Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Edgar Wallace Warm and Dry

I went down to see Superintendent Minter just before the election began. He heard I was going to participate in the fray with a visible sneer on his homely face. “Politics!” he said. “Good Lord! At your time of life! Well, well, well! I’ve known a lot of fellows who took up that game, but nobody that ever made it pay, except Nippy the Nose, who used to travel the country and burgle the candidates’ rooms when they were out addressing meetings.

“You know a lot about the hooks and the getabits of life, and you know that they’re all specialists. If a man’s a lob crawler—”

“What’s a lob crawler? I’ve forgotten.”

The Superintendent shook his head sadly. “You’re forgetting everything,” he said. “I suppose it’s these politics. A lob crawler’s a man who goes into a little shop on his hands and knees, passes round the counter, and pinches the till. There’s not much of it nowadays, and anyway in these bad times there’s nothing in the till to pinch.

“But once a lob crawler, always a lob crawler. If you go on the whizz — and I don’t suppose you want me to tell you that whizzing is pocket-picking — you spend your life on the whizz. If you’re a burglar, you’re always a burglar. I’ve never yet met a burglar who was also a con man.

“That’s the criminal’s trouble — he’s got no originality, and thank the Lord for it! If they didn’t catch themselves, we’d never catch ’em. Nippy was an exception. He’d try anything once. If you went into the Record Office at Scotland Yard and turned up his M.O. card, which means—”

“I know what a Modus Operandi card is,” I said.

The Superintendent nodded his head approvingly.

“That’s right. Don’t let these politics put business out of your mind. As I say, if you turned up his M.O. card you’d have a shock. He’s been convicted of larceny, burglary, obtaining money by a trick, pocket-picking, luggage pinching — everything except blackmail. It’s a funny thing that none of the regulars will ever admit they’ve committed blackmail, and there’s not one of them that wouldn’t if he had the chance.

“I used to know Nippy — in fact, I got two of his convictions. Nothing upsets a police officer more than these general practitioners, because we are always looking for specialists. We know there are about six classes of burglars. There’s a class that never attempts to break into a live shop, by which I mean a shop where people are living in the rooms upstairs; and there’s a class that never goes into a dead joint, which, you will remember, is a lock-up shop with nobody on the premises.

“And naturally, when we get a burglary with any peculiar features, we go through the M.O. cards and pick out a dozen men who are likely to have done the job, and after we’ve sorted ’em out and found which of ’em are in stir and which of ’em are out of the neighborhood, we’ll pull in the remainder one by one and give them the once-over.

“So that when there was a real big bust in Brockley, and we went over the M.O. cards, we never dreamed of looking for Nippy, because he hadn’t done that sort of thing before; and we wouldn’t have found him, but we got the office from a fence in Islington that Nippy had tried to sell him a diamond brooch. When you get a squeak from a fence it’s because he has offered too low a price for the stolen property, and the thief has taken it elsewhere.

“Nippy got a stretch, and the next time he came into our hands it was for something altogether different — trying to persuade a Manchester cotton man to buy a one-tenth share in a Mexican oil field. Nippy would have got away with the loot, but unfortunately he knew nothing about geography, and when he said that Mexico was in South Africa the cotton man got a little suspicious and looked up the map.

“Nippy was a nice fellow, always affable, generally well dressed, and a great favorite with the ladies. When I say ‘ladies’ I mean anybody that wore stockings and used lipstick.

“Nippy used to do a bit of nosing, too, but I didn’t know he was making a regular business of it. Now, a nose is a very useful fellow. Without a nose the police wouldn’t be able to find half the criminals that come through their hands. I suppose I’m being vulgar and ought to call them police informers, but ‘nose’ has always been good enough for me, because, naturally, I’m a man without any refinement.

“I happened to be walking down Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner one day when I saw Nippy. He tipped his hat and was moving on when I claimed him. ‘Good morning, Sooper.’ he said. ‘I’m just on me way to the office. I’m going straight now. I’m an agent, you see, and everything’s warm and dry. I’ve opened a little business in Wardour Street.’ he said.

“Nippy had opened lots of businesses, mostly with a chisel and a three-piece jimmy, but I gathered that he had opened this one by paying the rent in advance. All criminals tell you they’re going straight. Usually they’re going straight from one prison to another. There are exceptions, but I’ve never heard of ’em.

“We had a few minutes’ conversation. He told me where his office was, and I promised to look him up. He was so happy about me calling that I thought he was lying, but when I dropped in a few days afterwards I found that he had a room on the third floor.

“I expected to find that he was the managing director of the Mountains in the Moon Exploration Company, or else the secretary of a new invention for getting gold out of the sea. It was a bit surprising to find his real name, Norman Ignatius Percival Philipson Young, on the glass panel. It was now that I found what he was agent for. He was standing in with the very fence who had given him away on his last conviction, and I suspected he was doing the same job.

“Anyway, he was full of information about various people, and he gave me a tip that afternoon to prove his — what’s the phrase? yes, bona fides — that’s French, isn’t it? I made a pretty good capture — a man called Juggy Jones, who did a lot of automobile pinching, and was in with a big crowd up at Shadwell, who took the cars, repaired them, and shipped them off to India. There’s many a grand family car running round Madras, loaded to the waterline with little Eurasians.

“Anyway, Juggy was a very sensible man, and if ever a thief could be described as intelligent, Juggy was that man. He didn’t talk much.

“He was a big fellow, about six feet two, with a face as cheerful as the ace of spades. But if he didn’t say much he did a lot of thinking.

“I took him out of a café, where he was having dinner with a lady friend, and we walked down to the station together and I charged him.

“He said nothing, but when he came up before the magistrate and heard the evidence and was committed for trial, he asked me to see him in his cell.

“ ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised, Sooper,’ he said, ‘if I know the name of the man who shopped me.’

“ ‘And I shouldn’t be surprised either, Juggy.’ I said, ‘because you’ve known me for years.’

“But he shook his head and said nothing else. Somebody got at the witnesses for the Crown, and when they went into the box at the Old Bailey they gave the sort of evidence that wouldn’t bring about a conviction, and it looked as if he was going to get an acquittal and something out of the poor box to compensate him for his wounded feelings, when the prosecuting counsel took a pretty strong line with one witness who, after he had changed his evidence three times, said just enough to convict Juggy on the count.

“He went down for a carpet. Am I being vulgar? Let me say he went down for six months, and a very lucky man he was. If we could have convicted him on the other indictments he’d have taken a dose of penal servitude.

“Naturally Nippy didn’t appear in court, and I wondered what he was getting out of it.

“It was a long time afterwards that I found out there was a quarrel between the two rings as to who the stuff should be shipped to, and Nippy had been put in to make the killing. Nippy gave me one of two bits of information which were useful, but you could see that he was just acting for the fence. I made a few inquiries up Islington way, and I found out that whenever the police went to him to find out about stolen property, he referred them to the gentleman in Wardour Street who’d be able to tell them something.

“Now a thief who’s earning a regular living has never got enough money, and I was pretty certain Nippy was doing something on the side, because he began to have his old prosperous look and started attending the races. As a matter of fact, though I didn’t know it, he was working up a connection with a gang of luggage thieves. I found this out when he came on to my manor — into my division, I mean, i found him at a railway station acting in a suspicious manner, and I could have pinched him but, being naturally very kind-hearted with all criminals if I haven’t enough evidence to get a conviction, I just warned him. Nippy was very hurt.

“ ‘Why, Sooper,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a good job. I’m warm and dry up in Wardour Street. Why should I lower myself to go back to my old sinful life? I haven’t had a drink for three months, and I never pass the Old Bailey without taking off me hat to it.’

“ ‘There are two ways of being warm and dry, Nippy,’ I said. ‘One is to be honest, and the other is to get to Dartmoor, where I understand there is a fine system of central heating.’

“While this was going on, Juggy Jones came out of stir and reported to me. He’d got out with his usual remissions and I had a little chat with him.

“ ‘It’s all right, Sooper,’ he said. ‘I’m going straight. I’ve had enough of the other game. How’s Nippy — warm and dry?’

“ ‘Do you know him?’ I asked.

“He thought a long time. ‘I’ve heard about him.’ he said.

“I should imagine he’d been doing a lot of thinking while he was in prison, and when I heard that he and Nippy had been seen together having a drink in the long bar, I thought it advisable to see Nippy and give him a few words of fatherly advice. But you couldn’t tell anything to Nippy. He knew it all, and a lot more. He just smiled. ‘Thank you, Sooper.’ he said, ‘but Juggy and I have always been good pals, and you couldn’t wish to meet a nicer man.’

“According to his story, they had met by accident in the Haymarket. They’d had a drink together. I think Nippy was a bit jealous of Juggy, because he was one of the few crooks I have met who had saved money. He had enough money, anyway, when he was at the Old Bailey to engage a good mouthpiece, and he’d got a nice little flat in Maida Vale.

“One of my men shadowed Nippy and found he was in the habit of calling there, so if Nippy disappeared and his right ear was found on the Thames Embankment, I knew where the rest of the body would be. Not that crooks are that kind — they never commit murder.

“I only heard the rest of the story in scraps and pieces. But so far as I could make out, Nippy had been trying to get the man into the luggage crowd, which was silly because, as I have said before, a man who knocks off automobiles doesn’t knock off anything else.

“Juggy said he would like to try the business, and he must have looked it over pretty thoroughly and taken an interest in it because one day he sent for Nippy to come to his flat and put him on an easy job that came off and brought him about £150.

“It’s a simple trick. You have a car outside the station, and in it a little hand stamp and a case of type. You hang about the cloakroom till you see a man coming along earning a bag in and taking his ticket. You’ve got a little bag of your own, containing a few well-worn bricks wrapped up in your favorite newspaper. You edge up behind him, and when he takes a ticket you check your bag and you receive a ticket. Now, suppose you receive Number 421. You know the ticket just before you was 430.

“You go outside to your little car. You have got a lot of blank tickets of all colors — they sometimes change the color — and you just make up the stamp to Number 430 and you stamp it. About three or four hours later along comes a gentlemanly-looking person, hands in the phony ticket Number 430 and claims the bag, and that’s the end of it.

“One night, just as Nippy was going to bed, Juggy rang him up and asked him to come round to see him. When he got to the flat he told Nippy a grand story. It was about a man who traveled in jewelry and who was in the habit of taking one over the eight, and sometimes two. This fellow, according to Juggy, when he felt the inebriation, if you’ll excuse the word, overtaking him, used to go to the nearest cloakroom and deposit all his samples in a bag which was kept in a case that you could open with a blunt knife or a celluloid card.

“According to Juggy, this fellow was coming to London from Birmingham, and the two arranged to shadow him. They picked him up at a railway station — a large fat man, who was slightly oiled. You may not have heard the expression before, but it means a man who has been lubricating — which is also a foreign expression, but you must go with the times.

“They tailed him till he went into a restaurant and met another man. He carried a bag, and he took out of this bag, and showed to the world, a large leather roll which he opened on the table. There were more diamonds in that roll than Nippy had ever heard of. When he saw it he began to breathe heavily through his nose.

“When they got outside the restaurant Nippy said to Juggy, ‘Can’t we get him in a quiet place and convert him to free trade? It’s warm and dry.’

“But Juggy wouldn’t have it. He said that this man, because he was in the habit of getting soused — which is another expression you may not have heard before, but it means the same thing — was always followed by a detective to watch him. Apparently, he wasn’t an ordinary traveler — he was the head of the firm.

“So Nippy and Juggy followed him for a bit. He went into a bar and when he came out he couldn’t have driven a car without having his license suspended for ten years. Sure enough he made for a railway station in the Euston Road, handed over the stock, and they watched it being locked in the safe.

“ ‘He’ll do that every day this week,’ said Juggy, ‘but no time’s like the present. You’re a peterman, I’m not.’

“And then he told Nippy his plan. It was to put him in a packing case and deposit him in the cloakroom. ‘It’s Saturday night. They close the office at twelve, and all you’ve got to do is to get out during the night, open the safe, get the stuff, and I’ll be down to collect you in the morning.’

“Nippy wasn’t what I might describe as keen on the job, but he’d seen the diamonds and he couldn’t keep his mind off them. Juggy took him down to a little garage off the Waterloo Bridge Road and showed him the packing case he’d had made.

“ ‘If you don’t like to do it, I can get one of my lads who’ll do the job for a pony and be glad of the chance. It’s going to be easy to get, and we’ll share fifty-fifty.’

“Nippy was still a bit uncertain. ‘Suppose they put me upside-down?’

“ ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Juggy. ‘I’ll put a label on it: This Side Up — Glass.’

“Nippy had a look at the case. It was all lined, there was a nice seat, and although it was going to be a little uncomfortable there was a neat little pocket inside, with a flask of whiskey and a little tin of sandwiches.

“ ‘You won’t be able to smoke, of course, but you won’t be there more than seven hours. I’ll notify the left-luggage people that I’m bringing the case in, and I’ll slip the fellow a dollar and tell him not to put anything on top. All you’ve got to do is open the side of the case and step out. It’ll be like falling off a log.’

“Nippy had a good look at the case. The side opened like a door. It didn’t look hard at all. The only danger was that when they came in the morning to the cloakroom they’d find out that the safe had been opened.

“ ‘That’s all right,’ said Juggy. ‘You needn’t bust it. I’ve got a squeeze of the key.’ He took it out of his pocket.

“ ‘That’s all right,’ said Nippy. It’s an easy job. We’ll be warm and dry on this.’

“About seven o’clock that night Nippy got inside the packing case and tried it out. The air holes all worked beautifully, so everything was as the heart could desire. He bolted the door on the inside, then heard somebody putting in screws on the outside.

“ ‘Hi!’ said Nippy, ‘what’s the idea?’

“ ‘It’s all right,’ said Juggy. ‘They’re only fakes. They come out the moment you push the side out.’

“I don’t know what happened to Nippy in the night, and I can’t describe his feelings, because I’m not a novel writer. He heard cranes going and people shouting, felt himself lifted up in the air, heard somebody say, ‘Lower away!’ and he went down farther than he thought it was possible to go. And then Nippy began to realize that something had to be done.

“It was two hours before anybody heard his shouts, and at last the stevedores broke open the case and got him out. He was in the hold of a ship, and the packing case was labeled on the top: Bombay. Stow away from boilers. Keep warm and dry.

“It broke Nippy’s nerve. He’s in Parkhurst now, recuperating.”