Flowering Death Page 5

  He employed the knocker.

  Standing on the whitewashed steps he whistled softly to himself, and the air was one of Henry Hall’s latest successes. Spike couldn’t remember its name; nor did he try to remember. He was studying with interest the marks on the steps which indicated the passage into the house of two men wearing heavy boots and carrying a burden. He noticed, too, that near the bottom of the green door a thin line of paint had been scraped off, as if the lower edge of some heavy article had inadvertently struck the woodwork ... Spike was of the opinion that two experienced furniture-removers would not have allowed such an accident to happen.

  A young woman answered his summons, and he smiled slightly to himself as he observed the cigarette smouldering in her hand. This was, he considered, scarcely in the best of form. No genteel person interviewed a stranger at her front door without first extinguishing the cigarette which she might be smoking.

  For the rest, the girl was tall and slim and had well-groomed hair the colour of polished platinum. Her blue eyes were hard and her painted mouth somewhat coarse; but otherwise Spike found nothing amiss with her appearance. She had a typical suburban look — the look of a woman with social aspirations whose husband could only afford to rent a bungalow in a building scheme. She wore a revealing yellow jumper and a short tweed skirt. Spike glanced with disdain at the long and shapely silken legs.

  “Mrs. Mallinson?” he ventured.

  “Yes. Can I do anything for you?”

  She had a slow drawl, and this drawl was not quite so typically suburban as her appearance. In fact, Spike conceived a sudden notion that her birthplace had been in another continent, though she was doing her best to conceal the fact.

  “My name is Pringle,” he said. “Could I speak to your husband for a moment?”

  Through lazy eyes Spike was watching intently her expression. As he put the request he saw something flicker for a moment in her eyes. Was it annoyance — or fear? Or was it a mixture of both? He could not be sure; for almost immediately the girl’s expression had again become fixed. Spike wondered if she were playing a part. If so, she was a consummate actress. A little doubt crept into the young doctor’s mind.

  “What is your business, Mr. Pringle?”

  Was she fighting for time? Was she afraid to allow him into the house? Was she afraid, at the same moment, to send him about his business, lest, by such means, she should arouse the suspicions of her neighbours? Or was she an innocent woman, merely annoyed by the unexpected call of a stranger? Even as he smiled in a friendly fashion upon the girl, Spike’s brain whirled with questions.

  For her part, she saw an eminently presentable young man with dark hair and very white teeth — and with something about him which ... oh, well, that had nothing to do with her. Nevertheless, the hard, watchful expression softened a little.

  “I am employed by the builders of this housing scheme,” said Spike smoothly, “as an inspector of sorts. My job is to interview householders periodically and to receive any complaints regarding the construction of the houses. I have orders to make a personal examination of the various apartments to ascertain if the tenants are keeping them in good condition. I have spent most of the afternoon in Somerset Street. This is my last call.”

  He paused to allow the gist of his explanation to be understood. And as he remained silent, congratulating himself that she had believed his tale, he could have sworn he saw fear this time in Mrs. Mallinson’s expression. She took a quick pull at her cigarette.

  “I don’t know —” she was beginning, when Spike interrupted hurriedly, employing his most beguiling manner.

  “Of course,” he said, “in the case of Aldersyde the matter will be formal. I can see plainly that you and your husband are excellent tenants. But if I could have one word with Mr. Mallinson, to satisfy my employers, I should be greatly obliged.”

  Again the girl hesitated and Spike would have given an ear to know for certain whether her hesitation was the result of apprehension or of natural British distaste of having a private house examined by an unknown individual.

  Then suddenly a tall, thin man appeared in the hallway from an apartment which Spike later discovered to be the principal bedroom. He was darkly complexioned; his hair was black and sleekly brushed. Spike could not place his nationality, though he had seen a man from the Italian colony in New York who resembled him closely. When Mr. Mallinson spoke his English was impeccable.

  “Why, Madge! Who is this?”

  Mrs. Mallinson explained, and Spike was intrigued to observe that upon the appearance of her husband she had become noticeably more at ease.

  “I was about to tell the gentleman that we should be delighted to show him over the house. And I’m sure, George; we have no complaints.”

  Her first statement, Spike half-suspected, was a downright lie; but he did not, of course, give the slightest evidence of his opinion. Indeed, he was beginning to believe that, after all, the whole business was going to prove a mare’s nest.

  “Come in, Mr. Pringle,” said the tall man genially. “Come right in. It’s a grand little house, and I’m sure you will agree, when you see them, that the rooms are in good order.”

  “Doubtless,” smiled Spike as, adjusting his stick over an arm, he strode into the tiny hall. “By the way, did I see a furniture-van at your door this evening?”

  Not by the flicker of an eyelid did Mallinson give himself away, and once more Spike wondered ... Was he making a ridiculous mistake? Had Superintendent MacNiven been right after all? He glanced sideways at the girl; but she, too, was smiling pleasantly.

  “Probably you did, if you were in the district,” volunteered the man. “We have just acquired a new wardrobe and it arrived about an hour ago. It’s in the bedroom here.”

  He threw open the door of the room from which he had recently come, and Spike glanced into a dainty little apartment. Its one distinguishing feature was an oaken wardrobe which, to Spike’s discerning eye, was a little too big and clumsy to match properly the remaining furniture. Nothing else in the least suspicious met his keen glance.

  The living-room, the sitting-room, a spare bedroom, the bathroom and a kitchen were also examined by him, outwardly with superficial haste, but actually very thoroughly.

  In the living-room an oldish man with iron-grey hair looked up from his perusal of an evening paper and nodded absently. This, thought Spike, would be the person described by Superintendent MacNiven as Mrs. Mallinson’s father.

  Everything was quite ordinary and unsuspicious, and Spike began reluctantly to believe that no one could have been hidden in the house. Mr. and Mrs. Mallinson chatted pleasantly to him; and dull doubt grew to certainty in his mind. He was making a damned fool of himself!

  He was preparing to leave Aldersyde filled with bitter disappointment, when a sudden sound caught his ear. It was a hollow, thudding sound and it came, muffled, from the direction of the principal bedroom.

  Mr. Mallinson laughed easily.

  “Those cats!” he exclaimed. “I can’t understand Madge’s predilection for them!”

  But Spike had made up his mind. All his suspicions had returned. His instincts could not be wrong ... He would have to take a risk at any rate, for the sake of Joan Nevinson.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “That doesn’t sound like a cat.”

  He wheeled round in the hall. He made straight for the bedroom door, opened it and approached the wardrobe. In turn he wrenched open the door of the ungainly piece of furniture. He saw that which was inside.

  There was a scream from Mrs. Mallinson; and Spike, out of the corner of his eye, caught a glimpse of a knife in Mr. Mallinson’s hand. He slammed shut the wardrobe door and turned.

  CHAPTER VI

  IT was as if in the midst of a fast-moving film a “still” had been inserted.

  Spike stood before the wardrobe, long slim body poised on the balls of his toes, the stout ash stick hanging motionless from his right hand. There was a triumphant little smile about
the corners of his mouth but the expression in his eyes was as hard as flint. He was waiting for the tenants of Aldersyde, Somerset Street, to make the first move.

  Mr. and Mrs. Mallinson remained stock-still in the doorway; and, at the back of his mind, Spike marvelled at the subtle change in their general appearance.

  The girl was no longer a suburban wife, a little discontented, a little uncertain of the social graces. She had shed her pose and was herself, a cruel-lipped sensual woman whose experience of criminal matters was written clearly in close-set eyes. But there was fear, too, in the tense pucker of the narrow forehead; and long fingers clenched together between her breasts, knuckles gleaming white. The cigarette still stuck out from the bunch that was her hands, the smoke jerking upwards in irregular spirals.

  Somewhat in front of her Mallinson crouched forward, a look of diabolical hatred and suspicion on his olive-dark features. Gone was his geniality, his friendly banter. In his left hand he held a long-bladed knife which he had drawn from beneath his arm-pit. It was a weapon similar to that which stage-performers use in a knife-throwing act. Spike observed with technical interest, now that his suspicions had been confirmed, the peculiar shape of the man’s head. It had a narrow dome and broadened out in a peculiar manner in the region of the flat, pointed cars.

  The head of Department Q7 broke the silence. He was in a tight corner and he knew it. An attempt on his part to summon McGonagle and the others from the street would result, he was certain, in the quick insertion of the knife into a vital corner of his anatomy. But he felt the need of speech. He was a talkative young man; for he found talk, however trivial, to be a great steadier of the nerves. At the Yard, however, the hope was expressed in certain quarters that some day, through sheer exhaustion, the muscles of his tongue would become permanently paralysed.

  “Lombroso,” he remarked, addressing Mallinson, “would have found your head most interestin’ — not to say suggestive.”

  The tall man said nothing; but his gleaming white teeth became more apparent and his left hand moved slowly backwards. Spike reflected bleakly that left-handed people are generally expert at throwing things. But he continued to talk with outward coolness.

  “Lombroso had a theory that a passionate murderer had a ridged cranium; while a cold-blooded murderer possessed a head of the domed variety. Now your —”

  Mallinson took a step forward. His left arm was now almost fully extended behind his back. Spike measured the distance between him and the unsavoury occupier of Aldersyde.

  “Cut it out!” snarled Mallinson. “Who are you?”

  “Who am I?” returned Spike blandly. “Didn’t I give you my name? Septimus Pringle, housing inspector, at your service ... I am afraid I shall have to report to my employers that you keep a lovely girl tied up in your wardrobe.”

  It was evident that Mallinson was uncertain of his man; but it was equally evident that he intended to take no risks ... Spike admitted afterwards that he was cold with fear at that moment. He thought rather wistfully of the faithful McGonagle and Spring, of the shy Walsh waiting for him in the street. He thought of what might happen to Joan if he were killed.

  He must play for time. He must try to lure Mallinson one step nearer; one step nearer before that knife flashed towards him. The droll refrain of a music-hall ditty began to run through his mind: “And the great big saw came nearer and nearer and nearer and nearer and NEARER!”

  The girl’s tense attitude slowly relaxed. She took a puff of her cigarette, now consumed almost to its cork tip.

  “Why did you come to Aldersyde, Mr. Pringle?”

  The American drawl was very pronounced.

  Spike grinned and replied truthfully.

  “To inspect your rooms, dear lady ... And if I may ask a question in return, why have you called your house Aldersyde?”

  She smiled with insolent confidence.

  “I am an admirer,” she said, “of Annie S. Swan. You may be aware that Aldersyde was the title of her first novel.”

  Spike shook his head in polite astonishment. But all the while he was watching the left hand of Mallinson.

  “I am afraid,” he murmured, “that you do not have a literary taste in common with your husband. He appears to be a student of the late Edgar Wallace.”

  She laughed shortly, and the sound seemed to spur her mate to action. He crept a pace onwards, soft-footed like a cat, and prepared to launch the knife on its deadly journey.

  But Spike, as his opponent came closer, observed an opportunity. Out shot his right hand, in which he clutched the strong walking-stick; and as Mallinson’s knife, balanced on expert fingers, came streaking forward, the stick struck. Mallinson cried out in pain as the knife whirled to one side, cut his hand.

  Spike bellowed.

  “McGonagle! Spring! Got ’em!”

  Then, like a rugger player, he dived for Mallinson’s legs. In a vaguely shocked way he heard the girl cursing; but he was too much occupied in an attempt to subdue the man to reflect upon her lack of feminine sensibilities.

  Spike was in good physical condition, and he was by no means a small man. He trained regularly at the gymnasium connected with the Yard; and young policemen, believing themselves to be good wrestlers and expert exponents of ju-jitsu, knew to their cost the explosive strength of his sinewy arms and the power of the bunched muscles in his back. And on one occasion a noted sprinter from the Midlands, having recently joined the Metropolitan Police, was surprised to discover that he could not give the scholarly head of Department Q7 two yards in a hundred.

  In spite of his physical prowess, however, Spike found Mallinson a difficult opponent. Ju-jitsu tricks were countered in approved fashion, and once the stranger’s groping fingers almost closed on his throat.

  Would McGonagle ever come?

  And then Mrs. Mallinson picked up the knife. Out of the corner of his eye Spike saw her approach the wardrobe and open the door.

  “Mr. — er — Pringle,” she said, “if you don’t stop molesting my husband I shall be forced to injure Miss Nevinson.”

  With a strength born of desperation Spike hurled Mallinson from him. He leapt to his feet. But the dark-complexioned tenant of Aldersyde was equally quick. Like an acrobat he whirled round and up to block Spike’s passage towards his wife.

  “Don’t touch that girl,” snarled Spike, “or —”

  There was a sudden clamour in the hallway. The door of the bedroom burst open.

  “Begorra!” roared McGonagle, observing Mrs. Mallinson’s intention. “Put down that knife or I’ll shoot ye dead.”

  His broad face was no longer kindly. His protruding eyes made his expression one of ferocity. Behind him Spring and Walsh menaced Mallinson with their revolvers.

  “A dramatic moment,” commented Spike to the panting Mallinson, “resemblin’ in certain respects the Relief of Mafeking.”

  McGonagle’s cheeks suddenly wrinkled in a smile. He turned to Walsh.

  “You have the handcuffs.”

  Dark eyes glowing with excitement, the young detective approached the girl. This was his first big arrest. He took the knife gingerly from her hand and snapped steel on her wrists.

  “You will observe, Mrs. Mallinson,” said Spike, and Spring chuckled audibly, “that we have our finer feelings at New Scotland Yard. It is always a case with us of ladies first.”

  “So that’s what you are! Dirty, bloody ’tees!”

  She turned on him a face convulsed with hatred. Her red lips protruded and a stream of vicious oaths came from between them. As Walsh attended to the handcuffing of the man Spike remonstrated with her.

  “My dear lady, surely you didn’t learn all these words from Annie S. Swan?”

  “To hell with you!” she screamed. “You were clever. Damned clever. But your cleverness will not help this lousy country to-morrow when the scourge of the flowers —”

  “Dry up, Madge,” interrupted Mallinson quietly. “You’ve said enough.”

  Suddenly the tirade
ceased. The angry flush drained from the girl’s cheeks, leaving them pale and pinched. She trembled, as if in a moment she had realized the significance of her words and had been overcome by abject fear. Spike glanced in peculiar fashion at his friends.

  “The scourge of the flowers,” he murmured. “Won’t you explain, Mrs. — er — Mallinson?”

  Slowly she shook her head, and in her close-set eyes there was terror. And presently, when it was obvious that no more could be learned from the pair at that moment, Spike gave brief instructions to McGonagle and Spring.

  “Take them over to the Yard. You’ll get a car from Superintendent MacNiven. I’ll be with you when I attend to Miss Nevinson. Walsh will stay here to keep an eye on the house until MacNiven sends over two relief men ... By the way, there was an old lad in the living-room when I came in. You know, MacNiven referred to him as Mrs. Mallinson’s father. He’s probably gone by now.”

  McGonagle nodded.

  “No one there when we smashed our way inside. We searched the front rooms.”

  “All right. Can’t manage everything.”

  As McGonagle and Spring filed out with the prisoners, and as Walsh left the room to mount guard at the front door, Spike went over to the wardrobe. He put out his arms and lifted Joan Nevinson from the interior. Her wrists and ankles were bound tightly together with thin cords, and there was a big silk handkerchief tied over her mouth as a gag.

  Spike lowered her gently into an armchair. He unknotted the gag, loosed the cords. And had McGonagle and Spring observed him then, they would have been surprised at the tenderness in his eyes.

  Joan smiled at him tremulously.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you ever so much.”

  “You’re — you’re all right? I mean — they didn’t hurt you in any way?”

  “No ... But — I was so afraid. When the furniture men came I let them into the house myself. They attacked me in the library, tied me up like this ... ”

  She bit her lip and a cry escaped her. Spike understood. He caught her hands and began to chafe them.