‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929

Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.

Copyright

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Eveleigh Nash 1916

Published by The Detective Story Club Ltd for Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1930

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1930, 2018

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008137717

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008137724

Version: 2018-04-17

Dedication

DEDICATED TO

WILLIAM ALLAN PINKERTON,

America’s greatest Crime Investigator, to whom one of the writers will be ever indebted for the great and valuable assistance offered him throughout his official career.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

The Detective Story Club

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

FOR the lover of a really exciting detective story, here is good fare. For those a little tired of New York’s Underworld, here is more familiar ground: west-end streets and restaurants; respectable suburban villas; purlieus of Bloomsbury—an east-end we know to be true. Here are no puppets, but human, vivid figures playing out a drama of love and hate and greed, the sleuths of Scotland Yard hot on their trail and the shadow of the hangman’s noose before their eyes.

Ex-Superintendent Frank Froëst tells his story in a straightforward way. There are no hidden clues, no sudden dénoue-ments to put the reader deliberately on a false trail. He shares the excitement of the hunt, knows all there is to know, and has every chance to spot the murderer and solve the mystery of the forged cheques.

The adventures of Jimmie Hallett are sufficiently exciting in all conscience to satisfy the most exacting of detective story ‘fans’. Against a familiar London background, we have here a tale of breathtaking adventure—knifing, arson, racing-taxicabs, and shooting-to-kill. Can Weir Menzies, that genial detective with the churchwarden manner, even with all the resources of Scotland Yard behind him, succeed in outwitting a gang of international crooks of whose very numbers he is ignorant?

His efforts to unravel the tangle lead him to the unsavoury atmosphere of Shadwell and the docks. His quarry, after slipping through the cordon of police, is run to earth in a Chinese opium den. There is a cellar in Brixton, a furiously-driven taxi with a dead woman for fare—in fact, a constant succession of thrills.

Apart from the tale, to make the acquaintance of Mr Weir Menzies is a pleasure in itself. Weir Menzies, the model husband, the respectable and respected citizen of Tooting, with his dog and his roses and his dislike of late hours; Weir Menzies, with his calm, unhurried manner, refusing to be rushed, refusing to be ruffled, relying on perseverance and dull routine and plain common sense. Surely here is a detective after everyone’s heart.

Detection as a science and not a freak accomplishment is expounded in this story with a wealth of convincing argument. As a vindication of official procedure it is worth reading alone. It is written with genuine knowledge of the methods of police detection, sometimes dull and laborious in themselves: the careful sitting of a mass of irrelevant detail; the intelligent consideration given to the most trivial scrap of information; the interesting survey of the case from time to time by highly-placed officials (the C.I.D. believes firmly that two heads are better than one, and sometimes three than two); then finally the close and oft-repeated scrutiny of the points of the case when it takes definite shape in their hands, to ensure that it is proof against the slings and arrows of the defending counsel.

It is a fact of real life, in this country at least, that a criminal may—and not infrequently does—escape justice, in spite of widespread belief in his guilt, through the inability of the police to bring definite proof in support of their theory. A recent tightening of the law has still further restricted their powers of questioning suspects—never at any time in England have they been permitted to indulge in the protracted and intensive methods of examination in vogue on the continent and in America—and thus made it increasingly difficult to obtain the proofs necessary to bring the criminal to justice.

The Rogues’ Syndicate illustrates clearly the difficulty under which the police sometimes labour in this respect—their inability to obtain sufficient evidence to prove their charge to a jury—and as an intelligent exposition of this aspect of our criminal law should be read with enjoyment by everyone interested in crime and detection.

Accuracy of detail is ensured by the fact that the author, ex-Superintendent Frank Froëst, was over thirty years at Scotland Yard. His triumphs range from his successful round-up of Jabez Balfour in the Argentine in connection with the Liberator frauds to his equally dramatic success in the Crippen case, the sensational arrest of Dr Crippen—in which wireless played an important part being planned by this resourceful detective in his room at Scotland Yard.

THE EDITOR

FROM THE ORIGINAL DETECTIVE STORY CLUB EDITION

April 1930

CHAPTER I

HALLETT blundered into an unlit lamp-post, swore with fervour, and stood for a second peering for some identifiable landmark in the black blanket of fog that shrouded the street. Where he stood, a sluggish, dense drift had collected, for, following the treacherous habit of London fogs, it lay in patches. About him he could hear ghostly noises of traffic muffled and as from afar, but whether the sounds came from before or behind, from right or left, was more than his bewildered senses could fathom.

For the last ten minutes he had been walking in a spectral city among spectres. A by-street had trapped him, and no single wayfarer had come within his limited area of sight. He lifted his hat and rubbed his head perplexedly as he came to the conclusion that he was lost. It was as though London had set out to teach the young man from New York a lesson. The fog had beaten him.

‘Expect I shall get somewhere in time,’ he muttered, and strode doggedly on.

He had gone perhaps a dozen yards, when from ahead a quick burst of angry voices broke out. Then there came a running of feet on a sodden pavement. Hallett came to a stop, listening. The fog seemed to thin a trifle.

Out of the thickness the outlines of a woman’s figure loomed vaguely. She was running swiftly and easily with lithe grace. As she noted the motionless figure of Hallett, she swerved towards him, and he caught the hurried pant of her breath—caused rather, he judged, by emotion than by exertion. She halted impetuously as she came opposite to him, and he caught a glimpse of her face—the mobile face of a girl, with parted lips and arresting blue eyes. She was hatless, and, though Hallett could not have described her attire, he got an impression of some soft black stuff, clinging to a slim figure. She surveyed him in a quick, appraising glance, and before he could speak had thrust something into his hand.

‘Take it—run!’ she gasped, and tore forward into the fog.

It had all happened in a fraction of time. She had checked rather than halted in her flight. An exclamation burst from Hallett’s lips, and he was almost startled into obedience of the hurried command. Then heavier footsteps thudding near brought him to himself. He moved to interrupt the pursuer. As a man came into view Hallett’s hand fell on his shoulder.

‘One moment, my friend—’

An oath was spat at him as the man wrenched himself free and was blotted out in the gloom. Hallett shrugged his shoulders philosophically, and made no attempt at pursuit.

‘Alarums and excursions!’ he murmured. ‘Wonder what it’s all about?’

In nine-and-twenty years of life, Jimmy Hallett had acquired something of a philosophy that made him content to accept things as they were, save only when they affected his personal well-being. Then he would sit up and kick with both feet. His lack of curiosity was almost cold-blooded. There was, indeed, a certain inoffensive arrogance in his attitude towards the ordinary affairs of life. He was the sort of man who would not cross the road to see a dog-fight.

Yet he always had a zest for excitement, providing it had novelty. A man who had scrambled for a dozen years in a hotch-potch of vocations retains little enthusiasm for commonplaces. When Hallett senior had gone out from the combined effects of a Wall Street cyclone and an attack of heart failure, his son and heir had found himself with a hundred thousand dollars less than nothing. Young Hallett went to his only surviving relative—an elderly uncle with a liver—and, with the confidence of youth, rejected the offer of a cheap stool in that millionaire’s office. He believed he could get a living as an actor; but a five weeks’ tour in a fortieth-rate company, which finally stranded in the wilds of Michigan, convinced him of the futility of that idea. After that he drifted over a wide area of the United States. Farmhand, railwayman, cow-puncher, prospector, and one very vivid voyage as a deck-hand on a cattle boat. It was inevitable that, of course, he should eventually drift into that last refuge of the unskilled, intellectual classes—journalism. Equally, of course, it was inevitable that Fate, who delights to take a hand at unexpected moments, should interfere when he showed signs of making a mark in his profession. His uncle died intestate, and Jimmy leapt at a bound to affluence beyond his wildest dreams.

He had stayed long enough in New York after that to realise how extensive and variegated were the acquaintances who had stood by him in adversity. They took pains that he should not forget it. And forthwith he had taken counsel of Sleath, the youthful-looking city editor of ‘The Wire’, who breathed words of wisdom in his ear.

‘Go to Europe, Jimmy. Travel and improve your mind. Let the sharks forget you.’

So Jimmy Hallett stood lost in a fog, somewhere within hail of Piccadilly Circus, with an unopened package in his hand, and the memory of a girl’s voice in his mind. A less observant man than Hallett could not have failed to perceive that the girl was of a class unlikely to be involved in any street broil. The man flattered himself that he was not impressionable. But he retained an impression of both breeding and looks.

He dangled the package—it was small and light—on his finger, and moved forward till the light from a shop window gave him an opportunity of examining it more closely. It was closely sealed with red sealing wax, but the wrapping itself had apparently been torn from an ordinary newspaper. He hesitated for a moment, and then tore it open. He could scarcely have told what he expected to find. Certainly not the thirty or forty cheques that lay in his hand. One by one he turned them slowly over, as though the inspection would afford some indication of why they had been so unexpectedly thrust upon him. A bare possibility that he had been made an unwilling accomplice in a theft was dismissed as he noticed that the cheques were dead—they all bore the cancelling mark of the bank. Why on earth should the girl have been running away with the useless cheques? And why should she have so impulsively confided them to a stranger to prevent them from falling into the hands of her headlong pursuer?

Not that Hallett would have worried overmuch about these problems had the central figure been plain or commonplace. She had interested him, and his interest, once aroused in any person or thing, was always vivid.

Keen-eyed, he scrutinised the cheques in an endeavour to decipher the signature. They were all made out by the same person, and payable to ‘self’. The name he read as J. E. Greye-Stratton. Whoever J. E. Greye-Stratton was, he had drawn within three months, in sums ranging from fifty pounds to three hundred pounds, an amount totalling—Hallett reckoned in United States terms—more than fifteen thousand dollars.

He stuffed the cheques into his pocket as an idea materialised in his mind. An opportune taxi pushed its nose stealthily through the wall of fog and halted at his hail.

‘Think you can find a post-office, sonny?’ he demanded.

‘Take you anywhere, sir,’ assented the driver, cheerfully.

‘Find your way by the stars, I suppose,’ commented Hallett, the tingle of fog still in his eyes.

Nevertheless, the driver justified his boast, and his fare was shortly engrossed with the letter ‘G’ in the London Directory. There was only one entry of the name he sought, and he swiftly transcribed the address to a telegraph form.

‘Greye-Stratton, James Edward, 34, Linstone Terrace Gardens, Kensington, W.’

Shortly the cab was again crawling through the fog, sounding its siren like a liner in mid-channel. All that the passenger could make out was a hazy world, dotted with faint yellow specks, which now and again transformed themselves into lights as they drew near them. Later the yellow specks grew less as they swerved off the main road, and a moment later the car came to a halt.

The driver indicated the house opposite which they were standing, with a jerk of his thumb, as Hallett descended.

‘That’s the place, sir.’

It was little that Hallett could see of the house, save that it was a big, old-fashioned building, with heavy bow, windows and a basement protected by wrought-iron rails. There was no light in any part of the house, not even the hall. Twice the young man wielded the big, brass knocker, arousing nothing apparently but an echo. As he raised it a third time the door was thrown open with disconcerting suddenness, and he was aware of someone standing within the blackness of the hall. Hallett could distinguish nothing of his features.

‘I wish to see Mr Greye-Stratton,’ said Hallett, and tendered a card.

The other made no attempt to take it.

‘He won’t see you,’ he declared, with harsh abruptness, and only a sudden movement of Hallett’s foot prevented the door being slammed in his face.

His teeth gritted together, and he thrust the door back and himself over the lintel. He was an easy-tempered man, but the deliberate discourtesy had roused him to a cold anger.

‘That will do, my man,’ he said, clipping off each word sharply. ‘I want ordinary civility, and I’m going to see that I get it. My name is Hallett—James Hallett, of New York. Now you go and tell your master that I want to see him about certain property of his that has come into my hands. Quick’s the word!’

There was a pause. When the man in the hall spoke again his tone had changed.

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Hallett. It is dark—I mistook you for someone else. I am sure Mr Greye-Stratton would have been happy to see you, but unfortunately he is ill. If you will leave whatever you have, I will see that it reaches him. By the way, I am not a servant. I am a doctor. Gore is my name.’

Hallett thrust his hand in the pocket that contained the cheques. He had no intention of handing them over without some information about the girl in black. And he fancied he detected a note of anxiety in the doctor’s voice, as though, while forced in a way to civility, he was anxious for the visitor to go.

‘I quite understand, Dr Gore,’ he said, coldly. ‘I will call at some other time. I should like to return the property to its owner in person—for a special reason. Good-night!’

‘Then you will not entrust whatever you have to me?’

‘I would rather see Mr Greye-Stratton at some future time.’

He half turned to go.

‘One moment.’ The doctor laid a detaining hand upon his sleeve. ‘I did not wish to disturb my patient unnecessarily, but if you insist, I will arrange for you to see him. Will you come with me? I am afraid it is rather dark. The electric light has gone wrong—frightfully awkward!’

Hallett groped his way after his guide, his brain busy. It was queer that the light should have given out—queerer still that no apparent attempt had been made at illumination, either with oil or candles. The place was deadly quiet, but that was only natural with a sick man in the house. He wondered why some servant had not answered the door. A man of less hardened temperament would have felt nervous.

The doctor’s footsteps, falling with ghostly softness on the carpet in front of him, ceased.

‘Here we are, Mr Hallett. Keep to your left. This is the room. If you will wait here a second, I will see if I can get a light. Where are you? Give me your hand.’

Slim, delicate fingers gripped Hallett’s hand as he followed the direction. He passed through a doorway, and for a moment his back was turned towards the doctor. He heard something whirl in the air, and a blow descended with crushing force on his right shoulder. He wheeled with a cry, but there was no question of resistance. A second blow fell, this time better directed, and a million stars danced before his eyes. He dropped, stunned.

CHAPTER II

PUNCTUALLY at half-past six the little plated alarm clock exploded, and Weir Menzies kicked off the blankets. Punctually at seven o’clock he had breakfast. Punctually at half-past seven he delved and weeded in the square patch of ground that was the envy and despair of Magersfontein Road, Tooting. Punctually at twenty past eight he left his semi-detached house, and boarded a car for Westminster Bridge.

There were occasions when the routine was upset, but it will be observed that, on the whole, Weir Menzies was a creature of habit. He had all that respect for order and method that has made Upper Tooting what it is. From the heavy, gold watch-chain that spanned his ample waist to his rubicund face and heavy, black moustache he wore Tooting respectability all over him. It was a cause of poignant regret to him that circumstances prevented him from taking any part in the local government of the borough. Nevertheless, he belonged to the local Constitutional Club, and was the highly esteemed people’s warden at the church of All Saints. The acute observer, knowing all this, might have judged him as a deserving, wholesale ironmonger.

And the acute observer would have been wrong.

Punctually at half-past nine Weir Menzies would pass up a flight of narrow, stone stairs at the back of New Scotland Yard into the chief-inspector’s room of the Criminal Investigation Department. From his buttonhole he would take the choice blossom—gathered that day at Magersfontein Road, Tooting—place it carefully in a freshly-filled vase, exchange his well-brushed morning-coat for a jacket of alpaca, place paper protectors on his cuffs, and settle down on his high stool—he preferred a high stool—to half an hour’s correspondence.

Mr Weir Menzies, churchwarden of Upper Tooting, was, in fact, Chief Detective-Inspector Menzies of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard. Not that he made any secret of it. There was no reason why he should. It is only on rare occasions that a detective needs to conceal his profession.

Although the residents of Magersfontein Road, Upper Tooting, knew that Mr Weir Menzies, of Magersfontein Road, Upper Tooting, was an admirable churchwarden, they had to take his reputation as a detective on trust. And, being constant subscribers to circulating libraries, they knew him as an innocent fraud. A man something over forty, with an increasing waist-line and a ruddy face, was obviously against the rules of all the established authorities. It was only understandable because he was at Scotland Yard. Everyone knows that official detectives are heavy, dull, unimaginative fellows, always out of their depths, and continually receiving the good-natured assistance of amateurs, by whom they are held in tolerant contempt.

Magersfontein Road, Upper Tooting, would have smiled broadly had anyone remarked that Chief Detective-Inspector Menzies held an international reputation; that he was held one of the subtlest brains in the service; that he was a man who had time and again shown reckless courage and audacity in bringing off a coup; that he, in short, had individuality and a perfect knowledge of every resource at his disposal in carrying out any purpose to which he was assigned.

He looked a commonplace business man; he was a commonplace business man with many of the traits of his class. He hated the unexpected, and protested that he loathed with a fierce abomination those cases in which he was engaged that meant a departure from the ordinary routine. But yet in those cases when they arose, there was no man more capable of dealing with their subtle intricacies than he. He had the faculty of adjusting himself to an emergency, of ruthlessly destroying superfluous red-tape that, in twenty-three years, had carried him to within one rung of the top of the ladder.

It was shortly before midnight. He had returned from a remote suburb, where, with a corps of assistants, he had made a neat, entirely successful raid upon certain pickpockets who had been too well acquainted with the resident detectives to give them any chance. It had been a triumph of organisation and vigilance, and Menzies had gone back to headquarters to arrange that the histories of the birds he had caged should be ready before the police-court proceedings in the morning. He was struggling into his overcoat, when he was summoned to the telephone. He picked up the receiver irritably.

‘Hallo!’ he said.

A musical buzz answered him, and Menzies allowed himself an expression that should be foreign to a churchwarden. Then, far away and faint, he caught a voice.

‘That Mr Menzies?’

‘Yes,’ he answered impatiently. ‘Speak up! Who is it? What do you want?’

A prolonged buzz reached him. He was conscious of someone speaking, but only intermittently could he hear what was said.

‘Pretty done up—buz-z—come at once—buz-z—at thirtyfour—buz-z—Gardens, Kensington—buz-z.’

‘Number, please?’ said a new and distinct voice.

‘Blast!’ said Menzies simply, and put down the telephone.

This addiction to forcible language on occasions of annoyance was a constant regret to him in his more reflective moments.

Jimmy Hallett’s first impression on awakening had been that someone was swinging a sledge-hammer irregularly on to his temple. He lay still for a little, wondering why it should be. By-and-by he sat up, and tried to piece together the events of the evening. His head ached intolerably, and he found consecutive thought painful.

It was totally dark, and he could make out nothing of where he was. Then the whole thing flashed across his mind, and he staggered rather uncertainly to his feet, and, steadying himself against the wall, struck a match.

The feeble flicker showed him a blue-papered apartment, furnished as a dining-room. He had been lying just within the room, and now he tried the door. It refused to answer to his tug, and he realised how weak he was as he all but toppled backwards. The match went out, and he struck another.

Then it was that he noticed an electric-switch, and pulled it over. A blaze of light flooded the room, and he tottered to one of the Jacobean armchairs at the head of the table. The sledge-hammer was still swinging at his temples, and things swayed dizzily to and fro before his eyes. He made a resolute effort to pull himself together. His eyes roved over the room, and he noticed a pedestal telephone on a small table in the corner furthest from him.

‘What was the name of the chap Pinkerton gave me an introduction to?’ he muttered.

And drawing a bundle of papers from his breast-pocket, he sorted them till the envelope he needed lay at the top.

CHIEF DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR WEIR MENZIES,

New Scotland Yard, S.W.

Cautiously the man began to move across the hearthrug towards the telephone. Four shambling steps he took, and then something that had been hidden by the table tripped him, and he sprawled on all fours. He gave a little gasp of horror, and steadying himself on his knees, held his hands a foot in front of his face, gazing at them stupidly. They were wet—wet with blood, and the thing that had tripped him was the body of a man.

It is one thing to be brought in association at second-hand—so to speak—with a crime, as are doctors, journalists, and detectives, but quite another to be so closely identified with it as to be an actor in the drama. Hallett had seen violence and even death in his time, but never had cold horror so thrilled him as it did now. In ordinary conditions, with nerves previously unshaken, he would have been little more moved than a spectator at a play—perhaps even less so, for real life tragedies are rarely well stage-managed.

Circumstances, however, had conspired to bring home to him the last touch of terror. The sudden assault, the locked room, and now the dead man, had strung his nerves to a fine edge. He could have shrieked aloud.

He wiped his hand on his handkerchief, but the stain still remained. Carefully he stepped over the body, and made his way to the telephone. His imagination was beginning to work, and he recalled cases where perfectly innocent men had been the victims of circumstantial evidence that had convicted them of hideous crimes. The story of the cheques thrust upon him in the fog seemed to him ridiculously unconvincing. Had his mind been less overwrought, had he been able to take a calmer survey of the matter, he would probably never have given his own position a thought. He fingered the telephone-book clumsily, and his mind reverted to the coincidence that he should hold a letter of introduction to one of the senior detectives of Scotland Yard.

‘Queer that it should come in so handy,’ he grinned feebly; and then weakness overcame him.

He gave a number to the exchange, and hours seemed to elapse before he got on to Menzies. In a quick rush of words he made himself known to the detective, and recited the happenings of the evening. He was not to know that barely a dozen disconnected words had reached the detective. His strength was waning, and he wanted Menzies to know everything before he gave way. As he finished, the receiver dropped listlessly from his hand, and for the first time in his life Jimmy Hallett fainted.

At the other end of the wire Weir Menzies was left with one of those harassing little problems that he hated. It was an irregular hour—an hour when he had reckoned on being safely on his way home. For all the insistence of the voice at the telephone, it might be quite a trivial affair. Menzies did not like losing sleep for trivialities. People in trouble are apt to take distorted views of the importance of their difficulties. That is why private inquiry agencies flourish.

Menzies had once been asked to investigate a highly important West End robbery at the house of a duke. The duchess herself had demanded the services of ‘the ablest and most experienced detective possible’, and had refused to give details to anyone else. Menzies went—to discover that a pet Pomeranian had strayed.

‘Madam,’ he had remarked after a frigid five minutes, ‘at one period I should have been delighted to try to find your dog. I was then paid for such matters. I am now paid for other things. There are many men as competent as I for the investigation to which you attach such importance. I regret that it would be a breach of duty for me to undertake it. I am merely a detective, but the salary I am paid for the use of my time would be out of proportion to the result, even if successful. I must refer your Grace to the local police-station. Good-evening.’

Since then he had been very cautious of ambiguous messages. He thought of his well-aired bed, and sighed. He was almost tempted to turn over the affair to the local division of police to deal with the case, or leave it to the night staff of the Criminal Investigation Department. The fact that he had been appealed to by name ultimately swayed him.

In two minutes he had set in motion the machinery which would reveal the point from which the voice originated. It needed no complex reasoning, no swift flash of inspiration. He broke up a game of dominoes, and emerged with two men—one to extract from the Kensington directory a list of thoroughfares ending in ‘gardens’, and the names of persons who resided at the respective thirty-fours; and the other with a telephone directory to eliminate all those not on the telephone.

‘And get a move on,’ he added. ‘I don’t want to hang about all night. Ask Riddle to come up and ’phone ’em through to the local people as you check ’em off. Tell ’em they’ll oblige me by sending out as many spare men as they’ve got to ask at each address if anyone rang me up.’

He adjusted his coat with precision, lit a cigar, and sauntered over to the Underground station opposite. Barring accidents, the address would be ready for him by the time he reached Kensington.

His anticipation was not disappointed. One of the advantages which the Criminal Investigation Department has over the individual amateur detective, beloved by Magersfontein Road, is the co-operation at need of a practically unlimited number of trained men. True, the detective staff at Kensington had long since gone home, since there was no extraordinary business to detain them, but, in this case, a dozen ordinary constables served as well. Nine of them had returned when Menzies walked in. There was only one who interested him. He had reported that he could get no reply from Linstone Terrace Gardens.

‘Did you find who lives there?’ questioned the chief-inspector.

The reply was prompt.

‘Yes, sir. Old gentleman named Greye-Stratton. He lives alone. Had two servants until last week, when he sacked ’em both, because he said they had been bribed to poison him.’

‘Ah!’ Menzies nodded approval. ‘You’ve got your wits about you, my lad. Where did you get all this from?’

The constable flushed with pleasure. He was young enough in the force to appreciate a compliment from the veteran detective.

‘The servant next door, sir,’ he answered.

‘That will do. Thank you.’ Menzies rubbed his hands with satisfaction as he turned to the uniformed inspector by his side. ‘It begins to sound like a case,’ he muttered. All his petulance had gone. When it came to the point, the man was an enthusiast in his profession. ‘I’ll get you to come along with me, inspector. It sounds uncommonly like a case.’

CHAPTER III

THE eminent Tooting churchwarden, perched on the stalwart shoulders of his uniformed colleague, wriggled his way on to the roof of the porch with an agility that was justifiable neither to his years nor his weight. He was taking a certain amount of risk, if there were no serious emergency within the place, for even a chief detective-inspector may not break into a house without justification.

He worked for a while with a big clasp knife on the little landing window, with a skill that would have done credit to many of the professional practitioners who had passed through his hands, and at last threw up the sash and squeezed himself inside.

‘Wonder if I’m making a blamed fool of myself, after all?’ he muttered with some misgiving, as he struck a match and softly picked his way along the corridor.

He was peculiarly sensitive to ridicule, and he knew the chaff that would descend on his head if it leaked out that he had elaborately picked out and broken into a house empty for quite a plausible reason.

There would be no way of keeping the matter dark, for every incident of the night would have to be embodied in reports. Every detective in London is bound to keep an official diary of his work, however free a hand he is given in his methods.

He burned only one match to enable him to get his bearings. Noiselessly he descended the stairs into the hall, and his quick eye observed a splash of light across the floor. It came from under a doorway. He turned the handle and pushed. The door resisted.

‘Locked,’ he murmured, and knocked thunderously. ‘Hallo in there! Anyone about?’

Only the muffled reverberation of his own voice came back to him. Frowning, he strode to the doorway, slipped back the Yale lock, and admitted the uniformed man.

‘If I had nerves, Mr Hawksley, this place would give me the jumps,’ he observed. ‘There’s something wrong here, and I guess it’s in that room. See, there’s a light on.’

‘That’s queer,’ commented the other. ‘It could only just have been switched on. I didn’t notice it outside.’

‘Shutters,’ said Menzies. ‘Shutters and drawn curtains. Come on. I’m going to see what’s behind that door.’

There was no finesse about forcible entry this time. Half a dozen well directed kicks shattered the hasp of the lock and sent the door flying open. Menzies and his companion moved inside.

For a moment the blaze of the electric light dazzled them. Menzies shaded his eye with his hand. Then his glance fell from the overturned telephone down to the prostrate figure of Jimmie Hallett. He was across the room in an instant, and made swift examination of the prostrate man.

‘Knocked clean out of time,’ he diagnosed. ‘Help me get him on the couch. Hallo, there’s another of ’em.’ He had observed the body on the hearthrug.

He bent over the murdered man in close scrutiny, but without touching the corpse. His lips pursed into a whistle as he marked the bullet wound that showed among the grey locks at the back of the head. He was startled, but scarcely shocked.

He straightened himself up.

‘This looks a queer business altogether, Hawksley. You’d better get back to the station. Send up the divisional surgeon and ’phone through to the Yard. They’d better let Sir Hilary Thornton and Mr Foyle know. I shall need Congreve and a couple of men, and you’d better send for Carless and as many of his staff as can be reached quickly. They’ll know the district.’

The faculty of quick organisation is one of the prime qualities of a chief of detectives, and Menzies was at no loss. The first steps in the investigation of most great mysteries are automatic—the determination of the facts. It is a kind of circle from facts to possibilities, from possibilities to probabilities, and from probabilities to facts. But the original facts must be settled first, and for any person to fix them single-handed is an impossibility.

There are certain aspects that must be settled by specialists; there may be a thousand and one inquiries to make in rapid succession. Menzies had no idea of playing a lone hand.

For a couple of hours a steady stream of officials and others descended on the house, and Linstone Terrace Gardens became the centre of such police activity as it had never dreamed would affect its respectability and retirement.

Men worked from house to house, interviewing servants, masters, mistresses, gleaning such facts as could be obtained of the lonely, eccentric old man, his habits, his visitors, friends, and relations. Inside the house the divisional surgeon had attended to Hallett—‘No serious injury; may come round at any moment’—and once certain the other was dead waited till flash-light photographs of the room had been taken from various angles examining the body. Draughtsmen made plans to scale of the room and every article in it. A finger-print expert peered round searchingly, scattering black or grey powder on things which the murderer might have touched. In the topmost rooms, Congreve, Menzies’ right-hand man, had begun a hasty search of the house, that would become more minute the next day.

Menzies had occupied a morning-room at the back of the house, and was deep in consultation with Sir Hilary Thornton, the grizzled assistant-commissioner, and Heldon Foyle, the square-shouldered, well-groomed Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department. There was little likeness between the three men, unless it lay in a certain hint of humour in the eyes and a firmness of the mouth. A detective without a sense of humour is lost.

Now and again Menzies broke off the conversation to issue an order or receive a report. Thornton observed for the first time the characters in which he made a few notes on the back of an envelope.

‘I didn’t know you knew Greek, Menzies,’ he remarked.

The chief-inspector twiddled his pencil awkwardly.

‘I use it now and again, Sir Hilary. You see, if I should lose my notes by any chance, it’s odds against the finder reading them. I used to do them in shorthand, but I gave it up. There are too many people who understand it. Yes, what is it, Johnson?’

The man who had entered held out a paper.

‘Addresses of the cook and housemaid, sir. One lives at Potter’s Bar, the other at Walthamstow.’

‘Have them fetched by taxi,’ ordered Menzies curtly.

‘Couldn’t you have statements taken from them?’ asked Sir Hilary, mildly. ‘It’s rather a drag for women in the middle of the night.’

Menzies smoothed his moustache.

‘We don’t know what may develop here, sir. We may want to put some questions quickly.’

While Menzies was thus straining every resource which a great organisation possessed to gather together into his hands the ends of the case, Jimmie Hallett awoke once more. The throbbing in his head had gone, and he lay for a while with closed eyes, listlessly conscious of the mutter of low voices in the room.

He sat up, and at once a dapper little man was by his side.

‘Ah, you’ve woke up. Feeling better? That’s right. Drink this. We want you to pull yourself together for a little while.’

‘Thanks. I’m all right,’ returned Hallett, mechanically. He drank something which the other held out to him in a tumbler, and a rush of new life thrilled through him. ‘Are you Mr Menzies?’

‘No; I’m the police divisional surgeon. Mr Menzies is in the next room. Think you’re up to telling him what has happened? He’s anxious to know the meaning of all this.’

‘So am I,’ said Hallett grimly, and staggered to his feet. ‘Just a trifle groggy,’ he added, as he swayed, and the little doctor thrust a supporting shoulder under his arm.

The three in the next room rose as Hallett was ushered in. It was Foyle who sprang to assist Hallett, and lifted him bodily on to the settee, which Menzies pushed under the chandelier. The doctor went out.

‘Quite comfortable, eh?’ asked Foyle. ‘Let me make that cushion a bit easier for you. Now you’re better. We won’t worry you at present more than we can help, will we, Menzies?’

The three officials, for all that their solicitude seemed solely for the comfort of the young man, were studying him keenly and unobtrusively. Already they had talked him over, but any suspicions that they might have held were quite indefinite. At the opening stage of a murder investigation everyone is suspected. In that lies the difference between murder and professional crime. A burglary, a forgery, is usually committed for one fixed motive, by a fixed class of criminal, and the search is narrowed from the start. A millionaire does not pick pockets, but he is quite as likely as anyone else to kill an enemy. In a murder case no detective would say positively that any person is innocent until he is absolutely certain of the guilt of the real murderer.

Hallett, whose brain was beginning to work swiftly, held out his hand to the chief-inspector.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Menzies. I’ve got a letter of introduction to you from Pinkerton. That’s how I came to ring you up. My name’s Hallett.’

Menzies shook hands.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Hallett. This is Sir Hilary Thornton—Mr Heldon Foyle.’

‘And now,’ said Jimmie decisively, when the introductions were done, ‘do you people think I killed this man, Greye-Stratton?’

The possibility had been in the minds of everyone in the room, but they were taken aback by the abruptness of the question. Weir Menzies laughed as though the idea were preposterous.

‘Not unless you’ve swallowed the pistol, Mr Hallett. We’ve found no weapon of any kind. You were locked in, you know. Now tell us all about it. I couldn’t hear a word you said on the telephone.’

They all listened thoughtfully until he had finished. Thornton elevated his eyebrows in question at his two companions as the recital closed.

‘Where are those cheques?’ asked Foyle. ‘They may help us.’

Hallett patted his pockets in rapid succession.

‘They’re gone!’ he exclaimed. ‘They must have been taken off me when I was knocked out.’

‘H’m!’ said Foyle reflectively. ‘Can you make anything of it, Menzies?’

The chief-inspector was gnawing his moustache—a sure sign of bewilderment with him. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘There’s little enough to take hold of,’ he returned. ‘Could you recognise any of the people you saw again, Mr Hallett—the girl, the man who was running after her, or the chap in the house?’

‘I haven’t the vaguest idea of what the face of either of the men was like,’ said Hallett.

‘But the woman—the girl?’ persisted Menzies.

Hallett hesitated.

‘I—I think it possible that I might,’ he admitted. Then an impulse took him. ‘But I’m sure she’s not the sort of person to be mixed up in—in—’

The three detectives smiled openly.

‘In this kind of shemozzle, you were going to say,’ finished Menzies, ‘There’s only one flaw in your reasoning. She is.’

Wrung as dry of information as a squeezed sponge of water, Hallett was permitted to depart. The courtesy of Sir Hilary Thornton supplied him with a motor-car back to his hotel; the forethought of Menzies provided him with an escort in the shape of a detective-sergeant. Hallett would have been less pleased had he known that the before-mentioned detective-sergeant was to be relieved from all other duties for the specific purpose of keeping an eye upon him. Weir Menzies was always cautious, and, though his own impression of the young man had been favourable enough, he was taking no chances.

All through that night Weir Menzies drove his allies hither and thither in the attempt to bring the end of the ravelled threads of the mystery into his hand. No one knew better than he the importance of the first hot burst of pursuit. An hour in the initial stages of an investigation is worth a week later on. The irritation at being kept out of bed had vanished now that he was on the warpath. He could think without regret of a committee meeting of the church restoration fund the following day, from which he would be forced to absent himself.

Scores of messages had been sent over the private telegraph and telephone system of the Metropolitan Police before, at seven o’clock in the morning, he took a respite. It was to an all-night Turkish bath in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Circus that he made his way.

At nine o’clock, spruce and ruddy, showing no trace of his all-night work beyond a slight tightening of the brows, he was in Heldon Foyle’s office. The superintendent nodded as he came in.

‘You look fine, Menzies. Got your man?’

The other made a motion of his hand deprecatory of badinage.

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a line on him.’

Foyle sat up and adjusted his pince-nez.

‘The deuce you have! Who is he?’

‘His name is Errol,’ said Menzies. ‘He’s a prodigal stepson of Greye-Stratton, and was pushed out of the country seven years ago.’

‘Menzies,’ said Foyle, laying down his pince-nez, ‘you ought to be in a book.’

CHAPTER IV

WEIR MENZIES fitted his form to the big armchair that flanked Foyle’s desk, and dragged a handful of reports, secured by an elastic band, from his breast-pocket. Foyle snipped the end off a cigar, and, leaning back, puffed out a blue cloud of smoke.

‘It’s been quick work, though I say it myself,’ observed Menzies complacently, ‘especially considering it’s a night job. This night work is poisonous—no way of getting about, no certainty of finding the witnesses you want, everyone angry at being dragged out of bed, and all your people knocked up the next day when they ought to be fresh.’

Foyle flicked the ash from his cigar, and a mischievous glimmer shone in his blue eyes.

‘It’s tough luck, Menzies. I know you hate this kind of thing. Now, there’s Forrester—he’s got nothing in particular on. If you like—’

Menzies’ heavy eyebrows contracted as he scrutinised his chief suspiciously. Untold gold would not have induced him to relax willingly his hold of a case that interested him.

‘I’m not shifting any job of mine on to anyone else’s shoulders, Mr Foyle,’ he said acidly.

‘That’s all right,’ said Foyle imperturbably. ‘Go ahead.’

Menzies tapped his pile of statements.

‘As far as I can boil down what we’ve got, this is how it stands. Old Greye-Stratton was a retired West Indian merchant—dropped out of harness fifteen years ago, and has lived like a hermit by himself in Linstone Terrace Gardens ever since. It seems there was some trouble about his wife—she was a widow named Errol when he married her, and she had one son. Five years before the crash there was a daughter born. Anyway, as I was saying, trouble arose, and he kicked his wife out, sent the baby girl abroad to be educated, and the boy—he would then be about twenty—with his mother. Well, the woman died a few years after. Young Errol came down to Greye-Stratton, kicked up a bit of a shindy, and was given an allowance on condition that he left the country. He went to Canada, and thence on to the States, and must have been a bit of a waster. A year ago he returned to England, and turned up at Linstone Terrace Gardens. There was a row, and he went away swearing revenge. Old Greye-Stratton stopped supplies, and neither the lawyers nor anyone else have seen anything of Errol since.’

Foyle rolled a pencil to and fro across his blotting-pad with the palm of his hand. He interrupted with no question. What Menzies stated as facts he knew the chief-inspector would be able to prove by sworn evidence if necessary. He was merely summarising evidence. The inference he allowed to be drawn, and so far it seemed an inference that bade fair to place a noose round young Errol’s neck.

‘We have got this,’ went on Menzies, ‘from people in Linstone Terrace Gardens, from Greye-Stratton’s old servants, from the house-agents from whom he rented his house, and from Pembroke, of Pembroke and Stephens, who used to be his solicitors. Greye-Stratton was seventy years old, as deaf as a beetle and as eccentric as a monkey. I don’t believe he has kept any servant for more than three months at a stretch; we have traced out a dozen, and there must be scores more. But it is only lately that he has taken to accusing them of being in a plot to murder him. The last cook he had he made taste everything she prepared in his presence.

He had no friends in the ordinary way, and few visitors. Twice within the last year he has been visited by a woman, but whom or what she was, no one knows. She came evidently by appointment, and was let in by the old man himself, remained half an hour, and went away. Practically all his business affairs had been carried on by correspondence, and he was never known to destroy a letter. Yet we have found few documents in the house that can have any bearing on the case, except possibly this, which was found in the fire-grate of the little bedroom he habitually used.’

He extracted from the pile of statements a square of doubled glass, which he passed to Foyle. It contained several charred fragments of writing-paper, with a few detached words and letters discernible.

‘J. E. Gre … will see … ld you … ues … mother to her death … ous swine … let me hea …’

‘Errol’s writing?’ queried Foyle.

‘I haven’t got a sample yet, but I’ve little doubt of it. Now, here’s another thing. It was Greye-Stratton’s custom to lock up the house every night at dusk himself. He would go round with a revolver and see to every one of the bolts and fastenings, and no one was alowed in or out afterwards. It was one of the grievances of the servants that they were prisoners soon after four o’clock each day in winter. And though he always slept with that revolver under his pillow, we can’t find it.

‘There’s another thing. Greye-Stratton had a little study where he spent most of the day, and there was a safe built into the wall. It may mean nothing, or anything, but the safe was open and there was not a thing in it. Now, we have been able to discover no one who has ever seen that safe open before. It’s curious, too, in view of Hallett’s story about the cheques, that we have not been able to lay our hands on a single thing that refers to a banking transaction—not so much as a paying-in book or a bunch of counterfoils.

‘The doctors say the old man was shot about three hours before we got there; that would be about half-past nine. I don’t know how Hallett struck you, Mr Foyle, but, according to his own account, he must have arrived at Linstone Terrace Gardens at nine.’

Foyle rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

‘You mean, he may have been there when the shot was fired?’

Menzies made an impatient gesture.

‘I don’t know. I own freely I don’t quite take in this yarn, and yet the man struck me as genuine. He’s got good credentials, and if he’s mixed up with the murder, why did he ’phone to me?’

‘Search me,’ said Foyle. ‘What about the daughter? You said there was a girl.’

Menzies stuck his thumbs in the sleeve holes of his waistcoat.

‘That’s another queer point. She was brought up abroad, and scarcely ever saw the old man. Pembroke says she spent her holidays with an old couple down in Sussex, to whom he had instructions to pay three hundred pounds a year. When she left school, he paid the allowance to her direct, but for two years she has not called or given any instructions about it. He wrote to Grey-Stratton, who retorted that it was none of his business—that the allowance would be paid over to his firm, and that if the girl did not choose to ask for it, it could accumulate. He did not seem at all concerned at her disappearance. Take it from me, Mr Foyle, we shall run across some more deuced funny business before we get to the bottom of this. There’s not even a ghost of a finger-print. If only we can find Errol—’

Foyle was too old a hand to offer conjecture at so early a stage of the case; nor did Menzies seem to expect any advice. Hard as he had driven the investigation during the night, the ground was not yet cleared. Until he had all the facts in his possession, it was useless to absolutely pin himself to any one line of reasoning. There was now one man who, on known facts, might have committed the murder; but, plausible as was the supposition that Errol was the man, the detectives knew that at best it was only a suspicion. And suspicion, nowadays, does not commit a man; it does not always justify an arrest. There must be evidence, and so far there was not a scrap of proof that Errol had been within a thousand miles of Linstone Terrace Gardens on the night of the murder.

Menzies went away with his bundle of documents to have them typed, indexed, and put in order, so that he could lay his hand on any one needed at a moment’s notice. He was in for a busy day.

Two advertisements he drafted in the sanctuary of his own office. One was to check Hallett’s own account of the evening before, and to identify, if possible, the street in which the cheques had been forced on him.

‘£1 REWARD. The taxi-cab driver who, on the evening of —, drove a fare from the West End to 34, Linstone Terrace Gardens, Kensington, will receive the above reward on communicating with the Public Carriage Office, New Scotland Yard, S.W.’

The other ran differently, and seemed to give him more trouble. Several sheets of notepaper he wasted, and discontentedly surveyed his final effort.

‘If James Errol, last heard of at Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., will communicate—’

He crushed the sheet up, flung it in the waste-paper basket, and lifted a speaking-tube.

‘Any newspaper men there, Green? Right! Tell ’em I’ll see ’em in half an hour. Send me up a typist.’

The newspaper Press, if deftly handled, may be a potent factor in the detection of crime. Moreover, the ubiquitous reporter is not to be evaded for long by the cleverest detective living. The wisest course is to meet him with fair words—to guide his pen where there is a danger of his writing too much, and put him on his honour on occasion. Many a promising case has been spoilt by tactless treatment of a pressman at a wrong moment.

Menzies dictated an account of the murder in which he said just as much as he wanted to say and not a word more. The conclusion ran:

‘The stepson of the deceased gentleman, a Mr James Errol, left England for the United States many years ago, and his present whereabouts are unknown. The police are anxious to get into touch with him in order that certain points in connection with his father’s career should be cleared up.’

The chief detective-inspector knew that the simple paragraph would throw into the search for Errol the energies and organisation of every great newspaper—an aid he did not despise. It was not intended as an official statement. The Criminal Investigation Department does not issue bulletins officially. It was an act of courtesy, and incidentally a stroke of policy, to maintain the goodwill of the Press. The reporters might paraphrase it as they would.

He received the newspaper men pleasantly, parried their chaff and too adroit questions with unruffled good humour, and told them little anecdotes which had not the slightest bearing on the murder of Greye-Stratton. They read the typewritten sheets he handed them greedily, and cross-examined him as mercilessly as he had ever been cross-examined at the Old Bailey. A clerk brought a card to him, and he read it without a change of countenance.

‘In a minute,’ he said to the waiting clerk, and put the card in his waistcoat pocket. ‘Well, gentlemen, you know as much as I do now. If there’s anything else you want to know, just drop in and see me when you like. Good-morning.’

They accepted their dismissal, and he took another glance at the card.

‘Miss Lucy Olney,’ he read, and underneath written in pencil, ‘Peggy Greye-Stratton.’

CHAPTER V

THE early evening papers were on the streets before Jimmie Hallett rose, and the inevitable reporters had established a blockade of his hotel. He cursed them while he shaved. It seemed that the notoriety which he had left New York to escape had followed him to England. As an old newspaper hand himself, he had little taste to be served up again all hot and spiced for the delectation of a morbidly hungry public.

He surveyed a salver full of cards that had been brought up to him with a scowl. Vivid recollections came to him of the way in which he had himself dealt in ‘personal sketches’ and ‘personal statements’ on big ‘stories’, and he began to conceive a certain fellow-feeling for his long-forgotten victims. But his chin grew dogged.

‘I’ll see ’em in blazes before I’ll talk. Go away and tell ’em I’m dead.’

The liveried functionary who had brought the cards gave as near an approach to a grin as his dignity permitted.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said quietly; ‘they’ll not believe it, sir.’

Hallett swung his eyes sideways to the man, and his hand slipped to his trousers pocket. It was no use getting angry.

‘Say, what are you getting out of this, sonny?’ he demanded. ‘It’s all right. You needn’t answer.’ A banknote crackled between his fingers. ‘If you can clear out the gang below this is yours. It’s more than they’ll give you.’

‘Very good, sir. There’ll be no harm in telling them you’re in a very critical condition, sir, I suppose?’

‘Not in the least. If they’re the least bit human they won’t worry a dying man. It will stave them off for a while perhaps.’

As a matter of fact, beyond a mild headache and some stiffness, he felt scarcely a trace of the attentions of his overnight assailant. He was uncertain whether that was a tribute to the skill of the divisional surgeon or to the hardness of his skull. He inwardly congratulated himself that the injury was not a particularly noticeable disfigurement. Indeed, a skilful brushing of the hair almost hid it.

He descended to breakfast with an appetite that in itself was proof that his general health remained unaffected, and discovering that there was a back entrance to the hotel, decided to make use of it, lest some pertinacious reporter might still be lingering in the reception-hall. He wanted to know something of what the police were doing, and a visit to Scotland Yard seemed the best way of finding out. In the background of his thoughts there was perhaps less concern that a murderer should be brought to justice than curiosity in regard to the lady of the fog.

There is a way mostly used by tradesmen at the Palatial Hotel, which leads through a narrow alley for fifty yards on to the embankment. Through this Hallett sauntered. He was half way through when a tap on the shoulder caused him to wheel. He confronted a slim-built, sallow-faced man, of lank moustache and burning black eyes.

‘Pardon,’ he said. ‘Your name is Hallett?’

He spoke silkily, and the extremely correct pronunciation of his words showed that he was neither English nor American.

‘Well?’ demanded Hallett, shortly.

He feared that he had been run down by a reporter, after all.

‘You were at the place where this man was killed yesterday, eh?’ The man shook a newspaper under his face.

‘Well?’ said Hallett again.

He had resumed his walk, but the other was keeping pace with him.

A hand caught at his arm. The burning black eyes were within three inches of his face.

‘You know who killed heem, eh?’ The English had become a little less correct under stress of some excitement. ‘You have not told the pol-lice yet? You will not tell them?’

Hallett shook himself free angrily.

‘Look here, my man,’ he said. ‘I don’t propose to answer your questions, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. Now git!’

He clenched his fists.

The foreigner’s hand dropped to his pocket. He did not remove it, but pressed something hard through the cloth against the young man’s ribs.

‘You are hasty, Mr Hallett,’ he remonstrated. ‘You don’t know what it is you say—what you’re up against. This is a pistol you can feel’—he pressed it close—‘and unless you listen quietly I shall keel you dead. Understand?’

‘Well?’ said Hallett, quietly for the third time.

‘You were at the house. You saw who killed the old man? You would know him again?’ The man did not wait for an answer. ‘You must keep your mouth shut. This is a warning. If you see him again you not tell, eh? There are many of us. You will be watched. And if you split—’

A prod with the pistol finished the sentence.

The theory that his molester was a reporter had long ago been abandoned by Jimmie Hallett. It was evidently thought that he had seen the face of the man at Linstone Terrace Gardens, and he was to be terrorised into silence. He had sense enough to reflect that, for all the audacity of the hold-up, the threat of surveilance was bluff—perhaps even the concealed pistol was bluff. Not that his actions would have differed much even had he supposed them real.

He took a quick step backwards and sideways, and a bullet that tore its way through the cloth of the other man’s pocket told that that part of the story was reliable. Then Hallett’s knee was in his back, and Hallett’s arms were woven in a strangle-hold about his throat. The man collapsed gurgling.

The whole business had occurred in barely two seconds of time. As they fell there was a third arrival.

‘Hold him down a minute, Mr Hallett. That’s all right.’

The third man possessed himself of the squirming captive’s wrists and twisted them behind his back to Hallett. Then he methodically and quickly ran his hands through the prostrate man’s clothing, possessing himself of a still smoking Derringer and a formidable sheath-knife.

‘Thank you, sir. Now this gentleman might get up. We’ll run him along to King Street Station, and see what Mr Menzies has to say about it.’

Then Hallett noticed that the man who had come to his assistance was the liveried functionary who had accepted his five-pound note to put off the pressmen less than an hour ago. But he no longer wore livery. He was in quiet, unassuming tweeds, and his manner was not exactly that which might be expected from a waiter to an hotel guest—even under such strange circumstances.

He surprised Hallett’s look of inquiry, and smiled as he locked his arm into that of the prisoner.

‘Detective-sergeant Royal, sir,’ he explained. ‘I’ll let you know all about it later. What’s your name, my man?’

He shook his captive slightly.

‘Smeeth—William Smeeth,’ said the man sullenly; and Royal winked at Hallett.

‘That’s a good old Anglo-Saxon name,’ he said. ‘Come along.’

It was in the Criminal Investigation office at King Street, while they were awaiting Menzies, that Royal gave his explanation, with a certain apologetic tone.

‘It was this way, Mr Hallett. You see, Mr Menzies asked me to keep an eye on you when you were sent home yesterday. Of course, he thought you were all right, but it doesn’t do to take anyone’s word in our trade. This is murder you see, and, though it seemed all right, you might have forged or stolen the introduction you had. We could not be sure your name was really Hallett.’

‘And sand-bagged myself on the back of the head,’ interpolated Hallett with irony.

Royal gave a shrug.

‘Mr Menzies doesn’t take any risks, sir. It couldn’t do you any harm. They know me at the hotel, and that’s how it was I was able to get into livery and walk into your room pretty well as I liked.’

A new light broke upon Hallett.

‘I get you. I thought perhaps I was a bit fogged when I got up, and had forgotten where I put things. You’ve been searching my room.’

Royal’s face never shifted a muscle.

‘I don’t admit it, sir. That would be illegal without your permission.’

‘Illegal or not, you did it,’ retorted Hallett. ‘I hope you’re quite satisfied.’

‘Oh, there’ll be no more trouble about that. Mr Menzies told me on the telephone just now that he’d cabled to the States, and they’ve put your reputation straight. Besides, there’s what I learned about you.’

‘I suppose you read my letters?’ ventured Hallett. ‘No; don’t worry to soothe me down. I’d probably have killed you if I’d caught you at it, but I’m quite calm now. By the way, there was a fiver—’

A flush mounted to the temples of the detective and he shook his head in vehement denial of the implication contained in the broken sentence.

‘I had to take it, or you might have suspected something. I passed it on to the servants, and told them what to do. I never saw the Press people myself. Some of ’em might have known me. When you went down to breakfast I changed my clothes and slipped a ’phone message through to headquarters. They told me to hang on to you till Mr Menzies had seen you. You’d never have known a word about it if it hadn’t been for our bird down below.’

He jerked his head in the direction of the cells.

Hallett begun to appreciate some of the realities of detective work. Before he could make any comment, Menzies came in. He nodded affably to the young man.

‘Morning, Mr Hallett. Not much the worse for last night, I see. I’ve got a little job for you presently. Meanwhile, I want to see your friend down below. Like to come along?’

He made no apology for the espionage he had set on foot, and Hallett did not think it worthwhile to thrash out the subject again.

‘William Smith’, it seemed, had already been searched with care and thoroughness. Royal explained to his chief that nothing which would serve as a hint as to whom he was had been found on him—nothing but the pistol, nine cartridges, and some money.

‘Have you looked for the name of the tailor on his clothes—the brace buttons, the inside of the breast-pocket, the trousers band?’ demanded Menzies.

‘Of course, sir,’ said Royal. He was a trifle offended that it should even be thought that he had neglected so elementary a precaution. ‘There’s nothing—nothing at all.’

Preceded by a uniformed inspector, they went down to the cells. Smith looked up sullenly from the bench on which he was seated, and met Menzies’ gaze squarely.

The detective chief was no believer in Lombroso’s theories of physiognomy, but he studied the face intently. In point of fact, he was analysing the features to discover if he had seen the man before. He wanted, too, to get some clue as to the manner he should adopt—authoritative and official, or familiary and persuasion.

‘Well, sonny,’ he said gently, ‘you’ve tumbled into a mess. Attempted murder is a serious business in this country.’

Smith glanced at him blackly over his shoulder. Menzies went on:

‘Of course, we don’t believe the cock-and-bull story you told Mr Hallett of there being a gang of you—’

‘You don’t, eh?’ exclaimed the prisoner, wheeling in sudden passion to face his visitors. ‘Then you are—what shall I say?—wooden blockheads!’ He pointed a long, slender forefinger at each of them in turn. ‘You and you and you! I tell you, you will be marked. I failed—but there are others who will not fail if you persist.’

Royal turned away to hide a snigger. This kind of melodrama failed to impress him.

‘No doubt, no doubt!’ assented Menzies soothingly. He might have been calming down a headstrong questioner at a vestry meeting. ‘But there are a good many police officers in London. It will take a long time to kill ’em off. Now, why don’t you be reasonable, Mr Smith?’

‘Pah!’ interrupted the prisoner.

He spat on the cell floor to indicate his contempt.

‘You’ve shown you know something about this murder,’ went on Menzies. ‘The judge is pretty sure to take that into account one way or the other at your trial. I, of course, should tell him if you helped us. It would probably make a difference, you know.’

The prisoner showed two rows of yellow teeth in an unmirthful, contemptuous grin.

‘Go away, wooden-head! I shall not go to prison, but you will die. You don’t know what you call—what you are up against.’

‘Perhaps I’ve got an idea,’ said Menzies. His voice changed. ‘I don’t know whether you’re playing the fool, my man,’ he said sternly. ‘or whether you really believe that kind of wild talk. Perhaps your friend Errol will be able to enlighten us.’

‘Errol?’ said Smith blankly. ‘I know him not.’

‘I hear you,’ said Menzies. ‘You think over what I’ve said, my lad. Meanwhile we’ll have a doctor to look at you.’

CHAPTER VI

MENZIES let an unparliamentary expression slip from his lips as the cell door clanged behind them. It is tantalising to have a piece of evidence drop into one’s lap, so to speak, and then refuse to be evidence. He was annoyed because his efforts to unlock the lips of the prisoner failed. He knew that if only the man could have been induced to talk, days, possibly weeks, of heartbreaking labour would be saved.

This fresh development ‘had him guessing’, as Jimmie Hallett might have said. Who was ‘William Smith’? Why had he threatened Hallett, and even gone so far as to try to carry his threat into execution? The hint of an organised conspiracy to save the murderer of Greye-Stratton would have excited his derision if it had not aroused speculation. The secret societies in England may talk murder at times, but they never seriously plot murder or carry out a murder. A man who imperils his neck has invariably some strong personal motive. And when others actively shield him, they also have some other motive than pure altruism.

One person may commit an irresponsible act for no reason; it is even conceivable that two people may act in concert in some insane crime. But here were at least three people concerned, and possibly more—the woman who had passed the cheques to Hallett, the murderer of Greye-Stratton, and ‘William Smith’. What was the link that bound them all together? That each was acting from some powerful self-interest he felt confident. It might be community of interest, but he was sceptic enough to think that accidental.

The chief-inspector checked his flow of thought with a jerk. Speculation without materials spelt a fixed theory—and to a detective a premature theory may be fatal. He is apt to try to prove his theory rather than prove the truth.

He laid a hand on Hallett’s arm as the goaler inserted a key in the big steel door that led to the charge-room.

‘Wait a minute. There are a dozen people the other side of the door waiting for us. I want you to have a good look at them when you go in. If you recognise any of them I want you to go up and touch her.’

‘Her?’ repeated Hallett.

His pulse throbbed unaccountably faster. Menzies eyed him keenly.

‘You said last night that you would probably know the woman again who planted the cheques on you. I’m relying on you, Mr Hallett. You’re a man of the world. Don’t run away with the idea that a pretty face can’t be mixed up in crime.’

‘So you’ve run her down? Why didn’t you tell me before? Who is she? Does she admit passing the cheques?’

Menzies shook a forefinger blandly at the young man.

‘I’ll answer your questions some other time. Only play the game, Mr Hallett.’

He was a shrewd judge of men, and all along he had been doubtful whether Jimmie’s chivalry would be proof against the test to which he proposed to put it.

And Jimmie himself was doubtful. A week—a day—ago he would have ridiculed the idea that a pair of blue eyes—seen only once—could have swayed him in any degree. He did not put his thoughts into form, but he wondered what the effect to her of an identification might be. Had Menzies any suspicion against her? Jimmie found himself arguing, illogically enough, that it was impossible. Menzies’ words braced him as they were intended to—come what would, he would point her out if she were in the charge-room.

And then the door swung back. The charge-room, lofty and bare, was tenanted by a little group of women, seated in a row at the lower end. Apart from them, in the centre by the inspector’s desk, were a couple of officers. A third was leaning against the dock. The chatter of voices ceased.

‘Take a good look at these ladies,’ said Menzies’ suave voice.

Jimmie had not needed more than one glance. There was a sufficient general resemblance among the array of women, but she was unmistakable. She was the second from the right. He had taken one pace towards her when her gaze met him. There was nothing in it of appeal. It was indifferent, cold, impassive.

Yet Hallett’s resolution wavered. He walked past her along the row, and back again. He felt himself a fool. There was not the faintest reason why he should not identify her. She was a stranger. She was at least indirectly responsible for the unpleasant experiences that had beset him. She was possibly concerned in a deliberate murder. And then, out of the tail of his eye, he saw her moisten her dry lips. That was the only trace of emotion she gave.

‘It’s no good, Mr Menzies,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t recognise anyone here.’

He had played poker in his time, and his face and voice were absolutely expressionless.

Menzies tapped a forefinger thoughtfully alongside his nose and smiled ruefully.

‘All right,’ he said; and Jimmie fancied there was an inner shade of meaning to the words. ‘That will do, ladies; thank you.’

The women—wives and daughters of police officials for the most part—separated. Only the girl of the cheques remained behind. As the room emptied, she walked towards Menzies.

‘That’s over, Miss Greye-Stratton,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I am ever so much obliged to you. I want you to know Mr Hallett, the gentleman who first called our attention to the death of your father.’

Jimmie concealed the surprise that the name gave him. Although there was a certain touch of melancholy in the oval face, there was none of that grief which might have been expected in a girl who had suddenly learned of the murder of her father. For a moment he was repelled. He murmured some conventional phrase of sympathy, but she swept it away as though aware that her manner needed explanation.

‘Yes, this is very dreadful, Mr Hallett, but not so dreadful to me as it might have been. You see, I scarcely knew my father. We were almost complete strangers.’

‘Miss Greye-Stratton called on me at the Yard as soon as she heard of the murder,’ interposed Menzies. ‘I thought it as well, in the circumstances, that there should be no ground for misunderstanding. You see, your story of the way the cheques came into your possession is bound to cause talk when you give evidence at the inquest. I wanted it to be definitely clear that Miss Greye-Stratton was not the lady, and she was good enough to consent to this arrangement.’

Hallett wondered how the diplomacy of the detective would have got over the difficulty if the girl had refused. That she had consented showed nerve, for she had not known that he would not identify her. He was curious, too, as to what would have happened if he had picked her out. Would she have been arrested on suspicion?

‘If it had been Miss Greye-Stratton, she would hardly have sought you out,’ he remarked.

‘No, no; of course not,’ said Menzies soothingly. ‘I never thought for a moment that she was the woman. One likes to save anything in the nature of scandal, though. I remember a case where two elderly ladies—sisters—living in a country house were attacked by someone with a hammer. One was found dead, the other unconscious—she remained unconscious for weeks. The hammer was found in an outhouse a hundred yards away. Now, there was a considerable amount of gossip, and the theory was firmly held by dozens of people that the living sister had attacked the dead one. They overlooked the fact that to have done so she must have walked to the place where the hammer was found after her own injuries had been inflicted. That’s an example of what I mean.’

The girl nodded.

‘I am quite sure you only meant to save me possible future unpleasantness. Is there anything else? You have my address.’

‘There is no other way at the moment in which you can help. As matters develop, I may call on you. It has been very good of you—’

She stretched out her slim, gloved hand to Hallett. But he was not inclined to let her escape so easily. She owed him something, if only an explanation.

‘I am going your way,’ he said, unblushingly. ‘Perhaps, if you don’t mind—’

Menzies stroked his moustache, and his eyes roved sideways to his aide-de-camp, Royal, who, after an absence of two or three minutes had now returned. Royal nodded almost imperceptibly, and the inspector said good-bye.

‘By the way, you had better be at the police court at two, Mr Hallett. We shall charge this man Smith today. I don’t expect you’ll be kept long. It will be purely formal. I shall apply for a remand.’

Hallett and the girl went down the steps to the street. He was conscious that, though she appeared to be gazing serenely in front of her, she occasionally scrutinised him with curious eyes.

Not till they were a hundred yards away from the police-station did either of them speak again. Then Jimmie ventured on the ice.

‘Perhaps now you will tell me what it’s all about?’

‘Oh!’ She stopped and turned full on him with wide-open, innocent blue eyes of a child. ‘So you knew all the time? I wasn’t sure.’

‘Wasn’t sure that I knew you as the girl in the fog?’

‘Yes. Shall we walk on? We might attract attention standing here. Why did you do it? Why didn’t you denounce me?’

Jimmie twiddled his walking-stick.

‘Hanged if I know!’ he confessed. Her self-possession rather daunted him. ‘I thought—that is—if you wanted to you would have explained the incident yourself.’

‘That’s no reason. You didn’t know me. There was no earthly motive. All the same, I am grateful to you, Mr Hallett—sincerely grateful.’

She sighed.

A porter with a parcel under his arm loitered three yards behind them. Ten yards behind him a ‘nut’, scrupulously dressed and seeming conscious of nothing but the beauty of his attire, swaggered aimlessly. Menzies, as has been said, was not a man who took anything for granted. His arrangements for ‘covering’ Peggy Greye-Stratton in the event of Hallett not recognising her had been completed long before he had confronted them in the charge-room.

Hallett might have guessed—if he had thought about it at all. The girl certainly did not. Jimmie caught at her last words.

‘You can prove that. Although we have only been formally introduced in the last five minutes, we are not exactly strangers. Come and lunch with me. Then we can talk. There are several things I want to know.’

She assented, it seemed to him, somewhat indifferently. He hailed a taxi-cab, and gave the name of a famous restaurant. As she sank back in the cushions it was as though a mask had dropped from her face. It had suddenly become utterly weary. She gasped once or twice as if for breath. Only for an instant had the mask dropped, but Hallett had seen and understood. The girl was strained to breaking-point, supporting her part only by strength of will.

What that part was, and why she was playing it, he was fixed in the resolution to learn. He spoke on indifferent subjects till lunch was over and coffee was brought. Then he leaned forward a little across the table.

‘I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you, Miss Greye-Stratton,’ he said.

A smile, palpably forced, appeared on the girl’s face. She twisted a ring on her finger absently.

‘That is a polite way of bringing me to the point, Mr Hallett. You have a sort of right to ask.’

A sigh trembled on her lips, and her eyes became absent. The man said nothing, but waited. Very dainty and desirable did Peggy Greye-Stratton seem to him then. Yet he would not have been human if he had not had misgivings. Her very reluctance to speak aroused a little spark of suspicion which he deliberately trampled under foot. A beautiful face, a high intelligence, and courage—and all these he knew she possessed—are not necessarily guarantees against crime.

She appeared to come to a resolve.

‘I will tell you what I told Mr Menzies,’ she said, looking up. ‘Knowing what you knew, it will seem incomplete to you, but you’—she looked him full in the face—‘are a gentleman. I trust you not to question me too far. There are—other people.’

He, too, had come to a resolve.

‘Tell me,’ he said levelly, ‘before you say anything else, did you have act or part in the murder of your father?’

She stared at him whitely and half rose. Her shapely throat was working strangely.

‘Do you think—’ she began. And then tensely: ‘No, no, no!’ Her voice fell to a strained whisper. ‘Why do you ask me that? If I had known—if I could have prevented—’

She was rapidly becoming distraught.

He felt himself a cur, but he pressed home the question relentlessly.

‘Do you know who it was that murdered your father?’

Her fair head fell to her arms on the table. Had Hallett known, he could not have put his questions at a time more likely to wring an answer from her. All that morning she had borne herself before the keen eyes of Menzies and his assistants, conscious that the slightest falter might betray what she did not wish known. Her nerves were now paying the penalty. She raised a face torn with emotion towards Hallett.

‘God help me!’ she moaned. ‘I believe I do.’

CHAPTER VII

HE had expected the answer, and yet is came to him as a shock. She was regarding him with an expression half-defiant, half-appealing. His eyes wandered round the room. He had engaged a table that stood in a recess behind one of the marbled pillars, and they were thus separated from the general company in the room. Their voices had been low, but he was afraid they might have attracted attention. But no one seemed to have observed them, and he turned once more to her.

Somehow she had repressed her weakness. He signalled to the waiter, and ordered a liquer. As she took it, he observed that her hand was perfectly steady. And yet but a moment before she had been on the verge of hysterics.

‘Tell me just what you like,’ he said simply. ‘Just as much or as little as you like. You can trust me.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘you are very good. Let me think. To begin with, you must know my father was a very strange man. When I was quite a baby he quarrelled with my mother, and I was sent down into the country, where I lived with an old gentleman-farmer and his wife named Dinward. I always understood that I was their child until a few years ago—they never spoke of either my father or my mother. Once—just before I went to school—he came to see me. I, of course, did not know whom he was.

‘I was sent to a convent school at Bruges, where I was brought up, coming home for the holidays—home, of course, being in Sussex. Occasionally I was brought to London. I won’t go into all the details of my life until I left school—it wouldn’t interest you. All this time, remember, I had no knowledge of any relations but the Dinwards. When I left school, I learnt for the first time that I was not their daughter. Mr Pembroke, a solicitor, came over to Bruges and told me very nicely. But—acting on instructions, he said—he could give no clue to my parents. There would be three hundred a year—about fifteen hundred dollars in your currency—payable to me quarterly by his firm. I was no longer to look to the Dinwards for support.

‘Mr Pembroke was very nice, but he had his instructions. I asked him what I was expected to do. “I presume,” he said, “that your”—he could not think of a word at first—“benefactor intends that you shall have enough to support you respectably. Think over your plans tonight, my dear young lady, and we will talk it over in the morning.”

‘I did think it over, you may imagine. I slept little that night. I have a certain facility for painting, and that seemed to me to offer an outlet to ambition. I told Pembroke next day; he expressed neither approval nor disapproval. A cheque, he said, would be waiting for me at the offices of his firm on the first day of every quarter. He offered to give me introductions in London, but I answered that the only introduction I needed was to my parents. He shook his head a little doubtfully, and that ended the conversation.

‘I wanted to see the world a little before I settled down in London. I went to see the Dinwards, but no word could I get from them as to whom I really was. They were kindly people, but not simple. They would tell me nothing. Perhaps, if I had then been less of a raw child, if I had had more knowledge of the world, I might have got round them. Later on someone—but I am coming to that.

‘The Dinwards were troubled about me, naturally. Of course, I promised to keep in touch with them. I changed my name. I had been called Peggy Dinward; I became Lucy Olney. That, by the way, Mr Hallett, is the name I still keep.

‘The allowance I was to receive seemed a tremendous fortune to me. I went abroad—to study art, I told myself. I went to Paris, to Rome, to Venice, and other places; but the money did not prove so ample as I expected. Perhaps I was extravagant. Anyway, in about eight months I was in London, determined to make my fortune, and I still thought that my art pointed the way.

‘You will guess that I had some troubles. Art for art’s sake is one thing, but I am afraid I haven’t the true temperament. I wanted recognition, and, though I could have existed without the money, I wanted money as a proof that I was recognised. But no one seemed to appreciate me as a genius. It was difficult enough to get dealers to take my pictures at a price that barely paid for canvas and paint. Then I drifted into magazine and book illustration work, and at that I found my metier. I earned much more than I really needed, even without my allowance.’

She fingered a serviette absently for a moment. There was an abstraction in her eyes. Hallett waited, without interruption, for her to resume.

‘I have not told you that I have a step-brother,’ she went on. ‘Indeed, I did not know it myself till two years ago. He is my mother’s son by her first marriage, and is much older than myself. He was sent abroad at the time that I was handed over to the Dinwards. As I say, two years ago he traced me out; I believe he got my adopted name and my address from the Dinwards. It was from him that I first learned who I was, who my father was, who my mother was. He told me the whole terrible story of Mr Greye-Stratton’s—I can’t call him my father—break with my mother. He swore that she was innocent, that it was a madman’s fit of jealousy that broke up the home. I—I—’

Her throat worked, and it was some moments before she resumed.

‘My brother had only recently returned to England, and he told me that his first step had been to find me. He wanted me to go back with him to Canada. “You’re my baby sister,” he said, “I have a right to look after you. There’s only you and I now.”

‘I can’t express how I felt. My quick anger against my father was less intense than his long-nursed hatred. We talked long. I refused his offer to go back to Canada, and told him that I would never take another penny from my father. He was against that. He argued that it was the least Mr Greye-Stratton could do for me. When he saw I was determined, he pointed out the possibility that I might be Mr Greye-Stratton’s heiress, and that to refuse the allowance might embitter him against me.’ She flamed for a moment into passion. ‘As if I wanted anything—anything from that man!

‘When he left me I scarcely knew what to do, what action to take. I resolved to do nothing. After all, when I was in a colder mood, I could see nothing that I could do. I could not or would not attempt a reconciliation with my father. I could not attempt the vindication of my mother. I renounced the allowance, and things went on as they were before, except that I had my brother.

‘He went back to Canada and the United States. Now and again I had letters from him. He had a hard struggle to make ends meet.

Hallett nodded mechanically. Something in her tone made him begin to see the brother in a less sympathetic light. He blurted out the question on the spur of the moment.

‘He bled—I mean, he wrote to you for money?’

She winced.

‘Yes; he wrote to me for money. A little more than a year ago he was in England again.’ Her words came more slowly. ‘He has stayed here ever since. He called on Mr Greye-Stratton, and something happend. What, I don’t know. I suppose there were recriminations, but my brother told me little but that he was now entirely without resources. Mr Greye-Stratton’—Hallett noted that she persisted in the formal mode of reference—‘had cut off all help from him. I don’t know if Mr Menzies has said anything to you about my brother?’

She flashed the question at him suddenly.

‘Not a word. This is the first I have heard of his existence.’

‘I ask because he questioned me closely about him. My brother is a hard man, Mr Hallett, and his outlook on life is different to that of the ordinary person. Circumstances have been against him. He was driven to find a living as best he could. I want you to remember that if he was desperate, he was driven to it. I helped as far as I could, but he had heavy expenses. He signed my father’s name to some cheques.’

‘He committed forgery?’

‘Yes. The cancelled cheques came into the hands of someone else who knew that he was my brother. He threatened to pass them on to Scotland Yard and give evidence against Dick unless I paid. Last night there was an appointment made at my flat. The price he needed was greater than I could pay. When he went, I followed him. I knew he had the cheques on him, and I hoped that I might find some way to get them from him. Just before I met you I had appealed to him again. He refused. He had the cheques in his hand. I snatched them, and when I ran into you I passed them to you on the impulse of the moment. That is all, Mr Hallett.’

‘But there is something more,’ he said; ‘something you have not said?’

She shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.

‘I have said all I can—all I dare. You helped me, Mr Hallett, and I have told you more even than the detectives. It has been a relief’—she sighed—‘to tell anyone.’

Jimmie was silenced. Yet a score of questions trembled on his lips. Trained to see the weak points in a narration, he could not fail to realise that there were gaps in the story, gaps that needed filling before one could come to full judgment. She had passed no hint of the blackmailer, the man from whom she had the cheques. That he was closely linked with her in some manner he felt confident. And then speculation was lost in a rush of pity for the girl who had been so unwittingly dragged into a maelstrom from which he could see no way of escape.

That the man Errol was a scoundrel was certain, on her own showing. He glimpsed through her reticence the fresh tragedy that his advent had meant to her life. Vainly he tried to see for what purpose she was being used. Of course, Errol had been bleeding her, but there was something more. It came to him suddenly. She knew the murderer—she had said so. Here was a motive for Errol, a motive more powerful than revenge or passion. She would stand to gain a fortune by Greye-Stratton’s death, and Errol would expect to dabble his fingers in it.

Yet this was the man for whom she was playing with fire. He was not very clear about English legal methods, but he conceived that in trying to shield him she was laying herself open to suspicion. He had judged Menzies acutely. If Greye-Stratton’s fortune were to come to her, that detective would leave nothing undone to be absolutely sure that she had no hand in the crime. Points would arise, actions be revealed, that would look black against her by the very reason that she had carefully concealed them.

‘Miss Greye-Stratton,’ he said gravely, ‘—forgive me for what I am going to say. I believe it is a crime here to be an accessory after the fact. Do you realise that? Don’t you think it would be wiser, for your sake—for your brother’s sake—to be candid with the police? Believe me, all that you have told me is sure to be known sooner or later.’

Her face was irresolute.

‘You think they will find out? That it will be worse because I tried to conceal it?’

‘I do. If you will take my advice—my sincere advice—you will come with me to Menzies now. Understand me. I shall not betray a word of our conversation without your permission.’

She placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her cupped hands, staring across the room in reverie. Then her head sank and her shoulders heaved.

‘I dare not,’ she sobbed. ‘God help me, I dare not …’

CHAPTER VIII

NO effective detective organisation is dependent on one man. Co-operation is the essence of all successful detective work, exactly as it is in the carrying on of any great business. Scotland Yard will throw a score, a hundred, ten thousand men into an enterprise, if need be, and every one of them, from the supreme brain downwards, will have an understudy ready at any moment to pick up a duty abandoned from any cause. No individual is vital, though some may be valuable. Every fact, every definite conclusion arrived at, is on record. There is no stopping, no turning back to cover ground already traversed. The spade work of detection is as automatic as book-keeping.

That is why Weir Menzies found time to cover the case against the pickpockets he had captured the preceding evening and to return to headquarters to smoke a quiet pipe and consider things in general. He propped his feet on a desk, leaned back in his chair, and began serenely to go through the reports that had accumulated from every point where information, however remote, might have been gathered on the Greye-Stratton affair.

He liked to have the salient facts of an investigation clear-cut in his mind. That often saved time in an emergency, as well as being an aid to definite thinking. Presently he began to make his Greek notes with a stubby pencil on the back of an envelope. Some of them would have surprised Hallett had he chanced to see them.

‘Statement of P. Greye-Stratton clearly incomplete. Knows much more than she says. Certain that Errol has been for many months constant visitor at her flat in Palace Avenue. (Gould’s report—interview with maid at her flat.) Yet she denies that she has spoken to, or been in communication with, her brother for nearly a year. Lift attendant remembers man calling on her the evening of the murder. Left after short interview, and immediately after she went out, hatless, in a hurry.’

He commenced a string of question-marks across the paper. ‘I’ll see that liftman myself,’ he murmured, and continued:

‘It was the maid’s night out. Lift attendant does not remember having seen man before, but he knows Errol. Description vague. Think possible P. G.-S. alarmed. Must handle cautiously and keep under constant surveillance. If can induce Hallett to cultivate her, may learn something.’

A sharp tap at the door interrupted him. He snapped an irritable ‘Come in!’ and, pencil in hand, surveyed frowningly a young man with a badly bruised eye.

‘Well, Jakes,’ he demanded impatiently, ‘who’s been decorating you? What’s the trouble?’

‘I got this from Hallett, sir. He—’

Menzies’ feet dropped from the table with a crash.

‘What the blazes! Some muddle, I’ll be bound. Where’s Gordon?’

‘Down below, sir. We—’

‘Then you’ve lost the girl?’ He smacked an angry fist down on the table. ‘Oh, curse your explanations! I beg your pardon—you confounded idiot!’ He sprang to the door, and roared down the green-painted corridor: ‘Royal! Royal!’ That individual popped out of a door like a rabbit out of a hole. ‘Come here, Royal. These two cabbages have let Miss Greye-Stratton dodge ’em. Take Smithers and get along to her flat, No. 74, Palace Avenue, and see if you can pick her up. She may have gone straight home, or she may not. I’ve got to come there myself presently, but I’ll hear what this dough-witted jackass has got to say.’

Ordinarily Menzies was courteous to his underlings, but when anything like stupidity interfered with his plans, he let himself go.

‘They remember it, and it’s better than putting ’em on the M.R.,’ he explained once to a colleague, which was his way of saying that he preferred a few hot words to putting the culprits on the morning report for judgment and punishment. ‘Only I sometimes wish that I didn’t swear so much at them.’

Royal had slipped away to carry out his instructions with the swiftness of the well-trained man. Menzies turned with a snarl to the young detective, who was trembling nervously, and as ill at ease as any young clerk ‘carpeted’ before his departmental chief for the first time.

‘Let’s have it,’ he said shortly.

The young man squared his shoulders.

‘They lunched at the Duke’s, in Piccadilly, sir. I went in with them, but could not get near enough to hear what was said. The lady did most of the talking. When they came out they walked towards Regent Street. I was close behind. Gordon was almost twenty paces behind me. They turned into Regent Street, and then sharp back along Jermyn Street. When they reached St James’s Street he said something to her, and came back towards me. I would have passed him, but he caught me by the shoulder, and asked me what I meant by molesting a lady.

‘I pulled myself free, and told him I was a police officer. I would have gone on, but he pulled me back again, and Gordon came up—’

‘And stopped to see what the matter was, instead of going straight on,’ commented Menzies bitterly. ‘I know. Go on.’

‘He stopped to help me. Mr Hallett was giving me a fair rough time. It took the two of us to tackle him properly. He kept it up for about three minutes, and then gave in.’

‘And by that time the girl might have been in Timbuctoo. He laid a nice trap for you, and you both fell into it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did you arrest him?’

‘No. We thought it ought to be reported to you before we did anything.’

‘That’s the only gleam of common sense you showed in the whole business. Go away. I’ll think it over. And the next time you’re shadowing, young man, remember you’ve got to stick—if the heavens fall you’ve got to stick!’

He whistled softly to himself when the other was gone.

‘I thought as much. She’s got him on a bit of string—and Hallett is a brainy man.’

He revolved the matter steadily in his mind as he walked to Palace Avenue. Hallett, if he could be persuaded, would be a valuable ally in discovering what information Peggy Greye-Stratton had withheld. Menzies used the instruments to his hands; and there was no reason why he should have scruples. If he had troubled at all to formulate the ethics of the question, he might have argued that when a crime was committed a girl who deliberately withheld or evaded giving information could not fairly object to any means adopted to break her taciturnity. That the role he proposed allotting to Hallett was actually that of a spy did not concern him. That would be Hallett’s own affair, if he accepted the commission.

Royal appeared out of nowhere as he neared the corner of Palace Avenue.

‘Not come back yet,’ he reported, laconically.

‘Well, there’s plenty of time yet,’ said Menzies, with a resignation that had been conspicuously absent in his talk with the delinquent officer. ‘She’s bound to turn up. You’d better ’phone for Gould to relieve you, and get down to the court to charge Smith.’

He strolled on to the block of flats, sent his card in to the manager in a sealed envelope, briefly explained as much of his errand as was necessary, and was presently confronted with a weedy, pale-faced youth, who nervously twisted his cap in his hands as the detective questioned him. His story varied nothing from the statement Gould had made.

‘Now, don’t get flustered, old chap,’ said Menzies, with that naÏve, bluff air he knew so well how to assume. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t know the man again? Try and think for a moment. Was he tall or short, fat or thin?’

‘Just an ordinary-looking man,’ said the attendant. ‘I didn’t pay any notice.’

‘No, of course not. Do you remember if he had a beard, or moustache, or was he clean-shaven?’

The youth wrinkled his brows, and after a moment’s thought shook his head.

‘Couldn’t say, sir. I rather believe he was clean-shaven.’

It was hopeless to try to extract a description from him. Menzies had expected as much. Observation is not in most people a natural gift; it is a matter of the most meticulous training, and many and laborious are the hours spent in teaching recruits to the C.I.D. staff the art of noticing. He switched to another point.

‘When the man came out of her flat, did he seem in a hurry?’

‘No, sir; not particularly. He rang for the lift.’

‘Didn’t say anything?’

‘Not to me. At least, he had something in his hand. He dropped it, and when it rolled down the shaft he swore. I offered to go and get it, but he said it didn’t matter—it was only a halfpenny.’

‘H’m!’

Menzies stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and tapped his toe on the floor.

‘You went and made sure it was only a halfpenny afterwards, of course?’

The man’s eyes had hitherto not met his. Now they were fixed boldly on his face.

‘No,’ he declared; ‘I didn’t think it worthwhile.’

A man may fail to look one in the face and be perfectly honest and truthful. But when such a man does meet questioning with a steady eye it is because he has become conscious that an averted gaze may arouse suspicion. Menzies smiled under his moustache, and stretched out a hand.

‘Where is it?’ he added quietly. ‘Give it to me.’

The lift attendant flushed and drew back. The directness of the demand had disconcerted him.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got anything.’

‘That so?’ said Menzies, smilingly. And then, with a swift change of voice: ‘Now, sonny, don’t let’s have any monkey business. You can’t play with me.’

Reluctantly, as though hypnotised, the attendant thrust two fingers into his waistcoat pocket, slowly drew something out, and placed it in the detective’s hand.

It was a plain, heavy circlet of gold—a wedding ring!

CHAPTER IX

JIMMIE HALLETT ran into Weir Menzies in the police-court corridor after the magistrate had formally remanded ‘William Smith’. The detective threw up his hands quickly in the attitude of one parrying a blow.

‘Don’t hit me, Mr Hallett,’ he implored. ‘I’ve got a weak heart.’

Jimmie grinned a little shame-facedly. He had not been quite sure how the detective chief would take the assault on the shadowers of Miss Greye-Stratton. He brazened it out.

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ he demanded.

Menzies caught him about the arms and pulled him into a small room set apart for consultations between lawyers and clients.

‘I suppose you know that men have got six months for less than you did this afternoon? You can’t knock police-officers about with impunity, you know.’

There was an underlying current of seriousness in his jocular tone which Jimmie could not fail to perceive. He ran his hand through his hair.

‘I’ll see you,’ he said, adopting the language of the poker table. ‘What are you driving at?’

‘This.’ The detective laid a thick forefinger on the palm of his left hand. ‘You’ve got sense, Mr Hallett, and you’ve had experience. Now, I’ve gone into your credentials, and I believe you’re straight. But I’m not going to stand any funny business. I’m investigating a case of murder, and anyone who stands in the way is liable to get hurt. Now, don’t interrupt. Let me finish. I don’t know whether you were playing a little game after lunch to win the girl’s confidence, or if she talked you over.’

He paused inquiringly.

Hallett pressed his lips together firmly.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Right. You were pushed into this at the start, and I’ve tried to treat you fairly. Don’t you forget murder’s a dirty thing, however you look at it. I don’t say Miss Greye-Stratton’s not straight, but she knows a deuce of a sight more than she ought to—or than she’s telling us. She’s got something up her sleeve. She’s no fool, for all her pretty face. She seems to have taken a fancy to you. Do you know why?’

The other shook his head, although he had a very good idea as to what Menzies was going to say. His face was impassive.

‘For the same reason that the man we’ve got below tried to get you this morning. You’re an important witness. She wants to shut your mouth and to find out how much you really do know.’

Jimmie laughed outright.

‘You’re wrong there. She’s not asked me a single question. All the talking was on her side.’

Then he realised that he had fallen into a trap. Not that Menzies gave any obvious indication of triumph. He merely stroked his moustache serenely.

‘Well, I don’t know that I’m far wrong. She wouldn’t be too quick. So she talked, did she? What did she say?’

The young man was not to be caught off his guard a second time.

‘It will all be stale to you. She repeated what she said she had already told you.’

‘All the same there may be something new,’ persisted the detective. ‘Let’s have it.’

‘If you like to let me have a look at her statement, I’ll tell you if there’s anything fresh I can add,’ parried Jimmie.

Menzies raised his eyebrows.

‘I think I see,’ he said. ‘I’d consider this a lot, if I were you. Why, man, can’t you see she’s playing with you? Confidence for confidence is an old trick. She has known you a matter of hours, and here she is pitching a tale to you as though you were an intimate friend. I trust you—you trust me! That’s what it comes to. Now, why not play our game instead of hers? If she’s innocent you won’t hurt her, but if she’s got her pretty fingers in the tar—’

Hallett became conscious of a smouldering rage at the innuendo of the comfortable, ruddy-faced detective. He did not realise that he was being deliberately provoked for a purpose. Menzies wanted to discover without doubt his attitude towards the girl.

‘Cut it out,’ he advised curtly. And then more quietly: ‘I think you entirely misjudge the lady. If I’ve only known her for a few hours, I guess I’m a better judge of her type than you.’

‘Bearings a bit hot, eh?’ smiled Menzies. ‘It’s no good getting angry with me. I’m clumsy, but I mean well. I hate to see a man stepping into trouble. And you’ll find trouble on your hands pretty soon, believe me. If I were you, I think I’d carry a life preserver or advertise that you didn’t see the man who killed Greye-Stratton.’

Hallett had taken a quick turn or two about the room, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. He came to a sudden halt.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Weir Menzies had a well-worn briar pipe in one hand and tobacco-pouch in the other. He methodically filled the pipe before answering.

‘Only from what I have gathered the lady’s in with a tough mob. I’ll know more about ’em by tomorrow, but I don’t want you laid out before I’ve picked up all the ends. I’ve warned you. You must do as you like. Only don’t go believing she’s a little blue-eyed saint, that’s all.’

Jimmie’s temper, held in till now, continued to rise. Whether it was the implication that he was being made Miss Greye-Stratton’s catspaw, or whether it was the suggestion that the radiant girl was the willing accomplice of a gang of criminals, he did not stop to analyse. He was angry with Menzies because he did not know by intuition what was plain to him—that if she were acting a part it was for the sake of someone else. He regretted now that he was bound not to divulge anything she had told him.

‘I guess you’re a fool, Menzies!’ he sneered. You’re making a mistake this time.’

Menzies took the handle of the door.

‘You think so, do you? Well, we’ll let it go at that.’ He swung the door open. ‘I suppose the lady told you she was—married?’

He spoke casually, as though by an after-thought, but he was quick to observe the change that passed over Jimmie’s face.

‘That’s a lie!’ he blurted out. ‘You’ve got something at the back of your head.’

The detective swung the door to again, and took something from his pocket.

‘Look at that!’ he said; and smoothed a sheet of paper before Hallett’s eyes.

Jimmie read it over twice, unable at first to completely grasp its significance. It was an attested copy of a marriage certificate between Peggy Greye-Stratton and Stewart Reader Ling.

‘She didn’t tell you about this?’ went on the detective, levelly. ‘That may alter your idea that she intends to play straight with you.’

Jimmie was struggling with a tangle of thoughts.

‘Who is Ling?’ he demanded.

‘A crook of the crookedest. He ran a wholesale factory for forged currency notes in the United States ten years ago. That was broken up, and he did five years in Sing Sing. He has been at the back of a lottery swindle since he came out, and Lord knows what else. We’d lost sight of him till I happened to get hold of this copy. That’s the kind of man who’s the husband of Miss Greye-Stratton.’

‘How did you find out?’

Menzies puffed reflectively. He had no intention of completely exposing his hand. He was certain that Peggy Greye-Stratton was the woman who had given Hallett the cheques, and that the latter had deliberately refrained from identifying her. Moreover, he was also convinced that she had told the young man something at lunch, though whether she was, as he affected to believe, using him as a tool, he was not in his own mind certain. The more he considered, the more he felt that she held the key to the mystery, if only she could be induced to speak. With him—with any official of police—she would be on her guard. Hallett, if he could be persuaded, was the one man who might win her confidence without exciting suspicion. So long as his sympathies remained with her, he was unlikely to be persauded. Therefore, if possible, his sympathies had to be alienated.

‘Just common sense,’ growled Menzies—‘ordinary common sense. I learned that she had a wedding ring—though she didn’t wear it. Sent up to Somerset House to inspect the registry of marriages, and got this half an hour ago.’ He laid a hand gently on the the young man’s shoulder. ‘Better do as I advise. Anyway, take care of yourself.’

He did not wait for an answer, but moved softly out of the room. He was wise enough to know when to stop. To say more might be to spoil things. Hallett might safely be left to his own reflections.

Hallett was a man whose brain, as a rule, worked very clearly. But now he was confused, and he strove vainly to reconcile reason with inclination. It seemed ages since the episode of the fog—years since he had looked into the pale, oval face of Peggy Greye-Stratton at lunch. Despite the convincing proof of the marriage certificate, he could not think of her as a married woman. Anyway, he told himself, if Menzies was right in that, it did not follow that all his inferences were right. He had left the ring of honesty in the story she had told him. And yet the idea of the detective was plausible enough. He could see where things dove-tailed. If she were deceiving him, she had been acute enough to tell him a series of half-truths. If she were a willing accomplice, as Menzies supposed, there was reason enough why she should mislead him. He had met female adventuresses before—pretty, cultivated women, some of them—but he had not been impressed by them as he had been by her. But then the circumstances were different.

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