The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
kick in the raid. J.G.’s name is Jonah at headquarters, and if I can do anything to help, it will be mud!’
To a certain Ras Lal Punjabi, an honoured (and paying) guest, Mr. Fenalow told this story, with curious results.
A good wine tastes best in its own country, and a man may drink sherry by the cask in Jerez de la Frontena and take no ill, whereas if he attempted so much as a bottle in Fleet .Street, he would suffer cruelly. So also does the cigarette of Egypt preserve its finest bouquet for such as smoke it in the lounge of a Cairo hotel.
Crime is yet another quantity which does I not bear transplanting. The American safe-blower may flourish in France just so long as he acquires by diligent study, and confines himself to, the Continental method. It is possible for the European thief to gain a fair livelihood in oriental countries, but there is no more tragic sight in the world than the Eastern mind endeavouring to adapt itself to the complexities of European roguery.
Ras Lal Punjabi enjoyed a reputation in Indian police circles as the cleverest native criminal India had ever produced. Beyond a short term in Poona Jail, Ras Lal had never seen the interior of a prison, and such was his fame in native circles that, during this short period of incarceration, prayers for his deliverance were offered at certain temples, and it was agreed that he would never have been convicted at all but for some pretty hard swearing on the part of the police commissioner sahib-and anyway, all sahibs hang together, and it was a European judge who sent him down.
He was a general practitioner of crime, with a leaning towards specialisation in jewel thefts. A man of excellent and even gentlemanly appearance, with black and shiny hair parted at the side and curling up over one brow in an inky wave, he spoke English, Hindustani and Tamil very well indeed, had a sketchy knowledge of the law (on his visiting cards was the inscription ‘Failed LL.B.’) and a very full acquaintance with the science of precious stones.
During Mr. Ras Las Punjabi’s brief rest in Poona, the police commissioner sahib, whose unromantic name was Smith, married a not very goodlooking girl with a lot of money. Smith Sahib knew that beauty was only skin deep and that she had a kind heart, which is notoriously preferable to the garniture of coronets. It was honestly a love match. Her father owned jute mills in Calcutta, and on festive occasions, such as the Governor-General’s ball, she carried several lakhs of rupees on her person; but even rich people are loved for themselves alone.
Ras Lal owed his imprisonment to an unsuccessful attempt he had made upon two strings of pearls the property of the lady in question, and when he learnt, on his return to freedom, that Smith Sahib had married the resplendent girl and had gone to England, he very naturally attributed the hatred and bitterness of Smith Sahib to purely personal causes, and swore vengeance.
Now in India the business of every man is the business of his servants. The preliminary inquiries, over which an English or American jewel thief would spend a small fortune, can be made at the cost of a few annas. When Ras Lal came to England he found that he had overlooked this very important fact.
Smith, sahib and memsahib, were out of town; they were, in fact, on the high seas en route for New York when Ras Lal was arrested on the conventional charge of ‘being a suspected person.’ Ras had shadowed the Smiths’ butler, and, having induced him to drink, had offered him immense sums to reveal the place, receptacle, drawer, safe, box or casket wherein ‘Mrs. Commissioner Smith’s’ jewels were kept. His excuse for asking, namely, that he had had a wager with his brother that the jewels were kept under the Memsahib’s bed, showed a lamentable lack of inventive power. The butler, an honest man, though a drinker of beer, informed the police. Ras Lal and his friend and assistant Ram were arrested, brought before a magistrate, and would have been discharged but for the fact that Mr. J.G. Reeder saw the record of the case and was able to supply from his own files very important particulars of the dark man’s past. Therefore Mr. Ras Lal was sent down to hard labour for six months, but, what was more maddening, the story of his ignominious failure was, he guessed, broadcast throughout India.
This was the thought which distracted him in his lonely cell at Wormwood Scrubbs. What would India think of him?-he would be the scorn of the bazaars, ‘the mocking point of third-rate mediocrities,’ to use his own expression. And automatically he switched his hate from Smith Sahib to one Mr. J.G. Reeder. And his hate was very real, more real because of the insignificance and unimportance of this Reeder Sahib, whom he likened to an ancient cow, a sneaking weasel, and other things less translatable. And in the six months of his durance he planned desperate and earnest acts of reprisal.
Released from prison, he decided that the moment was not ripe for a return to India. He wished to make a close study of Mr. J.G. Reeder and his habits, and, being a man with plenty of money, he could afford the time, and, as it happened, could mix business with pleasure.
Mr. Tommy Fenalow found means of getting in touch with the gentleman from the Orient whilst he was in Wormwood Scrubbs, and the handsome limousine that met Ras Lal at the gates of the Scrubbs when he came out of jail was both hired and occupied by Tommy, a keen business man, who had been offered by his German printer a new line of one-hundred-rupee notes that might easily develop into a most profitable sideline.
‘You come along and lodge at my expense, boy,’ said the sympathetic Tommy, who was very short, very stout, and had eyes that bulged like a pug dog’s. ‘You’ve been badly treated by old Reeder, and I’m going to tell you a way of getting back on him, with no risk and a ninety per cent profit. Listen, a friend of mine-’
It was never Tommy who had snide for sale: invariably the hawker of forged notes was a mysterious ‘friend.’
So Ras was lodged in a service flat which formed part of a block owned by Mr. Fenalow, who was a very rich man indeed. Some weeks after this, Tommy crossed St. James’s Street to intercept his old enemy.
‘Good morning, Mr. Reeder.’
Mr. J.G. Reeder stopped and turned back.
‘Good morning, Mr. Fenalow,’ he said, with that benevolent solicitude which goes so well with a frock coat and square-toed shoes. ‘I am glad to see that you are out again, and I do trust that you will now find a more-er-legitimate outlet for your undoubted talents.’
Tommy went angrily red.
‘I haven’t been in “stir” and you know it, Reeder! It wasn’t for want of trying on your part. But you’ve got to be something more than clever to catch me-you’ve got to be lucky! Not that there’s anything to catch me over-I’ve never done a crook thing in my life, as you well know.’
He was so annoyed that the lighter exchanges of humour he had planned slipped from his memory.
He had an appointment with Ras Lal, and the interview was entirely satisfactory. Mr. Ras Lal made his way that night to an uncomfortably situated rendezvous and there met his new friend.
‘This is the last place in the world old man Reeder would dream of searching,’ said Tommy enthusiastically, ‘and if he did he would find nothing. Before he could get into the building, the stuff would be put out of sight.’
‘It is a habitation of extreme convenience,’ said Ras Lal.
‘It is yours, boy,’ replied Tommy magnificently. ‘I only keep this place to get-in and put-out. The stuff’s not here for an hour and the rest of the time the store’s empty. As I say, old man Reeder has gotta be something more than clever-he’s gotta be lucky!’
At parting he handed his client a key, and with that necessary instrument tendered a few words of advice and warning.
‘Never come here till late. The police patrol passes the end of the road at ten, one o’clock and four. When are you leaving for India?’
‘On the twenty-third,’ said Ras, ‘by which time I shall have uttered a few reprisals on that cad Reeder.’
‘I shouldn’t like to be in his shoes,’ said Tommy, who could afford to be sycophantic, for he had in his pocket two hundred pounds’ worth of real money which Ras had paid in advance for a vaster quantity of money which was not so