The Golden Face: A Great 'Crook' Romance

Again, in a village some ten miles farther on, a constable shouted to me as I continued my wild flight, hence it seemed apparent that a cordon had been formed around me, and I now feared that to enter Winchester would be to run right into the arms of the police.

The only way to save myself was to abandon the car and get back to London by rail. As I contemplated this I was already passing beside the high embankment of the South Western Railway, where half a mile farther on I found a little wayside station. Therefore I turned the car into a small wood, and destroying my genuine license and hiding the genuine number-plate, I took the next train to Winchester, and thence by express to Waterloo after a very wild and adventurous night. That I had been within an ace of capture was palpable. But why?

I was in the service of the man who controlled that vast criminal organization which the police of Europe were ever trying to break up. But why should I be sent to meet the mysterious hunchback Tarrant on Clifton Bridge?

“There seemed to have been a little flaw in our plans, Hargreave,” said the alert, good-looking man as I sat with him in his cosy chambers in Half Moon Street that morning. “The police evidently got wind of the fact that old Morley was meeting you, and Benton tried to impersonate him. I know Benton. He’s always up against me. He might have succeeded had he made the hump on his back a hard one, eh?” he laughed, as though rather amused than otherwise.

“But he didn’t know the password,” I remarked in triumph.

“No! It was fortunate for you that I had arranged it with old Morley,” said the man with the master-mind. “One must be ever wary when one treads crooked paths, you know. The slightest slip – and the end comes! But, at any rate, last night’s adventure has sharpened your wits.”

“And it has cost us the ‘A. C.’!” I remarked.

“Bah! What’s a motor-car more or less when one is working a big thing!” he exclaimed. “Never let ideas of economy stand in your way, or you’ll never make a fortune. In order to make money you must always spend money.”

I often recollected that adage of his in later days, when the pace grew even hotter.

Rayne paused for a few minutes. Then he said:

“I’ve already heard from old Morley on the telephone half an hour ago. He was on the bridge and watched the fun. Then he discreetly withdrew and went back to his hotel in Clifton. He declares that you acted splendidly.”

“I’m much gratified by his testimonial,” I said.

“I’ve arranged that he shall meet you to-night here in London – outside the Three Nuns Hotel at Aldgate. Go to Lloyd’s and get a car. At half-past seven it will be dark. Drive up, go into the bar and have a drink. You’ll find him there and recognize him by his deformity. Outside he will mention the password and you will drive him where he directs. That’s all!”

And the man who had, on engaging me, so particularly wanted to know if I could sing, and had never asked me to do so, dismissed me quite abruptly, as was his habit. His quick alertness, keen shrewdness and sharp suspicion caused him to speak abruptly – almost churlishly – to those about him. I, however, now understood him. Yet I wondered what evil work was in progress.

He had often pitted his wits against the most famous detective inspector, the great Benton, who had achieved so much notoriety in the Enfield poisoning case, the Sunbury mystery in which the body of a young girl shop-assistant had been found headless in the Thames, the great Maresfield drug drama of Limehouse and Mayfair, and the disappearance of the Honorable Edna Newcomen from her mother’s house in Grosvenor Gardens. Superintendent Arthur Benton was perhaps the most wideawake hunter of criminals in the United Kingdom. As chief of his own particular branch at Scotland Yard he performed wonderful services, and his record was unique. Yet, hampered as he was by official red-tape and those regulations which prevented his men from taking a third-class railway ticket when following a thief, unless they waited for weeks for the return of the expenditure from official sources, he was no match for the squire of Overstow, who had a big bank balance, who moved in society, official, political and otherwise, and who actually entertained certain high officials at his table.

From a man in the Department of the Public Prosecutor at Whitehall, Rayne often learnt much of the inner workings of Scotland Yard and of secret inquiries, for a civil servant at a well-laid sumptuous table is frequently prone to indiscretion.

Arthur Benton was a well-meaning and very straight-dealing public servant with a splendid record as a detector of crime, but against money and such influence he could not cope. Indeed, more than once Rayne declared to me that he intended evil against Benton.

“Yet I rather like him,” he had said when we were discussing him one day. “After all, he’s a real good sportsman!”

So according to Rayne’s orders I met the hunchback Tarrant at the Three Nuns Hotel at Aldgate. I had taken another car from Lloyd’s garage – a Fiat landaulette, stolen, no doubt – and in it, at the old man’s directions, I drove out to Maldon, in Essex, where at a small house outside the town I found, to my surprise, Rayne already awaiting us.

What, I wondered, was in progress?

CHAPTER IV

THE FOUR FALSE FINGERS

The house outside Maldon proved to be a newly built, detached, eight-roomed villa in a lonely spot on the high road to Witham. As I idled about it, I smelt a curious odor of melting rubber. Apparently the place had been taken furnished, but with what object I could not guess. Tarrant was a queer, rather insignificant-looking old fellow with a shock of white hair and a scraggy white beard.

Both he and Rayne were closeted together in the little dining-room for nearly two hours, while I sat in the adjoining room. I could hear them conversing in low tones, and the smell of rubber warmed by heat became more pungent. What game was being carried on? Something very secret without a doubt. I thought I heard the sound of a third man’s voice. Indeed, there might be a third person present, for I had not been admitted to the room.

At last, leaving Rayne there, I drove the old man on to Witham, where I left him at his own request at a point near the wireless telegraph station, and turning, went back to the thieves’ garage and there left the car.

I did not see Rudolph Rayne again for several days, but according to instructions I received from Madame Duperré, I went by train up to Yorkshire and awaited their arrival.

From Duperré, who arrived three days after I had got to Overstow, I gathered that Rayne had suddenly been called away to the Continent on one of his swift visits, “on a little matter of business,” added Vincent with a meaning grin.

We were smoking together in the great old library, when I told him of my narrow escape on Clifton Bridge.

“Yes,” he said. “Benton is always trying to get at us. It was sly of him to impersonate old Morley. I wonder how he got to know that you were meeting him? Someone must have betrayed Rayne. I have a suspicion who it may be. If he has, then woe betide him! Rudolph never forgives an enemy or a blunderer.”

I tried to get from Duperré the reason why the hunchback had met Rayne in such secrecy, but he would divulge nothing.

Next day his wife and Lola returned, and that same evening as I sat with the latter in the chintz-covered drawing-room – for though I had been engaged as chauffeur I was now treated as one of the family – I had a delightful chat with her.

That she was sorely puzzled at her father’s rapid journeys to and fro across Europe without any apparent reason, of the strange assortment of his friends and the secrecy in which he so often met them, I had long ago observed.

The truth was that I had fallen deeply in love with the sweet dainty girl whose father was the most audacious and cunning crook the modern world had produced. I believed, on account of the small confidence we had exchanged, that Lola, on her part, did not regard me with actual disfavor.

“When will your father be back, do you think?” I asked her as she lounged upon a settee with a big orange silk cushion behind her. She looked very sweet. She wore a pretty but very simple dance-frock of flame-colored ninon, in which I had seen her at the Carlton on the night when I set out to meet the man Tarrant and was so nearly caught.

I had given her a cigarette, and we were smoking together cosily – Duperré and his wife being somewhere in the great old house. I think Duperré was, after all, a sportsman, even though he was a practiced crook, for on that night he and his wife allowed me to be alone with Lola.

“Do you know a friend of your father, an old man named Tarrant?” I asked her suddenly.

“Tarrant – Morley Tarrant?” she asked. “Oh! yes. He’s such a funny old fellow. Three years ago he often used to visit us when we lived in Biarritz, but I haven’t seen him since.”

“Who is he?”

“He was the manager of the branch of the Crédit Foncier. He is French, though he bears an English name.”

“French! But he speaks English!” I remarked.

“Of course. His mother was English. He was once employed by Morgan’s in Paris, I believe, but I haven’t seen him lately. Father said one day at table that the old fellow had overstepped the mark and owing to some defalcations had gone to prison. I was sorry. What do you know of him?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “I’ve heard of him.”

She looked me very straight in the face from beneath her long dark lashes.

“Ah! you won’t tell me what you know,” she said mysteriously.

“Neither will you, Lola!” Then, after a pause, I added: “I want to know whether he is your father’s friend – or his enemy.”

“His friend, no doubt.”

“Why should your father have as friend a man who robs a bank, eh?” I asked very earnestly.

“Ah! That I don’t know!” replied the girl as she bent towards me earnestly. “I – I’m always so puzzled. Ever since my dear mother died, just after I came back from Roedene, I have wondered – and always wondered. I can discover nothing – absolutely nothing! Father is so secret, and neither Madame nor he will tell me anything. They only say that their business is no affair of mine. My father has business, no doubt, Mr. Hargreave. From his business he derives his income. But I cannot see why he should so constantly meet men and women in all sorts of social positions and give them orders, as it were. I am not blind, neither am I deaf.”

“You have listened in secret, eh?” I asked.

“I confess that I have.” Then, after a slight pause, she went on: “And I have overheard some very strange conversations. My father seems to direct the good fortunes of certain of his friends, while at the same time he plots against his enemies. But I suppose, after all, it is business.”

Business! Little did the girl dream of the real occupation of her unscrupulous father, or the desperate characters of his friends, both male and female.

Truly, she was very sweet and charming, and I hated to think that in her innocence she existed in that fevered world of plotting and desperate crime.

We walked along the broad terrace in the twilight. Beyond spread the wide park to a dark belt of trees, Sherman’s Copse, it was called, a delightfully shady place in summer where we had often strolled together.

As we chatted, I reflected. So old Morley Tarrant was a gaol-bird! Hence it was but natural that Rudolph Rayne, who preserved such a high degree of respectability, would hesitate to meet him providing he knew that the police were watching. He certainly knew that, hence the secrecy of their appointment.

As we walked Madame suddenly emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room and joined us.

“I’ve just had a wire from Rudolph,” she said. “He’s leaving Copenhagen to-night and will be back to-morrow night. I’d no idea that he had been over in Denmark. But there! he is such a bird of passage that one never knows where he may be to-morrow.” And she laughed.

Later we all four sat down to dinner, a decorous meal, well-cooked and well-served. But the character of the household was shown by the fact that none of the servants – discreetly chosen, of course, and in themselves members of the criminal organization – betrayed the least surprise that I, who acted as chauffeur, should be admitted to that curious family circle.

Rayne returned next night, tired and travel-worn, and I met him at Thirsk station.

“We go up to Edinburgh to-morrow. I shall want you to drive me,” he said as he sat at my side in the Rolls. “Lola will go also.”

His last words delighted me, and next day at noon we all three set forth on our journey north. It rained all day and the run was the reverse of pleasant, nevertheless, we arrived at the Caledonian Hotel quite safely, and were soon installed in one of the cosy private suites.

Father and daughter breakfasted in their sitting-room, while I had my meal alone in the coffee-room.

When later I went up for orders Rayne dismissed me abruptly, saying that he would not require me till after lunch.

Half an hour afterwards, while idling along Princes Street, I came across Lola, who was looking in one of the shop windows.

“Father has sent me out as he wants to talk business with Mr. Hugh Martyn, a rich American we met at the Grand, in Rome, last year. Father has come up here specially to meet him.”

What fresh crooked business could there be in progress? That Rayne had paid flying visits to Copenhagen and Edinburgh in such a short space of time was in itself highly suspicious.

After luncheon, on entering Rayne’s sitting-room, I found him busily fashioning from a sheet of thin cardboard a small square box which he was fitting over a large glass paper-weight, a cube about four inches square which was wrapped in tissue-paper, the corner of which happened to be torn and so revealed the glass.

“I’m sending this away as a present,” he explained. “I bought it over in Princes Street this morning.” And he continued with his scissors to make the box to fit it. “I shall not want you any more to-day Hargreave,” he went on. “We’ll get back home to-morrow, starting at ten.”

And, as was his habit, he dismissed me abruptly.

Four days later I was summoned to the library, where in breeches and gaiters he was standing astride upon the hearthrug.

“Look here, Hargreave,” he said, “I want you to take the next train up to London and carry that little leather bag with you,” and he indicated a small bag standing upon the writing-table. “On arrival go at once down to Maldon and call at half-past nine o’clock to-morrow night at that house to which you took old Mr. Tarrant. You recollect it – The Limes, on the Witham road. Morley will be expecting you.”

“Very well,” I replied. “Is there any message?”

“None. Just deliver it to him. But to nobody else, remember,” he ordered.

So according to his instructions I duly arrived at the remote house at the hour arranged, and delivered the bag to the old man, who welcomed me and gave me a whisky-and-soda, which I found very acceptable after my long tramp from Maldon station. Tarrant was not alone, for I distinctly heard a man’s voice calling him just before he opened the door to me.

Recollecting that the old fellow had been in gaol, I was full of curiosity as to what was intended. I certainly never believed it to be so highly ingenious and dastardly as it eventually proved to be.

About a month passed uneventfully, save that I spent many delightful hours in Lola’s company. Her father had purchased another two-seater car – a “sports model” Vauxhall – and on several occasions I took him for runs in it about Yorkshire. Naturally he knew little about cars himself, but relied upon my knowledge and judgment. In addition to the Rolls and the Vauxhall I also had an “Indian” motor-cycle for my own personal use, and found it very useful in going on certain rapid missions to York and elsewhere. But the abandonment of the “A.C.” – which had, by the way, been regarded as a mystery by the Press – hurt me considerably.

Duperré had been absent from Overstow ever since the day we had left for Edinburgh, but as the bright autumn days passed I found myself more and more in love with the dainty girl whose father was a master-criminal.

Nevertheless, I felt that Duperré’s wife kept eager watch upon both of us. Perhaps she feared that I might tell Lola some of my adventures. As for Rayne, he was often out shooting over neighboring estates, for he was a good shot and highly popular in the neighborhood, while at Overstow itself there was some excellent sport to which now and then he would invite his local friends.

Rayne possessed a marvelous personality. When at home he was the typical country gentleman, a good judge of a horse and in his “pink” a straight rider to hounds. None who met him would have ever dreamed that he was the shrewd, crafty cosmopolitan whose evil machinations and devilish ingenuity made themselves felt in all the capitals of Europe, and whose word was law to certain dangerous characters who would not hesitate to take human life if it were really necessary to evade arrest.

His outstanding cleverness, however, was that he never revealed his own identity to those who actually carried out his devilish schemes. The circle of cosmopolitan malefactors who were his cat’s-paws only knew Monsieur and Madame Duperré – under other names – but of Rudolph Rayne’s very existence they were nearly all ignorant. Money was, I learnt, freely paid for various “jobs” by agents engaged by the man I had once known as Captain Deinhard, or else by certain receivers of stolen goods in London and on the Continent, who were forewarned that jewels, bonds or stolen bank-notes would reach them in secret, and that payment must be made and no questions asked.

Late one evening Duperré returned unexpectedly in a hired car from Thirsk. We had finished dinner, and I chanced to be with Rayne in the library, yet longing to get to the old-fashioned drawing-room with its sweet odor of potpourri, where Lola was, I knew, sitting immersed in the latest novel.

“Hallo, Vincent! Why, I thought you were still in Aix-les-Bains!” cried Rayne, much surprised, and yet a trifle excited, which was quite unusual for him.

“There’s a nasty little hitch!” replied the other, still in his heavy traveling coat. Then, turning to me, he said: “Hargreave, old chap, will you leave for a moment or two? I want to speak to Rudolph.”

“Of course,” I said. I was by that time used to those confidential conversations, and I walked along the corridor and joined Lola.

“I’m very troubled, Mr. Hargreave,” the girl suddenly exclaimed in a low, timid voice after we had been chatting a short time. “I overheard father whispering something to Madame Duperré to-day.”

“Whispering something!” I echoed. “What was that?”

“Something about Mr. Martyn, that American gentleman he met in Edinburgh,” she replied. “Father was chuckling to himself, saying that he had taken good precautions to prevent him proving an alibi. Father seemed filled with the fiercest anger against him. I’m sure he’s an awfully nice man, though we hardly know him. What can it mean?”

An alibi? I reflected. I replied that it was as mysterious to me as to her. Like herself I lived in a clouded atmosphere of rapidly changing circumstances, mysterious plots and unknown evil deeds – truly a world of fear and bewilderment.

Some days later I had driven up to London in the Rolls with Duperré, leaving Rayne and Lola at home, Duperré’s wife being away somewhere on a visit. We took up our quarters at Rayne’s chambers, and next day idled about London together. Just before we went out to dinner Martyn called, and after taking a drink Duperré went out with him, remarking to me that he would be in soon after eleven. Hence I went to the theater, and on returning at midnight awaited him.

I sat reading by the fire and dozed till just past two o’clock, when he returned dressed in unfamiliar clothes: a rough suit of tweeds in which he presented the appearance of a respectable artisan. His left hand was bound roughly with a colored handkerchief, and he appeared very exhausted. Before speaking he poured himself out a liqueur glass of neat brandy which he swallowed at a single gulp.

“I’ve had a rather nasty accident, George,” he said. “I’ve cut my hand pretty badly. Only not a soul must know about it – you understand?”

I nodded, and then at his request I assisted him to wash the wound and rebandage it.

“What’s been the matter?” I asked with curiosity.

“Nothing very much,” was his hard reply. “You’ll probably know all about it to-morrow. The papers will be full of it. But mind and keep your mouth shut very tightly.”

And with that he drew from his pockets a pair of thin surgical rubber gloves, both of which were blood-stained, and hurriedly threw them into the fire.

On the following evening about six o’clock I was alone in Rayne’s chambers when the evening newspaper was, as usual, pushed through the letter-box. I rose, and taking it up glanced casually at the front page, when I was confronted by a startling report.

It appeared that just after midnight on the previous night the watchman on duty at the Chartered Bank of Liberia, in Lombard Street, had been murderously attacked by some unknown person who apparently battered his head with an iron bar, and left him unconscious and so seriously injured that he was now in Guy’s Hospital without hope of recovery. The bank robbers had apparently used a most up-to-date oxyacetylene plant for cutting steel, and from the strong-room in the basement – believed to be impregnable and which could only be opened by a time-clock, and, moreover, could be flooded at will – they had cut out the door as butter could be cut with a hot knife. From the safe they had abstracted negotiable bonds with English, French and Italian notes to the value of over eighty thousand pounds, with which the thieves had got clear away.

The bank robbery was the greatest sensation of the moment. The thieves had cleverly effected an entrance by one of them having secreted himself in a safe in the bank when it had closed. In the morning at nine o’clock when the first clerk, a lady accountant, had arrived, she could get no entrance, so she waited till one of her male colleagues arrived. Then they called a constable, and after half an hour the sensational fact of the unconscious watchman and the rifled strong-room became revealed.

The newspaper report concluded with the following sentences:

“It is evident that one of the thieves cut his hand badly, for we understand that the detectives of the City police have found blood-stained finger-prints of four distinct fingers upon the door and in other parts of the strong-room. These, of course, have already been photographed, and in due course will be investigated by that department of Scotland Yard which deals with the finger-prints of known criminals.”

With the knowledge of the injury to Duperré’s hand I felt confident that the great coup was due to him. And I was not mistaken.

The bank thieves had got clear away, it was true, but they had left those tell-tale finger-prints behind! As everyone knows, the ridges and whorls upon the hands of no two men are alike, therefore it seemed clear that Scotland Yard, now aroused, would very quickly – owing to its marvelous classification of the finger-prints of every criminal who has passed through the hands of the police during the past quarter of a century – fix upon the person who had laid his hands upon the steel safe door.

An hour after I had read the report in the paper, Duperré rang me up.

“I’m going to Overstow by the nine-thirty from King’s Cross to-night,” he said. “If you can join me, do. The air is better in Yorkshire than in London, don’t you think so, old chap?”

“Right-oh!” I replied. “I’ll travel up with you.”

We met, and early next morning we were back at Overstow. Yet I managed to suppress any untoward curiosity.

It was only when about a week later I read in the paper of the result of the discovery of Scotland Yard finger-print department and of a consequent arrest that I sat aghast.

A notorious jewel-thief named Hersleton, alias Hugh Martyn, an American, had been arrested at a hotel at Brighton, and had been charged at Bow Street with the murderous attack upon the night watchman at the Chartered Bank of Liberia, his finger-prints, taken some years before, coinciding exactly with those left at the bank. He had violently protested his innocence, but had been committed for trial.