21: The Bridge

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GARNER caught sight of the two detectives as soon as they entered the room, and Liversedge, watching him closely, saw in his face the expression of a man who realises that he is unexpectedly confronted with a critical situation. But it died away as quickly as it had arisen; by the time Liversedge and Pryke had reached the corner in which he sat, Garner had recovered himself, and was gazing at Liversedge with a half-cynical, half-defiant smile. And Liversedge, quick to notice this, went straight to his point.

“Now, Garner!” he began in a low voice, as he leaned across the table behind which Garner sat. “You had Crench and Simpson here a few minutes ago! Where are they?” Garner looked at his questioner for an instant as if some insolent retort were on the tip of his tongue. But instead of making it, his manner changed, and he smiled.

“Ask me another, Liversedge!” he answered banteringly. “I don’t know!”

“Where did they go, then?” demanded Liversedge. “Answer that!”

Garner pointed to the farther end of the room.

“If you must know, they went through that door,” he replied. “Back entrance to the hotel there. I should say they’re on their way home. Business with them?”

“And with you!” retorted Liversedge. “Come, now, Garner---it’s no good bluffing! What were those two doing down here?”

Garner stretched himself lazily on his seat and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, shook his head.

“I don’t know any reason why I should act as an information bureau to you, Liversedge,” he answered. “If a couple of gentlemen come to see me at my hotel----”

“That won’t do, Garner!” interrupted Liversedge. “If you won’t talk here, you’d better come along at once---I’m not going to stand any nonsense! Which----”

Garner’s face grew dark, and he slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets.

“What do you mean by that?” he growled. “What warrant have you to----”

“Never mind about warrants!” said Liversedge. “You’ll hear about warrants sharp enough, if need be! Now, are you going to tell me what those two were doing with you here, or will you come along and tell it elsewhere?”

Garner looked steadily from one to the other of his unwelcome visitors. He made a particularly careful inspection of Pryke, who had assumed a ready and watchful attitude at Liversedge’s elbow, in such a position that at the fraction of a second’s notice he could spring into action. And he didn’t like Pryke’s looks, nor his athletic build, nor his hands and fingers, which seemed as if . . .

“I don’t know what the devil you’re after, Liversedge,” he muttered grumblingly. “I’m just going across to Holland on business, and those two came along to see me---I put up here so as to be ready for the first thing in the morning. Not a very palatial hotel, but convenient----”

“I’ve guessed all that,” interrupted Liversedge. “It doesn’t tell me what Simpson and Crench were doing here. What was their business with you?”

“Why should I tell you?” asked Garner. “What have you to do with my business? It’s an interference that----”

“Look here, Garner!” said Liversedge, bending closer across the table, and lowering his voice. “You listen to me! I don’t want to make any scene here, but you’ll either tell me what I want to know, or you’ll have to go with us! I’ve grounds for suspecting both Crench and Simpson in relation to the Bedford Row affair, and I’ve been watching them closely to-night and followed them here in consequence. Now I find them with you----”

“You haven’t found ’em with me!” said Garner, with a sneer. “You----”

“They were with you in this corner ten minutes ago,” said Liversedge. “They’re gone---but you’re here. Now, once more, what was their business with you? You heard what I said just now---I’ve given you your choice!”

Garner frowned. He was still unpleasantly conscious of the proximity of Pryke. If only Pryke hadn’t been so very formidable!

“I’m not at liberty to say what their business was,” he muttered. “But I can tell you where they’ve gone, if that’s any good to you.”

“Where, then?” demanded Liversedge.

“Cannon Street Hotel,” answered Garner readily.

“Do you know why they’ve gone there?”

“Well---I do!”

“Why?”

“If you must know, to meet Vandelius!”

“Is he staying there?”

“I conclude he is, since they’ve gone there to meet him.”

Liversedge reflected for a while.

“Very well!” he said suddenly. “We’ll go there! But you’ll come with us, Garner!”

Garner rose, shrugging his shoulders.

“No objection, if you insist!” he muttered. “Though why I should, I’m hanged if I know! Just remember I’ve got to be up by five o’clock to catch my boat.”

“It’s no great distance from here to the Cannon Street Hotel,” remarked Liversedge. “If I get satisfactory explanation there, you can return here as soon as you like. Now come on!”

Garner’s hat and overcoat were lying on the seat beside him; he put on his hat, threw the overcoat over his arm, and rose with the air of a man who gives a churlish assent to what he cannot avoid. Together the three men left the smoking-room and went out into the street.

“Going to walk?” asked Garner laconically.

“There’s no other way, I should imagine,” answered Liversedge. “No taxicabs about here, are there?”

“Get one at the end of Tower Bridge,” said Garner. “And,” he added sneeringly, “I suppose your time’s valuable!”

Liversedge made no reply. He took one side of Garner; Pryke took the other; the three walked abreast to the end of the street, across the bridge, and into St. Katherine’s Way, amongst the wharves and warehouses, in silence. At that hour, there were few people about; between the gas-lamps the street lay in darkness or in deep shadow. And in one of its darkest patches, and where an opening ran down to the river, seen gleaming in the light of lamps on the opposite shore, Garner suddenly dashed his overcoat across Pryke’s face and shoulders, twisted sharply before Liversedge realised what he was after, and disappeared into the gloom of an arch which led into a tall, apparently unused building. Before Pryke could throw off the heavy coat or Liversedge follow, he had vanished.

Pryke’s first proceeding, after he had thrown off the coat, was characteristic. He pulled out a police whistle and blew sharply, on it, once, twice, thrice. Then he turned to Liversedge, who was swearing softly to himself.

“The thing is,” he said, stepping back into the roadway and looking up at the front of the tall, gloomy building into which Garner had disappeared, “the thing is---is there a way out of this place at the back? Does he know of it? I reckon he steered us this way on purpose. If----” He checked himself to listen; heavy feet were coming, hurriedly, from both directions. A policeman came running round the nearest corner; two more from over the bridge they had just crossed.

“What’s this?” demanded the first pantingly, as he came up. “Who are you?”

“Detectives,” answered Liversedge. “Both of us. There’s a man slipped us and got away into this building! What sort of place is it?” he went on as the other policemen joined the first. “Are there any other doors?”

“It’s an old sail-loft,” replied the first policeman. “Disused for some time now; they’re just going to pull it down---I expect that’s why this door’s open. There’s no way out but this that I know of. How long’s he been in?”

“Slipped in just before I whistled,” answered Pryke. “Turn your light on!”

The three policemen turned on their lamps, and the five men cautiously advanced through the doorway into a cavernous chamber, where, when they came to a halt, everything was silent. They stood, listening; suddenly a faint, scurrying sound came to their ears from some inner recess.

“Rats!” said one of the policemen laconically. Then he added in the tone of one who volunteers highly interesting information: “Thousands of ’em hereabouts!---and thousands more on top of that---and still thousands!”

“Give us hold of that a minute,” said Liversedge, taking a lamp out of the nearest policeman’s hand. He turned it in every direction, revealing dark corners, heaps of rubbish, festoons of cobwebs, masses of disused timber and fallen plaster, and, on one side of the place, a steep stairway, towards which he promptly advanced.

“Must have gone up here!” he said. “Come on!”

“Better have a care!” said the policeman who had first appeared, “Rotten timber, most likely!”

But Liversedge went on and Pryke followed---to turn when he had climbed a few steps.

“One of you watch that doorway!” he said. “If it’s the only way out and in----”

Another policeman came hurrying in, and took in the situation at a glance.

“There’s a bridge between this place and another at the side!” he called out. “A foot-bridge, high up---right at the top. It communicates with a warehouse---another empty building. If he’s got in there---good Lord, what’s that?”

He paused as a sudden crash as of falling wood, above which rose a sharp cry of agonised fear, came from outside. And at that the two detectives ran down the stair, and followed by the policemen hurried round the corner into a narrow alley, on the cobble stones of which Liversedge turned the lamp he was still carrying. Within a few paces from the street, its yellow glare fell full on Garner, crumpled up in a heap; high above him, outlined against the grey of the sky, still swayed and dangled the worn-out timbers of the bridge that had given away beneath his weight.

Liversedge knew that Garner was dead before even he laid hands on him---he lay as only a dead man would lie. But he put a hand on him, while the other men gathered round in silence.

“Dead enough!” said Liversedge in a low voice. “Neck broken, I should think!---he must have fallen forty feet! Rotten woodwork, I suppose, up there.”

“They’d started taking that bridge down,” muttered the policeman who had last appeared on the scene. “All this property was coming down---there’s a new warehouse to be built here.”

The policeman who had first accosted Liversedge and Pryke turned the light of his lamp on the dead man’s face.

“I suppose you know him?” he asked, turning to the detectives. “Wanted him, eh?”

“We know him,” assented Liversedge. He glanced round at the mouth of the narrow alley in which they were standing. A crowd was beginning to collect. “Look here!” he continued. “You’d better get something, a stretcher, or an ambulance, and get him away to the mortuary. Send off at once---I want to find out what he’s got on him, and I can’t do that here. There’ll be something in his pockets,” he added in a whisper to Pryke, as one of the policemen hurried off. “He’d never have tried to slip us if he hadn’t had something incriminating! We must take care nothing’s touched until we’ve satisfied ourselves.”

“The other two?” suggested Pryke. “At Cannon Street Hotel?”

“That must wait,” said Liversedge. “Besides, I’m wondering now if that wasn’t all bluff? I think he may have meant to get us out of the hotel with that tale, so that he could give us the slip. Anyway, the first thing to do is to find out if there’s anything about him that will give us a clue. Now!---now that this has happened, I think there will be.”

Half-an-hour later, in a grimly sombre room, and in the presence of police officials and a police-surgeon, Liversedge laid out the contents of Garner’s pocket-book, and knew that he was on a definite track at last. Pryke and the others standing by marvelled at the things which Liversedge produced and carefully tabulated. There was a considerable sum in Treasury Notes, all brand new: there was another in French paper money, larger still. There was a draft on a bank in Buenos Ayres for several thousands of pounds, in favour of E. Gordon. There was a passport made out in the same name with a recent photograph of Garner attached to it. There was a newspaper clipping giving particulars of sailings from a French port to Monte Video and Buenos Ayres. And last, but certainly not least in Liversedge’s view of things, there were three Bank of England notes of five hundred pounds each. He laid these down and drew a slip of paper from his own pocket.

“These are three of the forty notes stolen from Mr. Henry Marchmont’s office in Bedford Row on the night of his murder,” he remarked to the police officials at his elbow. “See, here are the numbers!”

The principal official nodded at the dead man.

“Think he was concerned in that affair?” he asked.

“Well---here are the notes!” said Liversedge. “But there are other men! Two others that I’ve strong suspicions about. We were after them to-night when we chanced on this man. They got away---and we must be after them before this gets out.”

Presently he went off with Pryke, both grave and thoughtful. They walked some little distance in silence.

“Where now?” asked Pryke, at last.

Liversedge woke up out of a reverie.

“Oh, we’ll try the Cannon Street Hotel!” he said. “But as I said before, I believe that was all a made-up tale. We shan’t find them there---nor Vandelius, either.”

In that Liversedge was right---the hotel people knew nothing of Vandelius, nor of Crench, nor of Simpson. No men answering to their descriptions had been there.

“Headquarters now, Pryke!” said Liversedge, as they left the hotel. . . . “And as it’s on the way, we’ll just take a glance at Crench’s office in Chancery Lane. If we see a light there . . .”