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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THE CROOK IN CRIMSON
Edgar Wallace
KYPROS PRESS
Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please show the author some love.
This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2015 by Edgar Wallace
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Crook in Crimson
Chapter I: Hope!
Chapter II: Reeder’s Investigation
Chapter III: Death
Chapter IV: The Arrest
Chapter V: The Red Stains
Chapter VI: Mystery
Chapter VII: The Revolver Clue
CHAPTER VIII: RED ROBE
CHAPTER IX: THE SECOND TRAP
CHAPTER X: THE FINAL PLUNGE
The Crook in Crimson
By
Edgar Wallace
THE CROOK IN CRIMSON
First published as “The Crook in Crimson” in The Thriller, Mar 23, 1929
CHAPTER I: HOPE!
IN THE DUSK OF THE evening the waterman brought his skiff under the overhanging hull of the Baltic steamer and rested on his oars, the little boat rising and falling gently in the swell of the river. A grimy, unshaven, second officer looked down from the open porthole and spat thoughtfully into the water. Apparently he did not see the swarthy-faced waterman with the tuft of grey beard, and as apparently the waterman was oblivious of his appearance. Presently the unshaven man with the faded gold band on the wrist of his shabby jacket drew in his head and shoulders and disappeared.
A few seconds later a square wooden case was heaved through the porthole and fell with a splash in the water. For a moment one sharp corner was in sight, then it sank slowly beneath the yellow flood. A small black buoy bobbed up, and the waterman watched it with interest. To the buoy was attached a stout cord, and the cord was fastened to the case. He waited, moving his oars slowly, until the buoy was on the point of being sucked out of sight; then, with a turn of his wrist, he hooked an oar under the cord—literally hooked, for at the end of the short blade was a little steel crook.
Pushing the boat forward, he reached for the buoy and drew this into the stern sheets, fastened the cord round a wooden pin, and, lifting his oars, allowed the tide to carry him under the steamer’s stern. Anchored in midstream was a dingy-looking barge and towards this he guided the skiff.
A heavily-built young man came from the aft deck of the barge, and, reaching down a boathook, drew the skiff alongside. The swarthy man held on to the side of the barge, whilst the boathook was transferred to the taut line astern. The younger man did no more than fasten the soaking cord to a small bight. By this time the occupant of the skiff was on board.
‘Nobody about, Ligsey?’ he asked gruffly.
‘Nobody, cap’n,’ said the younger man.
The captain said nothing more, but walked to the deck-house astern and disappeared down the companion-way, pulling the hatch close after him. There he stayed till the estuary was a black void punctured with dim ships’ lights.
Ligsey went forward to where his youthful assistant sat on an overturned bucket, softly playing a mouth-organ. He stopped being musical long enough to remark that the tide was turning.
‘We going up to-night?’ he asked.
Ligsey nodded. He had already heard the chuff-chuff of the motor in the stern of the barge, where the skipper was starting it.
‘What we hangin’ around here for?’ asked the youth curiously. ‘We’ve missed one tide—we could have been up to Greenwich by now. Why don’t Captain Attymar—’
‘Mind your own business!’ growled the mate.
He heard the swarthy man calling him and went aft.
‘We’ll get that case in and stow it.’ he said in a low voice. ‘I left a place in the bricks.’
Together they pulled gingerly at the cord and brought the square, soaked packing-case to sight. Ligsey leaned over and gripped it with an instrument like a pair of huge ice-tongs, and the dripping case was brought to the narrow deck and stowed expeditiously in the well of the barge.
The Alloluna invariably carried bricks between a little yard on the Essex coast and Tenny’s Wharf. Everybody on the river knew her for an erratic and a dangerous-steering craft. The loud chuffing of her engine was an offence. Even nippy tug.boats gave her yawing bows a wide berth.
The boy was called aft to take charge of the engine, and Ligsey took the tiller. It was five o’clock on a spring morning when she came to Tenny’s Wharf, which is at Rotherhithe.
As a wharfage it had few qualities attractive to the least fastidious of bargees. It consisted of a confined space with room for two builders’ lorries to be backed side by side (though it required some manoeuvring to bring them into position), and the shabby little house where Joe Attymar lived. Through the weather-beaten gate, which opened at intervals to admit the builders’ carts, was Shadwick Lane. It had none of the picturesque character of the slum it used to be, when its houses were of wood and water-butts stood in every back-yard. Nowadays it consists of four walls, two on either side of the street. Bridging each pair is an inverted ‘V’ of slate, called a roof, and at frequent intervals there are four red chimney-pots set on a small, square, brick tower. These denote roughly where lateral walls divide one hutch from another. Each partition is called a ‘house,’ for which people pay rent when they can afford it. The walls which face the street have three windows and a doorway to each division.
Joe Attymar’s house did not properly stand in the lane at all, and Shadwick Lane was only remotely interested in the barge-master, for the curious reason that he could reach his house and yard by Shadwick Passage, a tortuous alley that threaded a way between innumerable back-yards, and under the shadow of a high warehouse, to Tooley Street. Year after year the swarthy man with the little iron-grey beard and the shaggy eyebrows brought his barge up the river, always with a cargo of bricks. And invariably the barge went down empty and without his presence; for, for some reason, there was neither passenger nor skipper on the down-river trip.
This fact was unknown to the people of Shadwick Lane. They were even unaware that Joe Attymar did not sleep in his house more than one night every month. They knew, of course, from the muddy old motor-car that he drove through the wide gates occasionally, that he went abroad, but guessed that he was engaged in the legitimate business of lighterman.
THERE are gaming houses which harass the police, strange little clubs and other establishments less easy to write about, but Mr Attymar was not associated with one of these. Such problems are, in one shape or another, perennial! Occasionally they grow acute and just at that moment the question of systematic smuggling was worrying Scotland Yard considerably.
Chief Constable Mason sent for Inspector Gaylor.
‘They’ve pulled in a fellow who was peddling dope in Lisle Street last night,’ he said, ‘You might see him after his remand. I have an idea he’ll squeak.’
But the man in question was no squeaker, though he had certainly given that impression when he was taken red-handed. He said enough, however, to the patient detective to suggest that he might say more.
‘All that I could find out,’ said Gaylor, ‘is that this selling organization is nearly foolproof. The gang that we rushed last year isn’t handling the output, but I’m satisfied that it still has the same governor.’
‘Get him,’ said the Chief, who was in the habit of asking for miracles in the same tone as he asked for his afternoon tea. And then a thought struck him. ‘Go along and see Reeder. The Public Prosecutor was telling me today that Reeder is available for any extra work. He may be able to help, anyway.’
Mr Reeder heard the request, sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid it is rather—um—outside my line of business. Dope? There used to be a man named Moodle. It may not have been his name, but he had associations with these wretched people—’
‘Moodle, whose name was Sam Oschkilinski, has been dead nearly a year,’ said Gaylor.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr Reeder, in a hushed voice appropriate to one who has lost a dear friend. ‘Of what did he die?’
‘Loss of breath,’ said Gaylor vulgarly.
Mr Reeder knew nothing more that he could recall about dope merchants.
‘Haven’t you some record on your files?’ suggested Gaylor.
‘I never keep files, except—um—nail files,’ said Mr Reeder.
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Gaylor, ‘one of your peculiar friends—’
‘I have no friends,’ said Mr Reeder
But here he did not speak the exact truth.
Mr Reeder was an authority on poultry and his acquaintance with Johnny Southers began in a fowl-house. Johnny lived three doors from Mr Reeder. He was rather a nice young man, fair-haired and good-looking. He had in Mr Reeder’s eyes the overwhelming advantage of being a very poor conversationalist.
Anna Welford lived in the house opposite, so that it may be said that the scene was set, for the curious tragedy of Joe Attymar, on a very small stage.
It was through the unromantic question of a disease which attacked Johnny Southers’ prize hens that Mr Reeder met Anna. She happened to be in the Southers’ back garden when Mr Reeder was engaged in his diagnosis. She was a slim girl, rather dark, with amazing brown eyes.
Johnny did not fall in love with her at first sight. He had known her since she was so high: when he was a boy she was endurable to him. As a young man he thought her views on life were sound. He discovered he was in love with her as he discovered he was taller than his father. It was a subject for surprise.
It was brought home to him when Clive Desboyne called in his new car to take Anna to a dinner-dance. He resented Mr Desboyne’s easy assurance, the proprietorial way he handed Anna into the car. Thereafter Johnny found himself opening and examining packing-cases and casks and barrels at the Customs House with a sense of inferiority and the hopelessness of his future.
In such a mood he consulted his authority on poultry, and Mr Reeder listened with all the interest of one who was hearing a perfectly new and original story which had never been told before by or to any human being.
‘I know so very little—um—about love,’ said Mr Reeder awkwardly. ‘In fact—er—nothing. I would like to advise you to—um—let matters take their course.’
Very excellent, if vague, advice. But matters took the wrong course, as it happened.
CHAPTER II: REEDER’S INVESTIGATION
ON THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY NIGHT, as Mr Reeder was returning home, he saw two men fighting in Brockley Road. He had what is called in Portuguese a repugnancio to fighting men. When the hour was midnight and the day was Saturday, there was a considerable weight of supposition in favour of the combat being between two gentlemen who were the worse for intoxicating drink, and it was invariably Mr Reeder’s practice to cross, like the Philistine, to the other side of the road.
But the two young men who were engaged in such a short silent and bitter contest were obviously no hooligans of lower Deptford. Nevertheless, Mr Reeder hardly felt it was the occasion to act either as mediator or timekeeper.
He would have passed them by, and did in fact come level with them, when one walked across the road, leaving his companion—though that hardly seems the term to apply to one who had been so bruised and exhausted that he was hanging on to the railings—to recover as best he could. It was then that Mr Reeder saw that one of the contestants was John Southers. He was husky and apologetic.
‘I’m terribly sorry to have made a fuss like this,’ he said. ‘I hope my father didn’t hear me. This fellow is intolerable.’
The intolerable man on the other side of the street was moving slowly towards where a car was parked by the pavement. They watched him in silence as he got in and, turning the car violently, went off towards the Lewisham High Road and, from the direction he took, central London.
‘I’ve been to a dance,’ said the young man, a little inconsequently.
‘I hope,’ said Mr Reeder with the greatest gentleness, ‘that you enjoyed yourself.’
Mr Southers did not seem disposed at the moment to offer a fuller explanation. As they neared Reeder’s gate he said:
‘Thank God, Anna was inside before it started! He’s been insulting to me all the evening. As a matter of fact, she asked me to call and take her home, otherwise I shouldn’t have met him.’
There had been a dance somewhere in the City, at a livery hall. Anna had gone with Clive Desboyne, but the circumstances under which Johnny called for her were only vaguely detailed. Nor did Mr Reeder hear what was the immediate cause of the quarrel which had set two respectable young men at fisticuffs in the reputable suburban thoroughfare.
