"Has Mr. Smith told you all the clues he has?" she asked.
She had evidently paid no attention to Binny's theory.
"No, I can't say that he has. He's rather stuffy when it comes to his own business."
"Do you think he would tell me?"
He looked at her in amazement.
"My dear Mary——" he began.
"Don't 'dear Mary' me, or I shall be very rude to you," she said. "Do you think he would?"
She was quite serious and he changed his tone.
"If he thought you could help him I'm sure he would," he said. "He has promised to call here tonight and tell me the latest developments. Would you like me to ask him?"
"I'll ask him myself," she said.
Surefoot arrived very late and very ruffled. He was entitled to his annoyance, for at half-past seven that night a penitent young detective had called him on the 'phone and had confessed failure.
"You missed him?" roared Smith. "Two of you? What's the matter with you?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but he must have known he was being tailed, and he dodged through the Piccadilly Tube. I'd just turned my head and he was gone——"
"Turned your what?" sneered Surefoot. "All right; scour London and pick him up. You know his address. He's got to be found."
He came to the Sheridan, full of bitterness about the new generation of detectives.
"They expect everything to be done for them. They rely on science instead of their eyesight," he fumed.
"Here's a detective for you."
Dick indicated the girl, and to his surprise Surefoot showed no sign of impatience.
"I should say she's got more sense in her little finger than those—gentlemen have in their big, useless bodies."
He looked at her thoughtfully.
"I'm going to ask you something, Mr. Smith," she said. "Would you tell me all you know about this case? I think I may help you."
Again Dick Allenby was amazed that the big man made no jest of the offer. He looked at her owlishly, opened his big mouth, closed it again, rubbed his head (going through his repertory, noted Dick mentally).
"Why shouldn't you?" he said at last. "Do you want him to know?" He jerked his head towards Dick.
She hesitated.
"If you don't mind. If you do we'll turn him out."
She was dressed for the street by the time the detective had arrived, and suggested that they should go to her flat. They went up in the lift together. Her flat was the last in the corridor. She went ahead of them, and stood stock still, showing an alarmed face to the two men.
The door was wide open!
"Did your servant leave it open?" asked Smith.
Surefoot pointed to the lock; the marks of a powerful jemmy showed where the door had been forced. The lock itself was hanging on one screw.
He went ahead, switched on the lights, without result.
"It's been turned off at the fuse box. Where is it?"
She indicated the position, and after a little fumbling there was a click, and light showed along the short passage.
"He fastened the door after he got in, but couldn't fasten it when he left."
Smith picked up two small wooden wedges from the floor.
He went out again into the corridor, the end of which was formed by a half wood, half glass door leading to the fire escape. He tried this, and, as he expected, found it open. A flight of iron stairs led into the darkness below. He sent for the lift-man, who could give no information at all. On a Saturday night most of the people who lived in the flats, he said, were in the country, where they spent their week-ends, and there had been no strange visitors that he could remember.
Surefoot went ahead down the passage into the flat, saw a door wide open, and entered Mary's bedroom. It was a scene of indescribable confusion; every drawer of every bureau had been taken out and emptied on the bed and roughly sorted. They found the same in the dining-room, where the little secretaire desk, which she had locked before she went out, had been broken and its contents piled on to the table.
Mary gazed with dismay upon the scene of destruction, but was agreeably surprised when she found that a small box which had been in her desk drawer, and which had been wrenched open, still contained the articles of jewellery she had left there. They were valued at something over two hundred pounds, she told the detective.
"Then what on earth did they come for?" she asked.
On further inspection Smith found that even the waste bin in the kitchen had been turned bottom upward and sorted over. One valuable clue he discovered: a small kitchen clock had evidently been knocked off the dresser and had stopped at eleven-fifteen.
"Less than an hour ago—phew!" Surefoot whistled softly. "In a devil of a hurry, too. Now tell me who knows this place—I mean, who has been here before? Forget all your girl friends, but tell me the men."
She could enumerate them very briefly.
"Mike Hennessey has been here, has he? Often? I've seen all the rooms, haven't I?"
"Except the bathroom," she said.
He opened the door of this well-appointed little apartment, switched on the light, and went in. The intruder had been here too; the wash-basin was half-filled with discoloured water.
"Hullo! What's that?"
Smith's eyes narrowed.
Level with the wash-basin, and a little to the right of it, the enamelled walls of the bathroom bore a red smear. The detective touched it; it was still moist. He looked at the tessellated floor. There was nothing, but on the edge of the white bath the smear occurred again.
Behind the door was a clothes hook, and here also there was a trace of red.
"He came in here first," said Surefoot slowly. "He had to wash his hands, and, turning on the tap, his sleeve brushed the wall. There was blood on it; he didn't notice this. He took his coat off and threw it on the edge of the bath. Then he changed his mind and hung it up."
"Blood?"
Mary stared at the gruesome stain.
"Do you think he hurt himself getting in?"
"No, we should have seen it on the floor or in the passage. Besides, the glass door of the corridor wasn't broken—I wonder where he got it?"
Surefoot considered all the possibilities in the shortest space of time.
"It beats me," he said.
Surefoot Smith went into the kitchen to re-examine the clock. He was no believer in coincidences, had seen the stopped clock too often featured in works of fiction to believe implicitly the story it told. But his inspection removed all doubt; the clock had not stopped, but was still ticking; the jolt had merely thrown the pin connecting the hands from its gear, and no clever clue-maker could have done that.
Mary had followed him into the kitchen, and watched him silently whilst he was making the examination.
"Now will you tell me?" she said quietly.
Surefoot Smith gaped at her.
"About——?"
"You said you would tell me what you have discovered about Mr. Lyne's murder."
He perched himself on the edge of the kitchen table, and briefly told her all he knew.
To say that Dick Allenby was surprised was to put it mildly. He regarded every Scotland Yard detective as reticence personified. Surefoot Smith was notoriously "dumb," and here he was talking freely to the girl, and, if he showed any embarrassment at all, it was the presence of Dick himself which provoked the inhibition.
Mary Lane sat, her hands clasped in her lap, her brow knitted.
"Got anything?" asked Surefoot anxiously.
And then he must have caught a glimpse of the astonishment in Dick Allenby's face, for he scowled at him.
"You think I'm being foolish, Mr. Allenby? Get the idea out of your mind; I never am. Every woman has just the kind of mind that every detective should have and hasn't. No science in it—not that I mean to be disrespectful, Miss Lane—just plain common-sense. Got it?"
He addressed the girl again. She shook her head.
"Not quite," she said. "I know why they burgled my flat, of course."
Surefoot Smith nodded.
"But you can't quite understand how they came to think it was here?"
Dick interrupted.
"May I be very dense," he asked politely, "and enquire what this is all about? Didn't know what was here?"
"The bank statement," said Mary, without looking up, and again Smith nodded, a broad grin on his face.
"I guess that is what they came for, but I can't understand how they knew."
Surefoot chuckled.
"I am the clever fellow that gave it away," he said. "I told Mike Hennessey this afternoon that a bank statement had been sent to you. I didn't tell him that it was in my pocket, and I could have saved him a lot of time and trouble. It's a great pity."
He ran his hand irritably through his hair and slid off the table.
"Those bloodstains now—they look bad," he said, and loafed out of the room with the other two behind him into the bathroom. "That's his sleeve—that's his hand, but too blurred to get a print. The man who came here wasn't hurt, and probably wasn't aware that he was bloodstained. Look at the top of that tap."
He pointed; there was a distinct smear of blood on the white-enamelled word "hot" on one of the taps.
Surefoot Smith took out his pocket torch and began to examine the passage-way. It gave him nothing in the shape of clues; but when he went outside the fireproof door, and inspected the door itself, he found two new traces of blood, one on the iron railings and one just below the glass panel of the door.
"I'll use your 'phone," he said, and a few minutes later was talking volubly to Scotland Yard.
Every railway station was to be watched; Dover, Harwich, Folkestone, and Southampton were to be warned.
"Not that he'll attempt to get out of the country. It's curious how seldom they do," he explained to the girl.
His offer to send up a man to be on guard outside the door she refused immediately, but he insisted, and in such a tone that she knew it would be a waste of time on her part to press her objection.
On his way home he called at old Lyne's house to interview Binny. That worthy man was in bed when he knocked, and showed considerable and quite understandable reluctance to open the door. No police had been left on the premises; Surefoot had been content to remove all documents to Scotland Yard for a closer scrutiny, and he sealed up the bedroom and the study.
Binny led him down to the kitchen, poked together the dying remnants of the small fire and dropped wood on it, for the night was a little chilly.
"I wondered who it was knocking—it brought me heart up into me mouth," he apologised, as he ushered the visitor into the tiny room. "I suppose, Mr. Smith"—his voice was very anxious—"the old gentleman didn't leave me anything? I heard you'd found the will—mind you, I'm not going to be disappointed if he didn't. He wasn't the kind of man who worried very much about servants; he used to say he hated having them about the place. Still, you never know——"
"I haven't read the will thoroughly," said Surefoot, "but I don't seem to remember finding your name very prominently displayed."
Binny sighed.
"It's been the dream of my life that somebody would die and leave me a million," he said pathetically. "I was a good servant to him—cooked his food, made his bed, did everything for him."
The detective pushed over a carton of cheap cigarettes, and, still sighing, Binny selected one and lit it.
"There's one way you can help me, I think," said Smith. "Do you remember Mr. Moran coming here?"
Binny nodded.
"Do you know what he came about?"
The servant hesitated a moment.
"I don't know, sir. But I have an idea it had something to do with his balance. Mr. Lyne was a very curious old gentleman; he never wanted to see anybody, and when he did he was always a bit unpleasant to 'em."
"Was he unpleasant to Mr. Moran?"
Binny hesitated.
"Well, I don't want to tell tales out of school, Mr. Smith, but from what I heard he did snap a bit at him."
"You listened, eh?"
Binny smiled and shook his head.
"You didn't have to listen, sir." He pointed to the ceiling. "The study's above here. You can't hear what people are saying, but if a gentleman raises his voice as Mr. Lyne did, you can hear him."
"You know Moran?"
Binny nodded.
"Do you know him very well?"
"Very well, sir. I was servant——"
"I remember, yes."
Surefoot Smith bit his lower lip thoughtfully.
"Did he speak to you after his interview with the old man?"
Again Binny hesitated.
"I don't want to get anybody into trouble——"
"The trouble with you, Binny, is that you can't say 'yes' or 'no.' Did you see him?"
"Yes, sir, I did." Binny was evidently nettled. "I was taking in a letter that had come by post as he went out. And now, Mr. Smith, I'll tell you the truth. He said a queer thing to me—he asked me not to mention the fact that he'd been, and slipped me a quid. Now I've told you all I know. I thought it was funny—but, bless your heart, he wasn't the first man to ask me not to mention the fact that they'd called on Mr. Lyne."
"I suppose not."
On a little table near the wall was a small paper parcel, loosely wrapped. Surefoot Smith was blessed with a keen sense of smell; he could disentangle the most conflicting and elusive odours. But putty was not one of them; it had a pungent, and, to Surefoot Smith, an unpleasant aroma. He pointed to the parcel.
"Putty?"
Binny looked at him in surprise.
"Yes, sir."
"Have you been mending windows?" Surefoot looked up.
"No, sir, that was done by a glazier. I broke the scullery window this morning. I didn't like to call anybody in, so I did it myself."
"The trouble in this house is that you're always having windows broken," said Surefoot Smith. "Why didn't you report to the police the attempt to break into this house——Oh, I remember, Mr. Lyne didn't want it."
When he went outside he made a more careful examination of the premises in the darkness than he had ever done by daylight. He went to the trouble of going to the back of the house, along the narrow mews, and here he saw how easy it was for a burglar to obtain admission. The back of the house was not protected, as most of its fellows were, by a garage block, and the door and window were approachable for anybody who could either scale the wall or force the door into the back courtyard. Was it a coincidence that this attempt had been made to gain admission into Lyne's house on the night of——?
Surefoot Smith frowned. It must have been the night that Tickler was murdered. Was there any connection between the two events?
He went back to Scotland Yard to receive reports, and found that his enquiries had produced no result. Berlin could tell him no more about Leo Moran, and there was absolutely no news at all of Gerald Dornford.
He opened the safe in a corner of his little room, took out the glove and the silver key, and laid them on the table. That key puzzled him. Was there any special reason why its owner should have gone to the trouble of painting it so elaborately and yet so carelessly? Any plater would have made a better job of it.
The glove told him nothing. He took from the big drawer of his desk a large sheet of virgin blotting-paper and began to work out again the sum of his problem.
Tickler had been killed; old Lyne had been killed, possibly by the same hand, though there was nothing to connect the two murders. Leo Moran was, to all intents and purposes, a fugitive from justice, a man against whom could be made out a prima facie charge of felony. His disappearance had coincided, not only with the death of Lyne, but with the discovery that Lyne's bank account had been heavily milked.
Was he in Berlin at all? Somebody was very much interested in the recovery of the bank statement, had gone to the trouble of burgling Mary Lane's flat to recover it—who? One man at any rate knew, or thought he knew, that the statement was at Mary's flat, and that man was Michael Hennessey.
Mike's conduct that afternoon had been consistent with guilty knowledge. He knew, at any rate, who was Washington Wirth. The gentleman called Washington Wirth was a murderer, possibly a murderer twice over.
In disjointed sentences Surefoot wrote down his conclusions as they were reached; crossed out one and substituted another; elaborated some simple proposition in his mysterious shorthand, only to cross through the wriggly lines and begin all over again. He made a little circle that represented Mary, another for Dick Allenby, another for Gerald Dornford, a fourth for Leo Moran. At the bottom of the page he put a fifth circle for Lyne. How were they connected? What was the association between the four top circles and the fifth?
Between them he placed a larger O that stood for Michael Hennessey. Michael touched Washington Wirth, he touched Mary Lane, and possibly Moran. He crossed out this last conclusion and started again.
Gerald Dornford touched Dick Allenby; he could draw a straight line from Dick Allenby to the murdered man—a line that missed all and any intermediary.
He got tired after a while, threw down the pencil, and sat back with a groan. He was reaching for the key when the light went out. There was nothing very startling and nothing very unexpected about that: the bulb had been burning yellow for two or three days, and obviously required replacement. Surefoot Smith, in his lordly way, had demanded a fresh globe, and the storekeeper, in his more lordly way, had ignored the request. Without warning, the bulb had ceased to function.
Surefoot was rising to his feet to reach for the bell when something he saw stopped him dead. In the darkness the key was glowing like green fire. He saw the handle and every ward of it. And now he understood why it had such an odd colour—it had been treated with luminous paint.
He picked it up and turned it over. The under side was dull and hardly showed, for it had not absorbed the rays of the lamp.
Surefoot went out into the corridor and summoned an officer, and a little later a bulb was discovered and fixed. He examined the key now with greater interest, jotting down notes upon his already over-crowded blotting sheet.
He was beginning to see daylight, but only dimly. Then the telephone bell buzzed; he took it up, and, going to the officer on duty at the door, called him.
"If you see Mr. Allenby, send him up."
He looked at his watch; it was twenty-minutes past twelve, and he could only wonder what had brought Dick to Scotland Yard at such an hour. Possibly his gun had been recovered.
"I wondered if you were here," said Dick, as he came into the office and closed the door behind him. "I should have telephoned, but I was scared they wouldn't put me through to you."
"What's the trouble?" asked Surefoot curiously.
Dick smiled.
"There isn't any real trouble; only I've been—or rather, Mary has been—called up by Hennessey's housekeeper for information about the gentleman."
"Hasn't he come home?" asked Smith quickly.
"He wasn't expected home," said Dick. "The lady called up from Waterloo Station; she's been there since nine with a couple of Mike's trunks. He was leaving for the Continent by the Havre train, and had arranged for her to be there to meet him with his baggage. She waited till nearly twelve, got worried, and apparently called up several people who knew Michael, amongst them Mary. Fortunately, I was just leaving the flat when the woman telephoned."
"Have you been to his house?"
Dick shook his head.
"It wasn't necessary," he said. "He had a furnished flat in Doughty Street; he paid his rent and closed up the place tonight. Obviously he was making a getaway in rather a hurry. He didn't start packing till this afternoon."
"After he'd seen me," said Surefoot. He scratched his chin. "That's queer. I can quite understand his wanting to get away—as a matter of fact, he wouldn't have got any farther than Southampton; I had already notified the ports."
"You would have arrested him?" asked Dick, in amazement.
"There's no question of arrest, my friend," said Surefoot wearily. "It isn't necessary to arrest everybody you want to stop going out of England. Their passports can be out of order, the visa can be on the wrong page, the stamp can be upside down—there are a dozen ways of keeping the money in the country."
"Did Hennessey know this?"
Surefoot did not answer immediately.
"I can't understand it," he said slowly. "Of course he didn't know. That wouldn't have prevented him catching the train."
There was a knock at the door, and a pleasant looking man, whom Dick recognised as a chief inspector, came in.
"The Buckinghamshire police have got a case after your own heart, Surefoot," he said. "A regular American gang murder."
Surefoot became instantly alert.
"A gang murder, eh? What kind?"
"They call 'em ride murders, don't they? Somebody has taken this poor devil for a ride, shot him at close quarters, and thrown him out on to the sidewalk."
"Where was this?"
"On the Colnbrook by-pass, this side of Slough. A big car passed, picked up the man lying across the footpath with its lights, and reported to the police. He couldn't have been dead more than half an hour when the police got to him."
"What is his description?" asked Surefoot.
"A big made man of forty-five," said the other, "wearing a green tie——"
"That was the tie that Mike Hennessey was wearing this afternoon!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mike Hennessey looked very calm, almost majestic in death; most easily recognisable. Surefoot Smith came out of the sinister little building and waited while the police sergeant turned the key.
Dick was waiting at the station. He had had enough of horrors for one night, and had not attempted to join himself in the identification.
"It's Mike all right," said Surefoot. "The murder was committed at ten-seventeen—there or there-abouts. The time is fixed by the big car that found the body, and a motor-cyclist who lives in this village reported to the police that he saw a small saloon car standing by the side of the road near where the body was found. I make out the two times as being between ten-fifteen and ten-twenty, and, allowing for the fact that the big machine did not overtake any car on the Colnbrook by-pass, that puts the time at ten-seventeen. The murderer's car might have turned round and gone back. It could, of course, have gone right through the village of Colnbrook, avoiding the by-pass, and I should imagine that is what happened. And now, my friend," he said seriously, "you realise that this was the gentleman who called at your young lady's flat? His coat must have been covered with blood without his realising the fact until, in searching the bathroom, he touched the wall with his sleeve. He took off his coat, washed his hands, and that's that."
"But surely some garage keeper will be able to identify the car if there was so much blood lost? The interior must be like a shambles."
Surefoot nodded.
"Oh yes, we'll find the car all right. There were three stolen last night that answer the description. I've just been through to the Yard and found that a machine has been discovered abandoned in Sussex Gardens."
A swift police car took them back to Paddington, and Surefoot Smith's surmise was confirmed. The abandoned car was that which the murderer had used. There was grisly evidence enough that the man had met his death in its dark interior—of other evidence there was none.
"We'll test the wheel for finger-prints, but Mr. Wirth will have worn gloves."
"That lets out Moran, doesn't it?" said Dick.
Surefoot smiled.
"Where is Moran? In Germany, we say—he's as likely to be in London. You may get to Germany in a few hours and get back in a shorter time. It may not have been Moran who left at all."
"But why?"
Dick Allenby was bewildered, more than a little alarmed for Mary Lane's safety, and said as much. To his consternation, Surefoot agreed.
"I don't think she should stay in that flat. She may have other evidence, and now she's begun to theorise she might be dangerous to our friend."
He accompanied Smith to the police station whither the car had been taken, and found the usual scene of impersonal activity. There were photographers, finger-print experts, car mechanics examining the speedometer. The owner of the car, who had been found and brought to the station, was a methodical man: he knew exactly the amount of mileage that was on the dial before the car was stolen, and his information helped considerably.
It seemed to Dick Allenby that he had spent the past fortnight examining bloodstained cars in police yards. There was a touch of the familiar in the scene he witnessed: the staring electric globes at the ends of lengths of flex, the peering police detectives searching every inch of the interior.
There was blood on the seat and on the floor; a trace of it on the gear lever. One of the detectives pulled a cushion from the driver's seat....
"Hullo!" he said, and, looking over his shoulder, Dick saw a flat silver cigarette case that was passed to Surefoot's hand.
Smith opened the case. It was empty. There was an inscription on the inside, easy enough to read in the light of the bulb.
"To Mr. Leo Moran, from his colleagues in the Willesden branch, May, 1920."
Surefoot turned it over and over in his hand. It was an old case; there were one or two dents in it, but it was polished bright, and either was frequently used or had been recently cleaned. Surefoot held it gingerly by the help of a sheet of paper, and had it carefully wrapped.
"We might get a finger-print on that, but I don't think it's likely," he said. "It's a little odd, isn't it—being under the cushion?"
"He might have put it there and forgotten all about it."
Surefoot shook his head.
"It's not his car, it was pinched. As I say—it's odd."
He did not speak again for some time.
"I mentioned the fact that the young lady has the bank statement. Mr. Hennessey passed the information on in the course of the ride, or before. The killer settled with Hennessey—by the way, he was supposed to be driving to Southampton to catch his boat. The car stopped at a filling station at the end of the Great West Road; Hennessey got out and telephoned to his flat—presumably to his housekeeper to send on his baggage. The murderer got rid of Hennessey as quickly as he could, rushed back to town and burgled the flat. Obviously he was somebody who had been there before——"
"Like Moran," suggested Dick.
Surefoot hesitated.
"He'll do as well as anybody else," he said. "He was looking for the bank statement. He couldn't have known that his coat was covered with blood, until he went into the bathroom, and saw either himself in the mirror or a stain on the wall. I'll tell you something more about him: he's lived in America. How's that for scientific deduction?"
"How on earth do you know that?"
"I don't," said the other calmly; "it's deduction—in other words, guesswork. It's a typical gang killing, though—taking a man for a ride and throwing him out of the car after he's been shot. Nobody seems to have heard the pistol go off, but if they did they'd think it was a motor-cyclist. They scorch down the by-pass."
He drove home with Dick, and was very voluble.
"Hennessey was in the swindle from the start. He knew who Wirth was, knew that Wirth was forging cheques, and took advantage of his knowledge to blackmail the other man." Then, abruptly: "I'm going to show Miss Lane the key and the cheque."
It was the first time Dick had heard about the key.
By the time Surefoot Smith reached Scotland Yard, all the grisly relics of the murdered man had been collected and laid on his table. There were a notebook, a few odd scraps of paper, about twenty pounds in cash, a watch and chain, and a key-ring, but nothing that was particularly illuminating—except the absence of any large sum of money. Obviously, Hennessey did not intend to make his jump for the Continent on a capital of twenty pounds. Surefoot guessed that the murderer, profiting by the previous discovery of money in Tickler's pocket, had relieved him of what might have been very incriminating evidence.
He looked over the papers. One was a page torn from a Bradshaw, with pencil markings against certain trains. Surefoot guessed that Hennessey's plan was to make his way to Vienna.
The second paper was the more interesting. It was a sheet torn from a notebook, and contained a number of figures. Surefoot had a remarkable memory, and he recognised at once that the figures represented those balances which had appeared in the statement. Evidently the paper had been handled many times.
Smith was puzzled. Why had Hennessey taken the trouble to jot these notes down in pencil and keep them? Obviously he knew of the bank statement, had possibly concocted it; but here he would have some other data than this scrap of paper. If the bank statement was an invention, as undoubtedly it was, there was no need to keep this note. Either the man would invent the figures on the spur of the moment, or else he had some book record of the defalcations and the amount that should have stood to old Lyne's account.
Early the next morning he telephoned to Mary Lane, who had spent an uneasy night. She was not even stimulated by the knowledge that there was a police officer in the corridor outside her flat, one at the foot of the fire escape, and another patrolling before the house.
"Come round by all means," she said, and was relieved to know that she was seeing him, for she wanted advice very badly.
The morning had brought no news to Surefoot. The enquiries he had made had drawn blank. A search of Mike Hennessey's flat gave him no clue that was of the least value. Of papers or documents there was none; an old bank book told him no more than that three years before Hennessey had been living from hand to mouth.
He was rather despondent when he came into Mary's flat.
"It almost looks as if science has got to be brought in," he said gloomily, as he produced a small packet from his pocket and laid it on the table. "Maybe you're it!"
He opened the wash-leather wrapper and disclosed the key. Then from his pocket-book he took out a cheque and laid it on the table. She examined the faint pencil marks carefully and nodded.
"That is Mr. Lyne's handwriting," she said. "I think I told you that when I was a girl I lived in the same house; in fact, I kept house for him, in a very inefficient way. He was rather trying to live with."
"In what way?" asked Surefoot.
She hesitated.
"Well, in many ways—domestically, I mean. For example, he had the same tradespeople for over forty years, and never changed them, although he was always quarrelling with them or disputing the amount he owed them."
She looked at the key, turning it over and over in her hand.
"Would you think I was terribly vain if I told you I thought I could find the man who killed Mr. Lyne?"
"I think you would be very silly if you tried to do it on your own," said Smith bluntly. "This fellow isn't one you can monkey about with."
She nodded.
"I realise that. Will you give me a week to make enquiries?"
"Don't you think you'd better tell me now what your suspicions are?"
She shook her head.
"No; I am probably making a fool of myself, and I have a very natural desire to avoid that."
Smith pursed his thick lips.
"You can't keep these——" he began.
"I don't want them," she said quickly. "You mean the cheque and the key? Would it be asking you too much to give me a replica of the key? If I find the lock it fits I'll telephone you."
He looked at her in surprise.
"Do you think you can find the lock?"
She nodded. Surefoot Smith sighed.
"This is like doing things in books," he said, "and I hate the way they do things in books. It's romantical, and romantical things make me sick. But I'll do this for you, young lady."
Two days later she received a brand-new, shining key, and set forth on her investigations, never suspecting that, day and night, she was shadowed by one of three detectives, whose instructions from Surefoot Smith had been short and not especially encouraging.
"Keep this lady in your sight. If you let her out of your sight, your chance of ever being promoted is practically nil."
It was the third day after the murder of Mike Hennessey that Cassari Oils moved. They had hovered between £1 3s. and £1 7s. for five years. They represented £40 shares, for in pre-war days they had been issued at 1,000 francs. The field was situated in Asia Minor, and had produced enough oil to prevent the company from collapsing, but insufficient to bring the shares back to their normal value.
Mary read the flaming headline on the City page, "Sensational Rise of Cassari Oils," and called up Mr. Smith.
"Those were the shares that you transferred to Moran, weren't they?" he asked, interested. "What did they stand at last night? I haven't seen the paper."
The stock had jumped from 25s. to 95s. overnight. When Surefoot Smith put a call through to the City he was staggered to learn that they stood at £30 and were rising every minute.
He drove up to an office in Old Broad Street which supplied him with particulars of financial phenomena, and discovered the reason from an unconcerned stock-jobber.
"They struck big oil about three months ago, and they've been sinking new wells. Apparently they found inexhaustible supplies, but managed to keep it quiet until they'd cleared the market of every floating share. The stock is certain to go to a hundred, and I can advise you to have a little flutter. There's no doubt about the oil being there."
Surefoot Smith had never had a flutter in his life, except that he invariably had half a crown on some horse in the Derby which he picked with the aid of a pin and a list of probable runners.
"Who is behind this move?" he asked.
The jobber shook his head.
"If I tried to pronounce their names I'd dislocate my jaw," he said. "They are mostly Turks—Effendi this and Pasha that. You'll find them in the Stock Exchange Year-book. They're a pretty solid crowd; millionaires, most of them. Oh no, there's nothing shady about them; they're as solid as the Bank of England, and this isn't a market rig. They haven't a London office; Jolman and Joyce are their agents."
To the office of Messrs. Jolman and Joyce Surefoot Smith went. He found the place besieged. He sent in his card and was admitted to the office of Mr. Joyce, the senior partner.
"I can't tell you very much, Mr. Smith, except what the newspapers can tell you. There are not a large number of shares on the market—I've just told a friend of mine who thought of running a bear that he's certain to burn his fingers. The only big holder I know is a man named Moran—Leo Moran."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Leo Moran! It was no news to Surefoot Smith that this man was interested in the stock, apart from the shares he had acquired from Mary. There was a little touch of trickiness about Moran; that was his reputation both in the bank and amongst his friends. From what Surefoot had gathered, and from his own knowledge of the man, he was capable of quixotic and generous actions, but, generally speaking, carried shrewdness a little beyond the line of fairness. Murderer he might be; forger, as Surefoot believed, he certainly was. The constant of his character was an immense self-interest. He was a bachelor, had no family attachments and few interests besides his shooting and the theatre.
This was a supreme gamble, then—Cassari Oils. Before Surefoot Smith left the stockbroker's office he discovered that Moran was, at any rate on paper, a millionaire. On one point he was puzzled: though Moran had bought steadily, and his operations had covered the years of defalcations, he had spent no very large sum, certainly only a small percentage of the moneys he was making. The man probably had other speculative interests, but these for the moment were impossible to trace.
Mr. Smith went home to his rooms off the Haymarket, and was surprised to find a visitor waiting for him on the landing.
"I haven't been here two minutes," said Mary. "I got on to your secretary at Scotland Yard and he told me that you might be at your flat."
He unlocked the door and ushered her into his untidy sitting-room.
"Well, have you found anything?"
She shook her head and smiled ruefully.
"Only my limitations, I am afraid," she said, and sat down in the chair he pulled forward for her.
"You're giving it up, eh?"
She hesitated.
"No."
It required an effort of will to say "no," for she had awakened that morning with an intense sense of mental discomfort and a realisation of the difficulties which beset her. She had been half inclined to send a penitent note enclosing the key to Surefoot, but confidence—not much, but some—had come to her with breakfast, and she had decided upon this, what was to her, a bold move.
"I realise what I have undertaken," she confessed. "Being a detective is not an easy job, is it? Especially when you don't know things."
Surefoot smiled.
"The art of being a detective is to know nothing," he said oracularly. "What do you know? If you know anything less than I do, you haven't heard of the murder. On the other hand, it is possible you may know a great deal more."
"You are being sarcastic."
He shook his head.
"I don't know the word, Miss Lane. What is it you want to know?"
She consulted a little notebook she took from her pocket.
"Can you give me a list of all the big cheques that were cashed and the dates? I particularly want to know the dates. If my theory is correct, they are made out on the seventeenth of the month."
Surefoot sat back in his chair and stared at her.
"That is a bit scientific," he said, a little resentfully, and she laughed.
"No, it is horribly like a mystery story. But, seriously, I do want to know."
He pulled the telephone towards him and called a number.
"Funnily enough, that is a bit of information I had never thought of getting," he said.
She felt he was a little nettled that he had been remiss in this respect, and she was secretly amused.
"But then, you see, Miss Lane," he went on, "if I had been at the Yard I would probably get it for you—hullo!"
He had got through to the bank. It took some time before the accountant, with whom he eventually got in touch, was able to supply him with the dates.
The cheques were made out on the 17th of April, the 17th of February, the 17th of December, the 17th of May in the previous year—Surefoot jotted down a dozen of them. Hanging up the receiver, he pushed the paper across to the girl.
"I thought so!" Her eyes were very bright. "Every one of them on the seventeenth!"
"Marvellous!" said Surefoot. "Now will you tell me what that means?"
She nodded.
"I will tell you in a week's time. I am going to do a lot of private investigation. There is one thing I wanted to speak about, Mr. Smith." Her voice was troubled. "I don't know whether I am imagining things, but I have an idea that I am being very carefully watched. I am sure a man was following me yesterday. I lost sight of him in Oxford Street; I was looking in a shop window in Regent Street and saw him again. Rather an unpleasant-looking man with a fair moustache."
Surefoot Smith smiled.
"That is Detective Sergeant Mason. I don't think he is much of a good looker myself."
"A detective?" she gasped.
Surefoot nodded.
"Naturally, my dear young lady, I am taking great care of you. You might as well know that you are being shadowed, not because you are under suspicion, but because for the moment you are under our protection."
She heaved a sigh.
"You don't know how relieved I am. It was rather getting on my nerves. As a matter of fact, I don't think I should have come to see you at all but for this."
"What about the seventeenth?" asked Surefoot. "Don't you think it would be wise for you to tell me what your suspicions are about?"
She shook her head.
"I am being mysterious and rather weak," she said.
Her mystery certainly irritated Dick Allenby, who could never be sure of finding her at home. He had a talk with Surefoot and sought his help.
"She will be running into all sorts of danger," Dick complained. "This man obviously will stop at nothing. He may still think that she has got the bank statement."
"Have you seen the young lady at all?"
Surefoot opened another bottle of beer dexterously. He was sitting on a bench in Dick's workroom.
"Yes, I have seen her. She wants me to lend her Binny."
"Lend her Binny?" repeated the detective. "What does that mean?"
"Well, he is in my employ now. She says she wants enquiries made about a former servant of Mr. Lyne's who is living in Newcastle under an assumed name. She wants Binny to go and identify the woman. I saw Binny about it, and he remembers her. She left soon after he arrived. She was a fairly old woman. Apparently she had a dissolute son who was a pretty bad character. Binny doesn't remember him, but Mary does. The old lady, who must be nearly ninety, is living in the north, and Mary wants him to go up to make sure that she hasn't made a mistake."
Surefoot Smith looked at him glumly.
"She told me nothing about it. Binny's your servant now? I suppose you own the house. What are you going to do with it?"
"Sell it," said Dick promptly. "In fact, I've already had an offer."
There was a knock at the door; the caretaker came in with a telegram for Dick. Surefoot saw him open it, watched him idly, and saw his jaw drop as he read it. Without a word he passed the wire across to Smith. It had been handed in at Sunningdale, and ran:
"Re patent air-gun reported stolen from you. Machine answering description circulated has been found at Toyne Copse lying at the bottom of a hole beneath body of a man believed to be G. Dornford, of Half Moon Street. Please report immediately Sunningdale police station to identify property."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He and Surefoot went down into Berkshire together. He had no difficulty in recognising the rusted steel case which had once been a delicate piece of mechanism. He left it to Surefoot Smith to make other and more grisly identification.
Surefoot returned after visiting the place where the body had been found, and he had further and convincing information. Jerry Dornford's car had also been discovered less than a hundred yards from the place where he had died. The car had evidently been driven over the heath land and concealed in a small copse.
"It's Dornford's own property, and I don't think there will be much difficulty in reconstructing the accident which put him out," said Surefoot. "He had an evening newspaper in the car with him; it is dated the day of old man Lyne's murder."
"Poor devil! How was he killed—or was it a natural death?" asked Dick.
Surefoot shook his head.
"An accident. The gun was loaded, wasn't it? Well, you'll be able to take the thing to pieces and tell me if it is still loaded. I should say it wasn't. Dornford stole the gun: there's no doubt about that. He either got scared or couldn't sell it, and decided to take it into the country and bury it. Very naturally, he chose a bit of land which is his own property. He took a spade with him—we found that. When they found him he was in his shirt sleeves. He had evidently dug the hole and was in the act of pushing in the gun when it went off. The bullet went through his body; we found it in a pine-tree that was immediately in the line of fire. In his pocket we found a demand for the payment of a loan, from Stelbey's, who did most of old Lyne's work. We also found a few notes that are going to make it pretty uncomfortable for somebody called Jules, when we can trace him."
"I can help you there," said Dick, who knew and rather disliked that sleek young man.
They came back to town late in the evening, and Surefoot was rather depressed.
"I always thought that Dornford had something to do with the murder, and put him down as a 'possible.' But it's pretty clear that he couldn't have done it, unless there were two bullets in the gun, or unless he understood the mechanism."
Dick went in search of Mary that night to tell her the news. He had never liked Gerald Dornford, but there were moments when he thought that his dislike was not so actively shared by the girl; but here he did her an injustice. A woman's instincts are keener than a man's, and she had placed Jerry in the definite category of men to be avoided.
She did not get back to her flat till late that night, as he discovered after repeated rings, and it was an unusually exhilarated voice that answered him when eventually he reached her.
"I've had a marvellous day, Dick, and I'm going to surprise our friend tomorrow—no, not tomorrow, the next day."
He tried to break the news gently about Jerry, and was surprised and a little annoyed to find his sensation was discounted.
"I read it in the evening newspaper. Poor man!" she said.
Dick Allenby spent a disturbed night. He was getting very worried about the girl and the risks she was taking. When he rang her in the morning she had already gone out, but when he saw Surefoot that gentleman did much to allay his anxiety.
"I've got the cleverest shadower at Scotland Yard following her night and day; you needn't worry." And then, curiously: "She hasn't told you what line she's following? The only thing I can find from my men is that she's chasing round the suburbs of London, and that she's doing a lot of shopping."
"Shopping?" repeated Dick incredulously. "What sort of shopping?"
"Pickles mostly," said Surefoot Smith, "though she's been after ham, and took over an hour in the City the other day buying tea. She's being scientific."
If the truth were told, Mr. Smith found it increasingly difficult to avoid being very annoyed with his mysterious collaborator. He hated mysteries.
Mary had gone a little outside of her usual orbit of enquiry that day. She left early for Maidstone and spent the greater part of the morning talking with a country bootmaker, an ancient and a prosy gentleman with a poor memory and a defective system of book-keeping. She got back to town about five, feeling tired, but a hot bath and two hours' rest revivified her. She was bright and fresh when she buttoned up her long coat and went out.
It was ten o'clock; the sky was overcast and a sprinkle of rain was falling when she signalled a taxi and drove to King's Cross. She found the disconsolate Binny waiting on the platform. Although the night was warm he wore an overcoat and a muffler, and was a typical picture of misery and loneliness when she came up to him. The detective who had followed her watched them talking, and was slightly amused, for he had been told something about the object of this northward journey of Mr. Lyne's handyman.
If he was amused, Binny was sceptical.
"I don't suppose I'll remember her, miss. People change, especially oldish people. She was only in the house about three weeks after I took on the job."
"But you would recognise her?" insisted the girl.
He hesitated.
"I suppose I would. I must say, miss," he protested, "I don't like these night journeys. I was in a railway accident once, and my nerves have never got over it. What with poor Mr. Lyne's death and all the newspaper reporters coming to see me, I've got in such a state that I don't know whether I'm on my head or my heels."
She cut short his personal plaint with a repetition of her instructions.
"You will go to this house and ask to see Mrs. Morris—that is the name she has taken, possibly because her son has been getting into trouble——"
"Visiting the sins of the parents upon the children I've heard about; visiting the sins of the children on the parents is something new."
"If it is Mrs. Laxby you are to send me a wire, but you must be absolutely sure it is Mrs. Laxby. You've got the photograph of her I gave you?"
He nodded miserably.
"I got it. But ain't this a job for the police, miss?"
"Now, Binny," she said severely, "you're to do as you're told. I've got you a nice sleeping car and it will be a very comfortable journey."
"They turn me out at four o'clock in the morning," said Binny; and then, as though he realised he was probably going a little too far with one who had such authority, he added, in a more cheerful tone: "All right, miss, you leave it to me; I'll send you a wire."
She left the platform a few minutes before the train pulled out, and took another taxi. The detective who followed her had no doubt that she was going back to her flat, and contented himself with giving instructions to his driver to follow the cab in front. Taxi-men are not necessarily good detectives, and it was not until the cab he was shadowing had set down an elderly man at a temperance hotel in Bloomsbury that he realised he was on the wrong trail, and doubled back to the flat to pick her up.
She had not returned, and, in a sweat, he began to cast round before reporting his failure to his very unpleasant superior.
It was a quarter past eleven when he saw the girl walking quickly in the opposite direction to which his cab was moving. He recognised Mary, jumped out of the cab, paid the driver, and followed through the rain on foot.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Unconscious of the fact that she had been shadowed, Mary Lane reached her objective. She was in a small paved courtyard which was made faintly malodorous by the presence of an ash-can that had not been emptied for a week. She moved cautiously, finding her way forward step by step with the aid of a tiny electric torch which she had taken from her hand-bag. At the end of the courtyard was a small door, flanked on one side by a window.
For a little while she stood on the doorstep, listening. Her heart was beating faster; she was curiously short of breath. Her early morning resolution to abandon her ridiculous quest came back with a stronger urge. It was absurd of her, and a little theatrical (she told herself) to continue these excursions into a realm in which she had no place. Police work was, in its most elementary phase, men's work.
The quietness of the night, the sense of complete isolation, the gloom and drabness which the falling rain seemed to emphasise, all these things worked on her nerves.
She took from her bag the replica key that Surefoot had had cut for her, and, finding the keyhole, pushed in the key. The truth or futility of her theory was to be put to the test.
For a moment, as she tried to turn the key, it seemed that she had made a mistake, and she was almost grateful. And then, as she slightly altered its position, she felt it turn and the lock snapped back with a loud "click!"
She was trembling; her knees seemed suddenly incapable of supporting the weight of her body; her breathing became painfully shallow. Here her experiment should have ended, and she should have gone back the way she came, but the spirit of adventure flickered up feebly and she pushed open the door. It opened without sound, and she peered into the dark interior fearfully. Should she go in? Reason said "No!" but reason might be womanly cowardice—a fear of the dark and the bogies that haunt the dark.
She pushed the door open wider and went in one step. She flashed the lamp around and saw nothing.
Then out of the darkness came a sound that froze her blood—the whimpering of a woman.
Her scalp tingled with terror; she thought she was going to faint. It came from below her feet, and yet from somewhere immediately before her, as though there were two distinct sounds.
The beam of light she cast ahead wobbled so that she could not see what it revealed. She steadied her arm against the wall and saw what looked like a cupboard door. To this she crept and listened.
Yes, the sound came from there and below. It was the entrance to a cellar. She tried the cupboard door; it was locked. And then there came to her an unaccountable fear, greater than any she had experienced before—there was danger, near, very near; a menace beyond her understanding.
She turned and stood, petrified with horror. The door was slowly closing. She leaped forward and caught its edge, but somebody was pressing it, and that somebody was in the room, had been standing behind the opened door all the time she had been there.
As she opened her lips to scream a big hand closed over her mouth, another gripped her shoulder and jerked her back violently, as the door closed with a crash.
"Oh, Miss Lane, how could you?"
The mincing tone, the falsetto voice, the artificial refinement of it were unmistakable. She had heard that voice at Kellner's Hotel when she had met Mr. Washington Wirth. She struggled madly, but the man held her without difficulty.
"May I suggest, my dear young friend, that you keep quiet and save me from the necessity of cutting your darling little throat?"
Behind the spurious courtesy of that hateful voice lay a threat, horribly, significantly sincere. She knew him now: he would kill her with as little compunction as he would slaughter a rabbit. It was not perhaps expedient to carry out this threat immediately, and her only hope of salvation lay with her wits.
With a moan she went limp in his arms, and he was so unprepared for this that he nearly dropped her and dropped with her, for the sudden collapse almost threw him off his balance. Clumsily he laid her down on the stone floor.
She heard his exclamation of anger, and, after a while the jingle of keys. He was unlocking the cupboard door.
Noiselessly she rose and felt for the door knob. It turned without a sound, and in a second she had flung open the door and was racing across the courtyard. He was too late to stop her, and she was in the deserted side street before he recovered from his surprise. A few minutes later she had reached a main road; ahead of her she saw two policemen, and her first instinct was to fly to them and tell them of her adventure. She hesitated; they would think she was mad, and besides——
"Hullo, Miss Lane! You gave me a fright."
It was the detective who had been following her all the evening, and he did not hide his relief.
"Where on earth did you get to? I'm Stenford from Scotland Yard. Mr. Smith told me that you knew I was trailing you."
She could have fallen on his neck in her gratitude—she was horrified to discover that she was hysterical. She gasped her story; he listened, incredulous.
"Have you got the key?"
She shook her head: she had left it in the door.
"I'll take you home, Miss Lane, and then I'll report to Mr. Smith."
He was a young detective, full of zeal, and he had hardly left her at the door of her flat before he was racing back to conduct a little investigation on his own before reporting the sum of his discovery to Surefoot Smith.
Mary made herself a cup of tea and sat down to steady her nerves before she went to bed. The flat seemed terribly lonely. Odd noises, common to all houses, kept her jumping. She realised that she would not sleep that night except in other and less nerve-wearing surroundings, and was reaching for the telephone when its bell rang sharply—so unexpectedly that she jumped.
It was the voice of Surefoot Smith, urgent and anxious.
"That you, Miss Lane? Listen—and get this quickly! Go to your front door and bolt it! You're not to open the door until I come—I'll be with you in ten minutes."
"But——"
"Do as I tell you!"
She heard a click as he rang off. She was in a panic. Surefoot would not have been so alarming unless her situation was a perilous one.
She went out into the hall. It was in darkness. She knew that she had left a light burning. Acting on blind impulse, she darted back into the room she had left, slammed the door and shot home a bolt. As she did so a heavy weight was flung against the door, the weight of a man's body. There were no arms in the room—nothing more formidable than a pair of scissors.
Crash!
The door shook; one of the panels bulged. She turned quickly and switched out the light.
"I have a revolver and I'll fire if you don't go away!" she cried.
There was a silence. She flung up the window. She must be a good actress or die.
"Mr. Smith! Is that you? Come up the fire escape!" She screamed the words.
Again the door crashed, and she had an inspiration. She took up the telephone.
"Get the police station—tell them a man named Moran is trying to break into my room—Leo Moran—please remember the name in case anything happens...."
She left the receiver off and crept to the door. Stealthy feet were moving along the corridor; the sound became less audible and ceased.
Mary Lane sank down on to the floor, and this time there was nothing theatrical in her swoon. It was the frantic knocking on the door and the voice of Dick Allenby that brought her, reeling, to her feet. She drew the bolt to admit him and the detective. She had hardly begun to tell her story when she fainted again.
"Better get a nurse," said Surefoot. "Phew! I never expected to find her alive!"
An agitated Dick, engaged in bathing the white face of the girl, was not even interested to ask how Surefoot learned of the girl's danger. Mr. Smith's officer had found him at his club and the two men had arrived simultaneously.
"I got a 'phone call from the detective who was shadowing her, giving me the story she had told. I told him to go straight back to her flat and stay there till I came. About half an hour later the simpleton called me up and said he'd searched the place and found nobody. Can you beat that? And then, of course, a trunk call from Birmingham came on the line and cut me off. I got rid of it and called Miss Lane—I should have called the nearest police station, but I worked it out that I'd be at the flat before they could deal with the matter. My officer called you at your club and got you?"
Mary had opened her eyes, and a few minutes later was sitting up, very white and shaken, but calm enough to tell her story. Throughout that night Scotland Yard officers combed London and the suburbs for their man. "May be accompanied by a woman," the official warning ran, and there was added a description of the wanted pair.
On the advice of Surefoot, Mary moved into an hotel. It was a quiet hostelry near the Haymarket. Surefoot had an idea that no harm would come to the girl now that Mr. Washington Wirth's secret was out. He might kill her to avoid the embarrassment of identification, but now that she had spoken she was no longer a menace to his security.
"I hope so, at any rate," she said ruefully. "I am a failure as a detective."
Surefoot sniffed.
"I'm a bad man to ask for compliments," he said. "Beyond the fact that you've found our man and proved it, and apart from what I might call the circumstance that you've discovered how the forgeries were wangled, you've been perfectly useless!"
On the night of the girl's adventure Surefoot had cabled to his friend in New York the particulars of the English gangster who was at large in England. He went farther and arranged for the New York Police Department to cable the photograph of the man to Scotland Yard. A description would have been sufficient. There was no mistaking. The day the photograph was received, Surefoot had gone to call on the directors of Moran's bank. A very careful audit had been made of the bank accounts, but no further defalcations had been unearthed.
He was leaving when the general manager, who had placed the facts before him, remarked:
"By the way, I suppose you know that Moran's service in the bank was interrupted when he went to America? He was there three or four years. We have reason to believe that he was engaged in some sort of speculative business—he never gave us any particulars about it."
"That's odd," said Surefoot.
He did not explain where the oddness lay.
"He has also a large interest in Cassari Oils, which have had such a sensational rise," said the manager. "I only discovered this a few days ago."
"I have known it for quite a long time," said Surefoot grimly, "and I can tell you something: he has made nearly a million out of the stock."
The man's eyebrows rose.
"So there was no need for him to be dishonest?"
"There never was," said Surefoot cryptically.
In these days Dick Allenby was a busy man. As principal heir to his uncle he had an immense amount of work to do. The late Mr. Lyne had certain interests in France which had to be liquidated. Dick took the afternoon boat express to Paris.
Between Ashford and Dover there had been a derailment on the day before, and the passenger trains were being worked on a single line. There was very little delay occasioned by this method of working the traffic, except that it necessitated the boat train being brought to a standstill at a little station near Sandling Junction.
The Continental train drew slowly into the station and stopped. There was another train waiting to proceed in the opposite direction. As they were going to move Dick turned his head idly, as passengers will, and scrutinised the other passengers.
The Pullman car was passing at a snail's pace. The long body drew out of view and there came a coupé compartment at the end of the car. A man was sitting in the corner, reading a newspaper. As the trains passed he put the paper down and turned his head. It was Leo Moran!