Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 3, No. 4, September 1942

The Man Next Door by Edgar Wallace

When Mr. Giles walked into Chief Inspector O. Rater’s room, he did so with a cheerful assurance. His attitude proclaimed the fact that he had nothing whatever to fear from Scotland Yard or its genii; there was a smile on his red face and a frank geniality in his blue eyes which would have been proper to a man whose past was beyond reproach.

“Good morning, Mr. Rater: it’s very good of you to see me, I’m sure. When I wrote, I said to myself: ‘I wonder if the gov’nor will spare me a minute?’ The fact is, I’ve been trying to make up my mind to write to you for some time.”

“Sit down, Farmer,” said the Orator, gently. He whose rubicund countenance and expansive manner, no less than the accident of his surname, had earned him the nickname, smiled wider than ever and drew a chair to the inspector’s table.

“You know what things are, Mr. Rater! When a man’s had a little bit of trouble with the police and is starting all over again to build up his reputation, he sort of shrinks from getting in touch with the police or authorities, if I may use that expression.”

“Straight now, Farmer?”

The Orator’s steady eyes were coldly sceptical.

“Ab-so-lutely! The other game doesn’t pay, Mr. Rater. You know that. Yes, I’ve had a bit of luck. An uncle of mine set me up in business. Naturally, he doesn’t know the jokes I’ve been up to—”

“What kind of business?”

“Farmer” Giles dived into a pocket and extracted a pocket-case. The Orator took the large card which was handed across to him:

“ ‘Agent’ tells me everything!” said Mr. Rater. “What are you — a bookmaker?”

But it appeared that the Farmer was the proprietor of a prosperous general agency.

“The business is increasing every month,” he said, enthusiastically. “I’ve worked it up in eighteen months to double what it used to be. My uncle — well, I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Rater — I bought it with my own money. Twelve hundred of the best. I’ve always been a very careful man, as you know, and I’ve put money aside. What’s the use of my telling you lies? It was my own money, got on the cross, most of it... you’re too wide to believe it wasn’t. I’ve been making up my mind to come and have a chat with you—”

“I recognised you in the city, and you know I recognised you,” interrupted the Orator. “Yes, the business is O.K. I’ve had you taped up.”

The Farmer beamed.

“Trust you! I said to my wife — quite a lady, Mr. Rater — she was in business herself when I picked her up — I said: ‘Molly, if there’s anybody wider than Mr. Rater, I don’t want to meet him!’ My very words!”

“Married, eh?”

Mr. Giles nodded.

“Eighteen months. I’d like you to come down to tea one Sunday. She’s as pretty as a picture. It’s not much of a neighbourhood — 908 Acacia Street — and we’ve got a few queer birds living in our road. One of these days I’ll get a flat up West, but I always say ‘Creep before you crawl!’ ”

He was a man given to the employment of trite maxims.

“908 Acacia Street!”

The Orator had two causes for astonishment. Acacia Street he knew. It was a long avenue of very small houses, the last thoroughfare in which you might expect to find the residence of J. Giles & Co. (late Olney, Brown & Stermer), Merchants of the City of London.

“This is my point, gov’nor.” The Farmer was anxious to explain the modesty of his habitation. “I’m trying to make an honest living. I’m earning good money, but what happens if I come up West and take a flash flat? First of all, the police start making enquiries; secondly, I meet my old friends, and that starts me wrong.”

“Very creditable,” murmured Inspector Rater; “also you’re not known in Brockley.”

“Exactly!” said the other.

He took up his hat from the floor where he had placed it and smoothed the crown.

“Do you know a man called Smith — George Smith?” he asked.

The Orator looked at the ceiling.

“It’s an uncommon name,” he said; and the Farmer grinned.

“You will have your joke, gov’nor! He lives next door to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t a lag. He’s a sanctimonious sort of fellow, and goes to church; but all I know is that the night the boys did that jog at Blackheath and got away with eight thousand quid worth of sparklers, he was out all night; I happened to know because I saw him come home at five.”

“You having worked at your office all night?” murmured the Inspector, and for a moment the caller was disconcerted.

“No. To tell you the truth, I’m an early riser.”

“You always were, Farmer,” said Mr. Rater, and offered a limp hand.

908 Acacia Street! And at 910 lived a certain man who was a wood carver by trade and who dabbled in electrical contrivances.

A coincidence: a portent, probably — Mr. Rater found material for speculation.

Giles went back to his office in Cannon Street. He had some rooms on the second floor of a business block, and attended to the more intimate side of his affairs. He had in truth purchased the wreckage of a once prosperous concern, but with little intention of putting it to a legitimate use. Even when that remarkable order had been cabled to him from a client of the old firm, and he had been notified by the bankers that £6,000 had been placed to his credit for the purpose of making the purchase, his first inclination had been to draw the money and vanish gracefully. He had, however, taken over two clerks with the business, and one of these explained that the money could only be drawn on presentation of the invoices for the goods; thereupon Mr. Giles most virtuously, and with the assistance of the clerk who knew something about the execution of orders, carried out his duties, received his small commission and was more or less content.

It so happened that the order he filled was an advantageous one, and at the end of six months’ trading he found his clientele had increased threefold.

He was only mildly interested in the phenomenon, for his interests lay elsewhere than in the pure paths of commerce. J. Giles & Co. was really the head clerk, who conducted all negotiations and did no more than bring cheques to be endorsed or signed (the former operation was carried out by Mr. Giles willingly, the latter suspiciously), and he left to his employer other negotiations more delicate than the head clerk imagined.

The shipping of second-hand motor-cars to India and the Far East is a lucrative business, if you do not pay too much for the cars. And Mr. Giles paid next to nothing. He had a stabling yard adjacent to the London Docks, where cars would be crated, and it was on the shipment of these machines that his fortune was founded. He had got the strength of this graft from a man he met in Dartmoor, and he might have accumulated a fortune on the disposal of the stolen machines — he was on his way to being the biggest car fence in London — and from the legitimate profits of his business, if that unfortunate spirit of adventure which was his downfall had remained dormant.

On the night before he had interviewed Mr. Rater, he had visited Sunningdale in a stolen car, and, accompanied by two willing helpers, had lifted from a locked house some £1,500 worth of silver, and that was not his first job.

The modus operandi of the little gang can be simply described. A motorcar left unattended was “knocked off” by one of the confederates; the other two were picked up in a quiet suburban street, and the car was driven to the house which had been marked down for attack. He had found some little difficulty in securing assistance. Higgy James, whom he eventually secured, voiced the objection of his kind.

“You’re a good workman, Farmer, but what about that gun of yours? If you’re carrying one, miss me out. You’ve done a seven for shooting at a copper, and the next time it’ll be life, and anybody who’s with you may get the same. I’m not playing unless you cut out the shooter.”

The English criminal’s horror of being found in possession of firearms is natural. The pistol-embellished burglar receives an automatic addition of five years for his armament should he find himself interviewing one of His Majesty’s judges.

The silver from the overnight raid had already been melted, and in bar form would be disposed of by J. Giles & Co. (late Olney, Brown & Stermer), Merchants & Shippers. He finished work early and went to Acacia Street, having a certain matter to settle. As he passed No. 910, where his offending neighbour lived, he scowled at the unlighted window. No. 910 was built against his own house, which was of a semidetached order. Giles opened his own door with a key, and strode into the dining-room. The girl who was sitting by the side of the fire, sewing, got up quickly, and a stranger observing the scene, with no knowledge of their relationship, might have supposed that she stood in terror of him, for all the smile she forced. If she was not as pretty as a picture, that was entirely Farmer Giles’ fault, but the bruise had almost disappeared, he was pleased to note — pleased because that old so-and-so Rater might very easily take it into his head to accept the invitation he had given.

“Get my tea,” he said, curtly.

“Yes, dear.”

As she moved to the door he called her back.

“Has that fellow next door been smarming round?”

“No, dear; he hasn’t spoken to me; I haven’t seen him...”

“Don’t tell me no lies!” His voice rose menacingly. “You let me come back and catch you gossiping over the garden wall and see what happens to you, my girl!”

She did not answer; fear struck the colour from her face as she stood tense, waiting.

“I picked you up out of the gutter, so to speak,” said J. Giles. “A bit of a shop gal, up to your eyes in debt. Why I married you I don’t know: I must have been crazy with the heat. I’ve given you a home and all the luxury that the heart can desire.”

“Yes, dear; I’m very grateful.” She hastened to speak, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

“My tea,” he said.

He often woke up in the morning with a dismal sense of his lunacy in marrying this girl. Men should stick to their own game, and his game was burglary and not bigamy. Here was a handle for the “busies” if they ever got to know about his first marriage; and just as he was making good, and had three thousand “ready” stowed away in the Northern and Southern Bank. The more he thought about his danger from this source, the more he hated her. It was inconsistent in him that he objected to the attentions of the man next door. If the old fool hadn’t knocked on the wall in the middle of the night, and later come with an overcoat over his pyjamas to ask what was the meaning of the screams, he might have used Mr. Smith for his own purposes. He wasn’t a bad-looking fellow, either, though rather grey and sombre. When the Farmer had caught him by the throat and had attempted to throw him into the street, the intruder had pinned him as though he were a child, had shaken off the grip and flung the Farmer the length of the passage.

Joe Giles brooded before the fire till the girl brought in his tea and placed the tray on the table. For a long time he ignored her presence, and then, without looking at her:

“If a fellow named Rater calls, he’s from Scotland Yard — a friend of mine. I know everybody at Scotland Yard — I have to, in my business; but you needn’t tell him anything about me, do you hear?”

“Yes, dear.”

A long silence; and then:

“What’s that fellow next door do for a living?”

“I don’t know, Joe.”

“ ‘I don’t know, Joe!’ ” he mimicked her. “Do you know anything?”

She shrank back from the threat of his uplifted hand, and he laughed.

“You behave yourself and I’ll behave myself,” he said. “I’ve got a gentleman calling on me to-night: when he comes, you go up to the bedroom. If I want you I’ll send for you.”

He looked at his watch and yawned, and, going up to the bathroom, washed himself and announced his intention of going out for an hour. Once, in the early days of their marriage, she had made the mistake of asking him where he was going, but that folly had not been repeated.

She waited until the door slammed on him, passed quickly into the drawing-room with its bow window, and through the curtains watched him till he disappeared; then she went through the kitchen, leaving all the doors open so that she could hear, knowing that her neighbour would have heard the door slam.

He was waiting in the garden, a dark figure in the gloom.

“I had to lie to him, Mr. Smith,” she said. “I said I hadn’t spoken to you. What am I to do?”

Her voice was vibrant with despair; and yet she found a certain dismal happiness in talking to him. Every night the girl went out at the same hour, and every night she made her way to the garden to discuss a problem which had been hopeless at its outset and was hopeless yet.

“Well, you hadn’t seen me to-day.” His voice was rough but kindly. “Has he beaten you again?”

She shook her head: he could just see that gesture.

“No, he hasn’t struck me since you came the other night. I don’t know what to do, Mr. Smith, I’m so terrified of him. He gives me no money, so I can’t run away from him. If I went back to my old job at Harridge’s he would follow me. He terrifies me. Sometimes I think I shall put my head in the gas oven and end it all.”

“You’re talking like a fool.” The man’s voice was sharp, but almost instantly he became his gentle self. “I’ll find a way out for you—”

“Who is Mr. Rater of Scotland Yard?” she asked, suddenly.

“Why?” He had obviously been startled by the question.

“Joe was talking about him; said he would be likely to call. Do you know him?”

A pause.

“Yes, I know him. I met him once. When is he coming?”

His tone was anxious, and she wondered what Rater stood for in his mind.

“I don’t know if he’s coming at all. Joe only said that he might be calling. He wants to know what you do for a living.”

She heard a chuckle from the other side of the wall.

“He does, does he? Well, you can tell him the truth: I’m a working woodcarver — he’s seen me at the bench often enough; and I’ve another job, which is my own private affair and I never talk about it.”

“I’ll bet you don’t, you dirty trickster.”

The girl screamed and turned in horror, to find her husband standing almost by her side. He had crept back without a sound, and had overheard the last part of the conversation. She would have fled past him, but he caught her by the arm in a grip that made her scream again.

“You wait here. So this is what you do when I go out in the evening, eh? I’ll settle with you later, Smith.”

He dragged the girl inside and bolted the door. Mr. Smith, who was by no means a squeamish man, made a little grimace as her cries came out to him...

She lay huddled on the bed, too weak, too stunned even to cry. Mr. J. Giles buttoned his wristband and put on his coat.

“Now you can go to bed, my girl, and be thankful you’re alive,” he said.

He locked the bedroom door on her and went downstairs into the kitchen and chose an empty soda-water bottle. Then he went out of the house and knocked at Mr. Smith’s door. He was glad to notice that the hallway was in darkness. He heard the footsteps of the man, and then the door was pulled wide open.

“Well?”

Evidently Joe had been recognised.

“I thought I’d come to see you, Mr. Smith” — Giles’ manner was polite, even deferential “—and ask you as a great favour to me not to talk to my wife. She’s a very foolish girl, and I don’t want to get her into trouble of any kind, and—”

His tone was so conciliatory, his manner so completely subdued, that Smith was off his guard. He saw, only for the fraction of a second, the weapon in the man’s hand, and ducked his head as the soda-water bottle struck him. He went down on his knees and collapsed in a heap on the floor, and Mr. J. Giles closed the door carefully and went back into his house to spend an uncomfortable half-hour. Suppose this bird went to the police... that was the second mad thing he had done.

From time to time he pressed his ear against the thin party wall, and had the satisfaction of hearing the stumbling feet of his victim. Taking up a position in the parlour where he could watch the front door, he waited for the man to emerge; but half an hour and an hour passed, and nothing happened. The Farmer smiled. There was probably a very good reason why the man should not go to the police.

Towards ten o’clock the man he expected called. It was “Higgy,” the best of runners and the most loyal of assistants. There was a job ready for the working — a big house on the outskirts of Horsham. The family were away; there were seven maidservants and two elderly men.

“The old lady who owns the house is down at Bournemouth, and keeps all her jewels in the safe. You can’t see it because it’s let into the wall behind the head of the bed. ‘Stokey’ Barmond went through the house yesterday — he got pally with a gel servant — and he says it’s easy. A French safe that you could open with your fingernails, and lashings of jewellery — old-fashioned, but the stones are extra.”

“What’s the best way for the car?” asked Mr. Giles.

“Higgy” explained. There was a side road where it could be parked, and from there over a low boundary wall into the grounds was “a step.” He produced a fairly accurate plan, for “Higgy” in his youth had been apprenticed to a cartographer. This the Farmer scanned carefully.

“It looks good. Get ‘Stokey’ to knock off a car to-morrow night, and pick me up at the top of Denmark Hill.”

“No shooters,” said “Higgy.” It was his conventional warning.

“Is it likely?” demanded the Farmer.

It was his conventional reply.

Nevertheless, when he went up to his room he took his Browning from a locked drawer, and slipped in a full magazine. He knew better than any that his next stretch would be a lifer, and he would as soon hang.

That morning he had seen Smith with a bandage round his head. He was standing at a little iron gate that shut off the forecourt of his house from the road. For a moment, at the sight of him, the heart of J. Giles had quailed and he had gripped the loaded cane he carried.

“Good morning,” said Smith. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

“Pick it when you like,” said the Farmer, keeping his distance.

The man shook his head.

“I think you’ll choose the time yourself,” he said, and with the mysterious hint they parted.

All day long Mr. Smith considered his position, and in the evening, after the Farmer had gone to his nefarious work, the man next door went out to find a telephone booth and Rater. For the party walls were very thin, and Mr. Smith, who made a hobby of wire and other electrical contraptions, had made for himself a small microphone...

“You’ve left it rather late, Smith,” said the Orator; but anticipated Smith’s explanation.

“It’s a queer thing for me to do, sir. I can’t very well go into the box, and that’s been worrying me all day.”

The Orator only waited long enough at Scotland Yard to get into touch with the Sussex police before he boarded a swift tender and took the Worthing road.

The Farmer’s gift of organisation was of a high order. Almost to the minute he was picked up at the top of Denmark Hill by a light car, the proprietorship in which had undergone a change in the previous hour. “Higgy” was at the wheel, their companion in the seat behind.

“You picked a good ’un,” said the Farmer graciously, which was high praise for him.

They passed through Horsham in a blinding shower of rain which would have made police observation a difficult business even if “Higgy” had not already changed the number-plate of the stolen car and covered its radiator with a muff.

As they approached the scene of their exploit, “Higgy” asked, not without anxiety:

“You haven’t brought your shooter, have you, Farmer?” and Mr. Giles turned on him savagely.

“What’s the matter with you? Would you get a stretch for my gun? It’s me that’s got to go through it if we’re caught — not you!”

Nevertheless, “Higgy” persisted stubbornly.

“Have you got a gun or haven’t you?”

“I haven’t,” snapped the Farmer.

“Higgy” said nothing, but he was not convinced. It was his task to stand by the car, and at the first sound of a shot — well, “Higgy” knew his own graft best. He’d be half-way to Horsham before the Farmer reached the road. He had already got his excuses ready for his desertion.

The car turned into the side lane, moving silently on the downward slope with its engine shut off till “Higgy” braked the machine to a jolting standstill. There was a whispered consultation. Crossing the wall, Farmer and his assistant disappeared into the night. “Higgy” loosed the brakes, and, by pushing and pulling, managed to turn the nose of the machine about without switching on his engine. He waited for ten minutes to pass, trod on the starter and set the engine going. A quarter of an hour, and he was half-dozing at the wheel, when he heard the squelch of a footstep, and a light was suddenly flashed in his face.

“Step down and don’t shout,” said a terse voice. “Higgy” was conscious that the lane was full of uniformed policemen, two of whom were already crossing the wall.

The Farmer had reached his objective, and with the assistance of a convenient porch had forced a window which brought him to the bedroom. The safe proved to be almost as easy money as he had anticipated. In a quarter of an hour he had wrenched the little door from its hinges and had stowed away in his several pockets the valuable contents. When he came out on to the porch his watcher had disappeared. Swinging over the balustrade, he slid down a pillar...

A hand gripped his arm tightly, but he wrenched it free. He saw, dimly, the shape of a helmet against the copper-red sky, dodged under an outstretched arm and ran. He was within a dozen paces of the wall when his pursuer leapt forward and, tackling him low, brought the thief sprawling to the ground. In an instant he was on his feet, grinning with rage, and as the constable scrambled up with him...

“Here’s yours!” said the Farmer, and shot twice from the hip.

He didn’t wait to see the man go slithering into the mud, but darted for the wall and threw himself over, into the arms of the Scotland Yard men who were waiting for him.

“It’s a cop,” said the Farmer, and hastened to establish his innocence. “We were struggling for the gun and it went off by accident.”

“The jury will be interested,” said the Orator, icily.

The murder was a commonplace, vulgar one. Only the profession of the victim gave it a public interest. The Farmer appeared first at the local police court, before a bench of magistrates, then before an Assize Court. £3,000 in the bank gave him the right to the best legal advice, and his case was argued with great eloquence by a brilliant leader of the Bar. The value of such assistance was that it prolonged the trial from one to two days, but the result was inevitable. The reporters sharpened their pencils, the bored ushers leaning against the wall, the morbid sightseers — even the stolid jury knew it was inevitable before the curtain rose on the last act of the drama. Only the judge and the counsel for the defense offered a similitude of conscientious doubt. And when sentence was promulgated, and he was taken to Wandsworth Prison, handcuffs on his wrists and three warders in attendance, there was, felt the Farmer, still hope.

He had not seen his wife since his arrest. She had come up once at his earnest request, but since he was not allowed to interview her except in the presence of a prison official, he could not give her instructions as to certain rather incriminating articles which must be done away with (such as two full boxes of ammunition in the right hand side of the chest of drawers); she wasn’t of much use to him, and the sight of her white, drawn face exasperated him to such an extent that when she came again he declined to see her.

The Court of Appeal dismissed his case summarily. And then it was he bethought him of sending for the Orator. Mr. Rater saw him in his cell, a growth of red beard on his redder face, and the Farmer grinned his greeting.

“You’ve got me to rights, Rater — why did you let ‘Higgy’ off with a three?”

“Higgy” had certainly escaped with three years’ penal servitude.

“And that fellow Smith — he thinks I’ll be leaving that woman of mine a bit of money and that he’ll marry her. Now I’m telling you, Rater, she’s not my wife. I was married before. She’s not entitled to a farthing — she won’t get it either.”

He gave particulars of his early marriage. It was not in a spirit of contrition, but rather, as he explained, with satisfaction, “to put her in her place.”

“My point is that I don’t want that woman to go claiming anything from me. She’s been a curse to me,” he added, but did not explain how. Nor, thought Rater, could a logical explanation be forthcoming.

It was out of sheer malice that he had sent for the Orator, who suggested as much, and the condemned man nodded and grinned.

“She’s not going to marry Smith — not on my money.”

“You needn’t worry about Smith—” began the Orator, but stopped. He was on delicate ground.

“That man’s a crook,” said the Farmer. “I’ve had him ‘taped’ for a long time. He’s always going out at nights, and staying away a couple of days. He lives alone, and I’ll bet if you ‘fanned’ his house you’d find lashings of stuff.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the Orator, who was glad to leave his victim.

The man next door was a sore point with the Farmer. He discussed him with his custodians, the warders who watched him night and day. He did almost all the talking, and they the listening; but they were good listeners.

“I wish I’d knocked his brains out,” he said, amiably. “They can only hang you once, even for fifty thousand murders. I’ll bet he carries that mark I gave him to his grave! I caught him here...” He illustrated the blow, and the warders were only faintly interested.

And then came the morning of mornings, and Mr. J. Giles submitted patiently to being prayed over. He was still red of face, hardly moved by the horror which awaited him in the little cell that opens immediately opposite the one in which he was confined. When the parson had finished, he rose from his knees with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Now let’s see your—”

And then the man next door walked swiftly into the cell, and he had a black strap in his hand. Giles stared at him open-mouthed. There was a livid scar on his forehead. No doubt at all, it was Smith... the man next door!

“Good Gawd!” he gasped. “That’s what you meant, was it? We’d meet again and you’d be the fellow that brought it off!”

Smith, the hangman, did not answer. He never spoke in business hours.