Richardson Scores Again (25 page)

“Ah, Monsieur Levees. If Monsieur had pronounced the name correctly, I should have known. Alas, you cannot see him, monsieur. I have special orders to admit no one to see him.”

“He knows me, madame, and he will blame you if I leave without seeing him,” said Richardson in his broken French. “Give me at least the number of his room.”

The lady was obdurate, but fortunately he had seen the number 27 scrawled in pencil across the form.

“Very well, madame, kindly let me have a cup of coffee in this lounge. Perhaps he will pass through it on his way out.”

It being a matter of principle with all French hotel proprietors never to turn away custom from their doors, the lady shouted for Anne Marie, and a slovenly waitress in felt slippers went off to the kitchen with the order. Richardson consumed his coffee at peace with the world. He had surmounted the first fence: the man was in the hotel and could not get out of it unseen. The immediate question was how long he would have to wait. Fortune favoured him. The children's game had degenerated into a noisy wrangle in the corridor behind the lounge; piercing screams from the younger members summoned the hand of authority to quell the riot: the mother left her seat at the desk to restore order. This was Richardson's heaven-sent opportunity. Leaving five francs on the table in payment for his coffee, he slipped out to the staircase and fled upstairs to the landing above, where he had little difficulty in locating No. 27. No member of the hotel staff had seen him.

He knocked gently at the door. A bolt was shot back and it was opened a few inches, revealing the haggard features of Ralph Lewis in pyjamas and slippers and unshaven. He tried to slam the door in Richardson's face, but police officers are trained by experience to counter this manoeuvre and he found a booted foot in the way. He fell back, panting, and Richardson found himself in the room with the door shut and bolted behind him. He noted that there was no telephone in the room and that he was between Lewis and the bell-push.

“I'm sorry to have to intrude upon you, Mr. Lewis, but I have come all the way from London to see you.”

“I told the people downstairs that I could see nobody,” stammered Lewis. “How did you get the number of my room?”

“It was not the fault of the hotel people that I did. They told me of your order and refused to give me the number of your room. Never mind how I got it. I couldn't have my journey from London for nothing. Besides, I am here in your own interests —to protect you against serious trouble. You will remember that when I last saw you in London you assured me that you were not being blackmailed. We have since had abundant evidence that you are, and if you will give me a frank account of all that you have gone through, we can undertake to protect you.”

“I haven't asked for any protection.”

“No, I am quite aware of that, but without knowing it you have been in serious danger, and we were lucky in getting to know of it in time.”

Ralph Lewis had turned very pale and his breath was coming short. “How do you mean in serious danger?” he stammered.

“I mean danger from a man who knew you in Canada as ‘Owen Jones.' He had come over from Canada to shoot you, and if you had gone on to Stuttgart the other day as you intended, you wouldn't be alive to-day.”

Ralph Lewis subsided on the bed and hid his face.

Richardson continued, “I know that you are suffering from nerves, like all the victims of black-mailers: otherwise you would not have thought of hiding yourself in a place like this.”

“I came here for a rest. My health is not what it was.”

“Yes, Mr. Lewis, I know that, and I also know more than you think about the cause of your breakdown. When you were travelling in Canada under the name of Owen Jones—”

“Who told you that?”

“A man who met you under that name in Quebec.”

“Has that blackguard told you that?”

“The man I mean is a curious person, but I shouldn't call him a blackguard. You must remember that evening in the saloon in Quebec—that saloon with a balcony overhanging the river—when you played poker with a man, and accused him of cheating you, and had a fight with him.”

“I see what it is. You needn't beat about the bush any longer. You've been sent out to arrest me for murder. I've been expecting this for months.”

“No, Mr. Lewis. I haven't come out to arrest you for murder or anything else. I've come out to hear your version of what happened in that saloon in Canada, and induce you to come home with me.”

“I don't believe it. I can't believe it. You
must
know what they accuse me of. You must have seen the handbills issued by the Quebec police.”

“I have seen a handbill, but it wasn't issued by the Quebec police or any other police. It's a forgery.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think that in a fight with a professional gambler named Moore, you pushed him into the river and drowned him. I had a talk with Moore the night before last. He is very much alive.”

Lewis had been sitting on the bed with his face averted. He swung round now and faced Richard-son, his mouth open with astonishment. At last he found his tongue. “You can't mean the same man. The man I mean fell twenty feet into the river at its deepest part and went under. He couldn't swim. I think I must have fainted or something: otherwise I should have done something to save him. Anyone would, however low he might have sunk. They were all shouting. Someone pulled me back into the room. That's the last I remember until I found myself in bed in the hotel. I left Quebec next morning, and I've been haunted ever since by the sight of that water swirling in the dark and that awful splash as the man hit the water.”

“Do you remember what the man was like?”

“However long I live I shall never forget him. He wasn't a man you could forget. He was a short, thick-set man with a broad face and dull eyes like a fish.”

“Had he a big head?”

“Yes. I heard one of the men ask him just before we began to play whether he didn't have to get his hats specially made for him. Another thing I remember about him is that he never took his hat off. He was wearing it on the back of his head when we sat down to play.”

“And they called him ‘Poker Moore'?”

“Yes, or just ‘Poker.'”

“Well, that was the man I was talking to in London the night before last. Look here, Mr. Lewis, as you've admitted so much, don't you think that you had better tell me the whole story from the beginning? What took you out to Canada?”

“My father had died the year before. As his only son, I came in for a good deal of money. He owned a lot of colliery shares, and it was the good time for coal-owners. I was what people would call a rich man in those days, but I'm a poor man now. Well, I thought of standing for the House of Commons and of making politics my career: I knew from my experience in the Oxford Union that I had some gift for stringing words together. I did not know that to succeed in public life one must have the thickest kind of skin, and that Nature hadn't given me. Well, at that time the shortest road to notoriety seemed to be a first-hand knowledge of the Dominions, and Canada was also a field for the investment of my spare cash. That was how I came to be in Canada.”

“But why did you go there under an assumed name?”

“I went there under my own name, but I had a fatal itch for getting to know the seamy side of life as well as the other, and in my waterside rambles I used the name of Owen Jones whenever I put on the suit of clothes that I kept specially for these rambles. It was then that I first met the man who has ruined me, morally and financially. I met him in the hotel lounge. He was a public-school boy like myself, a few years older than I was, a charming companion and apparently a man of means. When he found that I wanted to study the seamy side of the city, he told me that he knew it inside out, and offered to act as my guide. He called himself ‘Mr. Gordon' on these excursions; all the saloon-keepers and the loafers seemed to know him. When it came to drinking, I found that he had an extraordinarily strong head for carrying liquor, and, as I found out to my cost, I have a very weak one. Of course I had to be host on these occasions. I tried to be abstemious, but he wouldn't let me off. He said that ‘glass for glass' must be the rule, otherwise the people would suspect me of being a reporter in search of scandal for a newspaper.

“One night he said he would show me a real gambling hell where I could study the professional gambler and his ways. Like a fool, I consented. He took me along narrow streets to the waterside, and into a horrid little saloon lighted with evil-smelling lamps. There he introduced me to this man, Moore, and whispered that he knew more about the game of poker than any man south of the St. Lawrence River. I had to stand drinks for the three of us, and after the third drink I felt that I was ready for anything—even to taking a lesson in poker from Moore himself. There was a crowd of people in the room—one, I noticed, was a youngster in British Naval uniform—and they all crowded round the table to watch Moore play. At first I had a run of luck and won money from Moore. He paid up without a murmur, but he said that he wouldn't play any more unless we changed the pack. I was elated at winning money from a player of his reputation, and, to say the truth, I had drunk more than was good for me. He called for a new pack from the bartender, and from that moment I began to lose rather heavily. It was extraordinary how those cards let me down. I remember one deal when I had a full hand—three aces and two jacks—and bet heavily on it, and when he called me, he put down four sevens. That sort of thing may happen once, or even twice, in an evening, but when it happens a third time even a man half stupid with bad liquor will guess that the cards have been manipulated against him. I stood it as long as I could, but when I detected Moore winking at a pal standing beside his chair, I lost my temper and saw red. I accused him of cheating. Most of the crowd took his side. I was past caring at that stage. I threw the pack in his face, shoved the table over and got him by the throat. The crowd stood back—I think that they expected him to start shooting, and they wanted to keep out of the way of stray bullets. Moore was less powerful than he looked. I shoved him towards the glass door: the door was rotten and gave way. Though I didn't know it, we were on a verandah built out over the river. Moore made a frantic effort to drive me back into the room. He couldn't shout because I still had him by the throat. I gave him a shove with all my strength and he fell back against the rail of the verandah, which cracked and gave way under his weight and he went over, very nearly carrying me with him. It seemed an age before I heard his body splash into the water. I believe that I sat down on the floor and cried like a child. Someone—it must have been ‘Gordon'—pulled me back into the saloon. That is all I remember.”

Richardson saw that his eyes were dilated with horror at the memory of that moment. He tried to bring him back to less dramatic events. “I suppose that you did not stay in Canada?”

“No. My friend, ‘Gordon,' did everything—bought my ticket for the next steamer, sat with me in my room in the hotel, kept everybody away from me. He told me that there was a hue and cry for me, but that he would smuggle me on board the steamer without anyone knowing. When I got home I tried hard to forget about the business, and I allowed myself to be drawn into politics again through Mr. Vance, the philanthropist. It was nearly three years before I saw the man I had known as ‘Gordon' again. It was at one of the periodical meetings of Mr. Vance's helpers. There was ‘Gordon,' sitting right opposite me. Mr. Vance introduced him to the meeting as a man who had an extraordinary influence over criminals, and said that he had consented to take charge of a new enterprise—that of looking after those discharged convicts for whom the official Aid Societies could do nothing. After the meeting ‘Gordon' came over to me and told me that now he was back in England he had resumed his real name of Pentland, and flattered me by saying that he had heard from Mr. Vance that I was the ‘coming man.' He reassured me by saying that he thought that the hue and cry about Moore's death must have died down. I met him at meetings two or three times after that, and he did not refer to Canada, and then one day he came to me with a long face and showed me a police handbill, offering a big reward for the arrest of ‘Owen Jones' for murder, and giving a very accurate description of me. He said that one of the men who had been in the saloon that night had brought it to him; that he said that he had recognized me coming out of a political meeting. ‘It's all right,' he said; ‘I've stopped his mouth by promising him five hundred pounds and his passage to the Argentine, but of course I can't afford to pay all that money myself. He seemed to be so genuine that I was fool enough to give him the money.”

“You should have come to the police.”

“I didn't dare to do that. Knowing, as I thought, that the man was dead, you would have been bound to arrest me. That was only the beginning. Every two or three months he used to come to me again with some fresh story about a man who had to be paid not to denounce me. I was on the high road to ruin. My colliery shares had almost ceased to pay, and in these days no one can afford to pay huge sums every three months or so. Pentland had devised a signal to warn me when I was in danger, in case he could not get to me in time. He put his right hand up to the side of his face and put his left hand up to his right elbow, like this. That meant that if I could not give him a private interview I was to send him money in notes. I had had some weeks of respite from his exactions when I had to speak at that meeting in the Albert Hall, and there was Pentland, sitting in one of the front rows. There was nothing in that. Mr. Vance's people made a point of coming to my meetings, but just when I was well under way in my speech I saw Pentland making that sign and I broke down. What made it worse was that I hadn't the ready cash to pay any more hush-money.”