Elk 04 White Face by Edgar Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

an opportunist—saw here a gift from heaven in the shape of a drunken swell; looked left and right, and crossed the road with stealthy footsteps. He did not see Hartford moving towards him in the shadow of the wall. Lamborn flicked open the coat of the stricken man, dived in his hand and found a note-case. His fingers hooked to a watchguard; he pulled both out with a simultaneous jerk and then saw the running policeman. To be arrested on suspicion is one thing; to be found in possession of stolen property is another. Lamborn’s hand jerked up to the high wall which surrounded the company’s yard, and he turned to fly. Half a dozen paces he took, and then the hand of the law fell on him, and the familiar “Here, you!” came hatefully to his ears. He struggled impotently. Mr. Lamborn had never learned the first lesson of criminality, which is to go quietly.
    Hartford thrust him against the wall, and then saw somebody crossing the road, and remembered the man lying under the lamp-post as he recognised the figure.
    “Doctor—that gentleman’s hurt. Will you have a look at him?”
    Dr. Marford had seen the stranger fall and stooped gingerly by his side.
    “Keep quiet, will yer?” said Hartford indignantly to his struggling prisoner.
    His whistle sounded shrilly in the night. There were moments when even Lamborn grew intelligent.
    “All right, it’s a cop.” he said sullenly, and ceased to struggle.
    It was at that moment that the policeman heard an exclamation from the stooping, peering doctor.
    “Constable—this man is dead—stabbed!”
    He held up his hands for the policeman’s inspection. In the light of the standard Hartford saw they were red with blood.
    Elk, who was at the end of the street keeping a spieling house under observation, heard the whistle and came flying towards the sound. Every kennel in Tidal Basin heard it and was drawn. Men and women forfeited their night’s rest rather than lose the thrill of experience; when they heard it was no less than murder they purred gratefully that their enterprise was rewarded. They came trickling out like rats from their burrows. There was a crowd almost before the uniformed police arrived to control it.
    When Elk came back from ‘phoning the divisional surgeon the doctor was washing his hands in a bucket of water that the policeman had brought for him.
    “Mason’s at the station; he’s coming along.”
    “Here, Elk, what’s the idea of holding me?”
    Lamborn’s voice was pained and hurt. He stood, a wretchedly garbed figure of uncouth manhood, between two towering policemen, but his spirit was beyond suppression.
    “I’ve done nothing, have I? This rozzer pinched me—”
    “Shut up,” said Elk, not unkindly. “Mr. Mason will be along in a minute.”
    Lamborn groaned.
    “Him!” he almost howled. “Sympathetic Mason, what a night for a party!”
    Chief Detective Inspector Mason was visiting his area that night, and was in the police station when the call was put through. He came in the long, powerful police tender with a host of detectives, and a testy and elderly police surgeon. Dr. Rudd was a police surgeon because it offered him the maximum interest for the minimum of labour. He was a bachelor, with an assured income from investments, but he liked the authority which his position gave him; liked to see policemen touching their helmets to him as he passed them on the street; was impressed by the support he received from magistrates when he declared as having been drunk influential people who brought their own doctors from Harley Street to prove that they suffered from nothing more vicious than shell-shock.
    He knew Dr. Marford slightly, and favoured him with a cold nod; resented his being in the case at all, for the penny doctor was one of the poor relations of the profession, not the kind of man one would call into a consultation, supposing Dr. Rudd called in anybody.
    He made a careful examination of the still figure.
    “Dead, of course,”