A Stranger in Soho

In that inexpressibly comfortable little Soho café, owned and managed by that dignified Italian lady, the Signora Lucia Spadoglia, Inspector McCarthy sat and waited.

A neighbouring clock had just chimed out the hour of eleven upon a night which might easily have given birth to Henley's immortal line "black as the pit from pole to pole," for in the considered opinion of the inspector — not to mention a few million other human gropers at that moment in the metropolis and its environs — it was all that, and blacker.

Outside the cheerful walls of the signora's oasis the blackout was in full blast, and whatever helpful gleam of light there might have come from the skies in the broader main thoroughfares, the narrow, built-in streets of dingy Soho got none of it. In that truly cosmopolitan area it was, to use the truly expressive term of the good Father O'Hara, creeping about upon his nightly round of visits to the sick and ailing, as "black as the hobs of hell!"

Inspector McCarthy had had what he considered to be his fair share of it that night. For the past three hours, and by the doubtful aid of a dimmed torch, he had been paying visits to those cheaper cafés, and in particular delicatessen shops, in the Charing Cross Road and adjacent thoroughfares, which the Austrian and German refugees were wont to patronize. Harmless people who had suffered miseries almost beyond belief for the greater part, and who were filled with nothing but an immense and overflowing gratitude towards the land which had given them shelter in their hour of direst need. Still objects of pity to the soft-hearted McCarthy, notwithstanding the obvious improvement in their condition since arrival here.

But — and it was a very large "but" — there were others; those ugly little black sheep who creep into every flock and, indeed, are there only for their own ulterior purposes. Gentry, and, sad to say, ladies, who could do incalculable harm if their activities were not speedily checked. Hence the number of Special-Branch operators, expert linguists, he had observed mingling unostentatiously among the patrons of such places.

It was with almost the ecstasy of a devout Moslem gazing for the first time upon the walls of Mecca that he had fumbled his way into the well-blacked-out doorway of Signora Spadoglia's premises and blinked at its well-lit warmth and comfort, generally.

The signora, as has been written elsewhere, was a protégée of Inspector McCarthy. Time was when the premises were occupied as a pin-table saloon, the rendezvous of as tough a gang of thugs as Soho could show. It was run then by certain Semitic gentry — who combined business in nearby Berwick Street, with horse-racing and, additionally, Detective-Inspector McCarthy proved later, a side line in certain well-camouflaged and extremely payable "fencing" activities.

The inspector having piloted these gentry successfully, first through the Marlborough Street seat of Justice, and then the Old Bailey to durance vile, the place closed down and for a long time it was the home of nothing but cobwebs. Which, as it stood upon the corner of two busy streets and was unquestionably an excellent business stand, seemed a pity.

It was after it had remained in this condition for several months that the Signora Spadoglia, whose evening cooking of spaghetti, macaroni and other cereal edibles beloved of the Italian palate was famed from Soho to Clerkenwell, had her great idea, upon which she consulted the Soho-born Inspector McCarthy.

She had been, she informed him, a saving woman whose personal wants were few. To her had come the idea of redecorating the pin-table blot upon the Sohoan landscape and opening it as a café for the respectable tradesmen of the neighbourhood, where cooking of the best, and wines of a sound quality, would be procurable at a price to suit the pockets of her neighbours.

McCarthy hailed the idea with enthusiasm; interviewed the landlord upon the signora's behalf and knocked the rent down by nearly fifty per cent, after expatiating at some length to that gentleman upon what a splendid thing it would be for him to realize that he owned at least one piece of property which the police would unhesitatingly class as eminently respectable. So very different to the rest of his possessions in the quarter, which authority relegated to a totally different class, and which might quite easily become the object of unheralded police investigation at any moment.

The inspector's argument worked like a charm. In less than one month from that conversation all traces of the disreputable pin-table dive had disappeared and the Café Milano (Lucia Spadoglia, Ltd.) opened its hospitable doors.

But there was one fly in the signora's ointment, though the knowledgeable inspector had foreseen it: the erstwhile patrons of the pin-tables saw in the signora's enterprise a magnificent opportunity for free, and unlimited meals. Here was an establishment which to them was as manna from Heaven! Only a woman in charge; not even a doorman to be dealt with — though he would promptly have been given the "broken glass" treatment had he shown any sign of obstreperousness.

Upon the opening night the "boys" were there in full strength and soon were well under way. The respectable patrons present to honour the occasion looked askance; some stole quietly away before the trouble started. The signora, as became a woman of courage and enterprise, faced it all without the move of a muscle.

Then suddenly arrived a supper party of sixteen, headed by Patron Number One, Detective-Inspector McCarthy. His guests were composed entirely of units of the personnel of New Scotland Yard and a hard, splendidly-conditioned lot they looked. The fall of a pin would have sounded like a thud in the silence which reigned as the inspector and his party took their seats at two tables reserved for them nearby the cash desk at which the signora presided.

The gang being at that time under the leadership of the well-known and rightly-feared Mo Eberstein, the inspector invited that gentleman into an adjacent room for a few words. What exactly transpired has never to this day been made public by either party, but the appearance of the gang-boss suggested that he had not seen eye to eye with the inspector. Both his were...