THE CLUE OF THE SILVER KEY

by EDGAR WALLACE

H&S

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED          LONDON

Dedicated
to
MICHAEL BEARY

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR HODDER AND STOUGHTON, LTD.,
BY BILLING AND SONS LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER.

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CHAPTER ONE

They were all in this business—Dick Allenby, inventor and heir-at-law; Jerry Dornford, man about town and wastrel; Mike Hennessey, theatrical adventurer; Mary Lane, small part actress; Leo Moran, banker and speculator; Horace Tom Tickler (alas, for him!) was very much in it, though he knew nothing about it.

Mr. Washington Wirth, who gave parties and loved flattery; old Hervey Lyne and the patient Binny, who pulled his bath-chair and made his breakfast and wrote his letters—and Surefoot Smith.

There came a day when Binny, who was an assiduous reader of newspapers that dealt with the more picturesque aspects of crime, was to find himself the focal point of attention and his evidence read by millions who had never before heard of him—a wonderful experience.

Mr. Washington Wirth's parties were most exclusive affairs and, in a sense, select. The guests were chosen with care, and might not, in the manner of the age, invite the uninvited to accompany them; but they were, as Mary Lane said, "an odd lot." She went because Mike Hennessey asked her, and she rather liked the stout and lethargic Mike. People called him "poor old Mike" because of his bankruptcies, but just now sympathy would be wasted on him. He had found Mr. Washington Wirth, a patron of the theatre and things theatrical, and Mr. Washington Wirth was a very rich man.

He was also a mysterious man. He was generally believed to live in the Midlands and to be associated with industry. His London address was the Kellner Hotel, but he never slept there. His secretary would telephone in advance for the Imperial suite on a certain day, and on the evening of that day, when supper was laid for his twenty or thirty guests, and the specially hired orchestra was tuning up, he would appear, a stout, flaxen-haired man in horn-rimmed spectacles. The uncharitable said his flaxen hair was a wig, which may or may not have been true.

He was perfectly tailored, invariably wore white kid gloves. He spoke in a high, falsetto voice, had a trick of clicking his heels and kissing the hands of his lady guests which was very Continental.

His guests were hand-picked. He chose—or Mike chose for him—the smaller theatrical fry; chorus girls, small part ladies, an obscure singer or two.

Once Mike had suggested a brighter kind of party. Mr. Wirth was shocked.

"I want nothing fast," he said.

He loved adulation—and had his fill of it. He was a generous spender, a giver of expensive presents; people living on the verge of poverty might be excused a little flattering.

You could not gate-crash into one of Mr. Washington Wirth's parties, invitations to which came in the shape of a small oblong badge, not unlike the badge worn by the ladies in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, on which the name of the invited guest was written. This the recipient wore; it served a double purpose, for it enabled Mr. Wirth to read and address each of his guests by her name.

Mary Lane was well aware that the invitation was no tribute to her own eminence.

"I suppose if I had been a really important guest I shouldn't have been invited?" she said.

Mike smiled good-naturedly.

"You are important, Mary—the most important person here, my dear. The old boy was keen to know you."

"Who is he?"

Mike shook his head.

"He's got all the money in the world," he said.

She laughed. Mary Lane was very lovely when she laughed. She was conscious that Washington Wirth, albeit occupied with the cooing attention of two blonde lovelies, was watching her out of the side of his eyes.

"He gives lots of parties, doesn't he?" she asked. "Mr. Allenby told me today that they are monthly affairs. He must be rich, of course, or he wouldn't keep our play running. Honestly, Mike, we must be losing a fortune at the Sheridan."

Mike Hennessey took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the ash.

"I'm not losing a fortune," he said. Then, most unexpectedly: "Old Hervey Lyne a friend of yours, Mary?"

She denied the friendship with some vigour.

"No, he's my guardian. Why?"

Mike put back his cigar deliberately.

The band had struck up a waltz. Mr. Wirth was gyrating awkwardly, holding at arm's length a lady from the Jollity who was used to being held more tightly.

"I had an idea you were connected," he said. "Moneylender, wasn't he? That's how he made his stuff. Is Mr. Allenby related to him?"

There was a certain significance in the question, and she flushed.

"Yes—his nephew." She was a little disconcerted. "Why?"

Mike looked past her at the dancers.

"Trying to pretend they enjoy it," he said. "They're all getting gold-mounted vanity bags tonight—you'll get yours."

"But why do you ask about Mr. Lyne?" she persisted.

"Just wondering how well you knew the old man. No, he's never lent me money. He wants gilt-edged security and I've never had it. Moran's his banker."

Mike was one of those disconcerting men whose speech followed the eccentric course of their thoughts.

He chuckled.

"Funny, that, Mary. Moran's his banker. You don't see the joke, but I do."

She knew Leo Moran slightly. He was by way of being a friend of Dick Allenby's, and he was, she knew, a frequent visitor to the theatre, though he never came "back stage."

When Mike was being cryptic it was a waste of time trying to catch up with him. She looked at her watch.

"Will he be very annoyed if I leave soon? I have promised to go on to the Legation."

He shook his head, took her gently by the arm, and led her up to where Mr. Wirth was being delightfully entertained by three pretty girls who were trying to guess his age.

"My little friend has to go, Mr. Wirth," he said. "She's got a rehearsal in the morning."

"Perfectly understood!" said the host.

When he smiled he had white, even teeth, for which no thanks were due to nature.

"Per-fectly understood. Come again, Miss Mary Lane. I'll be back from abroad in three weeks."

She took his big, limp hand and shook it. Mike escorted her out and helped her into her coat.

"Another hour for me and then I pack up," he said. "He never stays after one. By the way, I'll bring on your gift to the theatre."

She liked Mike—everybody liked Mike. There was hardly an actor or an actress in London who had not agreed to take half-salary from him. He could cry very convincingly when he was ruined, and he was always ruined when hard-hearted people expected him to pay what he owed them.

A lovable soul, entirely dishonest. Nobody knew what he did with the money which he had lost for so many people, but the probability is that it was usefully employed.

"I don't know what's the matter with our play," he said, as he walked with her along the corridor to the elevator. "Maybe it's the title—Cliffs of Fate—what does it mean? I've seen the darn' thing forty times and still I don't know what it's about."

She stared at him, aghast.

"But you chose it!" she protested.

He shook his head.

"He did." He jerked his thumb back to Mr. Wirth's suite. "He said it made him feel a better man when he read it. It's never made me want to go more regularly to the synagogue!"

He saw Mary depart, fussed over her like a broody hen. He liked Mary because she was real in a world of unreality. The first time he had taken her out to supper he had offered her a few suggestions on the quickest method by which a young actress might reach stardom, and her name in lights, and she had answered him sanely and yet in a way that did not entirely wound his vanity—and the vanity of a fat man is prodigious.

Thereafter she went into a new category: he had many; she was the only woman in the world he really liked, though, it is said, he loved many. He strolled back to the hectic atmosphere of the supper-room—Mr. Wirth was presenting the bags.

He was unusually gay: usually he drank very little, but tonight ... Well, he had promised to drink a whole bottle of champagne if anybody guessed his age, and one of the three pretty girls had guessed thirty-two.

"Good God!" said Mike, when they told him.

As soon as was expedient he took his patron aside.

"About time these people went, Mr. Wirth," he said.

Mr. Wirth smiled foolishly; spoke with the refinement which wine brings to some.

"My deah, deah fellah! I'm quate ceepable of draving myself to deah old Coventry."

Certainly this was a new Mr. Wirth. Mike Hennessey was troubled. He felt he was in danger of losing a priceless possession. It was as though the owner of a secret gold mine, from which he was drawing a rich dividend, were hoisting a great flapping flag to mark its site.

"What you want," he said agitatedly, "is something cooling. Just wait here, will you?"

He ran out, saw the head waiter, and came back very soon with a little blue bottle. He measured a tablespoonful of white granules into a wine-glass and filled it with water; then he handed this fizzling, hissing potion to the giver of the feast.

"Drink," he said.

Mr. Wirth obeyed. He stopped and gasped between the gulps.

By now the last guest had gone.

"All right?" asked Mike anxiously.

"Quite all right," snapped the other.

He seemed suddenly sober. Mike, at any rate, was deceived. He did not see his friend to his car because that was against the rules. Mr. Wirth, wrapped in a heavy coat, the collar of which was turned up, his opera hat at a rakish angle over his eyes, made his way to the garage near the hotel, had his car brought out, and was getting into it when the watcher sidled up to him.

"Can I have a word with you, mister?"

Mr. Wirth surveyed him glassily, climbed into his seat and shifted his gear.

"Can I have a word——"

The car jerked forward. The little interviewer, who had one foot on the running board, was sent sprawling. He got up and began to run after the car, to the amusement of the garage workers; car and pursuer vanished in the darkness.

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CHAPTER TWO

The trailer lost his quarry in Oxford Street and wandered disconsolately onward. A sort of homing instinct led him towards Regent's Park. Naylors Crescent was a magnificent little side street leading from the outer circle. It was very silent, its small, but stately, houses were in darkness.

Mr. Tickler—such was his peculiar name—stopped before No. 17 and looked up at the windows. The white blinds were drawn down and the house was lifeless. He stood, with his hands thrust into his pockets, blinking at the green door that he knew so well, at the three worn steps leading down, and the hollow steel railway that masons had fixed into the stonework to allow the easy descent of a bath-chair.

Inside was wealth, immense, incalculable wealth, and a stupid old man on the verge of the grave. Outside were poverty and resentment, the recollection of the rigours of Pentonville Prison, a sense of injustice. Old Lyne slept on the first floor. His bed was between these two high windows. That lower window marked the study where he sat in the daytime. There was a safe in the wall, full of useless old papers. Old Lyne never kept money in the house. All his life he had advertised this habit. A burglar or two had gone to enormous trouble to prove him a liar and had got nothing for their pains.

There he was, sleeping in luxury, the old rat, under featherweight blankets specially woven for him, under a satin coverlet packed tight with rare down, and here was he, Horace Tom Tickler, with a pinch of silver in his pocket.

But, perhaps he was not there at all? That was an old trick of his, to be out when everybody thought he was in, and in when they thought he was out.

He walked up and down the quiet cul-de-sac for nearly an hour, turning over in his mind numerous schemes, mostly impracticable, then he slouched back towards the bright streets and coffee stalls. He took a short cut through the mews to reach Portland Place, and the most astounding luck was with him.

A policeman walking through Baynes Mews heard the sound of a man singing. It was, if his hearing gave a right impression, the voice of one who had gone far in insobriety, and the voice came from a tiny flat, one of the many above the garages that lined each side of the mews. Time was when they were occupied exclusively by coachmen and chauffeurs, but the artistic and aristocratic classes had swamped these humble West End habitations, and more than half of the new population of Baynes Mews were people who dressed for dinner and came home from parties and night clubs, their arms filled with gala favours, some of which made strange and distressing noises.

There was nothing in the voice to indicate anything more startling than normal inebriety. The policeman would have passed on but for the fact that he saw a figure sitting on the step of the narrow door which led to the little flat above.

The officer turned his electric lamp on the sitter and saw nothing which paid for illumination. The little man who grinned up at the policeman was, as the officer said to his sergeant later, "nothing to write home about." He was red-faced, unshaven, wretchedly shabby. His collar might have been white a week before; he wore no tie and his linen, even in the uncertain light of the lamp, was uncleanly.

"'Ear him?" He jerked his head upward and grinned. "First time it's ever happened. Soused! What a mug, eh? Gettin' soused. He slipped me tonight, an' I'd never have tailed him—but for this bit of luck.... 'Eard him by accident.... Soused!"

"You're a bit soused yourself, aren't you?"

The policeman's tone was unfriendly.

"I've had three whiskies and a glass of beer. Does a man of the world get soused on that, I ask you?"

The voice upstairs had died down to a deep hum.

At the far end of the mews a horse was kicking in his box with maddening irregularity.

"A friend of yours?"

The little man shook his head.

"I don't know. Perhaps; that's what I got to find out. Is he friendly or ain't he?"

The policeman made a gesture.

"Get out of this. I can't have you loungin' about. I seem to know your face, too. Didn't I see you at Clerkenwell Police Court once?"

This officer prided himself on his memory for faces. It was his practice to say that he could never remember names, but never forgot faces. He thought he was unique and his remark original, and was not conscious of being one of forty million fellow citizens who also remembered faces and forgot names.

The little man rose and fell in by the officer's side.

"That's right." His step was a little unsteady. "I got nine munce for fraud."

He had in truth been convicted of petty larceny and had gone to prison for a month, but thieves have their pride.

Could a man convicted of fraud be arrested under the Prevention of Crimes Act because he sat in the doorway of a mews flat? This was the problem that exercised the mind of the constable. At the end of the mews he looked round for his sergeant, but that authority was not in sight.

A thought occurred to him.

"What you got in your pocket?"

The little man stretched out his arms.

"Search me—go on. You ain't entitled to, but I'll let you."

Another dilemma for the policeman, who was young and not quite sure of his rights and duties.

"Push off. Don't let me see you hanging around here," he ordered.

If the little man argued or refused he could be arrested for "obstruction," for "insulting behaviour," for almost anything. But he did nothing.

"All right," he said, and walked off.

The policeman was tempted to recall him and discover the identity of the singer. Instead, he watched Mr. Tickler until he was out of sight.

The hour was a quarter to two in the morning. The patrol marched on to the point where his sergeant would meet him. As for Mr. Tickler, he went shuffling down Portland Place, looking in every doorway to find a cigarette end or cigar butt, which might have been dropped by returning house-holders.

What a tale to tell if he could sell the information in the right quarter! Or he could put the "black" upon the singer. Blackmail gets easy money—if there is money to get. He stopped at a stall in Oxford Circus and drank a scalding cup of coffee. He was not entirely without funds and had a bed to go to and money for 'bus fare, if the 'buses were running.

Refreshed, he continued his way down Regent Street and met the one man in the world he would willingly have avoided. Surefoot Smith was standing in the shadow of a recessed shop window, a stocky man, in a tightly buttoned overcoat. His derby hat was, as usual, on the back of his head; his round face ruddier than Mr. Tickler's was impassive. But for the periodical puffs of smoke which came from his big briar pipe he might have been a statue carved out of red brick.

"Hey!"

Reluctantly Tickler turned. He had been quick to identify the silent watcher. By straightening his shoulders and adding something of jauntiness to his stride he hoped to prevent the recognition from becoming mutual.

Surefoot Smith was one of the few people in the world who have minds like a well-organised card index. Not the smallest and least important offender who had passed through his hands could hope to reach a blissful oblivion.

"Come here—you."

Tickler came.

"What are you doing now, Tickler? Burglary, or just fetching the beer for the con. men? Two a.m.! Got a home?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, somewhere in the West End! Gone scientific, maybe. Science is the ruin of the country!"

Rights or no rights, he passed his hands swiftly over Tickler's person; the little man stretched out his arms obediently and smiled. It was not a pretty smile, for his teeth were few and his mouth large and lop-sided. But it was a smile of conscious virtue.

"No jemmy, no chisel, no bit, no gat." Surefoot Smith gave Mr. Tickler absolution.

"No, Mr. Smith; I'm runnin' straight now. I'm going after a job tomorrow."

"Don't waste my time, boy," said Surefoot reproachfully. "Work! You've read about it. What kind of thieving do you do now? Whizzing? No, you're not clever enough."

Tickler said a bold thing. The lees of wine were still sizzling within him.

"I'm a detective," he said.

If Surefoot Smith was revolted he did not betray his emotion.

"Did you say 'defective' or 'detective'?" he asked.

He might have asked further questions, but at that moment a pocket lamp flashed twice from the roof of the building he was watching. Instantly the roadway seemed to be covered by the figures of overcoated men converging on the building. Surefoot Smith was one of the first to reach the opposite sidewalk.

A loud rapping on the door told Mr. Tickler all he wanted to know. The place was being raided—a spieling club, or maybe worse. He was grateful for the relief and hurried on his way. At Piccadilly Circus he paused and considered matters. He was quite sober now and could review the position calmly; and the more he thought, the more thoroughly he realised that he had allowed opportunity to slip past him.

He turned and walked along Piccadilly, his chin on his chest, dreaming dreams of easy money.

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CHAPTER THREE

Mary Lane looked at the plain gold watch on her wrist and gasped.

"Four o'clock, my dear!"

There were still twenty couples on the dancing floor of the Legation Club. It was a gala night, and they kept late hours at the Legation on these occasions.

"Sorry you've had such a tiring evening."

Dick Allenby didn't look sorry; he certainly did not look tired. There were no shadows under the laughing grey eyes, the tanned face was unlined. Yet he had not seen his bed for twenty-four hours.

"Anyway, you rescued me," he said as he called a waiter. "Think of it! I was alone until you came. When I said Moran had been and gone I was lying. The devil didn't turn up. Jerry Dornford tried to edge in on the party—he's still hoping."

He glanced across to a table on the other side of the room where the immaculately dressed Jerry sat.

"I hardly know him," she said.

Dick smiled.

"He wants to know you better—but he is distinctly a person not to know. Jerry has been out all the night—went away just before supper and has only just come back. Your other party was dull, was it? Funny devil, this man Wirth. It was cheek of Mike Hennessey to invite you there."

"Mike is rather a dear," she protested.

"Mike is a crook—a pleasant crook, but a crook. Whilst he is at large it is disgraceful that there is anybody else in prison!"

They passed out into the street, and as they stood waiting for a cab Dick Allenby saw a familiar figure.

"Why, Mr. Smith, you're out late!"

"Early," said Surefoot Smith. He lifted his hat to the girl. "Evening, Miss Lane. Shockin' habit, night clubs."

"I'm full of bad habits," she smiled.

Here was another man she liked. Chief Inspector Smith of Scotland Yard was liked by many people and heartily disliked by many more.

The cab drew up. She refused Dick's escort any further and drove off.

"Nice young lady that," said Surefoot. "Actresses don't mean anything to me—I've just come from Marlborough Street, where I've been chargin' three of 'em—at least, they called themselves actresses."

"A little raid?"

"A mere nothing," said Surefoot sadly. "I expected to find kings and only pulled in prawns."

"Pawns," suggested Dick.

"Small fish, anyway," said Surefoot.

That he was called "Surefoot" was no testimony to his gifts as a sleuth. It was his baptismal name. His father had been a bookmaking publican, and a month before his child was born the late Mr. Smith, obsessed with the conviction that Surefoot, the Derby favourite, would not win, had laid that horse to win himself a fortune. If Surefoot had won, the late Mr. Smith would have been a ruined man. Surefoot lost, and in gratitude he had named his infant child after the equine unfortunate.

"I nearly came up to your workshop the other day and had a squint at that gun of yours—air-gun, ain't it?"

"A sort of one," said Dick. "Who told you about it?"

"That feller Dornford. He's a bad egg! I can't understand it—your gun. Dornford said you put in a cartridge and fire it, and that charges the gun."

"It compresses the air—yes."

Dick Allenby was not in the mood to discuss inventions.

"You ought to sell it to Chicago," said Mr. Smith, and made a clicking noise with his lips. "Chicago! Six murders a week and nobody pinched!"

Dick laughed. He had only returned from Chicago a month before and he knew something of the problems that the police had to face.

"These ride murders," Surefoot went on. "I mean takin' fellers out into the country in a car and shootin' 'em. Would it be possible here? No!"

"I'm not so sure." Dick shook his head. "Anyway, it is nearly half-past four and I'm not going to talk crime with you. Come up to my flat and we'll have a drink."

Surefoot Smith hesitated.

"All right; there's no sleep for me tonight. There's a cab."

The cab stood in the middle of the road near an island.

Smith whistled.

"Driver's gone away, sir." It was the club link-man who offered the information. "I tried to get it for the lady."

"He's asleep inside," said Smith, and walked across the road, Dick following.

Surefoot peered through the closed window of the cab, but saw nothing.

"He's not there," he said, and looked again.

Then he turned the handle and pulled open the door. Somebody was there—somebody lying on the floor, with his legs on the seat.

"Drunk!" said Smith.

He flashed his lamp on the figure. The face was visible, yet indistinguishable, for he had been shot through the head at close quarters; but Smith saw enough to recognise something which had once been Mr. Horace Tom Tickler and was now just a dead, mangled thing.

"Taken for a ride!" gasped Surefoot. "Good God! What's this—Chicago?"

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CHAPTER FOUR

In five minutes there were a dozen policemen round the cab, holding back the crowd which had gathered, as crowds will gather at any hour of the day or night in London. Fortunately, a police sergeant had been at Marlborough Street, attending to a drunk, and he was on the spot within a few minutes.

"Shot at close quarters by a very small-bore pistol," was his first verdict after a casual examination.

In a very short time the ambulance arrived, and all that was mortal of Horace Tom Tickler was removed. A police officer started up the engine of the taxi and drove it into the station yard for closer inspection. The number had already been taken. Scotland Yard had sent a swift car to find the owner, a taxi driver named Wells.

Dick Allenby had not been specifically invited to the investigations, but had found himself in conversation with Surefoot Smith at crucial moments of the search, and had drifted with him to the police station.

The man had been shot in the cab; they found a bullet hole through the leather lining of the hood. The body, Smith thought, had sagged forward to the ground and the legs had been lifted in the approved gang style.

"He was probably still alive when he was on the floor. The murderer must have fired a second shot. We have found a bullet in the floor-board of the cab."

"Have you found the driver?" asked Dick.

"He's on his way."

Mr. Wells, the driver, proved to be a very stout and thoroughly alarmed man. His story was a simple one. He had got to the garage where he kept his car a little before 2 o'clock. The door of the garage was closed. He left the cab outside, which was evidently a practice of his, for the cleaner, who would come on duty at six o'clock and prepare the cab for the day's work. He could leave it outside with impunity, because cabs are very rarely stolen; they are so easily identified and so useless to the average car thief that they are very seldom "knocked off." His garage was in a stable yard off the Marylebone Road.

So far as he was concerned, he had a complete alibi, for, after leaving the cab, he had gone to the nearest police station to deposit an umbrella and a pocket-book which had been left by a previous passenger. A policeman had seen him leave the car, and to this policeman he had brought the lost property, which he had afterwards deposited at the station. It was a very lonely yard, and, unlike such places, was entirely without inhabitants, the garages forming part of a building which was used as a furniture store.

It was seven o'clock, and the West End was alive with market cars, when Dick drove home to his flat at Queen's Gate. It was curious that the only impression left on him was one of relief that Mary had not walked across the road to the cab and opened the door, as she might have done, and made the hideous discovery. The car had been parked outside the club twenty minutes before the discovery; the driver had been seen to leave the taxi and walk towards Air Street.

The earliest discovery that had been made was that the taxi flag was down and a sum of seventeen shillings was registered on the clock. This gave the police approximately the period between the murder being committed and the body being found.

Late that afternoon Surefoot Smith called on Dick Allenby.

"Thought you'd like to know how far we've got," he said. "We found a hundred one-pound notes in this bird's pocket."

"Tickler's?"

"How did you know his name was Tickler?" Surefoot Smith regarded him with suspicion.

Dick did not answer immediately.

"Well, the odd thing is, I recognised him when I saw him. He used to be a servant of my uncle's."

"You didn't tell me that last night."

"I wasn't sure last night; I wasn't sure, in fact, until I saw the body lifted out. I don't know very much about my uncle's business, but I understand this man was fired for stealing, about six or seven years ago."

Surefoot nodded.

"That's right. I'd come to give you that bit of information. I saw old Lyne this morning, but, bless you, Scotland Yard means nothing to him. Your uncle, is he?" He nodded again. "Congratulations!"

"What did he say?" asked Dick, curious.

Surefoot Smith lit his huge pipe.

"If you think he broke down, I am here to put you right. All he could remember about Tickler was that he was a scoundrel, and anyway we knew that. A hundred one-pound notes! If there had only been a fiver amongst them it might have been easy."

He cleared a space on a crowded bench and perched himself upon it.

"I wonder who the fellow was who took him for a ride? American, I'll bet you! That's what's worrying me—science coming into crime!"

Dick laughed.

"According to you, Surefoot, science is responsible for all crime."

Mr. Smith raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

"Well, isn't it? What's science done? It's given us photography to make forgery easy, aeroplanes to get thieves out of the country, motor-cars for burglars. What's wireless done? I've had four cases in the West End in the last six months of fellows who used wireless to rob people! What's electricity done? It helps safe smashers to drill holes in strong rooms! Science!"

Dick thought there was very little evidence of applied science in the taxicab murder, and said so.

"It might have been committed in a horse cab."

"The driver couldn't have left a horse," was the crushing retort. "I'll bet you this is the first of many."

He reached out and put his hand on the oblong steel box that lay on the bench near him.

"That's science, and therefore it's going to be used by criminals. It's a noiseless gun——"

"Was the pistol last night noiseless?" asked Dick.

Surefoot Smith thought a moment, and then:

"Have you got any beer?" he asked.

There were a dozen bottles under one of the benches. Dick had many visitors who required refreshment. Surefoot Smith opened two and drank them in rapid succession. He was a great drinker of beer, had been known to polish off twenty bottles at a sitting without being any the worse for it, claiming, indeed, that beer intensified his powers of reasoning.

"No," he said, and wiped his moustache carefully with a large red handkerchief; "and yet we have seen nobody who heard the shots. Where were they fired? That cab could have been driven somewhere in the country. There are plenty of lonely places where a couple of shots would not be noticed or heard. You can go a long way in a couple of hours. There were rain marks on the windscreen and mud on the wheels. There was no rain in London; there has been a lot just outside of London."

He reached mechanically under the bench, took out a third and a fourth bottle and opened them absent-mindedly.

"And how did you find my noble relative?"

"Friend of yours?" asked Surefoot.

Dick shook his head.

"Well, I can tell you what I think of him."

Mr. Smith described Hervey Lyne in a pungent sentence.

"Very likely," agreed Dick Allenby, watching his beer vanish. "I'm hardly on speaking terms with him."

Again Surefoot wiped his moustache with great care.

"This fellow Tickler—you had a few words with him, didn't you, about five years ago?"

Dick's eyes narrowed.

"Did Mr. Lyne tell you that?"

"Somebody told me," said Surefoot vaguely.

"I kicked him out of my flat, yes. He brought father an insulting message from my uncle, and supplemented it with a few remarks of his own."

Surefoot got down from the bench and brushed himself carefully.

"You ought to have told me all this last night," he said reproachfully. "It might have saved me a bit of trouble."

"I also might have saved myself four bottles of beer," said Dick, slightly irritated.

"That's been put to a good use," said Surefoot.

He examined the odd-looking air-gun again, lifted it without difficulty and replaced it.

"That might have done it," he said.

"Are you suggesting I killed this fellow?" Dick Allenby's anger was rising.

Surefoot smiled.

"Don't lose your temper. It's not you I am up against, but science."

"It certainly is a gun," said Dick, controlling his wrath; "but the main idea—I don't know whether you can get it into your thick head——"

"Thank you," murmured Surefoot.

"—is that this should be put to commercial use. By exploding an ordinary cartridge, or nearly an ordinary cartridge, in this breech, I create a tremendous air pressure, which can be just as well used for running a machine as for shooting a gaol-bird."

"You knew he'd been in gaol?" asked Surefoot, almost apologetically.

"Of course I knew he'd been in gaol—two or three times, I should imagine, but I only know of one occasion, when my uncle prosecuted him. If I were you, Surefoot, I'd go to Chicago and learn something of the police methods there——"

"There ain't any," interrupted Surefoot decidedly. "I've studied the subject."

As Surefoot Smith walked towards Hyde Park he observed that all other events in the world had slumped to insignificance by the side of the taxicab murder. Every newspaper bill flamed with the words. One said "Important Clue"; he wasted a penny to discover that the clue was the first news that a hundred pounds had been found in the dead man's pocket, a fact which had not previously been revealed.

The antecedents of Wells had been investigated during the day and he had been given a clean bill by a man whose chief desire was to find the most damning evidence against him.

Smith was due at Scotland Yard for a conference at four o'clock. He hated conferences, where people sat round and smoked and expressed extravagant views on subjects they knew nothing about. But on this occasion, the first time for many years, he arrived promptly and had the satisfaction of finding that his four colleagues were as barren of ideas as he. They knew—and this was no discovery—that there was a possibility that this was a new type of crime which might become prevalent. Desperadoes had before now stolen cars, but had confined their operations to minor out-of-town burglaries.

There was one scrap of news. A policeman patrolling Portland Place from one of the mews behind had identified the body as that of a man to whom he had spoken at a quarter to two, and this tallied with Smith's own knowledge, for it was at two o'clock that he had seen Tickler walking down Regent Street from the direction of Portland Place.

Curiously enough, though a familiar phenomenon to police investigators, the policeman had said nothing about the drunken man in whose voice Tickler had been interested. Nor, in his report, had he given so much as a hint of that part of the conversation which revealed his knowledge of a man against whom he had had a grudge, and who might conceivably have had as deep an animosity towards him.

"This tells me no more than I know," said Surefoot, putting down the report. "Except that it is not true that Tickler ever had nine months; all his sentences were shorter. Who was it killed this poor little hound? He was broke, or nearly broke. I saw him stop to pick up a cigarette from the sidewalk just before he came up to me. Who picked him up in the stolen cab, and why?"

Fat McEwan leaned back in his well-filled chair and blew a trumpet of smoke to the ceiling.

"If there were such things as gangs you could guess it in once," he said despairingly. "But there are no gangs. This man was not even a nose, was he, Surefoot?"

Surefoot shook his head. "A nose" is a police informer, and Tickler had never been that.

"Then why the dickens should he have been killed? Tell me that."

This was a fair summary of an hour's discussion. Surefoot Smith went down to his little office entirely unenlightened. He found a number of letters, and one that had been posted at Westminster and had been delivered that afternoon. The envelope was dirty; his address was scrawled in an illiterate hand. He tore open the envelope and took out a sheet of paper, obviously extracted from a memorandum book of the cheaper kind. In pencil were the words:

"If you want to know who killed poor Mr. Tickler you'd better go and have a talk with Mr. L. Moran."

Smith looked at the letter for a long time, and then:

"Why not?" he asked himself aloud.

There were a great many things about Mr. Moran that he could never quite understand.

---

CHAPTER FIVE

Faith needs the garnishing of romance as much as hope requires the support of courage. Mary Lane had faith in her future, courage to brace the hope of ultimate achievement. Otherwise she was without the more important and disastrous illusions which do so much to create rosy prospects and unhappy memories.

She knew that some day she would be accepted by the West End of London as an important actress, that her name would appear in electric lights outside a theatre, and a little larger than her fellow artistes on the day-bill. But she never dreamed vain dreams of sudden fame, though, in the nature of things, fame is as sudden as the transition of a sound sleeper to wakefulness. Some day the slumbering public would open its eyes and be aware of Mary Lane. In the meantime it was oblivious of her existence—all except a few wide-awake writers of dramatic criticism. These very few, having a weakness for discovery, continuously swept the theatrical sky in search of nth dimension stars which would one day (here the astronomical analogy became absurd) blaze into the first dimension. Occasionally they "found"; more often than not they made themselves ridiculous, but covered their failure with well-designed fun poked at themselves and their own enthusiasms—which is one of the tricks of their business.

It was only a half-hearted discovery so far as Mary was concerned. She was a brighter speck in the nebula of young actresses. She might be (they said) a very great actress some day, if she overcame her habit of dropping her voice, if she learned how to use her hands, if this, that and the other.

Mary strove diligently, for she was at the age when dramatic critics seem infallible. She did not dream unprofitably; never lay awake at night, imagining the eruption of an agitated management into the dressing-room she shared with two other girls.

"You're understudying Miss Fortescue, aren't you? Get into her clothes quick: she's been taken ill."

She did not visualise newspaper columns acclaiming the young actress who had found fame in a night. She knew that understudy performances, however politely received, are as politely forgotten, and that a girl who grows famous in an evening steps into oblivion between Saturday and Monday.

On the second morning after her appearance at Washington Wirth's party, she had a brief interview with Mr. Hervey Lyne on the subject of her allowance. It was not a pleasant interview. None of her interviews with Mr. Lyne had ever been that.

"If you go on the stage you must expect to starve!" he snarled. "Your fool of a father made me his executor and gave me full authority. A hundred and fifty a year is all that you get until you're twenty-five. And there is nothing more to be said!"

She was very pretty and very angry, but she kept her temper admirably.

"Twenty thousand pounds brings in more than a hundred and fifty a year," she said.

He glared in her direction; she was just a blotch of blue and pink to his myopic vision.

"It is all you will get until you are twenty-five—and then I'll be glad to get rid of you. And another thing, young lady: you're a friend of my nephew, Richard Allenby?"

Her chin went up.

"Yes."

He wagged a skinny forefinger at her.

"He gets nothing from me—whether I'm alive or dead. Understand that!"

She did not trust herself to reply.

Binny showed her out and was incoherently sympathetic.

"Don't worry, miss," he said in his dull voice; "he ain't himself this mornin'."

She said nothing, hardly noticed Binny, who sighed heavily and wagged his head mournfully as he shut the door. He was by way of being a sentimentalist.

Ten minutes later she was talking vehemently over the telephone to Dick Allenby. His sympathy was more acceptable.

People used to say about Hervey Lyne that he was the sort of character that only Dickens could have drawn, which is discouraging to a lesser chronicler. He was eccentric in appearance and habit; naturally so, because he was old and self-willed and had a vivid memory of his past importance.

Everybody who was anybody in the late Victorian age had borrowed money from Hervey Lyne, and most of them had paid it back with considerable interest. Unlike the late "Chippy" Isaacs, as mild and pleasant a gentleman as ever issued money on note of hand, Hervey was harsh, unconscionable and rude. But he was quick. The swells who drove in broughams and had thousands on their horses, and gave champagne parties to men who wore side whiskers and women who wore flounces and regarded other women who smoked cigarettes as being damned body and soul, were sometimes in difficulties to find ready money, and generally they chose Hervey first because they knew their fate sooner than if they applied to Chippy.

Hervey said "No" or "Yes," and meant "No" or "Yes." You could go into Hervey's parlour in Naylors Crescent and either come out in five minutes with the money you needed or in two minutes with the sure knowledge that if you had stayed two hours you would not have persuaded him.

He gave up lending money when the trustees of the Duke of Crewdon's estate fought him in the Law Courts and lost. Hervey thought they would win, and had the shock of his life. Thereafter he only lent very occasionally, just as a gambler will play cards occasionally (and then for small stakes) to recover something of the old thrill.

His attitude to the world can be briefly defined: the galley of his life floated serenely on a sluggish sea of fools. His clients were fools; he had never felt the least respect for any of them. They were fools to borrow, fools to agree to enormous and staggering rates of interest, fools to repay him.

Dick Allenby was a fool, a pottering inventor and an insolent cub who hadn't the brains to see on which side his bread was buttered. Mary Lane was a fool, a posturing actress who painted her face and kicked her legs about (he invariably employed this inelegant illustration) for a pittance. One was his nephew, and might with tact have inherited a million; the other was the daughter of his sometime partner, and might, had she been a good actress, have enjoyed the same inheritance—would enjoy it yet if he could arouse himself from his surprising lethargy and alter his will.

His servants were complete fools. Old Binny, bald, stout, perspiring, who pulled his bath-chair into the park and read him to sleep, was a fool. He might have taken a kindlier view of Binny and left him a hundred or so "for his unfailing loyalty and tireless services," but Binny hummed hymn tunes in the house and hummed them a key or so flat.

Not that Binny cared. He was a cheery soul with large eyes and a completely bald head. A bit of a sluggard, whom his thin and whining wife (who was also the cook of 17, Naylors Crescent) found a difficult man to get out of bed in the mornings. Valet, confidential servant, messenger, butler, chair-puller, and reader, Binny, alert or sleepy, was worth exactly three times as much wages as he received.

Old Hervey sat propped up in his armchair, glooming at the egg and toast that had been put before him. His thin old face wore an expression of discontent. The thick, tinted glasses which hid the hard blue eyes were staring at the tray, and his mind was far away.

"Has that jackass of a detective called again?"

"No, sir," said Binny. "You mean Mr. Smith?"

"I mean the fool that came to ask questions about that blackguard Tickler," stormed the old man, emphasising every sentence with a blow on the table that set the cups rattling.

"The man who was found in the cab——?"

"You know who I mean," snarled the old man. "I suppose one of his thieving friends killed him. It's the sort of end a man like that would come to."

Hervey Lyne relapsed into silence, a scowl on his face. He wondered if Binny was robbing him too. There had been a suspicious increase in the grocery bill lately, Binny's explanation that the cost of food had gone up being entirely unacceptable. And Binny was one of those smooth, smug, crawling slaves who wouldn't think twice about robbing an employer. It was about time Binny was changed. He had hinted as much that morning, and Binny had almost moaned his anguish.

"It's going to be a fine day, sir, for your outing."

He stirred the contents of the teapot surreptitiously with a spoon.

"Don't talk," snapped the old man.

There was another long silence, and then:

"What time is that fellow calling?" he asked harshly.

Binny, who was pouring out the tea at a side table, turned his big head and gazed pathetically at his employer.

"What feller, sir? The young lady came at nine——"

Hervey's thin lip curled in silent fury.

"Of course she did, you fool! But the bank manager ... didn't you ask him to come——"

"At ten, sir—Mr. Moran——"

"Get the letter—get it!"

Binny placed the cup of tea before his employer, rummaged through a small heap of papers on an open secretaire and found what he sought.

"Read it—read it!" snapped the old man. "I can't be bothered."

He never would be bothered again. He could tell light from dark; knew by a pale blur where the window was, could find his way unaided up the seventeen stairs which led to his bedroom, but no more. He could sign his name, and you would never suspect that a man more than half blind was responsible for that flourish.

"Dear Mr. Lyne" (read Binny in the monotonous voice he adopted for reading aloud),—"I will give myself the pleasure of calling on you at ten o'clock tomorrow morning.

"Yours faithfully,

"Leo Moran."

Hervey smiled again.

"Give himself the pleasure, eh?" His thin voice grew shrill. "Does he think I'm asking him here for his amusement? There's the door bell."

Binny shuffled out and came back in a few seconds with the visitor.

"Mr. Moran," he announced.

"Sit down—sit down, Mr. Moran." The old man waved a hand vaguely. "Find him a chair, Binny, and get out—d'ye hear? Get out! And don't listen at the door, damn you!"

The visitor smiled as the door closed on a Binny who was unconcerned, unemotional, unresentful.

"Now, Moran—you're my bank manager."

"Yes, Mr. Lyne. I asked if I could see you a year ago, if you remember——"

"I remember," testily. "I don't want to see bank managers: I want them to look after my money. That is your job—you're paid for it, handsomely, I've no doubt. You have brought the account?"

The visitor took an envelope from his pocket, and, opening it, brought out two folded sheets of paper.

"Here——" he began, and his chair creaked as he rose.

"I don't want to see them—just tell me what is my balance."

"Two hundred and twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty pounds and a few shillings."

"M'm!" The "m'm" was a purr of satisfaction. "That includes the deposit, eh? And you hold stock...?"

"The stock held amounts to six hundred and thirty-two thousand pounds."

"I'll tell you why I want you——" began Lyne; and then, suspiciously: "Open the door and see if that fellow's listening."

The visitor rose, opened the door and closed it again.

"There's nobody there," he said.

He was slightly amused, though Mr. Lyne's infirmities prevented him from observing this fact.

"Nobody, eh? Well, Moran, I'll tell you candidly: I regard myself as a remarkably able man. That is not boastful, it is a fact which you yourself could probably verify. I trust nobody—not even bank managers. My eyesight is not as good as it was, and it is a little difficult to check up accounts. But I have a remarkable memory. I have trained myself to carry figures in my head, and I could have told you to within a few shillings exactly the figures that you gave to me."

He paused, stared through his thick glasses in the direction of the man who sat at the other side of his desk.

"You're not a speculator or a gambler?"

"No, Mr. Lyne, I am not."

A pause.

"H'm! That fool Binny was reading to me a few days ago the story of a bank manager who had absconded, taking with him a very considerable sum. I confess I was uneasy. People have robbed me before——"

"You are not being very polite, Mr. Lyne."

"I'm not trying to be polite," snapped the old man. "I am merely telling you what has happened to me. There was a scoundrelly servant of mine, a fellow called Tickler. The fellow who was killed ..."

He rambled on, a long, long story about the minor depredations of his dishonest servant, and the man who called himself Moran listened patiently. He was very relieved when he had taken the thin, limp hand in his and the door of No. 17, Naylors Crescent, closed behind him.

"Phew!" he said. He had a habit of speaking his thoughts aloud. "I wouldn't go through that again for a lot of money."

Binny, summoned from the deeps by a bell, came in to find the visitor gone.

"What does he look like, Binny? Has he an honest face?"

Binny thought profoundly.

"Just a face," he said vaguely, and the old man snorted.

"Clear those breakfast things away. Who else is coming to see me?"

Binny thought for a long time.

"A man named Dornford, sir."

"A gentleman named Dornford," corrected his master. "He owes me money, therefore he is a gentleman. At what hour?"

"About eight o'clock, sir."

Lyne dismissed him with a gesture.

At three o'clock that afternoon he ambled out of his sitting-room, wrapped in his thick Inverness coat and wearing his soft felt hat, allowed himself, growling complaints the while, to be tucked into his bath-chair, and was drawn painfully into the street; more painfully up the gentle slope to the park and into the private gardens, entry to which was exclusively reserved for tenants of Naylors and other terraces. Here he sat, under the shade of a tree, while Binny, perched uncomfortably upon a folding stool, read in his monotonous voice the happenings of the day.

Only once the old man interrupted.

"What time is Mr. Dornford calling?"

"At eight o'clock, sir," said Binny.

Lyne nodded, pushed his blue-tinted glasses higher up the thin bridge of his nose and folded his gloved hands over the rug which protected his knees from errant breezes.

"You be in when he comes, d'ye hear? A tricky fellow—a dangerous fellow. You hear me, Binny?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why the devil didn't you say so? Go on reading that trash."

Binny obeyed, and continued with great relish the story of London's latest murder. Binny was a great student of crime in the abstract.

---

CHAPTER SIX

Arthur Jules barely deserves description because he plays so small a part; but as that small part was big enough to put one man in the shadow of the gallows, he may be catalogued as a plump, sallow-faced young man, who wore a monocle, had perfectly brushed hair, and was invariably dressed as though he were on his way to a wedding reception.

He was a sort of attaché to a South American Legation, and a free-lance of diplomacy generally. In more suspicious countries he would have been handed his passport with extreme politeness, and his departure from Southampton would have been watched by the bored detective whose business it is to superintend the shipment of oddities.

He was always important and profound; never more so than when he sat at the bay window overlooking St. James's Street, stroking his little black moustache thoughtfully and speaking with just the slightest trace of an accent to Jerry Dornford.

Everybody knew and liked Jerry, whose other name was Gerald. He had all the qualities which endear a wastrel to the monied classes. He was, of course, a member of Snell's, as was Jules. He was, indeed, a member of all the important clubs where gentlemen meet. He paid his subscription, never passed a cheque which was dishonoured, had never been warned off or posted as a bankrupt. A tall man, with a slight stoop, brownish hair very thin on the top, deep-set eyes that smiled in a worn, tired face.

Jerry had lived very fast. Few of his creditors could keep up with him. He had been a co-respondent, and again a co-respondent, and was single, and lived in a little flat in Half Moon Street, where he gave small parties; very small. He retained his membership of exclusive racing clubs—bookmakers lived in the hope that he would one day settle with them. He had certain very rich relations who would certainly die, but were not so certain whether they would bequeath their undoubted wealth to this profligate son of Sir George Dornford. On the other hand, why shouldn't they?

He was in desperate need of money now. Jules knew how desperate: they had few secrets from one another. Whenever the little party in Half Moon Street was as many as four, Jules was the third.

"What is this fellow's name?"

"Hervey Lyne."

"Hervey Lyne? Yes, I know him. A very odd man," reminiscently. "When my dear father was Secretary of Legation—that must have been in 'ninety-three—he borrowed money from Lyne. But I thought he had retired from business. He was a moneylender, wasn't he?"

Jerry's lips twisted in an unpleasant smile.

"Financier," he said laconically. "Yes, he has retired. I owed him three thousand for years; it's four now. There was, of course, a chance that the dowager would leave a packet, but the old devil left it away, to the other side of the family."

"And he is pressing you?"

Jerry's jaw set.

"Yes," he said shortly. "To be exact, he is getting a judgment in bankruptcy, and I can't stop him. I have been dodging Carey Street all my life. Things have looked very black at times, but there has always been something that turned up."

There was a long and gloomy silence. Jules—he had another name, but nobody could remember it—stroked his little black moustache more quickly.

"Two thousand—that would stop the action, eh? Well, why not? Take two thousand, et voila! There is nothing to it. I do not ask you, like the fellow in the story-books, to go to the War Office and rob them of their schemes of mobilisation. But I do want something, for a gentleman who has himself been working on the lines of your friend. To me it seems a very large sum to pay for so small a thing.

"Naturally I do not say that to my gentleman. If he desires to be extravagant and my friend would benefit—tiens, why not?"

Jerry Dornford made a wry face at the street below. When he was asked to work for money he never forgot that he was a gentleman—it was rather a disgusting thing he was now asked to do, but he had contemplated things even more distressful. He had, in fact, found every solution to his difficulty except suicide.

"I am not so sure that it can be done, anyway," he said.

Two men came into the smoke-room. He looked up quickly and recognised both, but was interested particularly in one.

"That's Fate," he said.

"Who are they?" asked Jules.

He knew the second of the two, who was a member, but the first man, middle-aged, rather rotund, fair-haired, was a stranger to him.

"That's my bank manager. Incidentally, he is Lyne's banker too, a fellow named Moran—Major Moran, he loves to call himself. A Territorial fellow."

Jules shot a swift glance in the direction of the men who at that moment were seating themselves at the table.

"A great rifle shot. I saw him at Bisley. I was there with one of our generals, watching the shooting."

He turned his black eyes to Jerry.

"Well, my friend?"

Jerry breathed heavily through his nose and shook his head.

"I'll have to think it over," he said. "It's a beastly thing to do."

"More beastly to be a bankrupt, my friend," said Jules in his caressing voice. "Resignation from all clubs.... Poor old Jerry, eh? You are going into the Mike Hennessey class. You don't want to be that."

"Why Mike Hennessey?" asked Jerry quickly, and the other laughed.

"An association of ideas. You go often to the Sheridan, eh? I do not blame you ... a very charming girl."

He made a little grimace as though he were about to whistle.

"Association of ideas, eh? Allenby also likes the young lady. Queer how all things fit in, like the pieces of a puzzle. Think it over, my dear Jerry, and ring me up at the Grosvenor."

He snapped his fingers towards a club waiter, scribbled his initials on a bill and strolled towards the door, Jerry following. They had to pass Moran and his friend; that bluff, jolly-looking man looked up, nodded with careless friendliness and caught Jerry's sleeve as he was passing.

"I'd like to see you one day this week, if you're not busy, Jerry."

Jerry never forgot he was a member of Snell's and a gentleman. He never forgot that Mr. Leo Moran was a sort of glorified bank clerk, who had probably had his education at the State's expense; and, knowing all these things, he resented the "Jerry." It added to his irritation that he knew why Mr. Moran wished to see him. It was outrageous that one couldn't lunch in one's club without being dunned by cads of this description.

He pulled his sleeve away from the detaining finger and thumb.

"All right," he said.

He would have been more offensive if this man had not been a guest at the club, and, more important, if it were not in Moran's power to make things deucedly uncomfortable for Mr. Gerald Dornford.

As he and Jules were passing down the stairs together ...

"The swine! Who brought that kind of bird into the club? Snell's is getting impossible!"

Jules, who had a weakness for the rococo qualities of Italian opera, was humming a favourite aria of Puccini's. He smiled and shook his head.

"It takes all sorts of people to make a world, my friend," he said sententiously.

He flicked a speck from his immaculate coat sleeve, patted Jerry on the arm as though he were a child, and went swinging up St. James's Street towards his mysterious Legation.

Jerry Dornford stood for a moment, hesitant, then walked slowly down towards the palace. He was in a jam, a tight jam, and it wasn't going to be so very easy to get out.

He obeyed an impulse, called a cab and drove to near Queen's Gate, where he alighted, paid his fare, and walked on.

Dick Allenby lived in a big house that had been converted into flats. There was no attendant on duty at the door, and the elevator that took him up to the fourth floor was automatic. He knocked at the door of Dick's studio—for studio it had once been, before Dick Allenby had converted it into a workroom. There was no answer, and he turned the handle and walked in. The room was empty. Evidently there had been visitors, for half a dozen empty beer bottles stood on a bench, though there was only one used tumbler visible. If he had known something of Surefoot Smith he might have reduced the visiting list to one.

"Are you there, Allenby?" he called.

There was no answer. He walked across to the bench where the odd-looking steel box lay, and lifted it. To his relief he found he could carry it without an effort. Putting it down again, he walked to the door. The key was on the inside; he drew it out and examined it carefully. If he had been an expert at the job he would have carried wax and taken an impression. As it was, his early technical training came to his aid—it had once been intended that he should follow the profession of engineer.

He listened; there was no sound of the lift moving. Dick, he knew, had his sleeping room on the upper floor, and was probably there now. Dornford made a rapid sketch on the back of an envelope—rapid but accurate. He judged the width of the key, made a brief note and replaced it as the sound of somebody coming down the stairs reached him.

He was standing examining the empty beer bottles when Dick came in.

"Hullo, Dornford!" There was no great welcome in the tone. "Did you want to see me?"

Jerry smiled.

"I was bored. I thought I'd come up and see what an inventor looked like. By the way, I saw you at the theatre the other night—nice girl that. She was damned rude to me the only time I spoke to her."

Dick faced him squarely.

"And I shall be damned rude to you the next time you speak to her," he said.

Jerry Dornford chuckled.

"Like that, eh? By the way, I'm seeing the old man tonight. Shall I give him your love?"

"He'd prefer that you gave him something more substantial," said Dick coldly.

It was a shot at a venture but it got home. Gerald the imperturbable winced.

It was odd that up to that moment Dick Allenby had never realised how intensely he disliked this man. There was excellent reason why he should hate him, but that was yet to be revealed.