Elk 02 The Joker (25 page)

‘But before this happened there was a tragedy at 704, Park Lane. Apparently, when Marling approached Ingle the actor-convict had been in some doubt as to whether he should go to meet him. Ingle at first suspected a trap and wrote a letter declining to meet. Afterwards he changed his mind, but left the letter on his writing desk and the charwoman, Mrs Gibbins, seeing the envelope was marked “Urgent, By Hand,” came to the conclusion that her master had gone out and forgotten the letter; and with a desire to oblige, she herself brought it to Park Lane. Marling opened the door to her and had the shock of his life, for immediately he recognised her. He invited her into the library and there she slipped on the parquet floor and fell, cutting her head again the corner of the desk. They made every effort to restore her: that I can vouch for. They even brought me down to help, but she was dead, and there arose the question of disposing of the body.

‘Marling never ceased to blame himself that he did not call in the police immediately and tell them the truth, but he was afraid to have his name mentioned in connection with a man who had recently been discharged from prison; and in the end he and Mrs Edwins took the body to Hyde Park and dropped it in the water. You tell me there were signs of a struggle, but that is not so. The footprints were Mrs Edwins’ and not the dead woman’s.

‘Marling never saw the letter which the woman brought, it must have fallen from her pocket when they were carrying her down the slope towards the canal. He told me all about it afterwards; and I know he spoke the truth.’

(Here Mr Harlow’s narrative was interrupted for two hours as he showed some signs of fatigue. It was resumed at his own request just before midnight.)

‘Marling regarded his crimes as jokes, and always referred o them as such. It is, I believe, a common expression amongst the criminal classes and one which took his fancy. The great “joke” about Sir Joseph was the plan to restore him to his friends. I think it was partly Ingle’s idea, and was as follows. Two nigger minstrel suits were procured, exactly alike, and it was arranged that Ingle, at a certain hour, should get himself locked up and conveyed to what Marling invariably called “the lifeboat” - ’

‘Lifeboat?’ interrupted Jim quickly. ‘Why did he call it that?’

‘I will tell you,’ resumed Mr Harlow. ‘You will remember that he presented a police station which he had built only about fifty yards from this house; he made this presentation with only one idea in his mind: if he were arrested it was to that police station that he would be taken!

‘Sir Joseph lay under the influence of drugs in the room off the underground garage until the moment arrived, when he was stripped, his upper lip shaved and his face covered with the black make-up of a minstrel. He was then taken through the little door, which you say you have seen, along a locked passage to one of the stairways beneath the cells, and the substitution was an easy matter. Every bed in every cell lifts up, if you know the secret, like the lid of a box; beneath each bed is a flight of steps leading to the passage and to the garage - ’

Jim ran into Evory Street station.

‘I want to see Harlow quick!’ he said breathlessly.

‘He’s all right; he was asleep the last time I saw him,’ said the inspector on duty.

‘Let me see him,’ said Jim impatiently; and followed the jailer down the corridor till they stopped outside Cell No 9.

The jailor squinted through the peep-hole. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and turned the lock. The cell was empty!

When they visited the garage, the dark blue car was gone; and though this was found later abandoned on the Harwich road, the Splendid Harlow had vanished as though the earth had opened; nor was he ever seen again, though sometimes there came news from the continent of gigantic operations engineered through Spanish banks by an unknown plutocrat.

The Splendid Harlow had cached most of his money in Spain, but though Jim visited that country, he pursued no inquiries. People on their honeymoon have very little time for criminal investigation.

‘If I had only known about that infernal police station!’ he said once, as they were loafing through the Puerta del Sol.

Aileen changed the subject at the earliest possible moment.

For she had known about the plank beds which were doors to freedom.

It was too good a joke for Harlow to keep to himself. And in telling her he ran very little risk. He was an excellent judge of human nature.