The White Friar by Donald Stuart

Author:Donald Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

10

The Listener at the Door

Nearly three weeks passed without any sign or appearance of the mysterious avenger whose mission in life seemed to be the extinction of the Kielmann gang, and Mr. Kielmann began to grow a trifle less uneasy and also less watchful.

Since the shooting of ‘Slick’ Morley, he had had a fresh and stronger lock put on his front door, and as extra precaution had persuaded ‘Dude’ Dawson to vacate his own comfortable flat, and take up his abode in the spare bedroom. Dawson, as a matter of fact, had required very little persuading, but had jumped at the invitation with alacrity. Although for the time being their fear of the unknown was quiescent, it had by no means vanished. There were times in the middle of the night when Kielmann would start awake from a troubled sleep, and lie shivering and bathed in perspiration at some sound, which turned out to be nothing more alarming than the slamming of a door by a late resident of the flats, or the backfiring of a car in the street below. But for the past weeks a disturbing factor had come to bother the smooth Mr. Kielmann’s peace of mind, and this was no less than Lionel Crane’s untiring activity in trying to trace Len Sutton.

Twice since the episode of the air-gun had the stout man tried to remove this new menace to his safety, and on each occasion the result had been failure. The poison he had caused to be put in Crane’s early morning milk which was always left outside on the steps, proved to have had no effect, for Lionel was apparently in the habit of testing this before it was brought to the table, and the car which had tried to run him down in Oxford Street, had only succeeded in smashing into a lamppost, and the driver had been fined twenty pounds by an unsympathetic magistrate, which sum had eventually come from Mr. Kielmann’s pocket.

The worst of it was that although he had no real evidence, Crane knew from whom these various attempts on his life emanated, and Mr. Kielmann guessed that he knew. What he did not guess was how much Lionel had succeeded in finding out about Len Sutton, and this worried him more than a little. The strain of it all had taken effect even on Mr. Kielmann’s iron constitution.

He was thinner, and the sudden wasting of his flesh had resulted in giving him somewhat the appearance of a half-inflated balloon, for the skin hung loosely below his eyek and about the corners of his mouth, and covered his collar in wrinkled folds. There was not a movement that Crane made at that time that was not instantly reported to him. He was aware that the two agencies were working diligently, and that Lionel himself was giving them a personal hand in the inquiries that were being instituted, but try as he might he could not find out the result. He had

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