Sinners Beware E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

This is another collection of interlinked short stories about the good life in Monte Carlo and Beausoleil after the first World War. Ten stories about Peter Hames, the former Inspector on the New York police department that got tossed off the force when he tried to stop an innocent man being railroaded by a corrupt police force. Disillusioned, but after inheriting a million dollars, he moves to France to become a painter. But the detective instincts never left and he gets involved in various adventures. Oppenheim follows three characters through adventures wherein they solve crimes, thwart criminals, and are duped by professionals.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. THE CAFÉ RÉGAL, THE MISTRAL AND THE LADY

II. “anon. £1000.”

III. THE QUARREL

IV. THE TIGER ON THE MOUNTAINS

V. PADDY COLLINS FLAPS HIS WINGS

VI. THE IMPERFECT CRIME

VII. WHAT SIR STEPHEN FORGOT

VIII. GOING, GOING, GONE!

IX. THE LUCKIEST YOUNG MAN IN THE WORLD

X. MADEMOISELLE ANNA DISAPPEARS

I. THE CAFÉ RÉGAL, THE MISTRAL AND THE LADY

PETER HAMES, who had pushed open the door of the café and made abrupt entrance, paused within a yard or two of the threshold to shake the rain from his dripping mackintosh, and gazed about him with indifferent curiosity. The interior of the place was like the interior of many of the other Beausoleil bars. The staging, however, was unusual. For some reason or other, the electric supply in the immediate vicinity had failed. The lights were dim and inconstant, and, to amplify them, some one had lit an oil lamp which stood upon the edge of the counter. In the whole place there were only four people. Toby, the popular barman, was seated on the low stool onto which he sometimes subsided when waiting for clients, completely out of sight, except for the top of his head. Old man Delous, the crazy saddler from across the way, coatless and collarless, sat in a distant corner, mumbling to himself. A drunken man sprawled upon a bench on the opposite side, and on a high stool at the end of the bar remote from Toby, was perched a girl whose too lavish use of cosmetics and lipstick disguised her so effectually that one could only say she was young and had good features. She wore a hat which was between a beret and a jockey’s cap, slouched low over her forehead, and she was smoking Caporal cigarettes from a holder of unusual length. She scrutinised the newcomer wearily and apparently without interest.

“Wake up, Toby!” the latter enjoined, advancing a step or two nearer the bar. “My car is broken down at the bottom of the hill and I am wet through tinkering with it. A glass of the best brandy, quickly!”

Toby, who appeared to be sleeping, made no reply, nor did he attempt to rise to his feet. From the old man in the corner came a long, mirthless chuckle. Peter Hames, who had recovered his breath, took even closer note of his surroundings. The place was like some horrible study in still life. Someone had recently spilt liquor across the boarded floor; a chair was overturned; the sickly and indistinct illumination of the place became absolutely ghastly with the glimmering of a steely twilight, which found its way in through the uncurtained window, precursor of the leaden dawn.

“What’s wrong with this place to-night?” the newcomer demanded. “Wake up, Toby! I want some brandy, I tell you.”

The young man made no movement. He seemed to have fallen asleep, leaning forward on his stool. The girl knocked the ash from her cigarette and gazed down the length of the counter in insolent silence. Peter Hames lifted the lamp above his head with one hand and with the other shook the recumbent figure. Again the old man in the distant corner chuckled.

“What’s the matter with you, Toby?” customer enquired sharply. “Are you drunk, or what?”

Almost as he spoke, Peter Hames was conscious of that queer sensation about his fingers. He snatched bis hand away and held it under the lamp. The blood was dripping from his fingers on to the counter. He stood staring at it, the horror sealing his lips, paralysing even his nerves. The lamp slipped from his grasp and fell crashing on to the floor.

“Fool!” the girl exclaimed, as she flung a mat upon the thin flames. “Have you never seen a dead man before?”

A spiral of thick, black smoke was mounting to the low ceiling. With the extinction of the lamp, the sole illumination now was the streak of grey, forbidding light from that parting between the lowering clouds. The drunken man, snoring on his bench, old man Delous chuckling hideously in his corner, and the girl, back again on her stool with the cigarette holder once more between her lips, were all alike grotesque and vaguely-realised figures, phantasies in some foul nightmare. The smoke recoiling from the ceiling filled the place with an evil-smelling vapour. Through it, Peter Hames stepped swiftly to the door, re-crossed the threshold, and vanished into the lampless night.

A very dignified-looking manservant, of Franco-Italian extraction, entered his master’s studio one afternoon a few days later, with an announcement upon his lips. Peter Hames, in blue jean overalls, and the flowing tie of his professional confrères, was standing with his back to the window, painting rapidly in oils upon a small canvas.

“A young lady desires to see Monsieur.”

Peter Hames went on painting.

“You know very well, Vittorio,” he said reproachfully, “that I do not see strange young ladies.”

Vittorio was apologetic and fluent.

“The young lady is not of the type of Monsieur’s undesired visitors,” he declared. “She is chic and a young lady of the world. I will undertake to promise Monsieur that she is not a model.”

“Is she by chance possessed of a name?” Peter asked, still painting.

“It is to be expected, Monsieur,” the man agreed, “but not knowing that I was Monsieur’s servant of many years, and a person of discretion, she preferred to keep it to herself.”

His master, after stepping a little way back to inspect his work, continued to paint.

“I am intrigued, Vittorio,” he admitted, “but I do not wish to see the young lady. Use all your arts of diplomacy and get rid of her for me.”

Vittorio’s cheerful face became clouded.

“It will be a difficult matter, Monsieur,” he confessed.

“It will be impossible,” a very lazy, but pleasant feminine voice intervened. “I owe you all the apologies in the world, Mr. Hames, for this intrusion. Still, I had to see you, and I thought it might save time to follow your servant.”

She came slowly forward across the rush-carpeted studio with its simple, almost primitive furnishings. Peter Hames stood for a moment watching her in silence–a slim, elegant figure in severely cut coat and skirt of some dark material. She was fair, with grey eyes, which, from the moment of her entrance, held his, and the faint insolence of which marched with the lines of her mouth. Her complexion was innocent of all cosmetics; her lips were untouched. Even the fierce sunlight which surrounded her, streaming through the high windows, could show her no disfavour save for the slightest lines of fatigue or sleeplessness under her eyes. Peter Hames accepted fate, but first he wheeled his canvas around and turned it to the wall.

“What can I have the pleasure of doing for you, Mademoiselle?” he asked, pushing a chair into an adjacent corner of the studio, where the light was a little less penetrating. “Will you sit down?”

Vittorio, in response to a gesture from his master, left the room, his head high and full of the beatific consciousness of having done the right thing. The young lady sank into the chair and smiled up at her host.

“Well, to begin with,” she said, “you can tell me why you left the Café Régal so abruptly the other morning?”

He looked at her in puzzled fashion.

“The Café Régal?” he repeated. “I was afraid when I was informed of your visit, Mademoiselle, that you were making some mistake. I know of no such place.”

She nodded slowly.

“And I thought,” she murmured, “that Anglo-Saxons only lied–forgive the melodramatic touch–for the honour or the safety of their lady friends.”

“Are you so far removed from the Anglo-Saxon race?” he asked.

“Touché,” she admitted. “You can fence with me just as long as you wish, though. I like your studio and I am quite content to pay you a long visit. May I smoke?”

“By all means,” he assented. “I am afraid I can’t offer you anything very choice in the way of tobacco,” he added, producing a case.

She shook her head.

“Please don’t trouble,” she begged, “I smoke my own.”

From a plain suede bag, with a very beautiful clasp, she drew out a holder of exceptional length, fitted a cigarette into it, accepted a light from her host’s briquet, and leaned a little farther back in her chair.

“So you did not call for a glass of brandy at the Café Régal that night,” she murmured, “and stumble upon a tragedy? I rather envied you your entrance. An almost Rembrandtesque interior, wasn’t it?”

“Some day, when you have discovered your mistake,” lie suggested, “I shall ask you to take me there. Then I may be able to answer your question.”

She studied him pensively. Then an idea seemed to strike her and she leaned towards the wall. Easily anticipating his attempt at interference, with a swift turn of the wrist, she swung around the easel. They both looked at the picture together–at the sordid café, with its sombre, melancholy lighting effects, the girl, typical cocotte of the region, sprawling on her stool, the drunken man in his corner a shape only, old Père Delous, with his idiot but terrible face, showing his yellow fangs in that meaningless laugh. Behind the counter–nothing.

“A marvellous effort, from memory only,” she declared. “Did I really look like that?”

“Worse,” he answered tersely. “For all I know, you are. Appearances either way are deceitful. In any case what do you want with me?”

She sighed.

“You are annoyed,” she complained, “and that is unreasonable. I was quite content to leave you out of it until it became impossible. Why did you steal away from that place? Didn’t your chivalry prompt you to stay and see me through it?”

“It certainly did not,” he assured her. “When I recognised you, I knew that you had the case in hand and I probably wasn’t wanted.”

“A certain amount of common sense in that,” she admitted, with uplifted eyebrows. “But are you sure that you recognised me?”

“Perfectly. You looked like a vulgarly attractive little cocotte of the poorer regions–as you intended, I suppose. Your real name, I believe, is Miss Sybil Christian, once of Daly’s Theatre, London, later a very important personage for a brief period at that sinister building upon the Embankment, from which I think you–er–disappeared, for a short time, to do your duty by society; and now a free lance, with a taste for interfering in other people’s business.”

“Not so bad,” she acknowledged. “Miss Sybil Christian.”

“That is your correct name, except that, as the younger daughter of a peer, I presume that you could claim to be addressed as the Honourable Sybil Christian if it afforded you any satisfaction.”

She knocked the ash from her cigarette.

“What a horrible disillusion,” she sighed. “I thought that I was a creature of mystery to you. In fact, I rather hoped for overtures the other night, connected with my bogus profession.”

“I couldn’t have looked at you for five minutes without wanting to wash your face,” he rejoined.

She laughed almost naturally.

“You have always hated the sound of my name,” she remarked, “and I don’t know why. I have never interfered with you in any way. Now for my retaliation. Your name is Peter J. Hames. You are an American, born in New York, educated at Harvard and Oxford, and swallowed up in the War. You emerged penniless. Your people were ruined, weren’t they?”

He nodded. “Amazingly correct.”

“You had to earn your own living and you didn’t know how,” she went on. “Your only friend was the then Police Commissioner of New York, and he gave you a job. You were transferred almost at once to the detective service, where you did remarkably well, until the Fraser fiasco.”

“Don’t,” he begged.

“I shall finish,” she insisted ruthlessly. “You worked that out all right on the facts that you had. The trouble arose because your subordinates had deceived you. They wanted to see Fraser in the chair and there was a certain amount of ‘framing’ the case against turn, of which you had no knowledge. The man escaped by a miracle, and the rumour is that you very nearly killed one of the detectives who committed perjury. At any rate, you threw up your job, marched out of the place, and woke up the next morning to find that you had inherited a million dollars. Some people have that kind of luck. I haven’t.”

He was intensely interested now. His eyes were eagerly questioning her.

“This is marvellous,” he declared. “Go on, please.”

“You were temporarily fed up with your country,” she continued, fitting another cigarette into her tube, “and you came over here. You painted a little, you gambled a little, you explored this country as I should think it has never been explored before, and you probably flirted a little, although of that I know nothing. Then the old passion reasserted itself. Two undiscovered crimes were elucidated by you and the results handed over to the local police on condition that you remained anonymous. I know you, though. The thing is in your blood. You follow crime like a bloodhound, just because you can’t help it. You don’t want any credit; you are regardless of money. You just love the work. The call was in your blood when you swung open the door of the Café Régal that night and found that murder had been done. You were very harsh, though, to the poor little cocotte who sat upon the stool, waiting for your favours.”

There was a long and pregnant silence–to Peter Hames, the silence of humiliation.

“Mademoiselle–” he began at last, and his tone was almost humble.

“Please don’t,” she interrupted impatiently. “We are in a foreign country, but you are American and I am English. Don’t let’s forget it. And please don’t bear me any ill will because I really have the knack of finding out about things–what you call the detective instinct, I suppose.”

“I think you are wonderful,” he confessed. “I have heard of you, of course. I had never dreamed, though, that you had such sources of information or could use them so intelligently. Having admitted that, do you mind telling me why you came to visit me?”

“I want your help,” she confided.

“My answer to that is quickly given,” he replied, with a certain almost passionate stiffness. “Do you mind going away, as soon as you have finished that cigarette?”

It was many a long day before she looked at him again as she looked at him at that moment. Her eyes wore soft with the tears which never came.

“You will think that I am showing off,” she observed. “Indeed, I know why you say that. You say it because the people who were responsible for your failure on the Fraser case, and who nearly brought that poor fellow to the chair, were women–two women–vampires. I know all about them. You have been a woman-hater ever since. In your heart, I know that you have sworn that you would never work again with a woman. Very well, keep your word. Only help me this time. I want to save a man’s life and it is better done through you.”

He looked at her steadfastly. Somehow or other, sheer amazement had creased out the lines of his face. He was almost a boy again, full of wonder and repressed admiration.

“You were right in what you said just now,” he declared. “Women are the callous, arch-liars of the World. I have sworn–”

“It is to save a man’s life,” she pleaded–“an old man.”

It was then he yielded.

It was an hour before dawn and a stormy night. Rain streamed down the mountainous streets of Beausoleil and here and there fell hissing on the still warm pavements. The darkness was intense, wayfarers few. A short, stout man, wrapped from head to foot in a black cloak, with his feet encased in galoshes, and holding a capacious umbrella over his head, mounted one of the most precipitous of the side alleys and pushed open the swing door of that café of dubious repute–the Café Régal. He shook the rain from his clothes and glanced around with an affectation of carelessness. Behind the bar was Toby, the popular young nephew of the proprietress, Madame Hauser. Somnolent in a chair against the window was Père Delous, the saddler from over the way. Mademoiselle Anna, sprawling upon a stool at the bar, broke off in her conversation with Toby to stare insolently at the newcomer.

“A terrible night,” the latter remarked amiably, as he approached.

“Terrible indeed,” the girl assented. “One comes out only of necessity. I am waiting for the brave gentleman who will escort me home.”

“That will arrive, my dear; that will arrive,” the stout little man chuckled.

He leaned over the counter.

“You wish to speak to me privately, Toby,” he said, in a low tone. “Well, I have come. It is inconvenient. What have you to say?”

At Toby’s first eager words, the stranger stopped him.

“Be careful,” he enjoined. “Père Delous there counts for nothing, but the young woman–send her away.”

“She is always here,” Toby expostulated. “She is a customer.”

“She knows nothing of me,” was the acid comment. “Do as I bid or keep silent.”

Toby disappeared through a low door into the rear premises. Simultaneously with his return, a bent old woman, with unkempt grey hair, which seemed to have spread all over her face, untidily dressed in a soiled black gown, pushed her way through the side door. She looked at the stranger at the bar, whom she had known for fifty years, but she took no notice of him.

“Mademoiselle,” she croaked, “you are wanted on the telephone. Bring your drink. We will have a cordial together.”

Mademoiselle slipped from her stool and, without remark, obeyed the summons. With the closing of the door, Toby became eloquent. A stream of words broke from his lips. Now and then he banged the counter. He pointed to the street outside and the ceiling above. The stranger listened, and his face, which one might have judged to be rubicund and cheerful, became as hard as granite. He did not once interrupt; he waited until words melted into sobs.

“I have finished!” was the boy’s last coherent utterance.

His auditor stroked his chin and reflected.

“You may lose your place, Toby,” he warned him.

“I would give my soul to lose it,” was the passionate reply.

“One must consider,” the stranger murmured. “Give me a fine, Toby, and another for Père Delous.”

Toby obeyed, and, with both glasses in his hand, his customer crossed the floor. Père Delous chuckled.

“For me!” he exclaimed, holding out his shaking hand. “Ah, it is the medicine I need, but work is scarce and cognac is dear.”

“Wait!” his visitor admonished good-naturedly. “Let me feel your pulse. Are you strong enough for cognac, I ask myself?”

“It is strength I need,” Père Delous gasped.

The man in the long cape felt his pulse and nodded gravely.

“I will give you free medicine, Père Delous,” he promised, “for I know that you will never pay for it.”

His prospective patient mumbled. With greedy eyes he watched the pastille dropped into the glass of brandy; with greedy fingers he raised it to his lips and drained its contents. He sank back in his chair, crooning to himself, and closed his eyes… .

His benefactor sipped his own brandy and, re-crossing the room, shook the apparently drunken man, and whispered in his ear. Then he returned to the bar.

“I will have another fine, Toby,” he ordered. “After all, you are perhaps right. You are scarcely old enough for such an important affair. Why do the lights burn so ill to-night?”

“The storm. Soon I think they will be out altogether. Monsieur is not angry with me?”

“Not I,” was the genial reply. “Fetch an oil lamp before darkness comes.”

The young man obeyed with alacrity. It was a great joy that this noble patron was not angry. The latter moved over to examine the switch. By the time Toby returned with the lamp, he was back in his place, however. One by one, the electric lamps failed. A thin pencil of light, creeping through the window from outside, seemed to wake the drunken man. He staggered to his feet and lurched over to the counter, leering at Mademoiselle, who had just made her reappearance and was climbing on to her stool.

“A good sleep!” he declared. “It is excellent!”

“Go and sleep some more then,” she advised him. “You’re still drunk.”

He held on to the counter with one hand; with the other he drew a handful of hundred-franc notes from his pocket.

“Who would not be drunk!” he exclaimed. “I have made wonderful business. I will walk with thee to thy door, little one.”

She laughed at him scornfully.

“What an invitation!” she mocked.

He thrust five hundred francs into her hand. She looked at the notes with meticulous curiosity, opened her bag, and dropped them in. Then she finished her drink and slipped from her stool.

“To the door,” she warned him.

The man grinned.

“There are more of the notes,” he whispered, as they left the place together… .

The dawn was late in coming and little was to be seen by the feeble light of the lamp. The stranger felt in his pocket and produced a folding black case.

“Another brandy from the large bottle, Toby,” he ordered.

The boy turned around to the shelf. His patron leaned over, and, even in that weird light, the thread of steel in his hand glittered. He knew exactly where to strike, and Toby sank on to his low stool with scarcely a moan…. Then, for a few minutes, his assailant was very busy indeed. First he bent over Toby, drew keys from his pocket, and emptied several drawers. Afterwards he listened attentively to the stertorous breathing of Père Delous in his corner, and finally passed through the swing doors. For a few minutes the place was empty except for Père Delous, who woke up once to gaze with surprise at an unexpected stain upon his coat sleeve. Then the door swung open. The drunken man lurched in, stumbled to his bench, and lay there. The silence of the cafe was re-established. Outside, the rain had lessened, but the wind was moaning down the narrow streets. Again the door was opened. Mademoiselle Anna swaggered in. She looked across at the drunken man and laughed, made her way to her favourite stool at the bar, climbed on to it, and glanced downwards. Toby, in that uncertain light, might seem to have been sleeping, but perhaps she guessed. Once again, and for the last time that night, a customer pushed open the door, letting in a faint streak of leaden daylight and a gust of the wet storm. Peter Hames paused to shake the rain from his dripping mackintosh.

“Wake up, Toby,” he enjoined, advancing a step or two nearer the bar. “My car is broken down at the bottom of the hill and I am wet through tinkering with it. A glass of the best brandy, quickly!”

Afternoon tea was served in the studio of the villa upon the slopes of La Turbie and seven o’clock cocktails followed. The footsteps of Peter Hames’ temperamental butler fell upon the air. Undoubtedly he had done well to admit the importunate lady.

The mistral had passed, and Beausoleil was justifying its very beautiful name. Down the sunlit thoroughfare walked Monsieur Charles Dutroyen, the prosperous and enterprising chemist, the fame of whose business had carried so far that visitors even from the most aristocratic parts of the Principality climbed the hill to buy his wares. Beausoleil is the poor relation of Monte Carlo, and very few of its tradespeople could afford that daily promenade of Monsieur Charles Dutroyen. Every morning, with the midday closing of his ever-increasing establishment, he discarded the overall which protected his sombre professional clothes, accepted a well-brushed hat from the hands of his housekeeper, selected a cane, and made his way down to the Café de Paris. Every morning he took his aperitif in the closed Brasserie, or out in the sunshine, according to the weather, and nearly every morning he ordered his luncheon from an attentive maître d’hôtel, and, in due course, was to be found seated at a corner table in the restaurant, doing full justice to it.