A Scream in Soho by John G. Brandon

Author:John G. Brandon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2016-03-13T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIII

Withers Supplies Some Curious Information

In the seclusion of his own room McCarthy sat down to mull this thing out; to get it into some sort of chronological order which would give him fair ground to work from. The ghastly events of the night before, culminating as they did with the killing of Constable Harper, had unquestionably commenced with the brutal murder of the old coffee-stall man, Joe Anselmi. That that crime had been carefully premeditated by some cunning brain as the only method of getting the body of the intended victim out of Soho Square seemed to be an unarguable fact.

With regard to the second murder, there could be little or no doubt but that the killer must have been in possession of information that the pseudo Madame Rohner would go to those Soho Square offices at a given time last night, or, rather, early this morning. The possibility, indeed probability, was that Rohner had been decoyed there by some message which had to do with the plans stolen from Whitehall that afternoon.

That, again, argued that the killer, and those who he was connected with, knew not only of the existence of the plans and that they had been stolen by Rohner, but also that the thief was carrying them about, in all likelihood, preparatory to a speedy flight from the country with them. Which seemed to leave it as fairly beyond dispute that the thief was a secret-service agent of one country, while the killer was in the employ of another.

It seemed, to judge by the complete clearing out of Madame Rohner’s office, that that mysterious personage had first made her way into the building and attended to the destruction of all traces of her (or, rather, “his”) identity, or business, before coming in contact with the person, or, it might be, persons, who sought not only his life, but what he was known to be carrying. On the other hand, that clearance might have been made earlier in the evening and following the successful raid upon the safe in Whitehall. Whichever way it might have been, it made no appreciable difference. Of one thing McCarthy was quite certain, and that was that the room had not been cleared out by the murderer after the body of the victim had been got out of Soho Square in Anselmi’s coffee-stall—the time lapse between the scream and the discovery of Harper’s body was not sufficient to have permitted it being done.

To follow events along in their chronological order, the first person to claim his attention in the square had been that strange and, unquestionably sinister-looking person, the man with the ice-blue eyes. That, of course, might have been the merest coincidence and had nothing whatever to do with the murder. But, somehow, that “hunch” which he had followed at the time of the crime was as strong upon him now as it had been then; indeed, in the light of what had happened to Danny Regan, it had ceased in

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