During the intervening weeks Chief Inspector Hazlerigg and his team had been doing a great deal of work without obtaining anything startling in the way of results. Since this state of affairs was not uncommon at Scotland Yard no one had been unduly worried by it.
M. Bren departed to France, and worked his way steadily southwards down the busy demobilisation route; he had last been heard of at Lausanne. A cable received the week before had announced that he would probably have to extend his journey into Italy. He gave no reasons.
Inspector Pickup had taken charge of “Operation Flaxman” and had haunted the area of Berkeley Square and Curzon Street. Incidentally he and his fellow-workers had secured a great deal of information on the subject of the activities of Saxifrage Lamps, and the London office of that solid Birmingham firm had received a visit from the Inspectors of the Board of Trade. Hazlerigg had advised this raid, since news of it was sure to come to the long ears of Mr. Leopold Goffstein, and if that astute gentleman had noticed any sign of police activity he might reasonably put it down to the misdeeds of his neighbours rather than himself.
Pickup was not quite sure whether Goffstein knew that he was being watched or not. During the past weeks he had received a steady trickle of visitors. These had been picked up by the all-seeing eye of the quiet tele-camera in the shuttered house opposite. “Stills” were taken from the film and enlargements were passed down to the genius who presided over Records – and all with no result at all.
“You couldn’t expect anything else,” said Hazlerigg when he was told. “Leopold is Postmaster-General. His office is the clearing house. The people who go there are only messengers. They get letters and are told where to take them. It’s too easy. You could watch them all day and they could still pass their letters, right under your nose. You could think of half a dozen foolproof ways yourself – meeting in the middle of the rush hour at a tube station, sitting next to one another in a cinema, sharing a table in a restaurant.”
“I’ve no doubt you’re right, sir,” said Pickup, “but I still can’t quite see why they should bother.”
“It has this big advantage,” said Hazlerigg. “It works in both directions. The way that they’re managing it, none of the lesser characters needs to know where the Big Boys live. The chaps who actually do the jobs – they are the ones who are liable to get caught, you know – couldn’t tell us where headquarters is even if they wanted to. They just don’t know. If Mr. A. wants to get in touch with young B over a little jewel job in Pimlico he sends a note to Leopold. The messenger who takes it may be quite innocent. Leopold reads the message and gives it to C who knows how to hand it to our young friend B – as I said, he probably meets him in a cinema. And when it comes to the time for B to hand the stuff over—well, vice versa.”
Pickup thought this out for some minutes without comment. At last he said: “If it works that way, how do you explain Curly?”
“Yes,” said Hazlerigg, “I see what you mean. Curly was an operative – what you might call an outer-fringe man. He did an occasional job, and he was used as a messenger—”
“Exactly,” said Pickup. “And yet he knew where headquarters was. He went straight there after visiting Leopold.”
Hazlerigg looked speculatively at his aide and between them, without speaking, the very first faint glimmer of an idea was born.
“It might be,” said Pickup at last, “that Curly was needed to help in the move – to help in some minor way. I mean as a, look-out or stooge. They may have thought that as they were clearing out anyway, it wouldn’t matter him knowing where the old hideout was.”
“All the same, I should think that he’d have pretty strong instructions not to go straight there from Leopold’s—”
“You remember what the Major said about Curly, sir – lazy and insubordinate.”
“That’s it. He just took a chance. I don’t suppose,” went on Hazlerigg, “that the Big Boy would be very pleased if he knew about it. I mean, if he guessed that Curly had allowed himself to be followed all the way from Flaxman Street to Kensington, incidentally giving away Goffstein as well—”
“No, sir,” said Pickup with a grin, “I don’t suppose he would.”