Daredevil

CHAPTER XIV

EXASPERATION OF MR. TEAL

James Mattock read the second proclamation of the Alpha Triangle in his morning paper.

It was headed in the flamboyant fashion of the first, but it was much less circumlocutory. Its comparative brevity lent it a force which had been lacking in its predecessor—a force which gained much from the incidents which had come between the two, and which was emphasised by the account of the Battle of Billingsgate and the subsequent escape of the thirteen prisoners, a scoop that occupied the place of honour next to the manifesto itself.

SECOND MANIFESTO

by the Lord of the Alpha Triangle, in Council, to the Parliament
and People of the United Kingdom.

WHEREBY it is announced as follows:

Seeing that Our first Manifesto has been ignored, We find it necessary to increase the arguments we have already advanced, why it will be advisable for the Government to accede to Our Terms. And this We do according to this Warning: That, until Our receipt of official notification of the Government's acceptance of the aforementioned and previously detailed Terms, We shall destroy the undernamed Objects of Public Property, at intervals of two days from the date hereof, in the order given below.

      The New Underground Junction at Piccadilly Circus.
The Albert Hall.
The National Gallery and the Nelson Monument.
The British Museum.
St. Paul's Cathedral.
The Houses of Parliament.

Concurrently with this Campaign, Our already initiated Policy of Terrorism will be continued and augmented.

GIVEN by Our Hand this Day,
      (Signed)

Followed, in the facsimile which was blazoned across the front page of the Mercury, the sign of the Alpha Triangle.

Mattock read the whole epistle through a second time. Not that it interested him—he already knew it by heart—but because for the first time he had been struck by an almost insignificant detail of the layout. Searching in his wallet for the clipping of the first manifesto, he compared the two, and the confirmation of his idea made him sit very still for some time.

When he reached the Cockspur Street office that morning, he found that Raegenssen had not arrived, and the police were in possession. Shortly afterwards, Inspector Teal himself entered, and promptly buttonholed the ex-convict.

"The last time your boss was in was yesterday, wasn't it?" he drawled.

"Yes."

"What business did he do that day?"

Mattock looked at the detective.

"I've no right to talk about my employer's business," he said.

"No-o?" Teal's voice was silky. "But we want to know all about it—we're just buzzing with interest, in fact—and you look most like the man who's going to tell us."

"I'm sorry about that."

"What did Raegenssen do yesterday?"

"Rotten weather, isn't it?" said Mattock absently, and turned the papers on his desk.

Teal shifted his chewing-gum with a deliberate clamp of his jaws.

"Did he go to the bank by any chance?"

"I suppose," murmured Mattock, staring reflectively out of the window, "I suppose the ducks like it."

"You listen to me, and look at this! You know a warrant by this time, don't you? And d'you know what you'll get, with your record, if I use it? Marchmont Avenue, Hampstead, at the house of Oscar Raegenssen—burglary and assault—five years."

Mattock regarded the paper in the detective's hand calmly. Then he looked at Teal. James Mattock, convicted criminal and sometime jail-bird though he was, had once been a gentleman, according to Teal's own description, and the fact gave him an immeasurable pull over the detective. Teal, blunt and burly, a man of the people who had won his rank from the academy of the beat, felt uncomfortable under the steady once-over of the self-possessed clerk.

"You know," said Mattock kindly, "your tact would make an angel weep."

Teal had one pose which never failed to conceal his embarrassment. His heavy-lidded eyes half-closed, his whole figure relaxed—he looked as if he were on the point of falling asleep on his feet. Everything in the world seemed to bore him to tears.

"All right, Jimmy," he said wearily. "We can't make you squeal if you don't want to. The only thing that struck me was that giving us a bit of help now would cut a lot of ice. I mean, we could give you a hand in return—maybe go blind a trifle the next time you skated near trouble."

"There won't be a next time," was Mattock's uncompromising retort.

"All clear, then, Jimmy. But don't forget what I said. The offer's always open."

It seemed to Teal that Mattock had watched the whole performance with cynical enjoyment, and the clerk's answer verified that impression.

"If you're ever in trouble, Teal," he said, "go along to a music-hall manager. If you get an audition, and your form's up to to-day's, your fortune's made."

Feeling that he had not had the best of the encounter, Teal stalked into the inner office, where detectives were already at work examining the filing cabinets and the drawers of the roll-top desk. Mr. Teal's attention, however, was attracted by the massive safe, and he stood for a time before it, hands in the pockets of his waterproof, his lower jaw functioning monotonously.

Then he turned to one of the men.

"Has this been touched, Topham?"

"No, sir."

"Not a hand been laid on it?"

Topham appealed to his colleagues, and the reply was a fairly confident negative.

"Of course, it's difficult to swear that nobody's touched it without thinking."

Teal nodded.

From his waistcoat pocket he produced a powerful lens in a chamois bag, polished it on his handkerchief, and subjected the surface of the door to a prolonged scrutiny. Secondly, he studied the lock, and then he called one of the men over.

"Take a look at it," he advised. "Now, you see the faint scratches by the keyhole? D'you notice any new ones?"

"Two or three," was the result after a short examination. "There's also some marks inside the edges of the keyhole itself. They're all very new; in this weather the brass would tarnish quickly, and these marks are perfectly bright."

"Would a key be likely to leave those inside scratches?"

The man shook his head.

"I'm not an expert, sir, but I should say not, unless the original key had been lost and a carelessly made substitute used."

"Thank you," said Teal, and sank upon his knees as if in prayer.

He made a number of deep obeisances before the huge steel box, and then regained his feet with a sigh.

"Keep off this bit of carpet," he ordered. "We shall want an expert on this."

The expert was on the spot within fifteen minutes of Teal's telephone summons, and he came to a decision in a very short time.

"This is either Prester John's or Grantor's work," he pronounced, and Teal was too hardened to the daily miracles of the police records department to show any surprise at the definiteness of his Holmesian piece of deduction.

A number of micro-photographs were taken, and the fine specks of metallic dust which Teal had discovered on the carpet in his supplicatory attitude were carefully brushed up and placed in an envelope. The safe was also tested for finger-prints, the expert in that science going over it minutely with his grey powder and camel's hair brush, but nothing whatever rewarded his labours.

"The extraordinary thing," he said, "is that there's no mark of any kind. If Raegenssen had touched the safe at all recently, he either wore gloves or wiped it with a rag afterwards."

In an hour the plates had been developed and compared with similar close-ups classified in the colossal card-index system of the Records Office, and the unhesitating verdict was phoned through to Mr. Teal.

The vote went to Prester John, and the somnolent detective became a perplexed and irritated man, for the fact upset every single one of his theories and dizzied him completely out of his bearings.

After three thoughtful slabs of chewing-gum he rang up Storm, obtained permission, and then got through to the Yard and demanded the attendance of a third expert—a gentleman who in the past years had earned a comfortable income from his knowledge of safes until a false step and a term of confinement at His Majesty's expense had exacted from him due labour of hire already received, and (unusually enough) instilled into the said gentleman an enthusiasm for a more restful, if less remunerative and spectacular, employment on the lee side of the Law. On occasion, however, the ex-yegg had opportunities for the exercise of his craft without fear of retribution, and this was one of those occasions.

"Open that money box," commanded Teal without preface, and the expert, after a practised survey, grinned superciliously.

"This is degradin' an honourable perfession," he complained. "A blind elepeptic palarytic could open this tin wiv an 'air-pin an' a corkscrew. I suppose," went on the uncertain vocabularian, warming to his topic, "it ain't to be dammagid? Becos, if you ain't particulant, an' there 'appens to be a sardine opener on the presimes——"

"Get on with it," said the detective testily, for he was not feeling humorous at the moment.

The expert got to work with a pained air, first experimenting with three skilfully twisted lengths of steel wire, and then filing a key with the result of his investigations to guide him.

At the end of half an hour:

"An' 'ere we are. All chynge for Charing Cross an' the Pink Elephant an' Castrol. Pass dahn the car, please! An' I may say, Mr. Charman, that a softer crib 'as yet to be builded. Why, if the game 'ad bin so elemtenary in my days, when I was an exterp at the skience, I'd've bin a blinkin' millionanthropist by now, I would. Drivin' abaht Myfair in a calabriot, wiv all the flatties touchin' their 'ats to me an' 'opin' I'd put a monkey in their Christmas Box. That's the narks all over. One lore for the rich an' another fer the porous. An' no gratootooies—'cept from those 'oo make them big enough." He regarded the confounded detective in wonder. "Well, well, Mr. Teal—wot's the matter? Ain't nothink there? Well, wot did jer expect ter find? A leopotamosceraffe or a box o' pink pills? This ain't Masculine's, yer know. No conjuratin' in this gallery."

"Shut up, Nosey," said Teal rudely. "You can leg it now—we shan't want you any more. Oh, leave that key behind you. I want to shut this thing up again when I've finished."

When the "exterp" had taken his departure Teal sat back on the desk and stared at the open safe. Empty, vacuously empty, it stared back at him—one of the most annoying voids he had ever seen. The rows of steel shelves were bare. The only souvenir that Prester John had left behind him was the cardboard replica of the Triangle badge which Teal had managed to conceal from the roving eye of the ex-yegg.

Teal went back to the outer office and interrupted Mattock from the work of balancing a bulky ledger.

"When were you last here?" demanded the detective.

"Yesterday," said Mattock, without looking up.

"Did you go into that inner office?"

"Yes."

"What time was this?"

"About eleven-thirty."

"P.m.?" asked Teal sleepily.

Mattock raised his eyes with a tired expression.

"Oh, are you still here?" he sighed.

"Pip emma?" repeated Teal.

Mattock closed the ledger and pushed back his chair. His face was a picture of long-suffering tolerance.

"Is this a new kind of round game?" he inquired politely. "Because, if so, can't you get a detective or some other imbecile to play with you?"

"No—you'll do. Is Prester John a friend of yours?"

"I seem to have read about him. Did he write a book or something?"

Teal played his penultimate card.

He leaned over the desk and addressed Mattock in a confidential undertone.

"Listen here," he said. "Joan's in the Triangle—you know that, don't you? And you're fond of a Joan. So am I. A nice kid. It's only circumstances make a crook of her. I'd hate to see her follow the rest of the Triangle into stir, and she will, in time, if one of you hasn't a pull somewhere. You're independent now, but I guess there's a day coming when you'll be glad of a friend or two on the Embankment.".

Mattock studied his finger-nails.

"When we sink as low as that," he said carefully, "I'll let you know."

Inspector Teal straightened himself and shrugged. He walked over to the door of the inner office and called one of his men, and together they returned to the clerk.

"Arrest that man," said Teal, and Mattock rose to his feet with a charming smile.

"The charge?" he asked pleasantly.

"Burglary and assault at the house of Oscar Raegenssen on the fourteenth instant. Accessory before and after the fact in the burglary committed in this office last night. Suspected of concealing knowledge of the whereabouts of Oscar Raegenssen, who is wanted on a warrant issued last night. I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used as evidence against you."

Mattock bowed.

"Thanks for being so lucid. But you've got the last part of it wrong, you know. The correct formula is, used as evidence at your trial."

"As evidence at your trial," Teal corrected himself testily. "Take him away."

"One moment." Mattock stopped him. "The third charge falls to the ground, naturally. You've only asked me about Raegenssen's past movements—not about his present whereabouts."

"That'll keep," said Teal viciously. "Try it on the jury."

He was feeling rather fed up with Mattock's imperturbable assurance.

They took Mattock to Headquarters, and the formal charge was made. The same mocking tolerance permeated the man's demeanour when the usual questions were asked.

"Name?"

"James Norman Mattock."

"Age?"

"Fifty-seven years, eight months, one week, four days"—he looked at his watch—"eleven hours and about forty minutes."

"Address?"

"I decline to answer that question."

His tone encouraged no insistence on the inquiry, and they let it go at that.

They were taking him to his cell when he called Inspector Teal.

"I suppose I'll have to stop behind bars for a bit to satisfy your vanity," he said, "but I don't want it to be too long. So you might get hold of Captain Arden when you have the chance, and ask him if he'll see me."

"I'll find out how his temper is this morning," Teal promised him, and Mattock passed on with a courteous word of thanks.

In Storm's room, however, the detective found something else to occupy his mind, and it temporarily eclipsed his concern as to the fate of James Norman Mattock.

"I've got hold of a copy of the deed of sale of that sawmill," Kit said. "It's signed by Raegenssen, more or less, but there's something wrong with the signature—it doesn't agree with the writing on the papers they brought in from his office. Men with two handwritings make me take notice!"

Teal looked at the parchment, and particularly at the date.

"Two months ago. That's about when the reformation set in," he observed.

In the City and Continental office, Joe Blaythwayt was inclined to be taciturn about his client's business until the importance of his coöperation was pointed out to him, and duly signed authorisation produced.

"No, that's not his ordinary signature," he said as soon as he saw the conveyance. "I'll get you some genuine specimens."

He returned almost immediately with a bundle of cancelled cheques, and these Storm compared with the signature of the deed. The two were totally dissimilar. Whereas the writing on the parchment was small and neat, all the cheques were signed in a thick, sprawling hand.

The latest cheque attracted his attention for another reason.

"That's a lot of money to draw in cash," he remarked. "How did he take it?"

"Fivers. It wasn't the first time—I think you'll find two others made out for large sums, though that one is easy the largest he's ever put through."

Teal nodded.

"One way he is Triangular, the other way he isn't," he said peevishly. "That man's the two horns of a fat dilemma, all right. That sawmill wasn't really his, then!"

Storm rang up the other party to the sale, and found him after some trouble—the managing director of a firm of paper manufacturers with an office close by. Having found that the man was disengaged, Teal and he went round and interviewed him.

The result was not satisfactory.

"I remember the transaction distinctly; I should have remembered it, anyway, even if it hadn't been so recent, because of the way payment was made."

"How?" asked Teal perfunctorily, for the trial did not seem to him to be leading anywhere.

"In notes of four different countries," was the reply. "All denominations, big and small. United States dollars, the new Reichmarks, Spanish pesetas, and Italian lire. I didn't want to take them because of the Exchange risk—something considerable in a sum as long as this one—but he promptly added a five per cent. allowance to cover that."

"That must have cost him something."

The director nodded.

"Next, I was afraid of forgeries, but there again he met me. He went round with me to the bank and was present while the notes were examined and passed."

Teal, interested, suspended chewing for a moment while he put a question.

"Hard to describe," said the director. "Nothing noticeable about him, except his height. Past middle age, I should say. Grey hair, eyes light blue, lined face, walked like a much younger man. Very well built, small iron-grey moustache——"

"Beard?"

"No."

"Any kind of accent?"

"None at all. He spoke English perfectly. I'd take my oath he was an Englishman."

"Raegenssen himself without face fungus!" exclaimed Teal. "I always thought that accent of his was a fake—it sounded too much like the cheap revue idea of a Dutchman. It was Raegenssen."

"Or Mattock cleverly padded," added the sceptical Kit. "If you were going to do a deal in my name wouldn't you try to make up to look like me in a general description?"

The mention of Mattock recalled to Teal his prisoner's request, and he would have mentioned it as they returned to the Yard, but Storm was already off on another tack.

"You remember Miss Hawthorne told me over the phone she'd recognised someone in that getaway? Well, she won't pass the glad news on unless I promise she's to have a part in the play. Rat all women!"

"Arrest her as an accessory," suggested Teal sardonically.

"I'd be happier if she was inside! Kill H.... Teal, if you go down and break the neck of that constable who fell over himself last night I'll guarantee to rescue you from the gallows! He's put everything back by weeks. By the way, did that ad. go in the Era?"

"To-morrow," said Teal. "I put it over on Birdie all right. Mattock said I was a great actor," he added reminiscently, and recollected his promise.

Teal waited in the charge room while Storm paid a visit to the clerk's cell, and picked up a newspaper to while away the time.

In those days the Press was so full of the Triangle that most other information was crowded away into obscure paragraphs in small type which few people ever read. Teal, having a single-track mind, rarely had time to assimilate any news which did not bear directly on the case in hand, and politics concerned him not at all.

But he already knew the Triangle news by heart, and the second manifesto was by then as familiar to him as his own face. Consequently, he broke his usual habits and cast an eye over the other happenings of the world. And one section fairly leapt to his eye.

DEATH OF A GREAT SCIENTIST
DEPORTED AUSTRIAN CHEMIST COMMITS SUICIDE
UNCOMPLETED WORK

(Daily Mercury Special Correspondent)

VIENNA, Tuesday, June 3rd.

A drama of real life is locked up in the news of the death of the Austrian scientist, Carl Schewesen, who was deported from England some years ago. Schewesen's clothes were found on the banks of the Danube, together with a note explaining that he was taking what seemed to him to be the only way out of a hopeless existence.

Schewesen was known to have been making researches into the possibility of stabilising Nitrogen Trichloride (NCl₃), the most powerful explosive known to science, but, as far as contemporary methods of preparation have progressed, entirely without practical use, since even particles of dust settling upon it from the atmosphere are sufficient to detonate it. Schewesen had announced a few days before his death that his experiments promised an epoch-making success. He has left no notes behind, however, and it is to be feared that his knowledge has died with him.

Teal read the paragraph a second time, for this premature obituary notice did not appeal to his sense of humour. He was quite certain that Carl Schewesen was alive and in London, and, Storm returning with Mattock at that moment, he pointed to the column and vented his surmise.

Storm read it through, and looked grave.

"NCl₃," he murmured. "That sounds like more fun!"

"Is it very powerful?" asked Teal, and Storm smiled.

"If a small saltspoonful went off between us now, they'd be able to bury us in matchboxes!" he said.

It was then that Teal noticed the presence of Mattock, and turned to scowl at the man. Mattock had been looking over the detective's shoulder unobserved, and his smile showed that he had heard the conversation.

"I know all about Carl," Mattock said. "But the problem ought to amuse the flatties for some time. Flatties, I think, was the term Nosey used?"

Teal was struck by the change in the man's manner since he had met him in Walton Street Police Station. Then, Mattock had had the truculence which comes of an inferiority complex; but that had now dispersed as though it had never existed. In spite of the shabbiness of his clothes and the ugly lines which prison had cut in his face, he bore himself with a calm confidence that annoyed Teal. It annoyed him because he could not understand it. It was so out of keeping with the part of the lag under supervision. Truculence was regular, and cringing was also in order, though less common. So, too, was friendliness. But superiority—no.

"You look pleased with yourself," said Teal glutinously, falling back into his rôle of ennui personified.

"So I feel," agreed Mattock. "Captain Arden has very kindly permitted me to be released." He glanced at his wrist. "It's just lunch time. Thank the Lord I'm spared the culinary abortions you serve to persons in custody."

Teal's jaw dropped.

"Is that true?" he asked, and Storm nodded.

"I'm sorry, Inspector," he said officially. "I don't think any of the charges against this man will stand. You will, however, keep him under observation."

"I will!" asserted Teal grimly.

Mattock raised his hat and sauntered to the door with a smile. There, he paused.

"I should keep an eye on Uncle Joe, too," was his parting shot.

Teal stared sombrely at the door through which the man had passed. He shook his head sorrowfully.

"And there, by the Grace of the Devil," he muttered, "goes a man who knows far, far more about the Triangle than I shall ever find out."

"I've also cancelled the warrant that's out against Raegenssen," Storm said. "I don't think any charge will stand against him, either, yet. It's easy to prove that the signature to that deed isn't his, and there's no chance of tracing those foreign bills. You won't even get him by identification—nor will you get Mattock, for the matter of that. Neither of 'em fit exactly."

He was tapping a cigarette on his case when the telephone rang, and he was told that the call was for him. When he came back, the light of war was in his eyes.

"Now we shall see some more battle, murder and sudden death!" he said. "That was to say Mecklen's better. I'm going to get him to court to-morrow, if there's a whole army of Triangles in the way! And then we'll see if he'll squeak."

"He isn't the Triangle, anyway," said Teal gloomily. "Is it Mattock?"

Storm did not answer.

"Or is it Uncle Joe?"

Storm was intent upon the feat of throwing his cigarette high in the air and catching it between his lips—a piece of amateur juggling which he performed with skill.

"Then it must be Raegenssen," Teal said dreamily.

"Keep on guessing," Storm encouraged.

Mr. Teal shook his head and nipped the end from a rank cigar.

"You're so close, you'd make an oyster look like a yawning whale," he protested in despair. "Now, why let Mattock out? I'll bet that man knows all the things we want to know about Alphas and Apexes."

"Speak for yourself," murmured Storm, concluding his exhibition of sleight-of-hand by throwing his cigarette over his shoulder from the back and trapping it faultlessly.

Teal did not applaud.

"He must have had something exciting to tell you," he pondered aloud. "Was it absolutely necessary to release him?"

Storm, who was striking a match, watched it flare, and then looked up with his quick smile.

"Oh—sure!" he drawled. "He's going to kill Raegenssen!"

CHAPTER XV

ONCE A GENTLEMAN

Storm being an unconventional young man, it was not to be expected that the private report on the Battle of Billingsgate which he sent to Sir John Marker would be strictly in accord with conventional ideas on the correct composition of such documents. Kit Arden had no manner of use for formulas; jargon made him feel ill; in the presence of the bugaboo of official phraseology he positively writhed. He banged out his points with crisp simplicity, and framed them in sentences like bullets.

The letter is worth quoting in extenso, for reasons which will be apparent at sight.

When once the door of the sawmill had been opened, and the janitor removed without noise, the fate of the Alpha Triangle hung by a hair. In spite of the telephone call which told the men in the building that their heavily armoured bag had lost its cat, they could not forecast the minute in which the information so gained would be acted upon. The future of the organisation was suspended by that slender thread; our hope of being in amongst them, raising Hell, before they could collect their wits. You already know how that thread was snapped.

Whatever a man's genius, he cannot dream of terrorising a city—as the Apex intends to do—without a large number of assistants. With his young army of helpers locked away, he would have been crippled—perhaps irretrievably.

However, we failed—so that's that. Anyway, all we made was an attempt to maim, when our object is to kill.

One or two details stand over.

(1) Besides myself, two others got into the sawmill. One was Miss Hawthorne, secretary to the late Lord Hannassay, who went simply in search of adventure. The second was Joseph Blaythwayt, manager of the City and Continental Bank, Lombard Street, who in his spare time aspires to sleuthship. He is a friend of Inspector Teal, from whom he had heard unpublished facts about the Triangle which (on his own account) fired him with thoughts of honour and glory as an amateur Sherlock. He is also one of the lives threatened by the Triangle, which fact does not perturb him unduly.

(2) In my opinion, the telephone call which followed our departure came by chance, and was not based on knowledge of any of our plans.

(3) Raegenssen's office was burgled last night, and the safe opened, but I don't know if the men found anything. A lot of attention has centred round Raegenssen lately, so I expect his obituary notice is only a matter of days.

The Billingsgate raid having failed, I am basing my next move on the Era advertisement. It will, of course, be risky; but if anything goes wrong you will know what to do.

I can only guess how the Triangle will continue its campaign. I probably have a better appreciation of that colossal mind than anybody else; but if I gave you a logical prophecy, even you might begin to regard me as an imaginative alarmist. The solid fact, which you and everyone else has got to get hold of, is that for the time being all the odds are on the Triangle. They have all the advantage of surprise. Just now, the police aren't prepared. Violent crime isn't familiar to them yet. They can't quite adjust themselves to it—it'll catch them napping, and they'll take time to get busy. There's a genius at the top of the Triangle—or a lunatic, whichever you care to call him—and the police are neither geniuses nor lunatics. They're just plain ornery men dealing with plain ornery crooks, with all the odds on the crook. Crooks catch themselves and each other, but there'll be no nosing the Triangle. It can pay too well, and the little twisters follow the big money. Gangs in the past have gone just because discontented members shopped them. There will be no discontented members of the Triangle—why, their chief can even pull them out of the hands of the police! The rescue of the Billingsgate prisoners will add tremendously to the prestige of the Apex.

I promised you the head of the Apex on a Triangle in a fortnight, and that fortnight still has some time to run.

The brain of the Apex moves in such great leaps that nothing less than genius could anticipate it from pinnacle to pinnacle. Against that there is only one card to play—fear. Even genius has nerves. Even genius can be made to worry about its neck.

I shall win.

The removal of Lew Mecklen from St. George's Hospital to Marlborough Street Police Court was not advertised, but Storm did not doubt that the Intelligence Bureau of the Triangle had its own sources of information. He had asked for, and secured, a special escort from Wellington Barracks, and they were served out with ball ammunition. It was a wise precaution, for the soldier, being a lethal machine, is less chary of using firearms than the London constable, who is a civil institution into whose routine the more effective forms of violence rarely enter. Apparently the Triangle admitted that Mecklen was well guarded, for no attempt was made on the armoured car in which the gunman rode with platoons of scarlet-coated men marching in front and behind.

Lew was taken into the tiny court-room, and a stream of detectives followed him and filled the rest of the space. Outside, uniformed men blocked the tiled hall, and the military escort stood at ease in the road.

The proceedings were brief, for attempted murder offers no option of summary jurisdiction. Mecklen pleaded not guilty and declined to instruct a solicitor. Evidence of arrest was taken, to which the prisoner paid little attention. The verbal proceedings seemed not to interest him, but he studied his surroundings curiously. He did not cross-examine, and made no statement, and the whole business took no more than ten minutes.

"Without a hitch," remarked Storm, in grim reminiscence of the formal Press account of executions—"thanks to the Army!"

Mecklen was committed for trial, and, whilst the necessary papers were being made out and signed, he was taken to a cell in the adjoining police station. It was when they removed him and told him that he would be taken immediately to Brixton Prison that he showed his first sign of uneasiness. He asked if a message had come for him, and, when informed that none had arrived up to that time, he asked to be allowed to see a newspaper. On Storm's authority, the request was refused, and Mecklen was handcuffed and led out between a double rank of policemen. Teal went in front and Storm brought up the rear, and as the cortège came into view of the street Teal halted so suddenly that Storm trod on the prisoner's heels.

Pushing his way to the front, Arden found the detective staring up and down the street with a ludicrously blank expression on his sanguine countenance. Storm looked also, and his lean face hardened. There was a cab rank in the road, and he went over at once and asked a question of one of the drivers.

"About arf an hour ago," said the man. "Just after the man'd bin taken in. A cop comes out an 'ands a note to the orf'cer, an' walks away, an' then the orf'cer shouts 'Shun! an' off they goes."

"Did you see the constable's face?" asked Storm, and the chauffeur scratched his head.

"S'pose I must 'ave, but I didn't take much stock of it. You don't inspect every copper's dial wot yer sees—you'd get 'eart failure! Just looked an ord'nary pleeceman to me. 'Ulkin' great feller, oldish, walked as if 'e owned the earth—like they all do."

"Thank you," said Storm bitterly, and returned to the waiting group on the station steps.

By that time the escort would be back in barracks. In the first instance, there had been more than enough red tape, and no little grumbling in high places about troops being called upon to do the work of the police. A fresh escort would not be procured without considerable delay, and perhaps not even then. And yet a military guard Storm was determined to have. As it turned out later, he had made a grave mistake in jumping to the conclusion that the dismissal of the soldiery by means of a forged message was simply a ruse to make him send Mecklen to the prison in the ordinary van and under police escort only. Bearing in mind the Tower Hill affair, this was the explanation he had reached, and it made him doubly set on attempting no such hazard. He had Mecklen taken back to his cell, and ordered a special watch to be mounted over him. Then he rang up the C.O. at the barracks, and found that the two platoons had just returned.

"You might find out if the officer kept my note," he said, and waited until the requisite information was forthcoming. "He has? ... I'm sending a constable round for it now; he'll give his number, which is C2447.... Oh, no, nothing whatever, except that the note happens to be a fake! ... That so? Well, you're not half so sorry as I am."

He listened for a moment, and then replaced the receiver with great care.

"Started to quote me: If you want a thing done well," he explained. "On the whole, the observation's appropriate, but not the way he meant."

Teal was looking glum.

"I don't like it," he confessed. "And yet, on the face of it, Lew's almost as safe here as he'd have been in Brixton. But this Triangle's a shade too snappy for Claud Eustace—they think of things the ordinary crook'd laugh at, and they do 'em, and so far they've got away with them every darned time by sheer nerve."

"There's a special guard," Storm said, "and you can spend the night here yourself if you like. I'll see if I can see Marker and get a special order for another parade to-morrow. We can't do any more. Either the Triangle's thinking of raiding the station, or they're planning to hold up the prison van, and I think the first is the least likely to succeed."

Teal shook his head.

"I agree; but it doesn't make me happy. Triangles have three corners, so I guess they might manage to have a prick waiting in two places," he said prophetically.

Down at the Yard, however, a slight ray of hope awaited them, for the call put out the previous day for Prester John had been successful, and the burglar was even then being detained in Cannon Row pending audience.

The man who had made the arrest foreshadowed the result of the interview in his account.

"I took John in a bar in Camden Tower, where he often goes. He didn't deny the charge, and said he was coming along to see Captain Arden to-day, anyhow."

"He's got his wish, then," said Teal. "Send him up."

The facetious parent who, while replete with beer, had bestowed upon Mr. John the prænomen of Prester must have been gifted with second sight. The celebrated infringer of the laws of property resembled nothing so much as an elderly parson. He was lank and lofty, sallow-complexioned and blue of chin. He affected clothes of clerical hue, wore a high Gladstonian collar and a black bow tie, and generally gave the impression of sanctimoniousness incarnate.

"Good morning, brethren," he said politely. "I heard that my Lords had need of men, and I came."

It was his invariable greeting when summoned before the police to account for his lapses, and he accompanied it with an equally automatic gesture, holding his elbows in to his sides, bringing his forearms horizontal, and spreading out his flat palms in the same plane, a mannerism which the irreverent Inspector Teal described as "John's lo-and-behold mitt-flap."

"Acoustics excellent!" commented Storm. "I hear you visited Mr. Raegenssen last night."

"On business," nodded Prester John.

"And was he pleased to see you?" asked Teal.

"He was—er—unfortunately unable to attend."

Storm passed his cigarette case to the pious one and, when John declined, lighted a cigarette himself.

"How much was Mattock paying you?" he asked, waving his match in the air to extinguish it.

"Mattock?"

"Raegenssen's clerk. He put you on to the job, didn't he?"

"Not that I know of—although, of course, since the name is unfamiliar to me, he may have been the man. May I sit down? It assists the train of thought."

Permission being granted, the man seated himself with a sigh and hitched up his trousers fastidiously. Leaning back, he fixed his eyes on the ceiling and pressed the tips of his fingers together like a pedantic schoolmaster, and after a dramatic pause he deigned to continue.

"The circumstances are—to say the least of it—curious," he said. "To commence, then: I am, as you probably know by now, a member of the society called the Alpha Triangle. You have heard of it, of course?"

"No," said Teal, sotto voce.

"Not, you understand, that I associate myself in any way with the outrages which they propose to commit," John explained hastily. "No. I am simply a wage slave—an employee—an hireling. And, in passing, the hire is worthy of the hireling. My employers pay me a salary, which is very comfortable—thank you—and in return I undertake to deal with such refractory locks and so forth as they wish to penetrate. So far I have had little to do, although I was given to understand that there would be an important piece of work for me in the near future. The Bank of England, I think Surcon said—Surcon is the name by which the Apex is known to his men. An assumed name, of course, but we are not encouraged to discover his real one. There was a man named Rodriguez—a Portuguese—who said he was going to find out the real name and put the black—I believe that is the correct slang, Mr. Teal?—and—er—where had I got to? Oh, yes, put the black on. Polite people call it demanding money with menaces. Rodriguez died the other day. Enteric, you know. I'm sure of that, because I was able to take a swab from the hypodermic syringe Mr. Surcon used when he treated Rodriguez to a shot of morphine. Surcon says he qualified as a doctor. So did I. In my leisure moments, I still dabble in bacteriology, and bacilli typhosi are easily recognised under the microscope by the trained observer. So—er—one is not encouraged to be inquisitive, is one?"

"Quite," murmured Storm.

Inspector Teal cleared his throat noisily, fumbled aimlessly in his pockets, and came across a battered cigar. He nipped the end from it, and sought for matches. Instead, he found a virgin packet of spearmint, and abandoned fumigation in favour of mastication. Then, having returned the weary weed to his pocket and posted a wafer of chicle in his mouth, he struck a match and absently wondered why there wasn't anything to light.

Which seems to indicate a certain perturbation.

It does. Mr. Teal was familiar with the vanity of criminals, their affectations and their powers of plausible invention, but the yarn of Prester John was something which failed to enter the borders of his experience. The germ of truth in it stuck out like the Eiffel Tower: he had always known that Prester John had drifted to burglary, not from Borstal, but from Balliol, solely because of the moral kink in his nature. But the lying of criminals—which psychologists will tell you is "pathological," whatever that may mean—is expressly designed for the covering up of their defects and defections—not the revelation of the same. Wherefore Prester John became an interesting specimen.

A fact which seemed to have entered the mind of that oleaginous man, for he allowed an appreciable time to elapse before he resumed his confession—time during which the theatrical atmosphere piled up hand over fist.

"Well—to return," he went on at last. "Last night I received a telephone call in the name of the Apex, instructing me to proceed with all speed to Scandinavia House, Cockspur Street. My lord had need of me, so I went." Interval for the lo-and-behold mitt-flap. "Entering the office to which I had been directed to proceed, I found seated at a desk a masked man—that sounds a bit thick to you, I suppose, Mr. Teal, but you've got to take my word for it. Er—a masked man, as I said. Most extraordinary."

He had a trick of affecting to have lost the thread of his discourse, and finding his place with an exaggerated effort of concentration.

"This man—masked, as I told you—er—where was I? Oh, yes; this man explained to me that in his rôle of Ezra Surcon—did I tell you that the Apex called himself Ezra Surcon?"

"You did," assented Teal patiently. "He explained?"

"That he was, of course, disguised when he appeared before us, and he had not had time to assume his disguise that night. Therefore, with a solicitude for my own safety which, I may say, touched me to the heart—therefore, he had donned a mask. And that was that. He indicated a safe, and invited me to open it. Which, reasonably enough—you understand—I did. And, when I got in"—lo-and-behold—"the cupboard was bare!"

Storm tapped the ash from his cigarette. The revelation affected him less than it did Inspector Teal; for he had already deducted much of what he now heard, and the criminal's story came as little more than a confirmation.

"Well, Mother Hubbard?" he prompted.

"And that was all," Prester John concluded with an eloquent wave of his hand. "Shall I ask you to picture the scene? My masked friend, shaking with baffled rage—quite upset, you know. Some people take things to heart so. It's a thing I—er—as I was saying, shaking with baffled rage; myself, calm and serene, rather like a turf accountant's clerk as the horses pass the post, knowing that whoever may have lost money his own wages are secure.… There's an extraordinary attraction for me in gambling—I've always wanted——" He caught a murderous gleam in Inspector Teal's eye, and tactfully returned to the point. "So that was that. Shall I endeavour to picture for you the scene—to—to delineate, so to speak, the situation? Shall I——"

"No," said Teal with determination. "What happened after the tableau?"

John shrugged.

"What would you? I went. My Lord's manner did not give me the assurance which every gentleman requires before he continues to inflict his company on a comrade, that he is welcome. You follow? The moment did not appear propitious for bringing up such sordid topics as my own remuneration. I folded up my wallet and silently stole away."

He uncrossed his legs as though, his mission accomplished, he was about to repeat that man[oe]uvre, but Teal's curiosity was no more than whetted.

"Did you see any Triangles that night?"

"Er—no."

"Not this?" persisted Teal, and produced from his wallet the cardboard insigne he had found in the safe.

Prester John examined it with interest, but he shook his head as he handed it back.

"This is one of the badges which are issued to the inferior members—the rank and file, so to speak," he said. "The higher members have tokens of silver and enamel. My own—er—have you finished with it yet, by the way?"

The question was ignored. Teal and Storm were busy with their own thoughts, and both these ran in the same channel. Storm, who was watching the methods of the two men dispassionately, allowed the detective to give tongue.

"Why have you spun us this yarn?"

"Why? I—er—thought it might possibly be of some assistance," said John deprecatingly. "As a matter of fact, I am giving up my illegal activities altogether, and resigning from the Triangle. I heard this morning that some obscure relative had died and left me money—nothing great, you understand, but sufficient at least to enable me to inhabit once more those haunts of culture and respectability after which my soul hankers."

Teal grunted non-committally and made a mental memorandum to verify this glad news. Prester John read the disbelief on the round red face, and smiled faintly.

"That happens to be true," he said.

"Then can you help us to locate any other members—silver badge size members, I mean—or any boltholes?"

John made a negative gesture regretfully.

"I wish I could," he said. "Unfortunately, I was never taken to any rendezvous but the one at Billingsgate, of which you already know. As for members, I have never—er—been in the habit of associating with gentlemen in the same—er—line of business as myself. Now that I am meditating a return to the straight and narrow path, my chief ambition is to—er—rehabilitate myself with the police, bearing no malice for the many tussles we have had in the past. But my acquaintances are unhappily so useless for your purpose."

Teal knew that this was the truth, for one of Prester John's many peculiarities was that he never mixed with other criminals, planned and executed all his coups single-handed, and disposed of the proceeds through channels unknown to the underworld.

"There's no clue you could give us about the masked man?" said Storm.

"Nothing. In fiction, a scar—a limp—a missing button. In real life, nothing. Tall, and I should think well-built; but since he wore an overcoat I shall not take the risk of—er—perjuring myself on that point."

Storm himself opened the door to the reforming burglar, and, receiving an almost imperceptible signal, followed the man out into the passage.

"All I've told you is blowed-in-the-glass," said Prester John in a rapid undertone, his pose having dropped from him like a cloak. "I am really going straight, and I know no more than I've told you. Except this. I know how it is between you and Miss Hawthorne—why, if a split sneezes it's known all over the underworld in half an hour. The order went out that she's got to go, and Lew's been told off to do it. He's going to escape to-night—I suppose you knew that? But that isn't Lew's way." He looked at Storm steadily. "The difference between Lew and me is that I was once a gentleman—whatever that may mean. But I was. Lew never will be. His mind is so ... vulgar. Take a stable tip."

He held out his hand a little hesitatingly, and smiled when Storm took it.

"Thanks," said Storm. "But why couldn't you say that in front of Teal?"

"My—er—dear sir, one must make good exits—intriguing curtains." He swung his stick, and once more his face was sanctimonious and his voice treacly. "The worthy Inspector Teal has, in his blundering fashion, crossed swords with me on many memorable occasions. Once, he even succeeded in obtaining my—er—incarceration for a period of three years—-the only time I have ever been inside. Painstaking—slow and sure—but not brilliant. I have taken a number of years convincing him that the Church was my proper métier. His mind is not elastic. I feared that if I—er—removed the mask of the musical comedy parson the shock, you know—terrible, terrible, terrible—all one's ideas dislocated—and so forth. You appreciate my point?" he pleaded, and there was a peep of laughter in Storm's grey eyes as he watched the lank figure pass mincingly down the stone corridor.

CHAPTER XVI

SENSATION OUT OF COURT

Storm returned to meet the lazily inquiring gaze of Inspector Teal. Teal was far too ponderous a man to be swayed by the emotions of the thin-flanked herd, but it was obvious that puzzlement was seething within his placid bulk—the symptom was the exaggerated precision with which his jaws chewed from side to side the plastic sweetmeat of Mr. Wrigley—and Storm was privately amused.

"What was his secret?" demanded the detective with assumed languor, when after some time the information had not been volunteered.

"Oh—Prester John sent you his love," Storm replied truthfully but uncertainly. "He didn't dare give it you in person!"

Mr. Teal's recumbent mountainousness heaved with an explosive grunt which registered unbelief.

They parted, for Storm had a luncheon engagement for which he did not wish to be unpunctual. He met Susan at the portals of the Regal, and thought that he had rarely seen her looking so beautiful. Being gloriously ignorant of the niceties of feminine apparel, he received from her dress no other impression than that it suited her to perfection. In her smart costume of plain bisque, relieved only by the daring splash of green where a flowing kerchief was knotted loosely at the throat of her white silk undertunic, she was piquantly beautiful. The bright sunshine lit up her smiling face, and its searching brilliance at once absolved her red lips and the faint flush of health on her cheeks from all accusation of artifice.

They made a striking couple.

Her loveliness was none of that pink-and-white fragility to which a certain type of Frenchwoman aspires—prettiness which is at one and the same glance irresistibly attractive and yet so obviously unfitted for any locale but the drawing-room and the Poiret gown. She was essentially a girl of the open spaces, with the lithe, free grace of carriage and the delicate browning of a clear skin which come only with a perfectly functioning body bred of, and to, the love of plenty of exercise in the eye of the sun and in the breath of the wind. And Storm fitted her perfectly, being a man good to look upon and finely built, and having a boyish love of laughter always lurking in his steady eyes to counteract the first impression of hardness you got from the squareness of his jaw and the vigorous set of his mouth. Outstanding at once by the lissom poise of his athletic figure, with just that indefinable air of restraint about him which is the infallible sign of a tremendously dynamic vitality controlled and directed by a dominant will.

He had meant to talk to her gravely, warning her of the dangers she was running, and pointing out the foolhardiness of her last night's adventure. She, for her part, had made up her mind to laugh at his fears and complain of his selfishness in keeping all the thrills for himself. He had meant to be firm: she had meant to be defiant. Somehow, neither programme produced according to schedule.

"Who was the man you recognized last night?" he asked her point blank, and her resolutions crumbled so weakly that she hated herself.

"The man we saw when we had that motor accident," she answered meekly. "Mattock, I think you called him."

Storm had known that, unless she was bluffing, it must have been one of three men, and he annoyed her afresh by the coolness with which he received the report.

"He's an enterprising man," he murmured, passing his cigarette case across the table. "One of these days there'll be trouble for James—you wager the haberdashery on uncle!"

"Aren't you interested?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Fairly! I know nearly everything there is to be known about Mattock. At the moment, I'm betting in my mind which'll die first—James Norman or Oscar Siegfried. That problem, however, is reserved strictly for office hours, and this is my lunch interval. What're you going to do about a job now Papa Hannassay is with the majority?"

"I don't know that I need one," she said surprisingly. "He's left me everything. I heard from the solicitors this morning."

Storm bit his lip.

"How much?"

The bluntness of his question made her stare at him. She found him unaccountably irritating that afternoon, and had half a mind to snub him, but she decided that that might be a failure. He had an amused way of laughing at people who stood on their dignity which was absolutely impossible to deal with.

"Ten thousand odd—if you're so desperately interested," she said frigidly, and was speedily disconcerted.

His eyes danced with quiet mockery.

"I am. Desperately interested," he assured her, and his smile swept pettiness out of existence. "Susan, don't be small! It's an important question, because I always understood old Pop Hannassay was rich."

"Don't be irreverent," she said severely. "De mortuis——"

"Nil nisi ludicrum. And how about the dead what die in their sins?"

She opened her bag and handed him the letter. He read it through carefully, and then made a note of the address of the solicitors.'

"Bylom, Craill and Bylom, Suffolk House, Lester Street, Strand. I'll see 'em this afternoon. Ten thousand! Jerusalem—a few years ago old Daddy—sorry, Susan!—Lord Hannassay was worth about half a million. You ought to be rich, instead of the unreasonably proud heiress to a paltry ten thousand!"

"How do you know all this?" she asked in wonder.

He was not disposed to enlighten her at that moment.

"There's damn little I don't know!" he boasted airily. "The snag is, it's going to take me all my time to remove just those little scraps of ignorance!" He looked at her for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, and then dropped a bolt from the blue: "When can you be married?"

Her face went blank.

He disregarded all the time-honoured laws governing the proper setting, manner and preliminaries for such questions. Twice he had made love to her—once, years ago, in his breezy, inconsequent manner in the kitchen of the Presidential Palace of Olvidada; for the second time, on that night when he had driven her home from Raegenssen's. And when he made love he was irresistible. On the whole, it was a proposition he should by rights have put forward long ago; yet, now that he had put it forward, the suddenness seemed alarming. It caused a queer constriction about her heart, and at the same time it brought to a head the vague and formless anger that had troubled her all day. He had been almost insulting—he broke every accepted canon for proposals. In fact, he did not propose at all: he took her for granted, and she was furious.

"Married to whom?" she asked with dangerous obtuseness.

"To me, of course."

The perplexed lift of her straight brows was perfectly done.

"I don't understand. Why should I marry you?"

His eyes held hers, and at the back of that clear gaze she saw a glint of comprehension and, coincidently, of good-humoured reproof which was maddening. Without batting an eyelid, he suggested a sympathetic elder amusedly tolerating the peevishness of a child.

"I really don't know," he said coolly. "It occurred to me you might like to. Besides, you love me."

The man's audacity stunned her. In her consternation it was some time before she could find suitable words wherewith to administer a stinging rebuke, and the effort was not diminished by the knowledge that he had spoken nothing but the truth.

"You flatter yourself," she said coldly, and he smiled.

"You flatter me," was his quick response. "Now, for the love of Mike don't boil over with rage—not till we've finished eating, anyway. Squabbling at meal times is so horribly bad for the digestion! You wouldn't like me to utter a loud shriek and collapse on the floor, clasping my diaphragm—a young man stricken down in his prime with dyspepsia—would you?"

Her retort had simply glanced off the armour of his confidence. The edge of it had cut rather less ice than would cover a sixpence. He might have done no more than ask her to go to the theatre with him, and agreed to wait for an answer until she had consulted her engagement book. He was—Good Lord! He was actually humouring her!

"You're mistaken—you won't refuse ever to see me again," he said, and, looking up, she saw that his eyes were still upon her, and knew that he had read her thoughts. And then he switched from the subject with the abruptness of the turning off of a tap: "How's Terry these days? D'you remember the X Esquire case? Old Terry was in that, though it never came out."

He continued blithely to recount the story in that staccato, jerky way he had of speaking, and she had to listen in spite of herself.

He could be a delightful raconteur—he had the happy knack of coining spontaneous phrases which had the punch of mule kicks. Gradually, so gently that she never noticed it, he thawed her out of her attitude of barely polite attention. Coffee was on the table before she realised how the time was flying. And, as she took the final cigarette he offered her, light dawned. Why had she been snappy? Because she had had so little sleep the night before, and tiredness had frayed her temper at the corners. Why should she vent her bad temper on him? Because ... because she'd read in the morning paper about the fight in Billingsgate (and she'd never even asked him about it—what must he think of her for that?) ... and she'd had her eyes opened to the danger he was in—and because there was some of her, something infinitely precious, going with him into every peril he encountered.... Because, for days, she had longed for him to want to marry her....

Understanding of herself came as a shock, but it did not break her resolution—merely turned it in another direction. He must have his lesson. He must learn that methods which battered a Board of Enquiry into submission (she had had that anecdote retailed to her with great gusto by Bill Kennedy himself when that genial Assistant Commissioner dropped in for a nightcap with Terry) would not have the same effect upon her.

She was still strong in this decision when they prepared to leave, and, when he had paid the bill and was waiting for his change, he had this fact demonstrated to him.

"For the last time but——" He paused and studied the end of his cigarette meditatively. "But two—for the last time but two, Susan, when will you marry me?"

"Never," she said, and hoped she sounded inflexible.

His eyes danced. His optimistic egotism was unshakeable.

"Sure?"

"I've given you my answer," she said, straining to be haughty in the face of that sunny smile. "So please don't ask me the other two times."

"I shan't forget," he promised ambiguously. "But hear me, Susan! Unless you come and ask me to marry you before midnight you'll sleep in a Vine Street cell, probably!"

She stared.

"What for?"

"Safety," he said soberly. "It all depends on whether a certain gentleman now in custody gets clear as he's promised. Now think!"

That evening, before he went to dinner, he made his last arrangements for the guarding of Lew Mecklen. He made a personal inspection of the cell, "fanned" the gunman himself for additional assurance in case he should have succeeded in concealing a weapon, and appointed three men with over ten years' service to watch the man, with three others to relieve them at 2 a.m. He left a last warning.

"If Lew gets away, somebody's hopes of promotion'll be gone for ever! Anything that's sent in to him is to be kept from him until after I've seen it to-morrow morning. He's not to have the privilege of ordering anything whatever from outside—you can tell him all his money's gone to pay his hospital bill. Nobody is to be allowed to enter the cell—don't even go in yourselves, unless he looks like dying. That's all. If the Triangle scores again, I should say the Chief Commissioner'll crucify every man in C Division with his own hands!"

It was perhaps lucky for several people that Storm had exaggerated the brutality of Sir Brodie Smethurst.

The circumstances, as far as one can collate the depositions of those concerned, were as follows:

About nine p.m. that night Police Constable C811, who was standing at the corner of Marshall Street and Broad Street, was approached by a bulky ruffian whose dissonant caterwauling was clearly a public nuisance. On being requested to desist, the large one smote C811 with some strength and his boot, even upon the shins, and was promptly taken into custody. Leading his captive up Marshall Street, C811 met three other musicians who, linked arm in arm, were making the night air hideous with their attempts to harmonise Rose in the Bud and Annie Laurie. C811 told them to shut up, whereupon the three ranged themselves in line before him, chorused a hearty tu quoque plus a vulgar expletive, and switched over to a pathetic rendering, in comparative unison, of Tosti's Good-bye. They also were added to the bag, and the four were shot into the charge room of Marlborough Street Police Station, certified drunk and accused of being disorderly withal, and locked up to await judgment in the morning.

They had scarcely been removed to the cells when Police Constable C796 arrived, having in tow two troubadours looking distinctly the worse for wear, whom he charged with conducting a free fight in Regent Street in the course of which they smashed a shop window. They also were placed in durance vile.