The Lion and the Lamb E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

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

Beschreibung

This is another great novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim, the prolific English novelist who was in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction including thrillers and spy novels, and who wrote over a 100 of them. David Newberry is released from Wandsworth prison having served a year for burglary. He was briefly a member of The Lambs, a London gang run by Tottie Green, with the help of the beautiful, coarse, but alluring Belle. Vowing revenge, Newberry buys a gym and assembles and trains a crew of willing fighters using the techniques of Juiy Jitsu which he learned from Asians while in Australia. Oppenheim provides a mystery of another sort!

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER I

AT exactly ten minutes past nine on a gusty spring morning, the postern gate in the huge door of Wandsworth Prison was pushed open, and David Newberry, for the first time in many months, lifted his head and drew in a long gulp of the moist west wind. His original, half-shamefaced intention of hurrying into the obscurity of the moving crowds was instantly shaken. He was cut adrift from the prison by that closed door, and nobody seemed to be taking any notice of him. Nothing seemed to matter except that this was freedom. When, a few moments later, he squared his shoulders and proceeded on his way, the miraculous had happened. He had lost his sense of self-consciousness, there was a certain eagerness in his footsteps, he was on his way back into life, and there were still things which were worth while.

A young man, on the other side of the road, who had been talking to some one in a stationary taxicab, broke off his conversation, crossed the thoroughfare, and presently accosted him.

“Hullo, Dave!”

David Newberry eyed the speaker with an air of gloomy disgust. He came to a standstill unwillingly.

“What do you want, Reuben?” he asked.

“I like that,” was the jaunty response. “What do you suppose I want, but you? Tottie Green isn’t the man to let any of his lads down. There’s a taxicab engaged,” he added, pointing across the way, “and a spread at The Lion and the Lamb. We’d have made it the Trocadero if we could, but I expect they’ll be keeping an eye on you for a time. Lem’s over there, waiting.”

“You can ride back in the taxi with Lem then, and eat the spread,” David Newberry rejoined. “I want nothing more to do with you, or Lem, or Tottie Green.”

Reuben laid his hand on his companion’s shoulder. He was a tall, dark young man, whose clothes fitted him almost too well, sallow-faced, with sharp features, and the persuasive voice of one who has started life as a welleducated huckster.

“Dave, old man, you’ve got to get rid of that stuff quick,” he begged. “Tottie just had to let you down. If he’d sent you even a lawyer, they’d have traced it back to us directly. Then, as regards Lem and me, it would have been a three years’ job for either of us, and,” he added, dropping his voice, “it might even have meant the swinging room for Lem. You got off with six months as a first offender. What’s six months, anyway–There’s your money in the bank and the boys waiting to see you.”

David Newberry shook himself free from the other’s grasp.

“You heard what I said,” he repeated. “Get back to your Lem and your taxi, and leave me alone.”

Reuben made no movement. His manner became even more urgent.

“You’ve got to get all that out of your head, Dave,” he insisted. “The old man’s waiting there, and Belle is all fussed up at the idea of seeing you again. Make up your mind to it. You’ve got to come back with me. Here comes Lem, to find out what’s the matter.”

“See that policeman?” the newcomer into the world pointed out. “I don’t want to be in trouble again for brawling in the street, or I’d knock you down. I’m going to call him.”

The man who had crossed the road presented himself– an unpleasant- looking person, with the square shoulders, the bulbous ears, and the cruel mouth of a prize fighter, which, indeed had been his profession. He grinned at David–not a pleasant expression, for his yellow, broken teeth and the sidewise withdrawal of his lips were alike unprepossessing.

“How goes it, Dave, old man?” he demanded, with a certain note of bluster in his tone. “What about a move, eh?”

“I wish to the devil you would move off, both of you,” was the bitter reply. “I have told Reuben here I want nothing more to do with Tottie Green or any of you. You’re a set of quitters, and I’m through with you.”

The grin this time more closely resembled a snarl.

“Stop your kidding,” the ex-prize fighter enjoined. “I tell you your money’s waiting–a hundred and seventyfive quid–not a penny docked. The old man’s going to hand it over to you himself. There’s a drop of Scotch too, in the taxi.”

David Newberry drew himself up, and there became even more apparent a very singular and remarkable difference between the three young men, as would have seemed almost natural, if their family histories had been known.

“Get this into your muddy brains, you fools, if you can,” he said firmly. “I’ve done with Tottie Green, done with all of you–except you, Lem, and you, Reuben. There’s a little understanding due between us that’s got to come; otherwise I never want to see any of your ugly faces again. Clear out!”

The deportment of Tottie Green’s second ambassador suddenly changed. He became truculent, if not menacing. He drew nearer to David, who avoided him with disgust.

“You just get this into your silly nut, Dave,” he countered. “You’re one of Tottie’s men, and you don’t quit till he says the word. There’s been one or two who tried, and they got theirs sweet and proper. Try it on, if you want to. You’ll feel the tickle of a knife in your ribs or the catgut round your throat before you’ve found your way to Scotland Yard. Come along, young fellow. You don’t want us to have to buy that blooming taxi, do you?”

Cannon Ball Lem had been a fair, middle-weight boxer in his time, and he sidled up to David in unpleasantly aggressive fashion. The latter took a quick step sideways and touched a policeman on the shoulder.

“Constable,” he complained, “this man is annoying and threatening me. I am just out of prison, and I haven’t any desire to go back again. Will you please see that these two leave me alone.”

The policeman, favourably impressed by David’s voice and manner, turned promptly around. The two ambassadors from the unseen power, however, were already disappearing into the taxicab. David raised his cap.

“Many thanks, Constable,” he said. “Cannon Ball Lem they used to call that young man, and he certainly had a fair idea of using his fists. I didn’t want to be knocked about the first day I was out of prison.”

The man grinned.

“Now that you’re free, you choose your company,” he advised.

David Newberry, absorbed soon in the traffic of the broader thoroughfares, went about his business with a slightly relaxed sense of tension. His first call was at a tobacconist’s shop, where he purchased two packets of Virginian cigarettes and a box of matches. In the doorway, he paused to light one of the former, and his whole expression softened as he slowly inhaled the smoke and tasted for the first time for many months the joy of tobacco. Presently he summoned a taxicah, and having decided, after a seemingly casual glance up and down the street, that he was not being followed, directed the man to drive to the Strand. At a second-hand shop in this neighbourhood, he purchased a leather trunk, slightly soiled but of very superior quality, a kit bag, and a fitted dressing case, for all of which articles he paid from a bulky roll of bank notes. He drove on to a famous emporium for the sale of misfits and second-hand clothes, where, being fortunately of almost stock size, he was able to purchase a complete and expensive wardrobe, the whole of which he took away with him in his trunk. From an outfitter’s, close at hand, he bought sparingly of linen and ties, having the air, whilst he made his selection, of one who is more at home in the chaster atmosphere of Bond Street. He was then driven to the Milan Hotel, where he engaged, without any trouble, a small bachelor suite in the Court. With his luggage stowed away, and the porters duly tipped, he descended to the barber’s shop, and for an hour submitted himself to the complete ministrations of the establishment.

At precisely midday, he took his first drink for many months–no crude affair of whisky from a bottle in a mouldy taxicab, but a double dry Martini cocktail, served in a thin wineglass with tapering stem, cloudy and cold. The unaccustomed sting of the alcohol seemed further to humanise him. He mounted in the lift to his rooms, a glow in his blood, his sense of freedom now become a realisable and glorious thing.

Seated in an easy-chair, with a cigarette between his lips, he glanced through the telephone book and asked for the number of Messrs. Tweedy, Atkinson and Tweedy, Solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn. Mr. Atkinson, for whom he enquired under the name of David Newberry, was prompt in response. His voice over the telephone sounded urgent and anxious.

“This is Atkinson speaking. Is that–er–er– h’m??”

“This is David Newberry,” the young man snapped. “Please rememher that that is the name and the style in which I wish to be addressed. When can I see you?”

“At any time you choose,” was the prompt response.

“In half an hour?”

“Certainly, if I can get to Wandsworth in that time. You are still, I presume–”

“I’m out,” David interrupted curtly, “or I shouldn’t be telephoning. Three days short for good conduct. Milan Court 128.”

“Fortunately, my car is waiting,” the lawyer confided. “I shall be with you almost at once.”

His client rang off. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking eastward over the bare tops of the trees at the misty, grey-domed churches and the solid new buildings slowly creeping up. There was a gleam of the river to the right, white-flecked and swirling, a scurry of dried brown leaves on the bosom of the tempestuous wind. In detail, he saw nothing. It was a great moment for him, a moment in which he needed all his self-control, all his imagination, all his resolution. Before him lay, if he chose to take it, the broad way of an easy life, a life of forgetfulness and oblivion to all he had suffered, forgiveness– negative at any rate–of the cowards who were responsible for those lost months, and that cloud of disgrace from which he could never wholly escape. He was too strong a character to be frequently subject to these spasms of self-pity, but in those few luminous moments he was acutely conscious of the flagrant acts of injustice on the part of others–his own kith and kin–who were, after all, responsible for his disaster. Even their death seemed to matter very little. The evil was done. It was hard for him to believe that a time might arrive when he would bear them no ill will. Before that time could arrive, life would have to be kinder to him, would have to thaw the bitterness in his heart and melt the blood which he still felt cold in his veins. There was always the chance that he might become a human being again, but in this period of detachment, when only the past was of account, it seemed to him a curiously remote possibility.

CHAPTER II

IN due course, there was a ring at the bell, and in response to David’s invitation, a middle-aged, very welldressed, portentous-looking gentleman, his right hand outstretched, and carrying a small black bag in his left, entered the room. Behind him, following a little diffidently, and with a despatch box under his arm, was another person of obviously less consequence. His clothes and general appearance bore the unmistakable imprint of the lawyer’s clerk.

“My dear Lord Newberry!” the solicitor exclaimed. “I beg your pardon–Mr. David Newberry, since you wish it–let me offer you a hearty welcome back into =? shall we call it civilisation?”

“Very good of you, I’m sure,” David murmured, affecting not to notice the outstretched hand.

“I come, hoping sincerely that you are prepared to let bygones be bygones,” his visitor continued. “Believe me, there were times when I felt a positive pain in carrying out the instructions we received from your lamented father.”

The young man inclined his head.

“Who is this person with you?” he asked.

“I took the liberty of bringing my confidential clerk,” Mr. Atkinson explained. “There are so many details connected with the estate which you should know of, things which no one man could carry in his head. We have all the papers here. It may be rather a long affair, but it has to be done.”

“It must stand over until another time,” David announced. “For this morning, I shall ask you to send away your clerk–what did you say his name was?”

“Mr. Moody. He has been with the firm for a very long time.”

“Mr. Moody then,” David continued, turning towards him, and for the first time there was a shade of courtesy in his tone and a slight smile upon his lips–“I shall ask you to send him away for the present. Anything that is necessary can be attended to later on. I am sorry, Mr. Moody, you have had the trouble of coming for no purpose.”

The elderly man smiled from his place in the background.

“It’s been a pleasure to see you again–er–Mr. David Newberry, if only for this moment.”

The clerk, in obedience to a gesture from his employer, withdrew, and David motioned the latter to a chair. The lawyer’s right hand was still twitching, but David’s eyes were still blind.

“I shall open our conversation, my–Mr. Newberry,” the man of law began, “by begging you to forget everything there may have been in the past of an unpleasant nature. I can assure you that your misfortune was a bitter grief to the firm, as it naturally was to your father and brothers.”

“We can take all that for granted,” David interrupted, a little curtly.

“Nevertheless,” the other continued, “I must repeat my conviction that if your father, if we had any of us, realised the situation properly, everything would have been different. When you have an hour to spare, I should like to go into the whole series of incidents, one by one.”

David smiled bitterly.

“I fear, Mr. Atkinson,” he said, “that I shall never have that hour to spare.”

“It has always been my conviction,” the lawyer persisted, “that your father took an unduly censorious view of your earlier indiscretions.”

David shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“A little late for that sort of thing, isn’t it?” he remarked. “We will leave the past alone, so far as possible. There are certain things, however, which you must understand. I arrived home from Australia penniless, and as I couldn’t see why in God’s name my father couldn’t do something for me, I wrote and asked him. His reply came through you, and you know what it was.”

The lawyer fidgeted in his seat.

“I risked a good deal,” he declared earnestly, “in attempting to modify your father’s attitude.”

“Never mind about that. You had to carry out instructions, of course =? but here comes the point. I was in London, penniless, barely twelve months ago. I hadn’t a job. I’d held a commission in the Australian army, which stopped my enlisting here. I thought of the Foreign Legion, but I hadn’t the money to get to France. I wasn’t eligible for the dole, even if I could have brought myself to touch it. You know what I did. I joined a gang of criminals. The first time I went out with them, they let me down. You also know the sequel to that.”

“Is it worth while,” Mr. Atkinson pleaded, “dwelling upon these–er–disagreeable incidents–The whole thing is finished and done with, you have come into a fine inheritance, an income of something like thirty thousand a year, and, if you will forgive my saying so, there is nothing left now but to wipe out this last very unpleasant memory, and make a fresh start.”

“Eventually, perhaps,” David observed. “As I have already warned you, however, I am not quite ready yet to take up my new responsibilities.”

Mr. Atkinson was puzzled.

“But, my dear Mr. Newberry,” he expostulated, “I don’t quite see–I don’t quite understand why there should be any delay.”

“You wouldn’t,” was the brief retort, “but there is going to be, all the same.”

“Perhaps you will explain.”

“I sent for you to do so. I sha’n’t use many words about it either. Mr. Atkinson, I am an embittered person.”

All the sympathy which the lawyer could summon into his somewhat expressionless face was there, as he looked towards the slim young man with the clean-cut features and the hard grey-blue eyes, lounging in the opposite chair.

“I’m not surprised at that, Mr. Newberry.”

“For fifteen years,” David went on, “my father, my two brothers, and practically the whole of the family have treated me like an outcast, entirely without reason. My father and brothers are tragically dead, so that’s an end of it. I can bear them no grudge, even if I can’t altogether forgive.”

The lawyer was grave and almost dignified.

“Indeed, Mr. Newberry,” he said, “the continuation of any ill feeling on your part would be–if you will forgive my saying so–unbecoming. The whole country was shocked at the terrible accident which cost your two brothers their lives on their way back from Paris. Full details will never be known, as there were no other passengers, and both the pilot and the mechanic were killed, but it was clear that they fell from over two thousand feet on a perfectly still day on to the rocks, with, naturally, the most appalling results. No wonder when the news was broken to your father the shock was too much for him. As you know, he fainted, never regained consciousness, and died without uttering a word. Mr. Newberry, you must forget all the wrongs you suffered from your family. Death, and such death, is atonement enough.”

“You are perfectly right, Mr. Atkinson,” David admitted. “I can assure you I have not an unkind thought in my mind toward my father or either of my brothers. That may be considered as wiped out. But to go back again to my own precarious existence. After suffering all that I had suffered, just reflect upon what happened to me when I was driven to join this band of criminals. Again I am made the cat’s-paw. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Atkinson, that law- breaking as a profession is not in my line. I had decided to quit it before that first j ob. Then see what happened. There were three of us concerned in the affair. It was well enough planned, and there was plenty of time for all of us to have escaped. My two companions, however, got the funk, locked the door on me, got away themselves, and left me to face the music.”

“Disgraceful!” the lawyer exclaimed.

“So disgraceful,” David agreed, “that before I enter into my inheritance and my new life, I am going to break up that gang, whatever it costs me.”

“But my dear–Mr. Newberry,” the lawyer protested, “why on earth, in view of your wonderful future, should you run the slightest risk in dealing personally with this band of criminals? I ask you to consider the matter seriously. Is it worth while?”

“It is not only worth while, from my point of view,” David confided, “but it has become a necessity.”

“I fail to follow you,” the lawyer confessed.

“If I don’t go for them, they’re coming for me. It seems that they don’t allow seceders, and they have already ordered me back to my place. As soon as they find out that I am a rich man and am not coming, there will be trouble.”

Mr. Atkinson was honestly shocked.

“But, my dear Mr. Newberry,” he expostulated, “let me entreat you to accompany me at once to Scotland Yard. Adequate protection shall be afforded to you. To that I pledge my word.”

“You think so,” David observed, with a faint smile.

“I’m afraid you don’t know my friends.”

“Why not take Scotland Yard into your confidence concerning them,” Mr. Atkinson urged. “I have always understood that the band of criminals with whom you were temporarily associated was one of the most dangerous in London. The police would move for you against them with the utmost pleasure. You ought to be able to give them valuable information and place yourself in safety at the same time.”

David shook his head.

“I’m afraid that you are very much a layman in such matters, Mr. Atkinson,” he regretted. “There’s just one thing the venomous person who was my late Chief is proud of, and that is that no man has ever squealed and lived for twenty-four hours.”

“Squealed?” the lawyer murmured questioningly.

“Given the show away – turned king’s evidence,” David expounded. “I’m not afraid of threats, but I took the oath like the others, and I really don’t think that I could bring myself to break it. I swore that, whilst I lived, I would never give away to the police or any one else the various lurking places of the gang, the names of any of them, or the headquarters of their leader. I believe, from what I have been told, that in the last six years seven people have taken the initial step towards breaking their word, and not one of them lived for twenty-four hours.”

Mr. Atkinson mopped his forehead. He was genuinely distressed.

“You must forgive me–you must really forgive me, Mr. Newberry,” he begged, “if I venture to say that your point of view is outrageous.”

“In what way?” David queried.

“How can your word of honour be binding to a band of criminals who, on their part, have already taken advantage of you, and from whom you acknowledge yourself to be still in danger?” the lawyer demanded.

David stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“The treachery to me,” he pointed out, “was not on the part of the gang but on the part of two members of it only. Those I am proposing to deal with privately. So far as regards the rest, they have carried out what they imagined to be their part of the bargain. They sent a taxicab to meet me at the prison this morning, with a bottle of whisky to promote good feeling. They had a feast prepared for me, and my share of the result of the burglary has been carefully put on one side and is waiting for me. They’ve carried the affair through soundly, from their outlook.”

Mr. Atkinson was very nearly angry. He spoke with resolution and vigour.

“The sooner you abandon these quixotic ideas the better, Mr. Newberry,” he said. “You can’t treat thieves like honest men. The Chief Commissioner at Scotland Yard is a friend of mine. I propose that we visit him at once, or, better still, let me ring him up and invite him to lunch.”

“Nothing doing,” was the terse reply. “You have some vague idea, Mr. Atkinson, of what my life has been, but let me tell you this: I have never lived without adventure, even though it has cost me dear, and I have never broken my word to man, woman, child, or thief, although that has cost me dear sometimes, too. I am taking this little job on outside the police; that is why I wanted to see you at once.”

The lawyer was nonplussed. Perhaps he recognised impregnability; at any rate, he acknowledged temporary defeat.

“The time will probably come before long,” his distinguished client concluded, “when I may be prepared to assume my title, to occupy my houses, and to visit my estate. Until then, I require you to keep my whereabouts an absolute secret both from my relatives and all enquirers, whoever they may be. I will sign a power of attorney, if necessary, and you will continue to manage my affairs as before.”

Mr. Atkinson was touched and eager. The hard, legal tone of some of the letters in which he had conveyed messages from the late Earl of Newberry to his prodigal son had caused him many a groan in the light of subsequent events. He leaned a little forward, moistening his lips and endeavouring to keep his voice steady.

“Do I understand you, my lord–I beg your pardon, Mr. Newberry–correctly?” he asked. “It is your wish that we continue to administer your affairs and act as your agents for the present?”

“That is my wish,” David assented. “In the meantime, I am in need of money. There will be no difficulty about that, I suppose?”

“Not the slightest. We are really almost ashamed to disclose the fact that the balances at your various banks amount to nearly a hundred and seventy- five thousand pounds. This, too, after we have invested quite freely of late.”

“At which bank have I the largest balance?”

“You have sixty-nine thousand pounds at Barclays’. I have here all the cheque hooks. Barclays’ is the top one. It will be necessary–I regret very much to trouble you– but it will be necessary for you to accompany me there to demonstrate your signature.”

“I will do that at once,” David decided, rising to his feet. “My campaign will probably cost money.”

The two men left the room together:? the lawyer with an unexpectedly light heart. His client’s mad scheme was depressing, but he had looked for worse things.

CHAPTER III

IN some odd and varying manner, every person in the hideous corner room on the first floor of the Lion and the Lamb public house seemed to possess something in common with its appalling ugliness. Tottie Green, renowned in criminal circles from Limehouse to Seven Dials, a mountainous heap of flesh, sat in his specially constructed easy-chair, upholstered in crimson velvet plush, coatless, his unbuttoned waistcoat freely sprinkled with tobacco ash, beads of perspiration from the heat of the room he loved standing out upon his coarse, low forehead. Cannon Ball Lem, in a suit of checks of music-hall size, the front of his hair plastered in two little curls over his forehead, and wearing bright yellow boots, represented the oldfashioned race of prize fighters as completely as the room itself had passed out of date with the ornate public houses of the last decade. The girl stretched upon the sofa, also upholstered with crimson plush, at first sight seemed to possess only the attractions of the barmaid type. She was large, richly but unbecomingly dressed, with flowing limbs, masses of golden hair, hazel eyes, a large pouting mouth, and over-beringed hands. The room itself was Tottie Green’s headquarters and abode. It represented to him everything he had desired in life. The furniture was all of one pattern and had been proudly chosen in the Tottenham Court Road by the proprietor of the Lion and Lamb when he had furnished his corner public house in the purlieus of Bermondsey. There were two scratched mirrors with gilded frames upon the walls, whose only other adornments were advertisements of whisky and other alcoholic beverages. The carpet was thick and might once have been expensive, but it was stained in many places, and much of the cigar ash which had escaped Tottie Green’s waistcoat seemed to have found an eternal resting place in its pile. There were a few cheap vases upon the mantelpiece, decanters and an open box of cigars upon the table, an empty bottle of wine lying on its side, a floating cloud of cigar smoke, and many indications that the heavily curtained window had remained closed if not for weeks, at least for days.

“I guess our young gent ain’t coming,” Cannon Ball Lem observed, without removing the cigar from the corner of his mouth. “Think I’ll drop down and have a game of billiards with Harry.”

“You stay where you are,” his patron and Chief growled.

“He’ll come fast enough. They generally do when Tottie Green sends for them.”

The girl raised herself a little on the sofa and removed the cigarette from her lips. There was something lionesslike in the grace of her attitude, as she leaned with her elbow on the back of the couch, her cheek in the palm of her hand.

“What’s all this talk about?” she demanded. “Why don’t he come for his money?”

“He don’t seem to need it,” her guardian confided. “He ain’t touched a bob from us, and there he is driving about in a fine motor car and staying at a West End hotel.”

She laughed.

“If he’s got any money to spare, I shall have to look after him,” she remarked.

“I doubt whether you’d get him if you tried,” Cannon Ball Lem snarled. “You should have heard him talk to us up at Wandsworth. He’s got some of them fine gentleman manners with him I can’t abear. I’d like him in the ring for five minutes. I’d spoil his beauty.”

“Don’t do anything of that sort until I’ve made up my mind whether he’s worth while,” the girl yawned. “If I want to get him, I shall, so you needn’t fret about that, Lem, or any of you. What’s doing these days? I want some more jewellery.”

“We’ve three of the lads out Hampstead way to-night,” Tottie Green told her. “Might be a fat little job, but small. There’s another affair I’ve marked down for some time, but our lads are getting too well known. That’s one reason why I want to keep Dave.”

“If you wanted to keep him, what did you start with selling him for?” she asked lazily.

“The lads did that,” her guardian replied, puffing asthmatically. “Reuben was in the show, and if they’d nabbed him it might have meant the swinging room.”

The girl rose to her feet and lounged over to the looking-glass. Her hands toyed ineffectually with the great coils of fair hair, which in their abundance and vitality seemed never to have known the restraining hand of a coiffeur. She turned around and looked about her disdainfully.

“Daddy Green,” she complained, “this is the foulest room in London. I think that I shall leave you all and start on my own.”

“What’s the matter with the room?” her guardian demanded in bewilderment. “It’s just the sort of place I always meant to have, all my days–the kind of headquarters to sit in and do nothing but make plans. Don’t you go and spoil it all, Belle. Where would you go to if you left here, I wonder?”

“Up the West End,” the girl replied thoughtfully. “I should like to go on the films. Think I shall, too.”

Tottie Green began to shake. His enormous stomach heaved and quivered. He perspired more freely than ever. Yet, notwithstanding his general appearance of impotence, there was a terribly menacing look about his eyes and lips.

“If you did that, my girl,” he threatened, “you’d be sorry for it.”

“My God, the boys were right!” Cannon Ball Lem, who had been looking out of the window, declared. “Here he is, in a motor car, with a chauffeur in livery, getting out as bold as brass. Isn’t he the toff too! I ain’t sure that I want him back, guv’nor,” he added, turning to his Chief.

“I fancy him and me’d fall out.”

“You’d probably get what you’re asking for if you did,” the girl mocked. “You’ve gone a bit to seed, you know, Lem.”

There was a knock at the door. David Newberry entered, closing it behind him. For a moment, he stood still. The girl was watching him, her hand resting lightly upon her hip, her hair aflame against the common, incandescent light. She smiled a welcome to him.

“Well, Mr. Bad Penny,” she said, “come to see the old folks at home, eh?”

He acknowledged her greeting courteously but without enthusiasm, and, advancing farther into the room, laid his hat and stick upon the table and drew off his gloves. He nodded curtly to Tottie Green and ignored Cannon Ball Lem altogether. They watched him, a little stupefied. He had had time to visit his tailor, and he was wearing clothes of a cut and style outside the range of their experience. He was a great deal more assured in his manner, too, than any one should have been in the presence of the great Chief of the Underworld. The old man carried a book in which seven crosses appeared at different times after the names of seven young men. Two of Tottie Green’s Lambs were languishing in prison, but the seven young men had passed into oblivion, all right. Pa Green ruled his band through fear, and the composure of this young visitor in his presence was distressing. He scowled across at him.

“So you’ve come at last,” he remarked harshly. “Taken your time about it, haven’t you?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, my first intention was not to come at all,” David replied. “Then I decided it would be rather interesting to know what you wanted from me. Besides,” he added, after a moment’s pause, “I have something to say to you on my own account.”

Tottie Green drew one or two deep breaths. The sound itself was unpleasant, and the display of his teeth was worse. He drank from a tumbler by his side and lit a cigar. For some reason or other, it seemed to occur to him that amicable methods might be better with his visitor.

“Do you want a drink or smoke, young man?” he asked, pointing to the table on which was set out a liberal supply of decanters and cigar boxes.

“Not with you,” was the calm reply.

The autocrat of the Lambs stared across the room. His eyes for the moment were bulbous. He had the air of one who could scarcely believe what he heard. From behind, Belle laughed lightly.

“That’s right, Mr. Dandy,” she encouraged him. “Don’t let them bully you.”

Cannon Ball Lem clenched his fist and looked at it thoughtfully. The man in the chair had more than ever the appearance of a fat and bloated satyr. Nevertheless, though he was shaking with anger, he still took pains to restrain himself.

“Young fellow,” he confided, “there’s more than one has gone to his grave for holding out against me. I don’t allow insubordination. You joined my Lambs, and when you join you’re mine until I give you your quittance, or until you buy it from me.”

“Give it to me then,” David demanded. “I’ve had enough of your Lambs.”

“I don’t choose to give it to you,” was the angry reply.

“Be sensible, Dave lad. I need you for my work. You ain’t so well known as some of the others, and you can do the gentleman stunts. That’s what we’re short of. You can work with Belle there sometimes, if you don’t want the rough stuff, although they tell me you’re a scrapper, all right.”

“That’s more than your lads are,” David answered bitterly. “They left me alone to fight two policemen whilst they got away with the swag. If that’s their idea of running a j ob, it isn’t mine. I’ve finished. Do you understand that? I wouldn’t go out with your pack of cowards again for anything in the world.”

The old man was breathing heavily. Speech at that moment would have been unwise. Belle called across the room to this very bold visitor.

“What about me, Dave? Wouldn’t you take me along and let me show you a few stunts? There are more ways of making money than breaking into safes.”

“Thank you,” David answered, “I don’t want to hear of any of your stunts. I’ve finished with the lot of you. That is one of the two things I came here to say.”

“And what might be the other?” Lem asked, sidling up a little closer to where David was lounging against the table.

“Get out of my way,” the latter enjoined. “I’m going to say it to the old man there, and I want to say it face to face. You’ve had a pretty good innings, Tottie Green. You’ve sat in here, filling your stomach, and swilling, and getting hold of young men to do your dirty work a trifle too long. It’s time it came to an end. You played a foul trick on me, and I’m going to get it back on you. I’m going to break you and your gang. As to those two cowards who ran away and left me to face the music down at Frankley Grange, they’re going to be sorry they were ever born before I’ve finished with them.”

There was a brief and strange silence. Cannon Ball Lem, who was a slow thinker, stood for a moment with his mouth open, and an ugly light dawning gradually in his eyes. The old man was making wicked and stertorous noises in his place. The girl was leaning a little forward, mildly amused, but watching every one closely through half-veiled eyes.

“You’ve got it straight from me now,” David went on coldly. “I came here to give you warning. I’m just being honest about the matter. Open war. That’s what it’s going to be. I’m a Lamb in revolt.”

“Hold on a minute, Lem,” his Chief croaked. “Wait till I give the word.”

David, who, warned by certain twitchings of the other’s body, was standing tense and prepared, shrugged his shoulders.

“You can turn your bully loose on me if you want to,” he said, “but I don’t see the use. My chauffeur down below knows I’ve come here, and he won’t go away without me. There was a policeman at the door as I came in. I should think a row up here in the Holy of Holies wouldn’t do you any good.”

Cannon Ball Lem was eyeing his master wistfully.

“Five minutes, Dad,” he begged. “Let me have five minutes with him.”

“Can you fight, David Newberry?” the girl drawled.

“I shouldn’t have come to a place like this without being able to take care of myself,” was the evasive answer. There was regret in her eyes as she lounged across the floor, moving as though without definite intent between the two men. With the flutter of her skirts, there stole out into the tobacco and drink-odorous room a waft of peculiar but seductive perfume, overstrong, almost nauseating, yet in its way disturbing. The memory of it lingered with David long after he had left the sordid apartment.

“I should have loved a scrap,” she confessed, “but you’re right, David. The police are better away from this place. Chuck it, Lem,” she enjoined in a voice of authority. “A scrap between you two wouldn’t do any one any good. As for you, David,” she concluded, with a challenging look into his set, determined face, “you’re a brave man in your own way, I suppose, but you’re a fool, all the same, to come here and talk like this. You’ll get what you’re asking for, all right, if you don’t take care. They’ll have you one of these dark nights.”

David Newberry prepared to take his leave.

“Let them, if they can,” he rejoined. “I’ve learned a few of their tricks myself, you know.”

“Your hundred and seventy-five pounds is here,” Tottie Green growled.

“Keep it,” was the scornful reply. “It will do to pay the hospital bill of some of your Lambs when I begin to talk to them.”

In some unexplained manner, each one of them knew that the immediate danger of a fracas was over. Belle, with her hand upon her hip, crossed over to the plush-draped mantelpiece. She took a cigarette from a box and lit it.

“Can’t I have it for chocolates?” she asked. “It’s not enough for diamonds, or I should have liked a ring. Goodbye, David Newberry.”

She flung a mocking smile across the room, and, with an ironic bow, he took his leave. As they listened to his retreating footsteps, she laughed again.

“He won’t be much trouble,” she declared scornfully. “If you really want him, I can get him all right.”

CHAPTER IV

CANNON BALL LEM stood at the window and scowled down into the street. The girl, with a cigarette between her lips, joined him. They watched David’s unhurried departure.

“A chauffeur–in livery!” the former exclaimed, turning aside to spit into his Chief’s spittoon.

“Don’t do that,” the girl ordered, in a tone of repugnance. “Makes me sick.”

Lem growled.

“Swanking about in his own motor car and wearing toff’s clothes!”

“If you ask me,” the girl observed, “I think that he is a toff. He behaves as though he had been used to that sort of thing all his life.”

“Where did Ned Rattigan bring in word that he was staying?” Tottie Green demanded.

“One of these swanky hotels,” Lem replied–“the Milan Court, up west. What I should like to know, Guv’nor,” he went on earnestly, “is where did he get the money from? He hadn’t got the price of a pint of beer when he joined up.”

“Maybe he’s on a confidence lay,” Tottie Green suggested.

The girl shook her head.

“David isn’t clever enough for that,” she declared. “It would need some nerve too, just out of prison. You can take my word for it, I’m right. Joined us because he was a toff down on his luck. Why, you can tell from the way he talks and wears his clothes. If any of you buy a new suit, even Reuben, you look like gawks for the first few days.”

“Gentleman David, eh?” Tottie Green murmured.

“Maybe you’re right, girl. What I should like to know is, where does the money come from? It seems to me that some of it ought to belong to us.”

“You should have left him to me to deal with,” the girl remarked, throwing herself upon the couch. “Some of it probably would have done then. The last person who ought to have been here is Lem. That made him mad to start with– Who’s this?”

They listened to the flying footsteps mounting the stairs, and wondered. They heard them without anxiety, for, in what was coming, there was nothing akin to the slow, ponderous footfall of authority.

“Some one in a hurry,” the girl drawled.

The door was swiftly but silently opened and closed. The young man Reuben entered. He stood on the threshold for a minute, sobbing for lack of breath, glancing eagerly around. Then he closed the door behind him and came farther into the room–a lean, cadaverous-looking young man, with smoothly brushed, glossy black hair, sombrely but carefully dressed.