He stared at it blankly. In the anxieties and vexation that had followed upon his talk with her in the afternoon, her letter had passed completely from his mind. His first impulse was to dash downstairs and ask the hotel office to find him a messenger of some kind immediately. Then he remembered Elizabeth’s request that it should not be dispatched from the hotel—a request that he was tempted in the circumstances to ignore. A moment later, however, he was pulling on a light overcoat and crushing a soft hat on his head. It was impossible to say how urgent the letter might have been, and he decided to deliver it himself and offer his apologies for the delay.
The address, he saw, was 13 Thames Wall, Bermondsey, and he instructed the driver of the taxi-cab to lose no time.
His notions about the Bermondsey district had always been vague: that it was probably unpleasant, and lay south of the river, fully summed them up. But when his cab swept past the entrance to London Bridge Station, ran along Tooley Street, and turned into a network of side-alleys, he began to realize that this particular part of Bermondsey, whatever the rest of it might be, was nothing more than a Thames-side slum. Public-houses, the haunts of watermen and bargemen, were frequent, and strident-voiced women stood in evil-smelling doorways. The taxi-driver pulled up beside some tall railings and pointed down a long passage that disappeared into darkness.
‘That’s your best way, sir, if you’re in a hurry. Want me to wait, sir?’
‘No thanks,’ replied Gilmour, paying the man and hurrying along the flagged footway towards the waterside.
Thames Wall he found to be a narrow street with high dark warehouses on the one hand, and on the other a row of houses intersected by dismal alleys running off at right angles. In the light of a flickering lamp above a doorway he caught sight of the figures ‘13’ painted on a dirty fanlight. Here was his destination, a great gloomy place wedged in between warehouses on the river side of the street. Then he saw that it was not a private house at all, but an inn or superior lodging-house above a public-house that occupied a large corner-section of the ground floor. ‘The Green Lantern’ was the name on the sign, and the doors were being closed upon a stream of loafers and dock-hands who moved slowly off into the dense warren of streets to the south. Standing underneath the lamp, Gilmour looked once more at Elizabeth Marlowe’s letter:
‘Julius Brown, Esq.,
‘c/o Young,
‘13 Thames Wall,
‘Bermondsey, S.E.’
This was the place, sure enough, for on a small, unclean brass plate beside the door he caught the words ‘Proprietor, T. Young.’ Why, in the name of creation, he asked himself, was Elizabeth Marlowe writing to any one who might be stopping at such a place?
But this was a question he was not in a position to answer. She had relied on him to dispatch the letter that afternoon; he had been blundering fool enough to let her down—and he must now make what reparation he could.
Twice he tugged the rusty iron bell-pull beside the door before it was opened by a man who looked as if he might have been a bartender from the public-house.
‘There’s a Mr. Brown staying here?’ asked Gilmour.
The man had a sullen pugilistic face and beady eyes, and he peered suspiciously at Gilmour out of the darkness in the passage.
‘You want him?’
‘Yes. I must see him personally—I’ve got a particular message for him.’
‘Mebby he’s out,’ muttered the man, then gave a jerk of his head. ‘Better come in.’ He closed and locked the door, and shuffled along the corridor.
Through a partly open window at the far end, Gilmour caught a sudden glimpse of the Thames. A big cargo-boat was moving in mid-channel, and he could see ripples of light from her on the ruffled surface of the dark waters. Opposite, on the north bank, a warehouse was ablaze with arc-lamps, and the din of cranes could be faintly heard. As Gilmour followed the man up the stairs, he saw that the building rose sheer from the riverside, and a low pier ran out for a little way, a black heavy mass above the moving water. Up several flights of stairs they went, then the man paused.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Gilmour—but that’s of no importance. Mr. Brown will understand after I explain I’ve got a letter here for him.’
The man gave a grunt and knocked at a door.
‘He’s in all right,’ he muttered, pointing down to the slit of light on the torn waxcloth.
The murmur of voices in the room suddenly ceased. A chair was scraped back; the key was turned in the lock, and the door opened.
‘Yes?’ said a voice quickly.
The man who spoke was of medium height, with a sallow square face and the narrow eyes of a Eurasian. Gilmour had an impression that he was partly Chinese.
‘Are you Mr. Brown?’ asked Gilmour, stepping forward.
‘No. My name is Young. You wish—Mr. Brown?’ He spoke in a mellow voice, and though there was a polite smile on his face, his dark restless eyes were running over Gilmour from head to foot.
‘Yes.’
‘Might I be allowed to convey a message?’ asked the man, with elaborate courtesy. ‘Mr. Brown is engaged.’
‘I have a letter for him,’ said Gilmour, ‘from Miss Marlowe.’
‘Marlowe? I will see.’ The Eurasian turned round to ask a question, and as he did so the door began to swing open. He caught the handle quickly and pulled it towards him, but not before Alan Gilmour had a rapid glance at the room beyond.
Several people sat round a table—two or three men, and, facing him, a woman.
A sudden tingle ran through his nerves. . . . He had seen that face and these cold blue eyes before; yes, he had seen her that morning crossing the pavement from her limousine at Carbery Square. It was the second time within ten hours that he had come strangely into contact with that friend of Sir Richard Templeton, Mrs. Lydia Prideaux.
CHAPTER XII
THE DUPLICATE PHOTOGRAPH
Meantime, at the corner of a side-street in Somers Town, a man stood smoking a cigarette. His clothes were shabby, and from below the peak of his dirty cloth cap he cast quick glances at the passers-by. In the distance, a church clock struck ten; and with a final puff at the stub of his cigarette, he tossed it away and began to move down the street with the shuffling gait of a loafer.
He seemed to know his way about, for without hesitation he turned down a narrow passage on the left. At the distant end of it a lamp on an iron bracket cast a fitful light on the grime-stained walls, but the middle section of the passage lay in deep gloom. Glancing up and down to make quite certain it was deserted, the man put his foot in a crevice and made a jump for the top of the wall. Slithering over, he dropped into a dark narrow courtyard beyond, and a couple of minutes later he was crouching on the roof of an outhouse.
The square silhouette of the buildings at his side was sharply cut against the night sky. Through many lighted windows he caught glimpses of grim, unlovely interiors. An occasional burst of talk reached his ears, and now and then harsh laughter rang out with an ugly dissonant note. Pausing only long enough to take his bearings, the man crawled forward along the roof towards the wall of the main building.
At last he found what he was looking for—an iron ladder that ran upwards to the roof. This he mounted with agility, and at the top hauled himself over the low parapet. Below him lay the narrow street, with the naphtha flare of a hawker’s barrow making a lurid pool of light at one end. Again the man stopped to take his bearings. The roof on his left sloped gently up to the ridge and was broken at regular intervals by small, square skylights. When he passed the third group of chimneys he halted, and looked down over the parapet for a landmark which he had previously noted on the opposite side of the street.