The Green Mamba
The spirit of exploration has ruined more promising careers than drink, gambling or the smiles of women. Generally speaking, the beaten tracks of life are the safest, and few men have adventured into the uncharted spaces in search of easy money who have not regarded the discovery of the old hard road whence they strayed as the greatest of their achievements.
Mo Liski held an assured position in his world, and one acquired by the strenuous and even violent exercise of his many qualities. He might have gone on until the end of the chapter, only he fell for an outside proposition, and, moreover, handicapped himself with a private feud, which had its beginning in an affair wholly remote from his normal operations.
There was a Moorish grafter named El Rahbut, who had made several visits to England, travelling by the banana boats which make the round trip from London River to Funchal Bay, Las Palmas, Tangier and Oporto. He was a very ordinary, yellow-faced Moor, pockmarked and undersized, and he spoke English, having in his youth fallen into the hands of a well-meaning American missionary. This man Rahbut was useful to Mo because quite a lot of German drugs are shipped via Trieste to the Levant, and many a crate of oranges has been landed in the Pool that had, squeezed in their golden interiors, little metal cylinders containing smuggled saccharine, heroin, cocaine, hydrochlorate and divers other noxious medicaments.
Rahbut brought such things from time to time, was paid fairly and was satisfied. One day, in the saloon bar of ‘The Four Jolly Seamen,’ he told Mo of a great steal. It had been carried out by a group of Anghera thieves working in Fez, and the loot was no less than the Emeralds of Suliman, the most treasured possession of Morocco. Not even Abdul Aziz in his most impecunious days had dared to remove them from the Mosque of Omar; the Anghera men being what they were, broke into the holy house, killed two guardians of the treasure, and had got away with the nine green stones of the great king. Thereafter arose an outcry which was heard from the bazaars of Calcutta to the mean streets of Marsi-Karsi. But the men of Anghera were superior to the voice of public opinion and they did no more than seek a buyer. El Rahbut, being a notorious bad character, came into the matter, and this was the tale he told to Mo Liski at ‘The Four Jolly Seamen’ one foggy October night.
‘There is a million pesetas profit in this for you and me, Mr. Good Man,’ said Rahbut (all Europeans who paid on the nail were ‘Mr. Good Man’ to El Rahbut). ‘There is also death for me if this thing becomes known.’
Mo listened, smoothing his chin with a hand that sparkled and flashed dazzlingly. He was keen on ornamentation. It was a little outside his line, but the newspapers had stated the bald value of the stolen property, and his blood was on fire at the prospect of earning half a million so easily. That Scotland Yard and every police headquarters in the world were on the lookout for the nine stones of Suliman did not greatly disturb him. He knew the subterranean way down which a polished stone might slide; and if the worst came to the worst, there was a reward of £5,000 for the recovery of the jewels.
‘I’ll think it over; where is the stuff?’
‘Here,’ said Rahbut, to the other’s surprise. ‘In ten-twenty minutes I could lay them on your hands, Mr. Good Man.’
Here seemed a straightforward piece of negotiation; it was doubly unfortunate that at that very period he should find himself mixed up in an affair which promised no profit whatever-the feud of Marylou Plessy, which was to become his because of his high regard for the lady.
When a woman is bad, she is usually very bad indeed, and Marylou Plessy was an extremely malignant woman. She was rather tall and handsome, with black sleek hair, boyishly shingled, and a heavy black fringe that covered a forehead of some distinction.
Mr. Reeder saw her once: he was at the Central Criminal Court giving evidence against Bartholomew Xavier Plessy, an ingenious Frenchman who discovered a new way of making old money. His forgeries were wellnigh undetectable, but Mr. Reeder was no ordinary man. He not only detected them, but he traced the printer, and that was why Bartholomew Xavier faced an unimpassioned judge, who told him in a hushed voice how very wrong it was to debase the currency; how it struck at the very roots of our commercial and industrial life. This the debonair man in the dock did not resent. He knew all about it. It was the judge’s curt postscript which made him wince.
‘You will be kept in penal servitude for twenty years.’
That Marylou loved the man is open to question. The probabilities are that she did not; but she hated Mr. Reeder, and she hated him not because he had brought her man to his undoing, but because, in the course of his evidence, he had used the phrase ‘the woman with whom the prisoner is associated.’ And Mr. John Reeder could have put her beside Plessy in the dock had he so wished: she knew this too and loathed him for his mercifulness.
Mrs. Plessy had a large flat in Portland Street. It was in a block which was the joint property of herself and her husband, for their graft had been on the grand scale, and Mr. Plessy owned racehorses before he owned a number in Parkhurst Convict Establishment. And here Marylou entertained lavishly.
A few months after her husband went to prison, she dined tete-a-tete with Mo Liski, the biggest of the gang leaders and an uncrowned emperor of the underworld. He was a small, dapper man who wore pince-nez and looked rather like a member of one of the learned professions. Yet he ruled the Strafas and the Sullivans and the Birklows, and his word was law on a dozen racetracks, in a score of spieling clubs and innumerable establishments less liable to police supervision. People opposing him were incontinently ‘coshed’-rival leaders more or less paid tribute and walked warily at that. He levied toll upon bookmakers and was immune from police interference by reason of their two failures to convict him.
Since there are white specks on the blackest coat, he had this redeeming feature, that Marylou Plessy was his ideal woman, and it is creditable in a thief to possess ideals, however unworthily they may be disposed.
He listened intently to Marylou’s views, playing with his thin watchguard, his eyes on the embroidery of the tablecloth. But though he loved her, his native caution held him to reason.
‘That’s all right, Marylou,’ he said. ‘I dare say I could get Reeder, but what is going to happen then? There will be a squeak louder than a bus brake! And he’s dangerous. I never worry about the regular busies, but this old feller is in the Public Prosecutor’s office, and he wasn’t put there because he’s silly. And just now I’ve got one of the biggest deals on that I’ve ever touched. Can’t you “do” him yourself? You’re a clever woman: I don’t know a cleverer.’
‘Of course, if you’re scared of Reeder – !’ she said contemptuously, and a tolerant smile twisted his thin lips.
‘Me? Don’t be silly, dearie! Show him a point yourself. If you can’t get him, let me know. Scared of him! Listen! That old bird would lose his feathers and be skinned for the pot before you could say “Mo Liski” if I wanted!’
In the Public Prosecutor’s office they had no doubt about Mr. Reeder’s ability to take care of himself, and when Chief Inspector Pyne came over from the Yard to report that Marylou had been in conference with the most dangerous man in London, the Assistant Prosecutor grinned his amusement.
‘No-Reeder wants no protection. I’ll tell him if you like, but he probably knows all about it. What are you people doing about the Liski crowd?’
Pyne pulled a long face.
‘We’ve had Liski twice, but well organised perjury has saved him. The Assistant Commissioner doesn’t want him again till we get him with the blood on his hands, so to speak. He’s dangerous.’
The Assistant Prosecutor nodded.
‘So is Reeder,’ he said ominously. ‘That man is a genial mamba! Never seen a mamba?
He’s a nice black snake, and you’re dead two seconds after he strikes!’
The chief