DREADFUL NIGHT OF HORROR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 69, 22 March 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

DREADFUL NIGHT OF HORROR.

" WHEN I WAS A GANGSTER."

IN THE TOILS OF A NOTED GANG LEADER—LONDON BOY HAS lUCKY ESCAPE —WITNESSED REVOLTING MURDER THROUGH L WINDOW—BACK TO WORK AND MANHOOD,

It is not easy to believe. I am the head of a firm of engineers, with an international reputation, and more persons on our pay roll than I just now can count. I have a beautiful home and have married a lovely girl, the daughter of a high standing professional man. We have three children who, we think, are the finest on earth. I am on the board of governors of three clubs. I enjoy the esteem of my community and I believe that I deserve it: There is no weight, no stain upon my conscience. I have led what people call "an upright life." yet I was a gangster. T was fifteen, and the oldest of seven children. Mv father-probably the least «id about him the better. I was office bov and messenger for a paper box factorv It seemed to me a prosaic business. I hated the shabby old building, near London Bridge, in which the boxes were made. I disliked the persons who made them, which included the "boss," who drove to business from his home at Reigate in a shining blue limousine. One night things began to happen. I v r ss walking 1101116 to sa\6 tra.ni faic. I was tired and looking hungrily into a window. How much more inviting was that big. round cake with custard in the middle than the cabbage soup mother was likely to have made for supper? "Look pretty good, don't they kid? How much money have you in your pocket?" "Fourpence." "Come inside, I'll treat you." I followed him into the bakery. I felt m y shoulders rising and squaring, my chest expanding. I was proud to be seen, even by strangers, with such a companion. He was a little more than of medium height' and stocky built. His shoulders were wide. His features were regular, his complexion dark. The shortness of his hair did not hide the deep ripple in it at the forehead and above his prominent ears. He was sending me a friendly glance out of dark, deep-set eyes. _ But •what I noticed that sent the thrill _of pride coursing through my veins, a kind of prickly heat of delight, was that he was the "best dressed man I had seen. I nodded again and this time I must have smiled. I tilted my shoulders sidewise as he did. I tossed my shabby hat on the chair beside his new one. Onfc, two, three cakes I devoured, and my stomach cried for more. The man ate as man}', but with less apparent relish. Some crumbs and crust remained on his plate. "You can eat some more, can't you iid?" I shook my head. "Of course you can. Waiter, another plate of the cakes, and a couple more cupa of coffee." I ate two more cakes. The man just played with his fork. I walked out after the fascinating stranger. "Thank you, sir, ever and ever <;o much." I strutted proudly beside him. "Got a job?" he asked abruptly. I poured forth my loathing for the box factory. We reached the door of the old brown tenement. My new friend sent one of his swift glances into the dark hall and up the dusk of the narrow stairway.

"Maybe I can find a way for you to better yourself. "Would you like that?" "Oh, sir; will you come up and talk io my mother about it?" "Not to-night. I have to be on the other side of town in a few minutes. Meantime don't say anything to your mother—or any of your people." That was the first time that I took counsel with pride. I had a friend. A well-dressed man who liked.me and called me "Old Chap," and thought I had not had a square deal at the box factory. My breast swelled with self-importance. All evening I was preoccupied. I only tasted the cabbage soup. My mother turned her pale, anxious look toward the full plate, and then upon my face, and asked, "What's the matter, sonny?" _ I answered "Nothing." No, I was not ill. Only not hungry. While my mother sighed at my cot-side I was thinking, ''We'll have beef steak one day, and ham and eggs the next when I better myself, lor I'll better the family." On the third evening after I had met the kind stranger I saw him again. He "*vaa waiting on the corner nearest the factory at closing time."Hello, kid. Let's go up to the bakery. I want to talk to you about that job I thought I might get for you." Tea cakes this time, and ham and eggs and coffee. While I ate ravenously he patched me and spoke in a low voice. "How'd you like to work for me, Youngster?" I nodded, full mouthed and joyful eyed. "My partner and I will try you out on,a little job this evening. If you're as smart as we think you are you can work with us all the time. Here's ten bob to hind the bargain." He gave me whispered instructions. At the door he shook hands with me. '"Sure you got it straight?" He repeated them and made me repeat them and the address he had given me._ "I'd lather do that than write it," he said. "I >ant to test your memory." Night of Adventure. \ After supper I put on my hat and told mother I was going to the night school, where I was taking a business_ course. She looked after me, with a frightened look in her eyes, but she only said; "Come home early, my son." I went as I had been directed, to_ the place Vrhero I was to meet my new friend. As he-had instructed, I went in a curious backward arnd forward course, weaving my way, retracing my steps on some blocks of tenements and crossing the streets in a diagonal walk. I went north for thr£S streets, past my destination. Thid crossed the street and retraced my steps to a fine old brick house near Regent's Park. I had scarcely halted a. careless figure slouched up the a %y, From it, .as it passed, came the yoice of my hero, Carlos. "Stay here, as I told you, until the people come out the front way and get into .the motor car waiting in the Porte cochere." "The what?" "The covered front porch without a floor. Then I'll slip past you and m the back way to meet a friend. \ou ■Walk up and down the street in front °f tie house. If a cop looks close at you or at the house come in through that side gate. It's open. And come to that side window on the right of the basement and rap hard with your knuckles the window, twice. Just like the diagram I showed you. Got it right?" "Yes, sir." "Rignt'o. Keep awake on the job. If the surprise party to my friend goes through right, without any meddling by cops, you'll get a lot more than five and ft steady job with me. "Thank you, Mr. Carlos. I'll do just you told me to do." "Now, don't speak to or pay any attention to me unless a cop starts looking. Then double on your tracks and make for that basement window. I'll open it to get the news." Gay voices sounded from the front 01 the _ house. There was an op.ening and closing of doors. The waiting limousine hesitated, then swung out to the street fmd made its purring way aronnd

the corner. All the lights in the house went out, save one that shone through the windows on the first floor at the back. Without a word, the figure that had a new, slouching gait but spoke with the voice of my hero, made its hurried way past me. He threaded his swift way among the flower beds at the rear of the house. A door swung open admitting him to the basement. Obeying my new employer, I patrolled the house. Shrinking into the shadows at sound of a footstep I furtively played my role of guardian of iny friend's welfare. A woman passed but did not look at me. A pair of lovers, sauntering past, paid no heed to me. A heavier footstep approached, a, square, determined, ringing footstep. The sound, Carlos had told me, that heralded a policeman's approach. Policeman at the Corner. An unmistakable sound to those of acute hearing. 1 squatted in the shadows close to_ the side alley toward the street. Up and down the elm-shadowed street 1 looked. No one was visible. I moved tremblingly toward the portecochere. The moon slipped out from behind a cloud. It revealed two figures in uniform strolling the sidewalk across the street. The twain paused directly in front of the house, across the way. One was a fat neighbourhood luggage tout in grey. "A grey tabby, that does not matter much," my hero had called him. The other was the man whose footsteps had reverberated on the pavement in the quiet night. They talked quietly. The "grey tabby" raised his hand in an excited gesture toward the house in the shadow of which I waited. The policeman walked hurriedly up to the corner. He halted at the corner. He opened the box. I saw his hand raised to give a signal. Pressing my thin figure, unseen in its threadbare dark clothes, flat against the wall of the house I moved quickly sidewise to the window above the basement. The shadows still hid me from the neighbourhood loafer. He was turning an anxious face toward the officer at the signal box. Catlike, I rose upon the wooden shutter of the cellar window. Once, twice, thrice I rapped upon the window pane. Even while I rapped something swift as a motion-picture scene was happening within the dimly-lighted dining room. The figure of my friend, Carlos, a mask over his face, another and burlier one that I had seen bowing to the party as it left the house to enter the car, the butler, started as though interrupted by a sound while they were placing something in a black travelling case on the table. Both turned quickly to face an opening door. The doorway framed a figure clad In black silk pyjamas. A tall, thin figure that swayed as it tried to steady itself, with pale hand, against the_ frame. A sick man. But one angered into sudden strength. Through the two inches open space of the window came his voice, thin, sharp with rage, commanding in its weakness.

"Brodie, you scoundrel. I suspected this." Carlos' hand went up. Prom a short, ugly object in it a flame spat. The man in dark pyjamas sank face down, across the door sill. From his side a red stream poured and widened. Up the street a polica whistle sent shrill warning. I heard, through the night's silence, the sound of running feet on the pavement. I fled, not from the hurrying police, but from the sight I had seen through the window. My arm stretched across my eyes to hide that sight. I groped my way through the rear gate to the back alley. My feet were swift as the winged Mercury's. Winged with horror. "Hands Up Or We'll Shoot." From the house behind me I heard a hoarse command: "Hands up or we'll shoot." I heard a voice raised in snarls and curses. Carlos' voice strangely transformed. The sound of a hurrying ear. A pause before the door. Then silence. I ran with rabbit fleetness and wariness, doubling on my tracks as my hero, turned fiend, had taught me, looking back, seeing no one but doubling again, to the tenement south of the Thames. As I neared the unsightly brown house my steps Blackened. I had not been seen. No one was following. But I must steady my shaking legs. I must start the blood flowing back into my colourdrained cheeks. My mother must not be frightened. I climbed the st&ira slowly. No one was at home. I made up the bed and slipped into it. When my mother returned, bearing her market basket, my nervous hands had ceased their fluttering. I closed my eyes and pretended to snore * . T ■ X The next morning, as I went to tne box factory, my feet ripped across a soiled newspaper. The headlines stared up at me. " Crooked-Mouth George Arrested for Attempted Burglary and Murder. Butler in Wealthy Man's Home Implicated as One of His Accomplices. Lookout Escapes." The photograph was that of my late hero, Carlos. The picture was taken from the rogues' gallery. He was a convict. Fear kept my lips locked. _ I never revealed the secret. I am telling it for the first time. I remained in the box factory for ten years. I was promoted to assistant book-keeper, then book-keeper. When my course in engineering was completed, I opened an office. No office has seemed dull; no worker who doesn't look up seems unimaginative to me, since the night of blood and horror near Begent's Park. . By one swift illumination, in the voice of a man pronouncing his own doom and another's, by the words, "Brodie,_ you scoundrel," I learned that there is no "soft job," and that what seems "easy money" may be of granite hardness.