Elk 02 The Joker Read Online Free PDF Page A

along the passage to open the door.
    A man was standing on the mat outside, tall, commanding, magnificent in his well-cut evening clothes. His snowy linen blazed and twinkled with diamonds; the buttons on his white waistcoat were aglitter.
    It was part of the primitive in the man, so that she saw nothing vulgar in the display. But something within her shrank under his pale gaze. She had a strange and inexplicable sensation of being in the presence of a power beyond earthly control. She was crushed by the sense of his immense superiority. So she might have felt had she found herself confronted by a tiger.
    ‘My name is Harlow - we met on Dartmoor,’ he said, and showed a line of even teeth in a smile. ‘May I come in?’
    She could not speak in her astonishment, but somebody answered for her.
    ‘Come in, Harlow,’ drawled Jim Carlton’s voice. ‘I’d love to have your first impression of Dartmoor; is it really as snappy as people think?’

    CHAPTER 4

    MR. HARLOW’S attitude towards this impertinent man struck the girl as remarkable. It was mild, almost benevolent; he seemed to regard James Carlton as a good joke. And he was the great Harlow! She had learnt that at Princetown.
    You could not work in the City without hearing of Harlow, his coups and successes. Important bankers spoke of him with bated breath. His money was too liquid for safety: it flowed here and there in floods that were more often than not destructive. Sometimes it would disappear into subterranean caverns, only to gush forth in greater and more devastating volume to cut new channels through old cultivations and presently to recede, leaving havoc and ruin behind.
    And of course she had heard of the police station. When Mr Harlow interested himself in the public weal he did so thoroughly and unconventionally. His letters to the press on the subject of penology were the best of their kind that have appeared in print. He pestered Ministers and commissioners with his plans for a model police station, and when his enthusiasm was rebuffed he did what no philanthropist, however public-minded, has ever done before.
    He bought a freehold plot in Evory Street (which is not a stone’s throw from Park Lane), built his model police headquarters at the cost of two hundred thousand pounds, and presented the building to the police commissioners. It was a model police office in every respect. The men’s quarters above the station were the finest of their kind in the world. Even the cells had the quality of comfort, though they contained the regulation plank bed. This gift was a nine days’ wonder. Topical revues had their jokes about it; the cartoonists flung their gibes at the Government upon the happening.
    The City had ceased to think of him as eccentric, they called him ‘sharp’ and contrasted him unfavourably with his father. They were a little afraid of him. His money was too fluid for stability.
    He nodded smilingly at Jim Carlton, fixed the unhappy Elk with a glance, and then: ‘I did not know that you and my friend Carlton were acquainted.’ And then, in a changed tone: ‘I hope I am not de trop.’
    His voice, his attitude said as plainly as words could express: ‘I presume this is a police visitation due to the notorious character of your uncle?’ The girl thought this. Jim knew it.
    ‘There has been a burglary here and Miss Rivers called us in,’ he said.
    Harlow murmured his regrets and sympathy. ‘I congratulate you upon having secured the shrewdest officer in the police force.’ He addressed the girl blandly.
    ‘And I congratulate the police force’ - he looked at Jim - ‘upon detaching you from the Foreign Office - you were wasted there, Mr Carlton, if I may be so impertinent as to express an opinion.’
    ‘I am still in the Foreign Office,’ said Jim. ‘This is spare-time work. Even policemen are entitled to their amusements. And how did you like Dartmoor?’
    The Splendid Harlow smiled sadly. ‘Very impressive, very tragic,’