Two Men in Twenty

The gang of thieves that was giving Scotland Yard so much trouble was called the "XXC mob" because the police had been unable to learn the names of any of its members. The gang had been London-centered--two hundred miles away from Granchester--so although Chief Inspector Martineau knew of the gang he wasn't very much concerned.

Then one day, as can happen even to a very successful gang, London got too hot. And Cain (though the police didn't know their names, the member of the mob had names, of course) said to his wife, Dorrie, "We'll fade quietly out of London, one by one, and Scotland Yard'll think we've died. The cops won't know where to start looking for us, 'cause we'll all be snug in our own little place."

Maybe the cops in Granchester didn't know where to look for them, but the cops soon knew that someone had moved to town. Martineau got a call early one Sunday morning. "A nine-nine-nine call has just come in from Tite Street. Somebody has been in during the night and opened a safe."

Martineau and his coworkers started to investigate, but they weren't getting very far and there was another Granchester robbery. By now Martineau knew he had the XXC gang on his hands and the going was going to get pretty tough.