The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar Wallace
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painstaking man, with a deliberate and an official, manner.
“What’s the matter?” asked T.X. quickly.
“We didn’t search Vassalaro’s lodgings,” cried Mansus breathlessly. “It just occurred to me as I was coming over Westminster Bridge. I was on top of a bus—”
“Wake up!” said T.X. “You’re amongst friends and cut all that ‘bus’ stuff out. Of course we searched Vassalaro’s lodgings!”
“No, we didn’t, sir,” said the other triumphantly. “He lived in Great James Street.”
“He lived in the Adelphi,” corrected T.X.
“There were two places where he lived,” said Mansus.
“When did you learn this?” asked his Chief, dropping his flippancy.
“This morning. I was on a bus coming across Westminster Bridge, and there were two men in front of me, and I heard the word ‘Vassalaro’ and naturally I pricked up my ears.”
“It was very unnatural, but proceed,” said T.X.
“One of the men — a very respectable person — said, ‘That chap Vassalaro used to lodge in my place, and I’ve still got a lot of his things. What do you think I ought to do?’”
“And you said,” suggested the other.
“I nearly frightened his life out of him,” said Mansus. “I said, ‘I am a police officer and I want you to come along with me.’”
“And of course he shut up and would not say another word,” said T.X.
“That’s true, sir,” said Mansus, “but after awhile I got him to talk. Vassalaro lived in Great James Street, 604, on the third floor. In fact, some of his furniture is there still. He had a good reason for keeping two addresses by all accounts.”
T.X. nodded wisely.
“What was her name?” he asked.
“He had a wife,” said the other, “but she left him about four months before he was killed. He used the Adelphi address for business purposes and apparently he slept two or three nights of the week at Great James Street. I have told the man to leave everything as it is, and that we will come round.”
Ten minutes later the two officers were in the somewhat gloomy apartments which Vassalaro had occupied.
The landlord explained that most of the furniture was his, but that there were certain articles which were the property of the deceased man. He added, somewhat unnecessarily, that the late tenant owed him six months’ rent.
The articles which had been the property of Vassalaro included a tin trunk, a small writing bureau, a secretaire bookcase and a few clothes. The secretaire was locked, as was the writing bureau. The tin box, which had little or nothing of interest, was unfastened.
The other locks needed very little attention. Without any difficulty Mansus opened both. The leaf of the bureau, when let down, formed the desk, and piled up inside was a whole mass of letters opened and unopened, accounts, notebooks and all the paraphernalia which an untidy man collects.
Letter by letter, T.X. went through the accumulation without finding anything to help him. Then his eye was attracted by a small tin case thrust into one of the oblong pigeon holes at the back of the desk. This he pulled out and opened and found a small wad of paper wrapped in tin foil.
“Hello, hello!” said T.X., and he was pardonably exhilarated.
Chapter VI
A man stood in the speckless courtyard before the Governor’s house at Dartmoor gaol. He wore the ugly livery of shame which marks the convict. His head was clipped short, and there was two days’ growth of beard upon his haggard face. Standing with his hands behind him, he waited for the moment when he would be ordered to his work.
John Lexman — A. O. 43 — looked up at the blue sky as he had looked so many times from the exercise yard, and wondered what the day would bring forth. A day to him was the beginning and the end of an eternity. He dare not let his mind dwell upon the long aching years ahead. He dare not think of the woman he left, or let his mind dwell upon the agony which she was enduring. He had disappeared from the world, the world he loved, and the world that knew him, and all that there was in life; all that was worth while had been crushed and obliterated into the granite of the Princetown quarries, and its wide horizon shrunken by the gaunt moorland with its menacing tors.
New interests made up his existence. The quality of the food was one. The character of the book he would receive from the prison library another. The future meant Sunday chapel; the present whatever task they found him. For the day he was to paint some doors and windows of an outlying cottage. A cottage occupied by a warder who, for some reason, on the day previous, had spoken to him with a certain kindness and a certain respect which was unusual.
“Face the wall,” growled a voice, and mechanically he turned, his hands still behind him, and stood staring at the grey wall of the prison storehouse.
He heard the shuffling feet of the quarry gang, his ears caught the clink of the chains which bound them together. They were desperate men, peculiarly interesting to him, and he had watched their faces furtively in the early period of his imprisonment.
He had been sent to Dartmoor after spending three months in Wormwood Scrubbs. Old hands had told him variously that he was fortunate or unlucky. It was usual to have twelve months at the Scrubbs before testing the life of a convict establishment. He believed there was some talk of sending him to Parkhurst, and here he traced the influence which T.X. would exercise, for Parkhurst was a prisoner’s paradise.
He heard his warder’s voice behind him.
“Right turn, 43, quick march.”
He walked ahead of the armed guard, through the great and gloomy gates of the prison, turned sharply to the right, and walked up the village street toward the moors, beyond the village of Princetown, and on the Tavistock Road where were two or three cottages which had been lately taken by the prison staff; and it was to the decoration of one of these that A. O. 43 had been sent.
The house was as yet without a tenant.
A paper-hanger under the charge of another warder was waiting for the arrival of the painter. The two warders exchanged greetings, and the first went off leaving the other in charge of both men.
For an hour they worked in silence under the eyes of the guard. Presently the warder went outside, and John Lexman had an opportunity of examining his fellow sufferer.
He was a man of twentyfour or twentyfive, lithe and alert. By no means bad looking, he lacked that indefinable suggestion of animalism which distinguished the majority of the inhabitants at Dartmoor.
They waited until they heard the warder’s step clear the passage, and until his iron-shod boots were tramping over the cobbled path which led from the door, through the tiny garden to the road, before the second man spoke.
“What are you in for?” he asked, in a low voice.
“Murder,” said John Lexman, laconically.
He had answered the question before, and had noticed with a little amusement the look of respect which came into the eyes of the questioner.
“What have you got!”
“Fifteen years,” said the other.
“That means 11 years and 9 months,” said the first man. “You’ve never been here before, I suppose?”
“Hardly,” said Lexman, drily.
“I was here when I was a kid,” confessed the paper-hanger. “I am going out