Foyle interjected a question. The chief inspector lifted his cigar tenderly from his lips.
‘It was in the old garrotting days,’ he said. ‘Waverley and I were coming down the Tottenham Court Road a bit after midnight—just off Seven Dials. There were half-a-dozen men hanging about a corner, and one of them tiptoed after us with a pitch plaster—you’ll remember they used to do the stuff up in sacking and pull it over your mouth from behind. I never noticed anything, but Waverley did. The man was just about to throw the thing over me when Waverley wheeled round and hit him clean across the face with a light cane he was carrying. The chap was knocked in the gutter and his pals came at us with a rush. A hansom driver shouted to us to leave the man in the roadway to him, and hanged if he didn’t drive clean over him with the near-side wheel. That gave us our chance. We hopped into the cab and got away without staying to see if anyone was hurt. But if Waverley hadn’t hit out when he did I’d have been a goner.’
‘I had a funny thing happen to me once in the Tottenham Court Road,’ said Foyle reminiscently. ‘I was an inspector then and big Bill Sladen was working with me—he had a beautiful tenor voice, you will remember. We were after a couple of confidence men and had a man we were towing about to identify them. Well, we got ’em down to a saloon bar near the Oxford Street end, but I daren’t go in because they knew me. It was a bitter cold night, with a cold wind and snow and sleet. So I stayed on the opposite side of the road and induced Bill to go over and sing “I am but a Poor Blind Boy”, in the hope that our birds would call him in and give him a drink. He hadn’t been at it five minutes before a fiery, red-headed little potman had knocked him head over heels in the gutter and told him to go away. Bill could have broken the chap in two with his little finger, but he daren’t do anything. He came over to me and I sent him back again. This time he did get invited inside. And there he stayed for a full hour, while the witness and I stood shivering and wet and miserable in the snow. We could hear him laughing and singing with the best of ’em. They wouldn’t let him come away. It was not until I took all risks and marched in with the witness and arrested them that they tumbled to the fact that he wasn’t a real street singer.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You’d better go and have a rest, Green. Meet me here at half-past twelve. We’ll take a taxi to Aldgate and walk up from there. And, by the way, here’s a pistol. I needn’t tell you not to use it unless you’ve got to.’
A BITTER wind was sweeping the Commercial Road, Whitechapel, as the two detectives, each well muffled up, descended from their cab and walked briskly eastwards. Save for a slouching wayfarer or two, shambling unsteadily along, and little groups gathered about the all-night coffee-stalls, the roads were deserted. Neither man had attempted any disguise. It was not necessary now.
As they turned into Grave Street they automatically walked in the centre of the roadway. There are some places where it is not healthy to walk at night on shadowed pavements. They moved without haste and without loitering, as men who know exactly what they have to do. From one of the darkened houses a woman’s shrill scream issued full of rage and terror. It was followed by a man’s loud, angry tones, the thud of blows, shrieks, curses, and brutal laughter. Then the silence dropped over everything again. The two men had apparently paid no heed. Even had they been inclined to play the part of knights-errant in what was not an uncommon episode in Grave Street, they knew that the woman who had been chastised would probably have been the first to turn on them.
There was a side entrance to 404A, which was the newspaper shop that Foyle had cause to remember. He struck the grimy panel sharply with his fist and waited. There was no reply. Again he knocked, and Green, unbuttoning his greatcoat, flung it off and laid it across his arm. He could drop it easily in case of an emergency. Still there was no answer to the knock.
‘Luckily I swore out a search warrant,’ muttered Foyle, and searched in his own pockets for something. It was a jemmy of finely tempered steel gracefully curved at one end. He inserted it in a crevice of the door and, leaning his weight upon it, obtained an irresistible leverage. There was a slight crack, and it swung inwards as the screws of the hasp drew. The two men stepped within and, closing the door, stood absolutely still for a matter of ten minutes. Not a sound betrayed that their burglarious entry had alarmed anyone.
Presently Green made a movement, and a vivid shaft of light from a pocket electric lamp played along the narrow uncarpeted passage. The superintendent gripped his jemmy tightly and turned towards the dirty stairs. Then the light vanished as quickly as it had flared up, and from above there came a sound of shuffling footsteps. Even Heldon Foyle, whom no one would have accused of nervousness, felt his heart beat a trifle more quickly. He knew that if he were as near the heart of the mystery as he believed any second might see shooting. Penned as he and his companion were in the narrow space of the passage barely three feet wide, a shot fired from above could scarcely miss.
Crouching low, he sprang up the narrow staircase in three bounds, making scarcely a sound. On the landing above he wound his arms tightly about the person whose movements he had heard and whispered a quick, tense command.
‘Not a word, or it will be the worse for you. Let’s have a light, Green.’
The prisoner kept very still, and Green flashed a light on his face. It was that of a man of forty or so, with pronounced Hebrew features. His greasy black hair was tangled in coarse curls, and a smooth black moustache ran across his upper lip. A pair of shifty eyes were fixed fearfully on Foyle, and the man murmured something in a guttural tongue.
‘We are police officers. How many people are there in this house?’ demanded Foyle sternly, in a low voice. ‘You may as well answer in English. Quietly, now.’
He had released his hold round the Jew’s waist, but stood with the jemmy dangling by his side and with ears cocked ready for any sound. Green had climbed the stairs and stood by his side.
Domiciliary visits are unfrequent in England, but the Jew was not certain enough to stand upon a legal technicality. As a matter of fact, the search warrant would have met the difficulty. He cringed before the two men, whose faces he could not see, for Green had thrown his wedge of light so that it showed up the man’s sallow face and left all else in darkness.
‘I do not know why you have come,’ he answered, forming each word precisely. ‘I have done nothing wrong. I am an honest newsagent. There is only my wife, daughter, son, lodger in house.’
‘You are a receiver of stolen goods,’ answered Foyle, something, it must be confessed, at a venture. ‘Don’t trouble to deny it, Mr Israels. We’re not after you this time—not if you treat us fairly. What about this lodger of yours? Have you bought him a typewriter lately?’
‘Yes—yes. I help you all I can,’ protested the Jew, with an eagerness that deceived neither of the detectives. There is no class of liar so abysmal as the East-end criminal Jew. They will hold to a glib falsehood with a temerity that nothing can shake. If there is no necessity to lie, they lie—for practice, it is to be presumed. The best way to extract a truth is to make a direct assertion by the light of apparent knowledge and so sometimes obtain assent. Foyle knew the idiosyncrasies of the breed. Hence the threat in his demand.
‘I bought a typewriter—yes,’ went on Israels. ‘I think he was honest. Didn’t seem as though police after him.’
‘Which room is he in?’
Israels jerked a thumb upwards. ‘Next landing. Door on left,’ he ejaculated nervously.
The superintendent pushed by the man. He knew that the critical moment had come. With his quick judgment of men he had summed up Mr Israels. Whatever the Jew’s morals, it was evident that he had a wholesome respect for his own oily skin. He would not risk himself to save the neck of another man. Foyle’s intentions were simple. He would steal quietly up the second flight of stairs, burst the door open if it were locked,