Chapter II.The HerbalistIt is the proud boast of our modern educationalists that the process of forcing knowledge down unwilling throats, known as compulsory education, has resulted in the triumph of science over superstition. Alchemy and astrology, the magic of the Middle Ages, have given place to chemistry and astronomy, the mysteries of which are displayed before the wondering eyes of the elementary scholar. The Age of Superstition is commonly supposed to have fled before the progress of the Age of Materialism.This supposition is demonstrably false. At no other age in the earth’s history has superstition owned so many votaries. From the most rapt spiritualist to the man who refuses to walk under a ladder, the world is full of people who allow superstition to play an important part in their lives. In the neighbourhood of Praed Street fortune tellers and interpreters of dreams are superstition’s most popular ministers, though it may come as a surprise to many that a brass plate nailed to the door of a house in the Harrow Road advertises the existence of the British College of Astrology.Even Alchemy is not without its devotees, although the alchemist has forsaken the more picturesque apparatus of his stock-in-trade. He now owns a small shop, the darker the better, and fills the windows with a curious assortment of dried herbs, each with a notice affixed to it describing its virtues. You may go in and buy two pennyworth of some dried plant with a high-sounding Latin name, the herbalist assuring you that, mixed with boiling water and drunk as tea, it will cure the most obscure disease. If you have sufficient faith, it probably will.But this is the least of the herbalist’s abilities. It is, in fact, merely the outward sign of an inward and spiritual wisdom. You can consult him, in the little back parlour behind the shop, upon all manner of subjects which you do not care to mention to your friends. And, for a consideration, he will give you advice which you may or may not follow. At all events, if the herbalist knows his business, he will contrive to command respect, and, at the same time, earn a surprising number of shillings.The establishment of Mr. Elmer Ludgrove, the herbalist of Praed Street, was almost exactly opposite that of Mr. Samuel Copperdock, who dealt in another herb, namely tobacco. There was a considerable contrast between the two shops; that of Mr. Copperdock was always newly painted, and its windows full of tins and boxes bearing the brightest labels known to the trade. The herbalist’s window, on the other hand, was low and frowning, backed by a matchboard partition which effectually precluded any view into the shop. Between the partition and the glass were displayed the usual bunches of dried plants and dishes containing seeds and shrivelled flowers. The door of the shop closed with a spring, and if you had the curiosity to push this open you found yourself in a dark little room, across the centre of which ran a narrow counter. The noise of your entry would bring Mr. Ludgrove through a second door, shrouded by a heavy curtain, and he would ask you politely what he could do for you.Mr. Ludgrove’s appearance was certainly in keeping with his calling. He was tall and thin, with a pronounced stoop and a deep but not unpleasant voice. But it was his head that you looked at instinctively. Above the massive forehead and powerfully-chiselled features was a wealth of long, snow-white hair, balanced by a flowing beard of the same colour. His eyes, behind his iron-rimmed spectacles, looked at you benignly, but they conveyed the impression that they saw further into your mind than the eyes of the mere casual stranger. If you were a mere customer for some simple remedy, you came away with the pleasant feeling of having been treated with unusual courtesy. If your business was such that Mr. Ludgrove invited you to discuss it with him in the room behind the curtain, you very soon found out that behind Mr. Ludgrove’s impressive presence there lay a wealth of wisdom and experience.Praed Street, which beneath its squalor possesses a vein of native shrewdness, had very soon estimated Mr. Ludgrove’s worth. That neighbourhood had very few secrets, romantic or sordid, which, sooner or later, were not told in halting whispers behind the sound-defying curtain. And, whatever the secret might be, the teller of it never became swallowed up again in the stream of humanity which flowed past Mr. Ludgrove’s door without some grain of comfort, material or moral, which as often as not had cost the recipient nothing.Mr. Samuel Copperdock had from the first taken a great fancy to old Ludgrove, as he called him. When the name had first appeared over the shop, which had stood empty for years, almost opposite his own premises, he had been intrigued at once. Curiosity—or perhaps it was not mere vulgar curiosity, but a thirst for information—was one of Sam Copperdock’s chief characteristics. He must have been one of Mr. Ludgrove’s first customers, if not the very first, for on the very day the herbalist’s shop was opened he had walked across the road, pushed open the door, and thumped upon the counter.He stared quite frankly at Mr. Ludgrove as the latter came into the shop, and opened the conversation without delay. “Look here, you sell medicines, don’t you?” he inquired briskly.Mr. Ludgrove smiled, and with a slight gesture seemed to indicate the long rows of drawers behind the counter. “Yes, if you like to call them such,” he replied gently. “What particular medicine do you require?”“Well, I’m terrible troubled with rheumatics,” said Mr. Copperdock. “Mind, I don’t hold with any of them quack mixtures, but I thought I’d just step across and see if you had anything that was any good.”Mr. Ludgrove smiled. Certainly Mr. Copperdock, short, red-faced, and inclined to stoutness, looked the picture of health. “Rheumatism, eh?” he remarked. “How long have you suffered from it?”Mr. Copperdock laughed. There was something disarming in the attitude of this herbalist fellow. Besides, deception in any form was not Mr. Copperdock’s strong suit.“Well, to tell the truth, I don’t worry much about them rheumatics,” he replied. “I came across neighbour-like, mainly to see what sort of a place you’ve got here.”“I’m sure you’re very welcome,” replied Mr. Ludgrove courteously. The two men leant on the opposite sides of the counter, chatting for a while. At last Mr. Copperdock straightened himself up, half reluctantly. “Well, I must get back to business, I suppose,” he said.“Look here, how serious were you about that rheumatism?” interposed Mr. Ludgrove. “Do you ever feel any twinges of it?”“Oh, sometimes,” replied Mr. Copperdock nonchalantly. “Can’t say as it worries me much, though.”“If you take my advice, you’ll stop it before it gets worse,” said Mr. Ludgrove, opening a drawer and taking from it a scoopful of some parched-looking seeds. “If you put a teaspoonful of these into half a tumbler of boiling water, and drink the liquid twice a day after meals, you won’t have any further trouble.”He had poured the seeds into a paper bag as he spoke, and handed them across to Mr. Copperdock.“How much?” asked the latter rather awkwardly, putting his hand in his trouser pocket.But Mr. Ludgrove waved him away. “Try them first, my dear sir,” he said. “Then, if you find they do you good and you want some more, we’ll talk about payment.”That first introduction had, in the course of years, ripened into friendship. Nearly every morning Mr. Copperdock was in the habit of stepping across the road and having a chat with old Ludgrove. Mr. Copperdock loved somebody to talk to. If you went into his shop to buy a packet of your favourite cigarettes you were lucky if you got out after less than five minutes conversation. In the evening, after the shop was closed, a select company in the saloon bar of the Cambridge Arms gave Mr. Copperdock the opportunities he sought. Mr. Copperdock, who had been a widower for many years, always talked of retiring in favour of his only child Edward.“Does the lad good to be left in charge of the shop for a bit,” was his father’s justification for his morning talk with his friend the herbalist. And Mr. Ludgrove, whose trade was never very brisk in the mornings, always seemed glad to see him.Thus, on the Monday following Mr. Tovey’s adventure it was to Mr. Ludgrove that Sam Copperdock hastened to unbosom himself. He was simply bursting with news, and he watched impatiently until the unlocking of Mr. Ludgrove’s shop door indicated that that gentleman was ready to receive visitors. Then he bustled across the road and into the shop. “Are you there, Ludgrove?” he called out.“Come in, come in, Mr. Copperdock,” replied a welcoming voice from behind the curtain, and the tobacconist, with an air of supreme importance, passed into the inner room.The room was half-parlour, half-laboratory. One side of it was entirely occupied by a long bench, upon which stood a variety of scientific instruments. At the other side, placed round a cheerful fire, were two comfortable arm-chairs, in one of which sat the herbalist himself. With a hospitable gesture he motioned Mr. Copperdock towards the other, but the tobacconist was too excited to perceive the invitation.“I say, have you heard the news about poor Jim Tovey?” he exclaimed, without preliminary.“My dear sir, I read my paper pretty thoroughly every morning, as you know,” replied Mr. Ludgrove with a glance at the sheet which lay on the table by his side.But Sam Copperdock merely snorted impatiently. “Newspaper!” he exclaimed, “why, the newspapers don’t know nothing about it! I tell you I’ve been up three parts of the night over this affair.”“Indeed? Then you probably know all the details,” replied the herbalist. “If you can spare the time, I should be very interested if you would sit down and tell me all about it.”This was exactly what Mr. Copperdock had meant to do. He sank heavily into the chair with a portentous sigh. “Terrible thing, terrible,” he began, shaking his head. “I’ve known Jim Tovey ever since he first took that shop in Lisson Grove, and to think that a thing like this should happen to him! And his poor daughter Ivy spent the best part of the evening at my place, too.”Mr. Ludgrove, who knew his friend’s methods of expression, was careful not to interrupt, and after a short pause the tobacconist resumed his relation.“First I knew of it was from my boy Ted. You see, it was like this. Ted’s very sweet on Ivy, and a nice girl she is, too. None of your fly-away misses, but a nice steady girl what’ll make her way in the world. Ted brought her to my place for dinner, then they spends the afternoon at the pictures, and comes back for supper. About half-past nine or maybe quarter to ten Ivy says it’s time she was getting home, and she and Ted goes out together. I was thinking Ted was a long time a-seeing of her home, since it was a shocking night, and they weren’t likely to dawdle on the way, when in he comes white as a sheet, and all of a tremble. ‘Dad,’ he says, ‘Ivy’s father’s been murdered.’“Well, I thought the boy had gone off his head. ‘Murdered?’ I says. ‘Why, what do you mean? Who’d want to murder Jim Tovey, I’d like to know?’ Then after a bit I manages to get the whole story out of him. It seems that when he and Ivy got to Lisson Grove, Jim Tovey was out. He’d been called to St. Martha’s to identify an accident case. He stayed there for a bit, when suddenly the door bell rings. Mrs. Tovey answers it, and in comes a policeman, with a message that Mrs. Tovey and Ivy were wanted at St. Martha’s at once. Mrs. Tovey goes upstairs to put her things on, and Ivy goes with her. Then the policeman asks Ted if he’s a friend of the family, and when he says he is, tells him that poor Jim has just been murdered in this very street, not a couple of hundred yards from where we’re sitting now.”Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “A most extraordinary affair altogether,” he commented.“Ah, you may well call it extraordinary,” agreed Mr. Copperdock significantly, “there’s more in it than meets the eye, that’s what I says. Well, as soon as I hears this I thinks of those two poor women, and off I goes to St. Martha’s to see if I could be of any use. There I finds a police inspector who asks me who I was. When he hears I was Jim Tovey’s oldest friend he tells me all about it. It seems that a policeman who had his eye on the lads coming out of the Express Train—they’re a rough crowd, as you know—saw a man fall down and then heard a lot of hollering. Thinking there was a scrap he went over and found Jim Tovey on the ground with a lot of fellows standing round him. It didn’t take him long to find out that Jim was dead, but nobody seemed to know how it happened. There was a crowd on the pavement outside the pub, and it was a foggy sort of night that you couldn’t see very clearly in.”“I know,” put in Mr. Ludgrove. “I was out about that time myself. I always go for a walk after supper, rain or fine; it’s the only chance of exercise I get.”“Yes, I know you do,” agreed Mr. Copperdock. “I often wonder you don’t catch your death of cold. Well, the policeman calls up the ambulance, and they gets poor Jim round to St. Martha’s. There they very soon finds out what’s the matter. There’s a great long knife, in shape rather like a butcher’s skewer, but without a handle, sticking into him. And the point’s right through his heart.”Mr. Copperdock paused dramatically. There was no doubt that he was thoroughly enjoying himself, and Mr. Ludgrove was far too good a listener to interrupt him.“I took Mrs. Tovey and Ivy home,” he continued, “and the Inspector told me he’d come and have a chat with me later. It was past midnight when he turned up, and then of course he wanted to know all about poor Jim, and whether I knew of anybody who had a grudge against him. He couldn’t have come to a better man, for I know a lot about Jim Tovey that I don’t suppose he ever told anybody else. You’ve heard of the Express Train gang, I suppose?”Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “It consists, I believe, of a number of young men who frequent the racecourses, and who meet in the evenings at the Express Train,” he replied.“They were the fellows outside the pub when poor old Jim was murdered,” continued Mr. Copperdock significantly. “Now the police, who know a lot more than most people give them credit for, know all about that gang. They’d had every man jack of them rounded up before the Inspector came to see me and put them through it. As the Inspector said, if Jim Tovey had been beaten up with bits of iron pipe, or something like that, he could have understood it. But the knife trick didn’t sound like the gang, somehow. None of them had the guts for deliberate murder like that, and there seemed no reason why they should have set upon Jim Tovey. He’d nothing to do with racing, and he wasn’t likely to be carrying a lot of money about with him.”Again Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “I see the point,” he said.“Yes, but you don’t know what I know,” replied Mr. Copperdock darkly. “The leader of the gang is young Wal Snyder. Decent lad he used to be, I knew his father years ago before he died. He and my Ted used to go to school together, and I managed to get him a job as errand boy. Then he got into bad company, run away from his job, and has been hanging about doing nothing ever since. Now, if you please, this young rip had the sauce to walk into Tovey’s shop a few weeks ago, and ask if Miss Ivy was in. Jim asks him what he wants her for, and he says that he knew her as a child, and as she’d turned out such a fine girl he’d like to take her out on the spree one fine evening. Jim tole me he fair lost his temper at that; I don’t know exactly what he said to young Wal, but he let him know pretty straight that if he found him hanging round Ivy he’d put the police on his track. The young scamp cleared out, telling him he’d better look out for himself.”“Ah, this throws a new light upon the matter!” commented Mr. Ludgrove, with polite interest.“Better look out for himself,” repeated Mr. Copperdock with careful emphasis. “A regular threat, mark you. Jim didn’t say anything about Wal to Ivy or her mother, you never know how women will take these things. Of course, I told the Inspector about it, and he took it all down in his book. He’d already seen Wal, together with the rest of the gang. It seems they’d had a pretty good week, and most of ’em confessed they were a bit on, and didn’t remember much after they was chucked out of the pub. But young Wal said he remembered an old chap barging into him—he said he didn’t recognize him—and just behind him was a fellow who looked like a seaman. He couldn’t say much about this other fellow, except that he had a sort of woollen cap covering his head, a fierce-looking black beard, and a great scar right across his cheek. Said he looked like one of them Russian Bolsheviks. Of course, there was a lot of people on the pavement, but he was the only one he noticed.”Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “I am inclined to think that the story does credit to the young man’s imagination,” he said quietly. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a Bolshevik sailor wandering about Praed Street on a Sunday evening.”“Nor hasn’t anybody else,” replied Mr. Copperdock scornfully, “what’s more, the policeman, who was on the spot pretty sharp, didn’t see anybody like this man in the crowd. There’s no question but what Wal Snyder invented this story to cover himself. It’s all plain as daylight to me—ah, but there’s one thing I haven’t told you. Remember I said that poor old Jim had been sent for to St. Martha’s to identify an accident case? Well, that was all my eye. There hadn’t been no accident and St. Martha’s hadn’t rung him up at all. It was just a trick to get him out into Praed Street.”“It ought to be possible for the police to trace where the call came from,” suggested Mr. Ludgrove.“Of course. The Inspector told me they’d done that already, but it didn’t get them much further. The call came from one of the boxes at Paddington station, one of them automatic contraptions where you press the button when you’re through. If you’re sharp with the button, there’s nothing to tell the people you’re speaking to that you’re speaking from a box. And, of course, at a place like Paddington there’s no one to see who goes in and out of those boxes.”“I see. And where was Wal Snyder when the call was made?”“Oh, in the Express Train all right. He’d got his alibi fixed up, no fear of that. Put one of his pals on to that job, the cunning young devil. And then, of course, he’d watch till Jim came past the pub on his way home, and the rest was easy.”“And what did your friend the Inspector think of all this?” inquired Mr. Ludgrove.“He didn’t say much,” confessed Mr. Copperdock. “But the police ain’t such fools as you might think. Young Wal Snyder will have to go through it, you mark my words. Well, I’d best be getting back home. You never know when I shan’t be wanted to give evidence or something.”And with that he rose and stalked out of the back room, leaving Mr. Ludgrove with a thoughtful expression on his face.
It is the proud boast of our modern educationalists that the process of forcing knowledge down unwilling throats, known as compulsory education, has resulted in the triumph of science over superstition. Alchemy and astrology, the magic of the Middle Ages, have given place to chemistry and astronomy, the mysteries of which are displayed before the wondering eyes of the elementary scholar. The Age of Superstition is commonly supposed to have fled before the progress of the Age of Materialism.
This supposition is demonstrably false. At no other age in the earth’s history has superstition owned so many votaries. From the most rapt spiritualist to the man who refuses to walk under a ladder, the world is full of people who allow superstition to play an important part in their lives. In the neighbourhood of Praed Street fortune tellers and interpreters of dreams are superstition’s most popular ministers, though it may come as a surprise to many that a brass plate nailed to the door of a house in the Harrow Road advertises the existence of the British College of Astrology.
Even Alchemy is not without its devotees, although the alchemist has forsaken the more picturesque apparatus of his stock-in-trade. He now owns a small shop, the darker the better, and fills the windows with a curious assortment of dried herbs, each with a notice affixed to it describing its virtues. You may go in and buy two pennyworth of some dried plant with a high-sounding Latin name, the herbalist assuring you that, mixed with boiling water and drunk as tea, it will cure the most obscure disease. If you have sufficient faith, it probably will.
But this is the least of the herbalist’s abilities. It is, in fact, merely the outward sign of an inward and spiritual wisdom. You can consult him, in the little back parlour behind the shop, upon all manner of subjects which you do not care to mention to your friends. And, for a consideration, he will give you advice which you may or may not follow. At all events, if the herbalist knows his business, he will contrive to command respect, and, at the same time, earn a surprising number of shillings.
The establishment of Mr. Elmer Ludgrove, the herbalist of Praed Street, was almost exactly opposite that of Mr. Samuel Copperdock, who dealt in another herb, namely tobacco. There was a considerable contrast between the two shops; that of Mr. Copperdock was always newly painted, and its windows full of tins and boxes bearing the brightest labels known to the trade. The herbalist’s window, on the other hand, was low and frowning, backed by a matchboard partition which effectually precluded any view into the shop. Between the partition and the glass were displayed the usual bunches of dried plants and dishes containing seeds and shrivelled flowers. The door of the shop closed with a spring, and if you had the curiosity to push this open you found yourself in a dark little room, across the centre of which ran a narrow counter. The noise of your entry would bring Mr. Ludgrove through a second door, shrouded by a heavy curtain, and he would ask you politely what he could do for you.
Mr. Ludgrove’s appearance was certainly in keeping with his calling. He was tall and thin, with a pronounced stoop and a deep but not unpleasant voice. But it was his head that you looked at instinctively. Above the massive forehead and powerfully-chiselled features was a wealth of long, snow-white hair, balanced by a flowing beard of the same colour. His eyes, behind his iron-rimmed spectacles, looked at you benignly, but they conveyed the impression that they saw further into your mind than the eyes of the mere casual stranger. If you were a mere customer for some simple remedy, you came away with the pleasant feeling of having been treated with unusual courtesy. If your business was such that Mr. Ludgrove invited you to discuss it with him in the room behind the curtain, you very soon found out that behind Mr. Ludgrove’s impressive presence there lay a wealth of wisdom and experience.
Praed Street, which beneath its squalor possesses a vein of native shrewdness, had very soon estimated Mr. Ludgrove’s worth. That neighbourhood had very few secrets, romantic or sordid, which, sooner or later, were not told in halting whispers behind the sound-defying curtain. And, whatever the secret might be, the teller of it never became swallowed up again in the stream of humanity which flowed past Mr. Ludgrove’s door without some grain of comfort, material or moral, which as often as not had cost the recipient nothing.
Mr. Samuel Copperdock had from the first taken a great fancy to old Ludgrove, as he called him. When the name had first appeared over the shop, which had stood empty for years, almost opposite his own premises, he had been intrigued at once. Curiosity—or perhaps it was not mere vulgar curiosity, but a thirst for information—was one of Sam Copperdock’s chief characteristics. He must have been one of Mr. Ludgrove’s first customers, if not the very first, for on the very day the herbalist’s shop was opened he had walked across the road, pushed open the door, and thumped upon the counter.
He stared quite frankly at Mr. Ludgrove as the latter came into the shop, and opened the conversation without delay. “Look here, you sell medicines, don’t you?” he inquired briskly.
Mr. Ludgrove smiled, and with a slight gesture seemed to indicate the long rows of drawers behind the counter. “Yes, if you like to call them such,” he replied gently. “What particular medicine do you require?”
“Well, I’m terrible troubled with rheumatics,” said Mr. Copperdock. “Mind, I don’t hold with any of them quack mixtures, but I thought I’d just step across and see if you had anything that was any good.”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. Certainly Mr. Copperdock, short, red-faced, and inclined to stoutness, looked the picture of health. “Rheumatism, eh?” he remarked. “How long have you suffered from it?”
Mr. Copperdock laughed. There was something disarming in the attitude of this herbalist fellow. Besides, deception in any form was not Mr. Copperdock’s strong suit.
“Well, to tell the truth, I don’t worry much about them rheumatics,” he replied. “I came across neighbour-like, mainly to see what sort of a place you’ve got here.”
“I’m sure you’re very welcome,” replied Mr. Ludgrove courteously. The two men leant on the opposite sides of the counter, chatting for a while. At last Mr. Copperdock straightened himself up, half reluctantly. “Well, I must get back to business, I suppose,” he said.
“Look here, how serious were you about that rheumatism?” interposed Mr. Ludgrove. “Do you ever feel any twinges of it?”
“Oh, sometimes,” replied Mr. Copperdock nonchalantly. “Can’t say as it worries me much, though.”
“If you take my advice, you’ll stop it before it gets worse,” said Mr. Ludgrove, opening a drawer and taking from it a scoopful of some parched-looking seeds. “If you put a teaspoonful of these into half a tumbler of boiling water, and drink the liquid twice a day after meals, you won’t have any further trouble.”
He had poured the seeds into a paper bag as he spoke, and handed them across to Mr. Copperdock.
“How much?” asked the latter rather awkwardly, putting his hand in his trouser pocket.
But Mr. Ludgrove waved him away. “Try them first, my dear sir,” he said. “Then, if you find they do you good and you want some more, we’ll talk about payment.”
That first introduction had, in the course of years, ripened into friendship. Nearly every morning Mr. Copperdock was in the habit of stepping across the road and having a chat with old Ludgrove. Mr. Copperdock loved somebody to talk to. If you went into his shop to buy a packet of your favourite cigarettes you were lucky if you got out after less than five minutes conversation. In the evening, after the shop was closed, a select company in the saloon bar of the Cambridge Arms gave Mr. Copperdock the opportunities he sought. Mr. Copperdock, who had been a widower for many years, always talked of retiring in favour of his only child Edward.
“Does the lad good to be left in charge of the shop for a bit,” was his father’s justification for his morning talk with his friend the herbalist. And Mr. Ludgrove, whose trade was never very brisk in the mornings, always seemed glad to see him.
Thus, on the Monday following Mr. Tovey’s adventure it was to Mr. Ludgrove that Sam Copperdock hastened to unbosom himself. He was simply bursting with news, and he watched impatiently until the unlocking of Mr. Ludgrove’s shop door indicated that that gentleman was ready to receive visitors. Then he bustled across the road and into the shop. “Are you there, Ludgrove?” he called out.
“Come in, come in, Mr. Copperdock,” replied a welcoming voice from behind the curtain, and the tobacconist, with an air of supreme importance, passed into the inner room.
The room was half-parlour, half-laboratory. One side of it was entirely occupied by a long bench, upon which stood a variety of scientific instruments. At the other side, placed round a cheerful fire, were two comfortable arm-chairs, in one of which sat the herbalist himself. With a hospitable gesture he motioned Mr. Copperdock towards the other, but the tobacconist was too excited to perceive the invitation.
“I say, have you heard the news about poor Jim Tovey?” he exclaimed, without preliminary.
“My dear sir, I read my paper pretty thoroughly every morning, as you know,” replied Mr. Ludgrove with a glance at the sheet which lay on the table by his side.
But Sam Copperdock merely snorted impatiently. “Newspaper!” he exclaimed, “why, the newspapers don’t know nothing about it! I tell you I’ve been up three parts of the night over this affair.”
“Indeed? Then you probably know all the details,” replied the herbalist. “If you can spare the time, I should be very interested if you would sit down and tell me all about it.”
This was exactly what Mr. Copperdock had meant to do. He sank heavily into the chair with a portentous sigh. “Terrible thing, terrible,” he began, shaking his head. “I’ve known Jim Tovey ever since he first took that shop in Lisson Grove, and to think that a thing like this should happen to him! And his poor daughter Ivy spent the best part of the evening at my place, too.”
Mr. Ludgrove, who knew his friend’s methods of expression, was careful not to interrupt, and after a short pause the tobacconist resumed his relation.
“First I knew of it was from my boy Ted. You see, it was like this. Ted’s very sweet on Ivy, and a nice girl she is, too. None of your fly-away misses, but a nice steady girl what’ll make her way in the world. Ted brought her to my place for dinner, then they spends the afternoon at the pictures, and comes back for supper. About half-past nine or maybe quarter to ten Ivy says it’s time she was getting home, and she and Ted goes out together. I was thinking Ted was a long time a-seeing of her home, since it was a shocking night, and they weren’t likely to dawdle on the way, when in he comes white as a sheet, and all of a tremble. ‘Dad,’ he says, ‘Ivy’s father’s been murdered.’
“Well, I thought the boy had gone off his head. ‘Murdered?’ I says. ‘Why, what do you mean? Who’d want to murder Jim Tovey, I’d like to know?’ Then after a bit I manages to get the whole story out of him. It seems that when he and Ivy got to Lisson Grove, Jim Tovey was out. He’d been called to St. Martha’s to identify an accident case. He stayed there for a bit, when suddenly the door bell rings. Mrs. Tovey answers it, and in comes a policeman, with a message that Mrs. Tovey and Ivy were wanted at St. Martha’s at once. Mrs. Tovey goes upstairs to put her things on, and Ivy goes with her. Then the policeman asks Ted if he’s a friend of the family, and when he says he is, tells him that poor Jim has just been murdered in this very street, not a couple of hundred yards from where we’re sitting now.”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “A most extraordinary affair altogether,” he commented.
“Ah, you may well call it extraordinary,” agreed Mr. Copperdock significantly, “there’s more in it than meets the eye, that’s what I says. Well, as soon as I hears this I thinks of those two poor women, and off I goes to St. Martha’s to see if I could be of any use. There I finds a police inspector who asks me who I was. When he hears I was Jim Tovey’s oldest friend he tells me all about it. It seems that a policeman who had his eye on the lads coming out of the Express Train—they’re a rough crowd, as you know—saw a man fall down and then heard a lot of hollering. Thinking there was a scrap he went over and found Jim Tovey on the ground with a lot of fellows standing round him. It didn’t take him long to find out that Jim was dead, but nobody seemed to know how it happened. There was a crowd on the pavement outside the pub, and it was a foggy sort of night that you couldn’t see very clearly in.”
“I know,” put in Mr. Ludgrove. “I was out about that time myself. I always go for a walk after supper, rain or fine; it’s the only chance of exercise I get.”
“Yes, I know you do,” agreed Mr. Copperdock. “I often wonder you don’t catch your death of cold. Well, the policeman calls up the ambulance, and they gets poor Jim round to St. Martha’s. There they very soon finds out what’s the matter. There’s a great long knife, in shape rather like a butcher’s skewer, but without a handle, sticking into him. And the point’s right through his heart.”
Mr. Copperdock paused dramatically. There was no doubt that he was thoroughly enjoying himself, and Mr. Ludgrove was far too good a listener to interrupt him.
“I took Mrs. Tovey and Ivy home,” he continued, “and the Inspector told me he’d come and have a chat with me later. It was past midnight when he turned up, and then of course he wanted to know all about poor Jim, and whether I knew of anybody who had a grudge against him. He couldn’t have come to a better man, for I know a lot about Jim Tovey that I don’t suppose he ever told anybody else. You’ve heard of the Express Train gang, I suppose?”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “It consists, I believe, of a number of young men who frequent the racecourses, and who meet in the evenings at the Express Train,” he replied.
“They were the fellows outside the pub when poor old Jim was murdered,” continued Mr. Copperdock significantly. “Now the police, who know a lot more than most people give them credit for, know all about that gang. They’d had every man jack of them rounded up before the Inspector came to see me and put them through it. As the Inspector said, if Jim Tovey had been beaten up with bits of iron pipe, or something like that, he could have understood it. But the knife trick didn’t sound like the gang, somehow. None of them had the guts for deliberate murder like that, and there seemed no reason why they should have set upon Jim Tovey. He’d nothing to do with racing, and he wasn’t likely to be carrying a lot of money about with him.”
Again Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “I see the point,” he said.
“Yes, but you don’t know what I know,” replied Mr. Copperdock darkly. “The leader of the gang is young Wal Snyder. Decent lad he used to be, I knew his father years ago before he died. He and my Ted used to go to school together, and I managed to get him a job as errand boy. Then he got into bad company, run away from his job, and has been hanging about doing nothing ever since. Now, if you please, this young rip had the sauce to walk into Tovey’s shop a few weeks ago, and ask if Miss Ivy was in. Jim asks him what he wants her for, and he says that he knew her as a child, and as she’d turned out such a fine girl he’d like to take her out on the spree one fine evening. Jim tole me he fair lost his temper at that; I don’t know exactly what he said to young Wal, but he let him know pretty straight that if he found him hanging round Ivy he’d put the police on his track. The young scamp cleared out, telling him he’d better look out for himself.”
“Ah, this throws a new light upon the matter!” commented Mr. Ludgrove, with polite interest.
“Better look out for himself,” repeated Mr. Copperdock with careful emphasis. “A regular threat, mark you. Jim didn’t say anything about Wal to Ivy or her mother, you never know how women will take these things. Of course, I told the Inspector about it, and he took it all down in his book. He’d already seen Wal, together with the rest of the gang. It seems they’d had a pretty good week, and most of ’em confessed they were a bit on, and didn’t remember much after they was chucked out of the pub. But young Wal said he remembered an old chap barging into him—he said he didn’t recognize him—and just behind him was a fellow who looked like a seaman. He couldn’t say much about this other fellow, except that he had a sort of woollen cap covering his head, a fierce-looking black beard, and a great scar right across his cheek. Said he looked like one of them Russian Bolsheviks. Of course, there was a lot of people on the pavement, but he was the only one he noticed.”
Mr. Ludgrove smiled. “I am inclined to think that the story does credit to the young man’s imagination,” he said quietly. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a Bolshevik sailor wandering about Praed Street on a Sunday evening.”
“Nor hasn’t anybody else,” replied Mr. Copperdock scornfully, “what’s more, the policeman, who was on the spot pretty sharp, didn’t see anybody like this man in the crowd. There’s no question but what Wal Snyder invented this story to cover himself. It’s all plain as daylight to me—ah, but there’s one thing I haven’t told you. Remember I said that poor old Jim had been sent for to St. Martha’s to identify an accident case? Well, that was all my eye. There hadn’t been no accident and St. Martha’s hadn’t rung him up at all. It was just a trick to get him out into Praed Street.”
“It ought to be possible for the police to trace where the call came from,” suggested Mr. Ludgrove.
“Of course. The Inspector told me they’d done that already, but it didn’t get them much further. The call came from one of the boxes at Paddington station, one of them automatic contraptions where you press the button when you’re through. If you’re sharp with the button, there’s nothing to tell the people you’re speaking to that you’re speaking from a box. And, of course, at a place like Paddington there’s no one to see who goes in and out of those boxes.”
“I see. And where was Wal Snyder when the call was made?”
“Oh, in the Express Train all right. He’d got his alibi fixed up, no fear of that. Put one of his pals on to that job, the cunning young devil. And then, of course, he’d watch till Jim came past the pub on his way home, and the rest was easy.”
“And what did your friend the Inspector think of all this?” inquired Mr. Ludgrove.
“He didn’t say much,” confessed Mr. Copperdock. “But the police ain’t such fools as you might think. Young Wal Snyder will have to go through it, you mark my words. Well, I’d best be getting back home. You never know when I shan’t be wanted to give evidence or something.”
And with that he rose and stalked out of the back room, leaving Mr. Ludgrove with a thoughtful expression on his face.