The Dark Eyes of London Read Online

Have you the registration of birth?"

    "I haven't got that; we're making a search for it tomorrow," said Larry.

    "I can save you the trouble," replied Diana Ward. "Clarissa is the other twin daughter."

    "Twins!" gasped Larry, and the girl nodded, her eyes dancing with merriment at his surprise.

    "Obviously," she said. "Poor Mrs Stuart had twin daughters. One of them died; the other is Clarissa, of whom Stuart learnt, perhaps, in the last few hours of his life." Larry looked at her in awe.

    "When you are Chief Commissioneress of the Metropolitan Police," he said, "I shall be very obliged to you if you make me your secretary. I feel I have a lot to learn."

    Flash Fred had not left London: he had no intention of leaving London, if the truth be told. He had certain doubts in his mind which he had determined to set at rest, certain obscurities on his horizon which he desired should be dispersed. Flash Fred was a clever man. If he had not been clever, he would not have lived in the excellent style he adopted, nor possessed chambers in Jermyn Street and a motor brougham to take him to the theatre at night. His working expenses were heavy, but his profits were vast. He had many irons in the fire and burnt himself with none of them—which is the art of success in all walks of life.

    On the evening of the day that Larry had made his discovery Flash Fred, in the seclusion and solitude of his ornate sitting-room, had elaborated a theory which had followed very close upon a discovery he had made that morning. Men of his temperament and uncertain prospects suffer from a chronic dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction is half the cause of their departure from the straight and narrow path, and is wholly responsible for their undoing. A hundred pounds a month, payable yearly, is a handsome income; but the underworld abhor anything that savours of steadiness, regularity and system—three qualities which are so associated with prison life that they carry with them a kind of taint particularly distressing to the lag-who-was.

    Twelve hundred pounds a year for five years is six thousand pounds, or twenty four thousand dollars at the present rate of exchange—a respectable sum; but five years represents a big slice taken out of the hectic life of men like Flash Fred.

    Twelve hundred pounds at best represents only two coups at Trente et quarante, and can be lost in three minutes.

    Dr Judd was a collector. It had been reported to Fred that Dr Judd's residence at Chelsea was a veritable treasure-house of paintings and antique jewellery. Fred had read a newspaper paragraph that Dr Judd was the possessor of historical gems worth fifty thousand pounds. Though Fred had no passion for history, he had an eye to the value of precious stones. And the theory he had evolved was in the main arithmetical. If he could get away with ten thousand pounds' worth of property in twenty-four hours, he would not only have anticipated his income for eight or nine years, but he would be saved the fag of coming to London every twelve months to collect it. Much might happen in twelve months. It might not always be possible for him to make the journey, since prison authorities are notoriously difficult to persuade. Or he might be dead.

    To get that movable property would be difficult, because the doctor was hardly the kind of man to leave his property unguarded. Indeed, the ordinary methods of effecting an entrance were repugnant to Fred's professional feelings. For he gained his livelihood by the cleverness of his tongue and the lightning adjustment of certain brain cells to meet emergencies, and to him a jemmy was an instrument of terror, since it implied work. But there was another method—and once he had made his getaway, would the doctor dare prosecute?

    That afternoon, sauntering aimlessly through Piccadilly Circus at the midday hour, he had come face to face with a tall, stoutish man, who, after one glance at him, had attempted to avoid a meeting; but Fred had caught him by the arm and swung him round.

    "Why," he said, "if it isn't old No. 278! How are you, Strauss?"

    Mr Strauss's face twitched nervously. "I think you've made a mistake, sir," he said.

    "Come off it," demanded Fred vulgarly, and, taking him by the arm, led him down Lower Regent Street.

    "Excuse my not recognizing you," said Mr Strauss nervously, "but I thought at first you were a bull-split we call them in this country."

    "Well, I'm not," said Flash Fred. "And how has the old world been treating you, hey? Do you remember G Gallery at Portland, in B Block?" The face of the stout man twitched again. He did not like being reminded of his prison experience, though in truth he had little against the prisoner who had occupied the adjoining cell.

    "How are you getting on?" he asked. And it happened that that morning Flash Fred had gone out without any visible diamonds—he carried them in his hip pocket, for he trusted nobody.

    "Bad," said Fred, which was a lie, but no good crook admits that he is prosperous. Then suddenly: "Why did you think I was a split, Strauss?"

    Strauss looked uncomfortable.