Some fifteen minutes later he sent once more for Sergeant Ormsby.
‘You have a son, haven’t you, Ormsby?’ he asked. ‘A nipper of about ten?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘A smart lad, able to put through a bit of play-acting?’
Ormsby smiled.
‘If you had seen him doing Tom Mix in “Miss Hook of Hollywood” at a children’s show out our way you wouldn’t need to ask.’
‘The very thing. Could you spare him for an hour or two tomorrow?’
‘Of course, Mr French. He’s on holidays now in any case.’
‘Then how would this work?’ French outlined his plan and the other laughed.
‘Suit the boy first-class,’ he observed with a chuckle, ‘and suit me too for the matter of that.’
‘Good, then we’ll leave in time to be at Harrow Station before the 9.17 in the morning.’
Next day French and an intelligent but somewhat mischievous looking boy alighted at Harrow shortly before nine. They were dressed for their parts. French was obviously a landed proprietor on a visit to town, while Freddy Ormsby was a convincing study of a preparatory schoolboy. Having seen Welland leave by the 9.17, they strolled into the town.
‘Now, sonny, we’ve got to kill an hour or two. What would you like? Coffee or an ice?’
Freddie’s predilection being for ices, they found a shop and gave a bumper order. French sipped coffee and smoked a lengthy pipe, and then they went for a walk. It was not till nearly eleven that they found themselves at the end of Acacia Avenue.
‘Now, Fred, here we are. Do your best, like a good chap.’
They strolled down the road, evidently strangers to the place, and as evidently father and son. At all vacant lots they stopped, clearly discussing a possible dwelling. Next door to No. 39 was such a lot, and at this they halted in its turn.
‘That bow window on the ground floor,’ French said in low tones, as he demonstrated with gestures how the ground might be terraced.
On his previous visit he had noted the exterior of the house, and by plotting the various elevations, he had deduced its probable plan. From this he was satisfied that the window in question belonged to Welland’s sitting-room. No other had a large enough expanse of blank wall beside it for the necessary size of the room.
Freddie Ormsby acted with promptitude.
‘Oh, daddy, see!’ he cried in shrill tones. ‘Look where the cat is!’ and before his scandalised parent could intervene, he had picked up a stone and sent it whizzing with unerring aim through the largest pane.
‘Played, sir! Fine shot!’ French whispered, then in loud tones: ‘Well, upon my soul, you little rascal! Look what you’ve done. What do you mean, sir, by such conduct?’
The door of No. 39 was opened by an elderly woman with an indignant countenance as an angry but apologetic gentleman and a scared, woebegone boy approached up its tiny drive.
‘I’m afraid, madam,’ said French, taking off his hat politely, ‘that an accident has occurred for which I am responsible. My son has so far forgotten himself as to throw a stone which unfortunately has broken your window. He had been warned about stone-throwing again and again, and I’ll see that this time it will be a lesson to him. I can only offer you, madam, my apologies, and go at once for a glazier to make good the damage.’
The good lady, who had evidently been prepared to breathe threatenings and slaughter, on finding the wind thus taken out of her sails, became somewhat mollified.
‘Oh, well, if that’s the way you put it, it will be all right,’ she admitted, ‘though it did give me a start and no mistake, the stone coming through. But there,’ she went on magnanimously, glancing at the frightened culprit, ‘you don’t need to say too much to ’im. Boys will be boys, that’s what I say. Boys will be boys.’
‘It’s excessively kind of you to look at it like that,’ French declared. ‘As I said, I can assure you it will be a lesson to him he will not forget. I hope nothing has been damaged inside the room?’
‘Well, I ’aven’t looked yet. Better come in and see for yourself.’
‘Thank you. And I think it will save time if I get a sample of the glass and measure the window.’
Having adjured ‘Cecil’ to wait for him and not to get into any more mischief while his back was turned, French followed the housekeeper. The room, as he had imagined, was Welland’s sitting-room. It was comfortably though not luxuriously furnished. In the window was a deep saddlebag armchair with beside it a table bearing some papers. Against one wall was a roll-top desk, with the cover down. A tantalus and a cigar cabinet stood on a second table. Many shelves of books hung on the wall.
‘The desk,’ thought French, as he expressed his relief that no further damage had been done and took his measurements. Two minutes later he withdrew in an atmosphere of politeness and regrets.
‘You did that well, old man,’ he congratulated his now grinning companion, when at last they were clear of Acacia Avenue. ‘You shall have five bob and the best lunch I can get you.’
At the station they met Ormsby, clad in a glazier’s well-worn overalls and with smudges of paint on his cap.
‘He did it fine,’ French greeted him, ‘you’ll be having the lad on the films yet. There’s the size of the pane and there’s what it was glazed with. Have you got what’ll do it?’
‘No,’ said Ormsby, ‘but there’s a glazier’s down the street. I’ll get it there. It was the room you wanted all right?’
‘Yes, and there’s a desk in it that you’ll have to go through. How’ll you do if the old woman sticks in the room?’
Ormsby smiled. ‘Trust me for that, Mr French. You may not have known it, but it sometimes takes a terrible lot of hot water to glaze a pane. I’ll keep her boiling up fresh kettles.’
Three hours later Ormsby knocked at the door of French’s room at the Yard.
‘There’s absolutely nothing there, Mr French,’ he began, as he took the seat to which the other pointed. ‘I had a bit of luck, and I’ve been through practically the whole house and there’s not a thing that you could get hold of. In the first place that woman’s a bit deaf and that helped me.’
‘I noticed it,’ said French.
‘Yes. Well, I went to the door and said I was the man come to glaze the pane and she had me in at once and I got to work. She hung about for a minute or two, but I didn’t speak, and when she saw me getting at it, she said she would be next door in the kitchen if I wanted anything and went out.’
‘Lucky for you.’
‘Wasn’t it, sir? But better than that, she was washing clothes and as long as I could hear the suds going I knew I was safe. I made some mess round the window to show I was working and then I went for the desk. It was an easy lock and I had it open in twenty seconds. I went through everything and there’s not a paper nor any other thing that shouldn’t be there. All absolutely O.K.’
‘Pity,’ French interjected.
‘Isn’t it? Then I made some more mess and had a look round the room and a quick run through the books. Then the old lady came in to see how I was getting on.’
He paused, and French nodded his appreciation of the situation.
‘She seemed satisfied with the amount of the mess and went back to the kitchen without speaking and I heard the washing start again. I thought I might take a bit of risk, so I slipped upstairs and found the man’s bedroom. I was afraid to stay too long, but I was long enough to make sure there was nothing there either. So then I came down and finished up the pane and painted the putty and came away.’
‘Well, that’s that, Ormsby.’
‘Sorry I couldn’t get more, Mr French.’
‘We may do our best to cook evidence,’ French said, with the twinkle in his eye showing even more clearly than usual, ‘but I draw the line at inventing it if it’s not there.’
Here was another disappointment. French had been building more even than he knew on Ormsby’s search of the house, and when this also had drawn blank, his chagrin was correspondingly great. The affair was certainly exasperating. It was a long time since he had felt so completely puzzled.
There was nothing for it, however, but to carry on with the plan he had made, and five o’clock that afternoon saw him at the clubhouse of Welland’s golf course, inquiring for the secretary.
‘This is a confidential matter, Mr Allan,’ he began when he was seated in that gentleman’s office, ‘and I do not know that I can claim your help in it. I can, however, ask for it, and that I am going to do.’
The secretary murmured politely.
‘It concerns a member of your club,’ went on French, ‘Mr Curtice Welland. Now I may say in confidence that we have reason to suspect that Mr Welland may not be all that he appears to be. In fact we think,’ French dropped his voice, ‘that he is one of a trio involved in no less a crime than murder.’
The secretary stared.
‘Curtice Welland?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Surely not, Inspector. Curtice Welland involved in a murder! You can’t ask me to believe that.’ He shook his head decisively.
‘Then you know him well?’
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t. I really scarcely know him at all. But he has always seemed so quiet and inoffensive; the last type of man that one would associate with such a crime.’
‘So was Dr Crippen, and so was many another murderer, Mr Allan,’ French said seriously. ‘Manner and appearance are unfortunately no guide, as you would know if you had my experience. But I make no accusation against the man. It may be that the Yard is mistaken in its view. And that’s what I have been sent here to find out. I am investigating Mr Welland’s life and character. And it is in that capacity I have come to ask your help.’
Allan hesitated, frowning.
‘Mr Welland is a member of the club,’ he said at last. ‘He is in a sense my employer. I don’t know that I feel at liberty to discuss him even if I knew anything against him, which thank heaven I don’t.’
‘Well, sir,’ said French with a smile, ‘if you don’t know anything, that settles the matter, doesn’t it?’ Then he came to his real objective. ‘But there is a bit of quite harmless information that perhaps you could give me. It is a list of Mr Welland’s particular friends among the members or of any with whom he plays regularly. This will not be giving anything away on your part, because you must see that I could find it out for myself by simple observation.’
Allan replied with evident relief. He would be glad to help the inspector, but there were no such persons. Welland had catholic tastes. He played with anyone who was available, not with anyone in particular.
French was more than ever worried as he returned to the Yard. Almost in despair he redoubled his efforts. He put a number of men on to watch Welland’s house, others he had shadow him while golfing and at other free times, but all without avail. As the days passed and he found that no one visited the garage or the office, and that Welland came into no regular touch with any human being other than the four girls, he became almost ill from anxiety. Gone was his usual cheery optimism, his suavity, his pleasant words for his subordinates. ‘Soapy Joe’ was soapy no longer.
And then quite suddenly, as he lay one night racking his brains over the problem, an explanation of the whole business shot into his mind. Tremulously he considered the idea, and the more he thought over it the more certain he grew that he was right.
Material objects were being carried in the secret pocket of the car. Material objects were being put in by Welland and taken out by the girls, and cash was being put in by the girls and taken out by Welland. The affair was a commercial proposition of a highly lucrative, but highly immoral and illegal type. These people were selling prohibited drugs!
And a good scheme it certainly was! Welland in some way as yet unknown was getting the ‘snow’ or other stuff in bulk and making it up into small packages. Every morning he would start out with four bundles of such packages in the pocket of his car. Every day each girl would remove a bundle and replace it with a roll of notes. Every night, on some preconcerted signal from her customer, she would pass out with the metal disc of entrance to the cinema a package of the stuff, pocketing the notes given in exchange. The illicit sale of drugs had increased by leaps and bounds, and of all the methods of which French had yet heard, this was certainly the best.
Here was ample motive for murder! Let the gang get wind of communication between any of their victims and Scotland Yard and the victim’s fate was sealed. Both the gains of success and the penalties of failure were too great to permit of any risks being run.
In a few moments French’s whole outlook on life had changed. Gone was his weariness, his lassitude, his depression. Once more he was the optimist, about to add one more laurel to the many he had achieved in his career.
For this case would make a sensation. If there was one thing more than another which the authorities were keen on suppressing, it was this drug traffic. If he pulled off a big coup in this line, it could not fail to affect his prospects.
And then came the usual reaction. It was not all so clear as he had imagined. How and from whom was Welland getting the stuff? How and to whom was he passing on the money? French saw that he had a good way to go before his case should be complete.
As he thought of this side of the affair he swore from vexation. Why, every investigation that he had made had tended to show that the man was neither obtaining drugs in bulk nor disposing of large sums of money! Curse it all! he thought, was there ever such a tangle?
Almost in despair he had just decided that he would have to fall back on his alternative scheme and arrest and search two of the girls, when a further possibility occurred to him. Could he not keep so close a watch on the girls while in their box offices that he could not fail to see small packages being passed out?
To think of the idea was to act on it. Early next morning French was once again closeted with the manager of the Panopticon, in confidence putting forward his suspicions and begging the other’s help towards testing them.
As a result of their deliberations, three men in the garb of electrical fitters arrived an hour later at the cinema. The boss of the little gang was named Ormsby, and his helpers Carter and Harvey. It seemed that an electric main in the corner of the entrance hall had given indications of fusing and immediate repairs had become necessary.
The defect, it appeared, was hidden in the wooden panelling alongside the box office presided over by Molly Moran, and the first job of the fitters was naturally to protect their work from passers-by. When, therefore, the staff came on duty for the afternoon session, they found that a neat canvas structure had been erected beside the box office. Behind this the men worked, and from this at five o’clock they went home.
All but one. From twelve-thirty that morning till eleven-thirty that night French sat behind the screen, his eyes glued to a hole in the canvas. From this he could see every movement of Molly’s hands on the little desk some five feet away.
His view, of course, was limited. His peep-hole was but slightly in front of the office and the side wall of the opening cut off all movement on the back of the little counter. But he could not have placed his observation point further forward, as his sight would then have been impeded by the backs of the purchasers. But over a small area he had a perfect view, and he did not believe that anything could be slipped across unobserved by him.
The watch was tedious, but not so tedious as if he had had to be on the strain all the time. He knew that no attempt such as he expected could be made during periods of rush booking: it would be too dangerous. It was, therefore, only the booking of isolated persons that he had to watch. And there were other alleviations. The noise outside was so great that he was able to change his position without fear of discovery. Moreover, he had taken in a goodly supply of food, which he consumed at frequent intervals. But still he thought the time would never come to an end. Stiff and sore and with a splitting headache he waited, until at last after the performance, when all but the manager had left, he crept out and thankfully stretched his cramped limbs.
His physical discomfort was, however, as nothing to his mental perturbation. For he had seen nothing! Moreover, so good had been his outlook, that he was satisfied that there had been nothing to see. Nothing was being passed out with the entrance checks. Of that he could swear.
His drug theory was therefore false. Whatever Welland was doing, it was not peddling opium. Something else was being transferred through the medium of the secret panel in the car.
French could have wept when he found himself forced to this conclusion. Never in his life had he been up against anything which had puzzled him more. He would give a month’s pay, he thought savagely, to get the thing cleared up.
That evening he had recourse once more to his household oracle. Again he put his difficulties before Mrs French, and again light seemed to come from doing so. Not that this time she made any suggestions. Rather it was that his own mind clarified and he saw that there was only one thing left for him to do.
The arrest of the girls would be too dangerous. He must therefore get Molly Moran’s confidence. By hook or by crook he must force her to tell her true story. And if he couldn’t frighten or cajole her into keeping his interference secret from Welland, why then he must just take the consequences. He determined he would see her again, first thing next day.