At exactly five minutes past eleven a small and decidedly grubby urchin paused in blank wonderment before the recumbent figures of Inspector Keating and Superintendent Kaye and scratched his head perplexedly. Inspector Keating with his mouth wide open was snoring melodiously in the key of A sharp in an attempt to drown his friend’s effort in G flat minor.
For some seconds the boy stood and marveled, while he debated the safest method of awakening the sleepers. Then he bent down and cautiously shook Kaye.
The Superintendent sat up and yawned, conscious that a piece of paper was being waved beneath his nose and that a small boy was talking in the inconsequent manner peculiar to small boys.
“Said as ‘ow the fat ‘un would gimme two bob, ‘e did,” said the boy tentatively. It was an invention of which he had great hopes. When Detective Sergeant Brown of the Squad had written the message he had said that the man for whom it was intended would probably give the bearer sixpence but the small boy had his own theories on the subject of Capital and Labor.
Kaye took the note and unfolded it. The message it contained was scrawled in pencil and barely readable.
“Can you come at once?” he read. “Traced Dennis Teyst’s Chrysler to a house and can’t round up the Squad. Daren’t leave the place in case the Teysts beat it. The place is in the London Road, the boy will lead you here.”
Kaye asked a few questions and the boy, with a reward in view gave directions that were not too explicit.
“Let’s be goin’,” he urged. “Shall I give ould ‘Shut Eye’ a shove an’ wake ‘im up?”
“You couldn’t,” said Kaye paternally. “He sleeps like a Waterman fountain pen writes, in any position.”
Stooping, he awakened his friend by the simple method of tweaking his nose.
“They’ve traced Dennis,” he said, rising to his feet, and Keating grunted.
“Oh they have, have they? I thought they’d gone for their summer holidays. Where is he?”
“His car is parked outside a house on the London Road.”
“How long has it been there?” Keating rumbled as he got to his feet.
“The house has probably been there twenty years,” Kaye retorted patiently. “I’m not sure if the car has been there twenty minutes or twenty seconds. We’ll go and find out, if you’ll shake off your hog-like slumber.”
Keating still rubbing his eyes followed his superior across the square.
“Who spotted him?”
“Brown,” Kaye said over his shoulder. “By the way are you walking with me or just shadowing me?”
“Brown,” said Keating impassively, “has got no imagination. He’ll probably walk into the house with ‘the Yard’ written inches deep all over him and try and hold ‘em by asking ‘em if they collect cigarette cards.”
Which was not really so libelous as it sounded. To be truthful, Detective Sergeant Brown did not handle the situation in the most tactful manner, even although he held a decided advantage. For it was an advantage.
He failed to see the going of either Ian or Ralph, but Dennis he certainly saw, and there is no doubt that that young man got the shock of his life when he found the path to his car barred by a man who positively shrieked C.I.D.
“I thought I’d shaken you fellows off at Croydon,” he said pleasantly, halting at the foot of the steps.
Brown maintained a cautious silence. He had no definite orders to stop Dennis leaving, but it occurred to him that that was what Kaye would expect.
It had also occurred to Dennis, and instinct told him that it was only a matter of minutes before half the Squad arrived and definitely placed his escape outside the bounds of possibility, but in the meantime there was only Brown. Straightening up he moved towards the Yard man with a peculiar smile.
“I don’t like your tie, your face or your general appearance, old soul,” he said kindly. “Will you get out of my way or will you be knocked out of it?”
The Yard man dropped into the approved crouch with feelings of relief. It was the opening he had been seeking and provided the necessary opportunity for delaying Dennis. About the issue, he had no doubts.
“I don’t want any lip,” he said moving forward aggressively, and that was his last coherent remark until Inspector Keating picked him up five minutes later.
“Like greased lightning, he was, sir,” the detective confided, rubbing his jaw. “I stopped a right hook and a fast left at the same time—at least that’s what it felt like. How does my face look, sir?”
“Foul,” snarled Keating, and strode towards the house after the equally irate Kaye. At the top of the steps the silence they were trying to preserve was suddenly shattered by the boy who took that opportunity to revert to matters mercenary.
Keating gave him a shilling and when he persisted, a clout on the head. Of the two treatments, the latter was the more effective. Standing in the covered-in porch, Kaye beckoned to Brown.
“Try your hand on that door,” he said, “and don’t do it like a battery going into action. Not that it matters, they’re in Mexico by now.”
Brown grinned. Opening doors was one of the things he did well. So well, that it was a matter of seconds before the entrance was effected.
“Collect any of the Squad you can get and return here pronto,” Keating instructed, and followed his friend into the darkened hall.
Both men held automatic pistols in their hands, but they were unnecessary. They found George where his brothers had left him.
He was staring straight at them when they entered and he continued to stare when Keating said, “I want you, George” and proceeded to read his warrant. The indictments were read to deaf ears, in fact Keating was still droning a formal charge when Kaye stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. Kaye knew as much as most doctors and more than many, but it had taken him a good twenty seconds to interpret the Colonel’s fixed stare correctly.
“No good, Sam,” he said slowly. “George is holding his creditors’ meeting elsewhere.”
Together they looked down at the dead man. Neither felt any particular pity. Disappointment was their chief emotion. Disappointment that the Colonel, who had cheated all his life should have cheated the rope, even in death.
“Some people get all the jam in life—others only get the pip, and I’m one of ‘em,” grunted Keating, tossing his hat aside.
“Wal got him all right. George must have been getting old,” he continued and began to turn out the dead man’s pockets while Kaye took an inventory of the contents. They were still examining George’s few worldly belongings when Brown appeared in the doorway of the room with two of the Squad in attendance.
“Give the house a once-over,” Keating instructed. “You won’t find anything but it’ll keep you out of mischief, which is more than I can do.”
He rose to his feet and took up a telephone from the table. His instructions to the Superintendent of the mortuary were curt and to the point. In fact he replaced the receiver in the middle of one of the Superintendent’s remarks.
In his moment of travail, Inspector Keating regarded his job and its disappointments bitterly. Many trenchant comments on Brown’s treatment of the situation occurred to him, and most of them were embellished with unflattering epithets. Epithets that would probably have annoyed Detective Sergeant Brown, but only succeeded in amusing one member of Keating’s audience.
That member was the Poacher.
Seated on an upturned box in the garage that adjoined the house he smoked placidly and, between intervals of philosophizing on a tire burst enjoyed the Inspector’s lucid disquisition.
On his head were a pair of earphones, attached by a thin wire to a small black box in a tool cupboard let into the wall. The dictograph connected the garage to the house and Keating’s remarks were perfectly audible to the unseen listener. They afforded him a considerable amount of amusement, but not sufficient to overrule caution. Even during the Inspector’s most vitriolic attacks, the Poacher continued to keep his eyes on the small curtained window of the garage.
Not that it detracted from his enjoyment. He was a person of many accomplishments, notably that of being able to listen attentively to one thing and think intently about something else. And at the moment he was thinking very intently.
Through the agency of a tire burst, he had missed by a margin of sixty minutes, the coup of a lifetime. It was an experience calculated to try the patience of nobler beings than the Poacher, but unlike Keating he viewed defeat philosophically. There were other things that he viewed less philosophically. Particularly the fact that the Squad were even then exploring the house and the grounds and might at any moment discover the; flat-tired car that was parked at the rear of the house.
As a car it was of no use to the Poacher and its loss would not grieve him. Chiefly because it belonged to someone else. At the same time the Squad had a flair for tracing the owners, or last occupiers, of abandoned cars, and the Poacher had his own reasons for not wishing to encounter either the Squad or Inspector Keating. Particularly not the latter.
Keating was not of a forgiving nature and on the subject of their last meeting he had much to forgive. The Poacher smiled in the darkness. He had covered the Colonel’s retreat very effectively on that occasion and there was something ironic in the fact that he had covered it to no purpose. At least, no purpose benefiting himself.
Before a treacherous tire burst had upset his calculations he had had one man, the Colonel, to deal with. Now, the secret of the bracelet’s whereabouts was split up among three others. Not an insurmountable difficulty, but disheartening. Decidedly disheartening.
Reflecting sadly on miscarriages of justice the Poacher extinguished his cigarette and replaced the earphones in the tool box beneath an oily rag. He regarded the installation of that little apparatus as one of the most noteworthy things that he had ever done. Given absolute freedom from interruption he could have enjoyed Inspector Keating’s monologue concerning man’s descent from apes, for much longer.
And Keating’s inspiration was by no means exhausted. In point of fact it was considerably amplified by Brown’s sudden reappearance.
Standing at the head of the steps, Keating observed Brown’s triumphant approach in the Squad’s long gray roadster with homicidal thoughts. There was an expression of contentment on Brown’s face—as he descended—a placid satisfaction that annoyed Keating.
The fact that the roadster had a smaller car in tow did not immediately strike Keating as significant.
“Of course if you like riding up and down the drive, don’t let me spoil your childish pleasure,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “At the same time, what’s the idea of having a motor show at midnight?”
“Found this car at the back of the house, sir,” said Brown.
“Very interesting. Found, you said? Have you been straightened by a night club owner?”
Brown smiled weakly. “Fact, sir.”
“H’m, whose is it?”
“It isn’t Ralph Teyst’s, or Ian Teyst’s, sir, and Dennis was driving a Chrysler.”
Inspector Keating looked at the car and grunted. It was a smart blue saloon and fairly new.
“Are our fellows still combing the grounds?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. The place seems to be deserted.”
“What did you expect, a garden party?”
Keating glared at his subordinate and Brown shifted uncomfortably.
“Put the damn thing in the garage,” Keating continued. “We aren’t trailing that round all night. The local people can trace the owner.”
Brown saluted and got back into the car. Turning it in a circle he headed for the garage, while Keating leant against the porch and muttered profanely.
Under his superior’s derisive eyes Brown backed the Squad’s Benz and uncoupled the other car. Then he opened the garage doors and began to push his find into the blackness of the interior.
Keating, waiting and smoking reflectively, went still further into the matter of Brown’s ancestry. After five minutes he came to the conclusion that Brown had gone to sleep in the garage. Which, without being literally true, was a reasonably accurate hypothesis. Actually he was unconscious. A spanner applied externally invariably induces a certain lassitude in the recipient.
Keating was unaware of that, but as the minutes passed he smiled resignedly and prepared to make Brown a present of further information concerning his lineage.
That was as far as he got. As he stepped forward something smacked against the stonework of the porch and a chip of stone stung his face.
With a startled grunt he leapt backwards and slammed the door as two more bullets ricocheted off the smooth pillars.
At the same moment a lithe figure vaulted into the driving seat of the Squad’s car. Superintendent Kaye was the only man who actually saw its mad career down the drive, but all Reigate heard the powerful engine roaring as the gray car tore through the town.
Even if the engine of the blue saloon had not been tampered with it could not have overtaken the Benz, but Keating lost ten minutes finding out why the car wouldn’t budge from the garage. Having found that out he wasted a further two minutes trying to discover some new and adequate description of what the makers called a Spangler Six. He succeeded. Subsequently he discovered the car’s owner and allowed him to share the secret. But it took the Squad three days to trace their Benz, and when they found it the driving wheel was missing, the tires were slashed to ribbons? and the gasoline tank looked like a nutmeg grater.
Inspector Keating’s remarks on that occasion were not only unreasonable, they were unprintable.