired, pale eyelids lifted.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you tell me the name of your lover — the man who put the liquid in your tea?”

  McGonagle held his breath as he awaited the girl’s reply. He watched in a fascinated way the transformed expression in his superior’s face. When the answer did come, he expelled the air from his lungs in a little gasp.

  “I am sorry. I did not know his real name. He was not of my race. I called him David. He told me to call him David. He was kind at first, but — but later he was harsh and cruel ... He did not seem to care. And he hasn’t come, even though he knows I am dying ...”

  “He knows you are dying, Nanny?”

  “He must know, because the old doctor would explain to him the method of the cure. Didn’t I tell you he saw the doctor sometimes ... Oh, sir ... ”

  The whirring of the hidden insect grew plainer in the silent room. A sudden shaft of sunlight fell upon the girl’s little, panting body, glinting on the silken coverlet. McGonagle passed a grimy hand across his forehead which was wet with perspiration. And there was something seriously the matter with his vision.

  “What was he like, Nanny? Did Mary see him?”

  Spike forced himself to remember his duty. And she responded so gallantly that he could scarcely see her through the blur of pity in his eyes.

  “Mary let him in — once or twice — but she does not know what he did to me. And there were others ... Mary can tell you nothing. I will try to describe this man. I have seen him —”

  The tired little head drooped back. A sigh escaped her. McGonagle thought that she was dead. His cap twisted in his hands.

  Spike saw, however, that the spark of life still lingered. Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, he knelt down by the bedside. He caught one of the slender hands and raised little pink fingers to his lips.

  Nan Li-San revived for a short moment. As they opened a starry light shone in her long slanting eyes. Her glance rested on Spike’s dark head. Then she whispered something. They were the last words she spoke; and the sound of them was almost overcome by the busy wings of the insect. McGonagle, however, caught the meaning of her whisper:

  “No one ever kissed — my hand — before.”

  CHAPTER XII

  AFTER a vain interrogation of Mary the Milker, who informed them that Nan Li-San had entertained men of various nationalities, Spike and McGonagle descended to the street. Even at midday there persisted the damp chill of the atmosphere, and yet sometimes the clammy heat made breathing difficult. Limehouse could never be described as a health resort.

  The two men tramped along silently, jostled by the teeming crowds. Once a Chinese with a yellow, leering face whispered something in Spike’s ear; and the head of Department Q7 dropped the man in his tracks with one cruel cut by the edge of his open hand. The creature writhed in the gutter, mouthing sibilant imprecations; but neither Spike nor McGonagle took further heed of him. And the crowds passed by the injured man with apathetic faces.

  They had reached a less squalid part of the district before Spike uttered a word to his friend. And when he did speak his voice was harsh and clipped.

  ‘‘What the hell are you snivvellin’ at, McGonagle? Have you a cold?”

  The inspector understood. His broad face, streaked with the dirt of his disgui
se, did not alter.

  “Maybe I have, Spike. I’m thinking of Nan Li-San.”

  “So am I, you fool!”

  “She wasn’t wicked. Her heart wasn’t wicked, I mean. You could see —”

  “No. She wasn’t wicked ... My God! Why are some men such beasts?”

  “But for you, Spike, Miss Nevinson —”

  Spike turned on him a dark face suddenly contorted with fury.

  “McGonagle!” he muttered. “Will you be silent?”

  The inspector was startled.

  “I’m sorry!” he growled. “I’m sorry, Spike.”

  And as quickly as it had come the anger of his companion subsided.

  They stood waiting for the arrival of a bus which would take them back to the vicinity of Whitehall. Newsboys were beginning to shout the early editions of the evening papers. Spike bought two, for McGonagle and himself to read on the bus when it came along.

  “Had we gone to Limehouse last night,” he said presently, “instead of hoggin’ it in our beds, we might have been able to save Nanny’s life and to get a description of — of the man.”

  McGonagle shook his head.

  “How could wo tell, Spike, that she was dying? And we might not have found the damp green in the darkness.”

  “I made another mistake,” returned Spike, deliberately ignoring the argument. “I’m makin’ the hell of a mess of this case ... Poor Nanny! Do you remember how she closed her eyes when she learned there was no hope of her getting better?”

  “Spike! There would have been no hope for her last night either, even though we had found her. How could you have prescribed the correct injection?”

  “I might have found out, old lad, before it was too late. I might ... McGonagle! There is a man livin’ in the world to-day whom I desire to kill with my own hands. He is the devil who stole the flower-disease culture from Dr. McIntee’s dispensary — the culture upon which the old man was doubtless working. He is the devil who used Nanny for his vile experiment. He is the devil who, when his experiment proved successful, conveniently forgot about her. He is the devil who stole the cure for the flower-disease from Dr. McIntee, the only man in the world who knew of it, and then murdered him. He is the devil who found in the old doctor’s desk one of the flowers which had come from Nanny’s feet and which McIntee was keeping for experiments — who dropped it inadvertently among the real flowers and then had no time to search for it again before the rest of the household stirred. He is the devil who is trying, supported by the new power that is his, to defeat the ends of the Government ... Some day soon, McGonagle, I will unmask Mr. ‘Black and White’; and if you are with me then you will not prevent me from —”