IT is not every man who can stare unexpectedly into the business end of an automatic without changing countenance. I say unexpectedly, for Bond Street at midday is the last place in which a hold-up is liable to occur. Yet Detective-Inspector Ansoll smiled as he lounged opposite the broad-shouldered man who held a pistol peeping from under a well-cut morning coat.
No one of the hundreds passing to and fro paid more than a casual glance to the two men outside the tobacconist’s window engaged in apparently idle conversation. For Coyne’s pistol was invisible to anyone but the man whose attention it was meant to engage, and he seemed unconcerned.
‘That you, Wolf?’ he said serenely. ‘I shouldn’t play about with that sort of thing. It’s liable to go off, and think what a horrid mess it would make. I didn’t know you were a gun man.’
‘I reckon it is liable to go off,’ agreed the other grimly. ‘Especially if you try to put any of the funny dope over on me. See.’
Wolf Coyne did not look like a desperate character. There were a thousand men abroad in the West End that morning who might have stepped out of the same mould as he. He had kindly hazel eyes, thick iron-grey hair, a well-kept iron-grey moustache, and there was no man living who could dress better or assume better manners at will. Just at present he had dropped his manners and something of his carefulness of speech.
‘Look here, Ansoll,’ he went on. ‘I’ve been after you a long time, and this has got to stop right now. I’m not putting any bluff across. You’re gunning for me, but I don’t stand for it—see. I’m trying to cut loose from the old game, and sooner than be driven back by any grafting son of a policeman who tries to fasten his teeth into me I’d shoot hell into you.’ He thrust his face forward viciously. ‘Get that. I wonder I don’t get you now while I’ve got a chance.’
Ansoll made a deprecating gesture. ‘I shouldn’t, Wolf,’ he said mildly.
No one would have guessed that he took the other’s threat seriously. Coyne had only one defect from the crook’s point of view. He sometimes lost his temper. Indeed, some thousands of miles away, in the United States, there were at least a couple of men who would bear the marks of his anger to their dying day.
‘They say it’s an unpleasant death,’ went on the detective cheerfully. ‘They’ve got a contrivance to strap you up, and they read part of the burial service over you while you’re still alive, and then you stand on the drop and they put a white cap over your face—Why, hello, Jimmie! Shake hands with Mr Coyne. Wolf, this is Mr Cotterill, one of my sergeants.’
The menacing muzzle of the pistol had disappeared as though by magic into Coyne’s trousers-pocket. His face lighted with a delightful smile that had charmed many hundreds of pounds from unwary pockets. He thrust out a delicately-manicured hand.
‘How do you do, Mr Cotterill?’ he said pleasantly. ‘Pleased to know you. I’ve got to run away now. We’ll run across each other sometime, I suppose, Ansoll. So long.’
He strolled away, tapping gently with his gold-headed cane at the side of his boot. Ansoll grinned as he looked after him, and saw him warmly shake hands with a middle-aged, eye-glassed man on the other side of the road.
‘See that, Jimmie! I wonder what Lord Dalgaren would say if he knew that his pal had a gun on me a few seconds ago, and was half a mind to batter my brains all over Bond Street. It looks to me as if he’s getting worried, Jimmie.’
Mr James Arthur inhabited a suite of rooms overlooking the river on the first floor of the Palatial Hotel; and since the Palatial Hotel charges its guests sixpence a breath, it will be evident that Mr Arthur was a man of means. If one had been sufficiently curious one might also have learned that he was a man of standing, for his intimates stretched right away into the topmost pinnacles of society. Still further one might have learned that Mr James Arthur had unimpeachable introductions from generals, from bishops, from the High Commissioner of a remote settlement, and from the President of a South American Republic.
Knowing all this, one would have been surprised to learn that Scotland Yard took an interest in Mr James Arthur—so great an interest that, since he stepped ashore at Liverpool, he had been watched over with as much paternal care as if he had been of Royal blood. The attentions of the detectives had not been obtrusive, but Mr James Arthur alias Wolf Coyne, had felt worried by an observation which he divined rather than saw. It is so harassing to one’s plans to be treated like a gold-brick man.
The essence of Mr Arthur’s grievance was, that he was a gold-brick man. So he was classed in the archives of Mulberry Street along with sawdust men, green-goods men, and other crude practitioners who could as easily have sprouted wings as have attained to the eminence of the Palatial Hotel. Yet since a knowledge of human nature is the greatest asset of ‘con’ men, whatever their degree, Mr James Arthur was rightly classified. He had a genius for divining a man’s (or a woman’s) weak point, and a facility for using the knowledge to his own advantage.
It had been Detective-Inspector Ansoll who had met Coyne at Euston and warned him that London was an unhealthy place for prolonged residence. Coyne, who had never been convicted in his life though he had had some narrow escapes, smiled blandly, declared that the officer had made a gross mistake, and passed on.
He had some reason for his confidence, since those introductions were genuine. It is astonishing how far personality and nerve can carry one in the remote corners of the earth. Moreover, acquaintance with many detective bureaux, and the knowledge that the victim of a confidence-man—whether he has merely bought a ‘stolen’ razor from a man in the street or a ‘gold’ mine with a questionable title from an urbane City man—rarely has the courage to talk about his folly afterwards, had brought him to despise threats. England is a free country, and it is a delicate business to interfere with a person merely because he has a reputation.
Yet Coyne had not been long in London before he felt the influence of the machine. There was no overt act to which he could take exception. If he had not known the quality of his own nerves he might have supposed that his imagination was betraying him. Somehow he was beset by an atmosphere of all-pervading watchfulness until all his plans threatened to go awry.
Now, in fact, there was nothing miraculous in Scotland Yard’s arrangements for ‘covering’ him—merely large resources and common sense. There were half a dozen men who did little else than glean details of his daily life—in the hotel smoking-room, among the servants, among his acquaintances. Coyne was too big a fish for Ansoll to take any risks, and the men he had put on to deal with the ‘con’ man had been picked with care. It was not easy work this method of trying to follow the mobile fluctuations of a subtle man’s brains. Yet in the end some hint of his intentions must inevitably materialise. Not till they had proof that he had committed some illegal act could they do anything else.
All this simmered through the ‘con’ man’s brain as he sat moodily in his big sitting-room with an iced-drink and a big cigar after his fruitless attempt to terrorise Ansoll. The kindly eyes were hard and his jaw was set. He was not, he told himself, going to be put out of the game—not if they turned a thousand bone-headed bulls to try and stack the deck against him. Once he had carried his plans through, he could laugh at them and his victims. The chief obstacle in his path was the man who was organising the opposition campaign—Ansoll. In which Wolf Coyne made an error of supposition, for Scotland Yard is never dependent on any one man.
He touched the bell.
‘I’ll get him,’ he muttered viciously, ‘I’ll get him.’ On the soft-footed valet who answered his summons he turned abruptly.
‘Get me a telegraph form,’ he ordered.
Within an hour afterwards he had a visitor—an old young man who moved with stealthy alertness, and whose eyes were incessantly roving to and fro. He gripped a clean-shaven chin and nodded guardedly to the ‘con’ man as he was ushered in, but not a word did he speak till the door had again closed behind the servant.
‘Say bo,’ he declared at last. ‘Is it really you? You certainly are making good, Wolf, since I saw you last. This is some luxury.’ His eyes wandered appreciatively about the chamber.
‘How are you, Freddie?’ said the other genially. ‘Sit down. You got my wire all right?’ He rose, crossed the room, and turned the key in the door.
‘I got your wire,’ agreed Freddie, picking up the cigar-case which lay on a table and helping himself. ‘I guess there’s something moving.’ He crossed his legs and struck a match. ‘Well, you know I’ve always admired your talents, Wolf, though if you’ll forgive me saying so, you’re a little too inclined to play a lone hand. You need a partner to balance you like—to help with the heavy work. I’m somewhere around it, eh?’
‘Don’t pull any of that dope on me,’ said Coyne sharply. ‘What I want you for is no partnership gag. You’ll get paid for what you do, and it won’t take you a couple of hours. It’s worth just a hundred to me and not a penny more. That’ll perhaps save argument.’
‘You always was harsh, Wolf,’ said Freddie in hurt remonstrance. ‘What are you going to pull out of it? What’s the stunt anyway?’
‘I’m going to pull out of it just what I can make,’ snapped Coyne. ‘You’ll get a hundred—and easy money at that—or you’ll get nix. Now listen. Been on the boards lately?’
‘The stage,’ lamented Freddie, ‘is infested with knights. There’s no chanst in the legitimate, and demean myself to vaudeville—’
‘Cut it out,’ advised Coyne. ‘Do you know Ansoll—the boss bull of the 14th Division?’
‘Do I know you?’ retorted Freddie. ‘Why, Ansoll is the friend of my youth, my long-lost uncle. Hasn’t he pulled me twice, once because I stood outside a bank wondering what I would do if I had all the money that was in the safe, and once—But say, if he’s on to you count me out of the game.’
‘You’re yellow,’ sneered Coyne. ‘I thought you had some nerve, Freddie. But if you can afford to throw away a hundred jimmies …’ He crossed over and laid a hand on the locked door.
‘Don’t be hasty,’ urged Freddie. ‘Tell me what it is and I’ll consider.’
Coyne resumed his seat. ‘It’s simple enough. There’s not a ha’p’orth of risk in it for you. All I want you to do is this …’
Freddie’s solemn face expanded in a grin as he listened. He nodded his head in delighted appreciation.
‘You’re sure a top-liner, Wolf!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s the nuttiest move I’ve heard for a long time. You put him in bad and you have your swell witnesses, an’—lor’ lumme, I’d like to see his face when you open out on him.’
‘That’s all right then. You’ll be on hand seven-forty-five to the minute. And mind, Freddie, no soaking. Here’s a fiver. Get down to it.’
Luck is a great handmaid to the detective—though he invariably has her on a lead. She must not be confused with coincidence, for example. It was no blind luck that had caused the clerk at the desk to scratch his head when a visitor applied for Mr Arthur. That was due to the persuasions of a couple of very ordinary-looking young men who for many days past had spent much time loitering in the palm court of the Palatial Hotel.
Nor was it luck that they happened to be there. That was a very simple precaution of Ansoll’s. The only piece of luck in the whole business was that Wolf Coyne should have overlooked their possible presence. Thereafter everything became more or less inevitable.
For while Coyne and his satellite were planning the downfall of the inspector, a man in one of the telephone boxes below was talking over the wire to Ansoll. And when Flash Freddie, actor by profession, and what the United States calls ‘sneak’ by vocation, stepped out of the elevator and moved jauntily on to the rubber-paved courtyard, he had no supicion that the young fellow who looked like a bank clerk and brushed by him was at all interested in his mission.
He whistled cheerfully as he turned into the Strand and bent his steps westward. The young bank clerk dropped farther and farther behind, but an acute observer might have noticed that his relative position to Freddie was maintained by a heavy-jawed man who, if suddenly addressed, might have answered to the name Jimmie. And ten yards behind Jimmie Cotterill, smiling and bland, a red rose in his button-hole, strode Detective-Inspector Ansoll.
The procession maintained its order till Freddie turned down a street off Charing Cross Road. Then Ansoll closed up on Cotterill and the two moved up on Freddie. His foot was in a doorway when the inspector’s hand dropped lightly on his shoulder. One glance he took, and then recoiled with every evidence of dismay and terror.
‘Well, Freddie!’ said Ansoll. In the quiet, gentle voice the other man read a menace that did not exist.
‘Gawd, Mr Ansoll!’ he cried. ‘You scared me.’
‘Sorry,’ apologised Ansoll. ‘You don’t mind a joke, old son?’ He linked his arm lovingly with that of his quarry, and Cotterill ranged up on the other side.
Freddie made a half-hearted attempt to disengage his arm. This encounter was altogether too pat upon his interview with Wolf Coyne to be to his taste. He was almost superstitious about it. But the ruling gambit of the crook came automatically to his lips.
‘There’s nothing you’ve got up against me. You lemme go. You ain’t no business to interfere with me.’
‘Freddie!’ remonstrated the inspector. ‘You seem frightened of something. What’s the matter with you? We only want to buy you a drink. You never used to be as shy as this.’ His grip tightened.
‘I’m not frightened,’ declared the other, raising his voice so that there should be no mistake. ‘What I got to be frightened about? Only I’ve got an appointment. You’ve got no right to hold me up like this. I’ll report you.’
‘Report away,’ agreed Ansoll. ‘We like it. But come and have a drink all the same.’
Somehow Freddie found himself impelled away from the costumier’s. The prospect of the drink did not entice him. He was possessed by too wholesome a fear even for that. His restless eyes sought vainly for enlightenment in the inspector’s face. It wore an air of beaming benevolence.
In the cellar-like saloon of a near-by public-house Freddie found himself seated on a high stool with a detective on each side. Ansoll paid for drinks, and his unwilling guest found the taste of a liqueur brandy grateful and comforting. Ansoll talked idly in general. When Cotterill insisted on a second round Freddie was a little less suspicious of their motives. With a brand-new five-pound note burning in his hip-pocket he was not to be outdone in hospitality, and again the barman replenished the glasses. Freddie began to see how he had misjudged his hospitable companions. By the fifth round he was calling Cotterill ‘Jimmie’, and had dropped the ‘Mr’ when he addressed Ansoll. It escaped his notice that since the second round they had confined themselves to temperance beverages.
‘You’re a good sort, Anse’. I sort o’—hic—thought you had it in for me. My mistake. Y’ heard o’ the sweat-box, eh? No ’fence. Same again?’ He put down his empty glass.
‘Same again,’ said Ansoll. ‘No, Freddie, the third degree don’t go in London. We’re all for pleasant methods. Own up now. We’ve never put a crooked deal up on you, have we?’
Freddie gravely shook his head. ‘No. I don’t owe you no grudge. When you’ve been after me you’ve always played the straight game. But—hic—say, Anse’—he hooked a couple of thin fingers on to the inspector’s middle waistcoat button—‘you folk want somethin’ outa me now.’ He leered cunningly sideways. ‘That’s so. I ses to meself—hic—when I lamped y’ firsta all, “Anse’s got something on—something doing, eh?” I was a bit peeved ’cos I’d gotta’ ’pointment—matter of hundred jimmies t’ me boy. But I’m glad I missed it now, because—hic—because you’re a good f’llah. Have another?’
‘Sure. That appointment now. Something to do with me, was it?’
Freddie grinned confidingly. ‘Y’ betcha shirt it was. Say, Anse’, some of the boys are savin’ it up for you. But I’m not in it now. I’m goin’ back to Wolf Coyne and tell him to count me out. You’re a good f’llah—better f’llah than Wolf any day. Let him keep his hundred.’
Ansoll raised a lemonade and angostura to his lips and took a slow drink. Over Freddie’s head he saw Cotterill deliberately close one eye. That was all the sign that either was vitally interested in Freddie’s babble.
‘H’m,’ commented the inspector. ‘Wolf’s gunning for me, is he? Well, I wish him luck.’
‘He’s a mean man. He thinks he’s got it all under his own thatch—’stead of calling in those that’s forgotten more of the game than he ever knew. Told me I was yellow, he did—me yellow.’ His half-fuddled wits were working a grievance against the ‘con’ man. ‘But you’re a good f’llah. I’ll show him whether I’m yellow—him and his swell suckers.’ He scowled at the fresh drink which had been placed in front of him.
Ansoll pulled at his reddish moustache. ‘Called you yellow, eh? I suppose that hundred pounds was so you might try and croak me. Why on earth Wolf Coyne should be putting it across me, I don’t know.’
‘Croak y’,’ Freddie laughed scornfully. ‘No, I don’t fall for that sort of business. I’m nobody’s fool to run my head into a rope. No, it’s like this, Anse’. You’re crowding Wolf, and he’s a man that don’t like to be crowded. So he fixed it with me to play a little game with you—something that’d keep you too busy thinking about yourself to interfere with him till he made a get-away. Now, Anse’, you’re a good f’llah, Wolf was going to give me a hundred of the best—what’s it worth to you if I put you wise?’
Ansoll stiffened. He stood up, and his smiling familiarity vanished. ‘You’re talking through the back of your head, Freddie,’ he sneered. ‘I thought you had more sense than to pitch me a cock-and-bull story like that. Say, honest now, have you ever met Wolf Coyne in your life? What do you think of him, Jimmie?’
Cotterill humped his shoulders scornfully. ‘What you take us for, Freddie? Just a couple of piecans? Want to make a fiver by telling us a tale? Try it on someone else, my lad.’
Freddie gulped angrily. This change from good fellowship to rank incredulity had been well-timed. Too ready an eagerness would have made him anxious to extract terms, or, worse still, might have aroused his slumbering suspicions. But this attitude of the officers was nicely calculated to make a nearly drunken man blurt out all he knew. Freddie eyed them in fierce resentment.
‘Telling the tale, am I? Don’t know Wolf Coyne, don’t I? You bulls think you’re mighty smart—I don’t think. Would you believe it if I was to tell you …’
Twenty minutes later he was being whirled in a taxi-cab towards King Street. To his protests both detectives listened with no trace of emotion.
‘It’s all right, old son,’ said Jimmie Cotterill soothingly. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just going to hold you safe till you’re feeling better. A nice, strong, hot cup of coffee is all you want—then a stiff soda water. Now, you cheer up and you’ll be as right as rain.’
They put him in the detention room at King Street—‘detained for inquiries’ was the official explanation—and adjourned to the dingy little C.I.D. office on the second floor. There they sank into chairs facing each other, and the little wrinkles round the corner of Ansoll’s eyes grew more intense. He gave a short cackle of laughter.
‘Wolf Coyne is It.’ He chuckled. ‘The one and only It. He meant having me. But I think the surprise packet he held for me will be nothing to his astonishment when he finds it go off in his hand. Now, Jimmie, we’ve got to get busy.’ He reached for the desk telephone. ‘Give me C.I.—Ansoll speaking.’
With the dismissal of Flash Freddie, Coyne felt that the Ansoll problem was in a fair way of being settled. It had been a flash of inspiration—almost of genius—that had shown him the way out. He regretted now the access of temper that had made him seek out the inspector and show a gun. In that he felt he had been foolish. But this—this was different—something worthy of the man who, before the week was out, would, barring accidents, be worth a hundred thousand pounds.
He chuckled to himself as he dressed for dinner. He had that touch of vanity in which most criminals, big, and little, are alike—though, unlike smaller men, he was content with his own admiration of himself.
As his man brushed him down he gave a glance at himself in the glass, and with a satisfied nod moved to the private room he had ordered for dinner. He did credit to his tailor, and his tailor was worthy of him. His wanderings and a certain natural ability had given him an air. He was distinguished even without the three orders that dangled on his lapel—a man of whom you might be sure at first glance as standing in front rank of whatever profession or society he adorned.
He welcomed his guests—there were only three—with that charm of manner that had stood him in good stead in multifarious enterprises. If you had raked London you would not have found three persons less likely to be duped by an adventurer than those whom Coyne was entertaining. There was Lord Dalgaren, millionaire, owner of fifty thousand acres in Yorkshire and two hundred in London, and reputed one of the best business men in the House of Lords; Sir Henry Palton, builder of the big enterprise that shrieked at you from every hoarding ‘Palton’s Preserves’; and young Rupert Dainton, M.P., who had been left £15,000 a year and a big political future.
It was over the coffee that business was introduced. Up till then Coyne had given no indication that this was any more than a matter of hospitality. He lit a cigar with dainty care.
‘Well, Palton,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a cable today. You people have had plenty of time to make sure of my credentials. This ought to be fixed up now, or before we know it we’ll be pushed aside. These American Republics are slippery folk to deal with. We don’t want anyone to get ahead of us.’
Palton adjusted a pair of eyeglasses and looked gravely over their rims at his host. ‘It would have been better if you’d got the concession signed before we put up the money, Mr Arthur. Of course I can understand the difficulties of the position, but—’
Coyne drummed on the table absently. It was Dainton who struck in. ‘My dear Palton, we’ve been over that ground a dozen times among ourselves. It isn’t as if it was a gamble. It’s a perfectly reasonable proposition.’
The ‘con’ man interrupted. ‘I want to be clear with you gentlemen. You perfectly understand that I don’t risk a penny of my own money. I would like you to be in on this, but of course if there is any difficulty about raising the money, I can take the proposal elsewhere. If you had my experience of South America you would know you can’t do these sort of things on hot air. You can get this concession to build a railway through one of the biggest South American republics if you are prepared to put up a hundred thousand as a guarantee that you really will build. It seems, as Mr Dainton says, perfectly reasonable. If we were the only people on the market—’
‘Put that point aside for a moment,’ said Dalgaren. ‘What I think, I tell you frankly, is that you are asking us too much. We’re putting up the money, and the contract you want us to sign agrees that for services rendered you are to receive not less than one-fourth of the ordinary shares when we go to allotment.’
‘That’s it,’ agreed Palton. ‘It’s too much. You agree with us, don’t you, Dainton?’
Coyne leaned back in his chair. He was too old a hand to make the mistake of lowering his terms. ‘I think we might perhaps drop the discussion.’ he said amiably. ‘You know how it stands. One hundred thousand to be paid to me here and the concession to be signed directly I cable that it’s done. I take one-fourth of the ordinary shares or nothing.’
‘You’re a hard man, Arthur,’ sighed Palton. ‘Have you got the contract?’
‘I’m a business man—that’s all. I’ve got four copies all made out, and we’ll sign ’em presently. You can pay the money over to my bank in the morning.’
A waiter placed a card in front of him. He looked at it frowningly for a moment and then nodded. ‘Show him into my sitting-room in five minutes.’ He held the card in his hand as the servant left, and turned with a smile to his guests. ‘This happens rather opportunely. I don’t suppose any of you can tell me the etiquette of the occasion. It’s a little matter of blackmail.’
‘Someone ferreted out the black pages of your past, Arthur?’ said Dalgaren. ‘Or is it a woman?’
‘Neither,’ said Coyne. ‘It is a gentleman who apparently holds an official position here.’ He read from the card: ‘Detective-Inspector J. C. Ansoll, Criminal Investigation Department.’
Dainton whistled. Palton readjusted his eye-glasses. ‘Do you really mean that this police officer is trying to blackmail you?’
The ‘con’ man nodded. ‘He’s got wind of this concession business somehow—just enough to make him believe there’s something fishy. He came to see me this morning, and threatened to tell you all the horrid details, Palton. It was an awkward fix, because, though I didn’t mind him going to you, I did not want the scheme talked about till everything was watertight. Publicity might have killed it. So I temporised—told him to come back some other time and we’d talk it over.’ He spoke with just the right air of amused irritability.
‘I say, this is serious,’ said Dainton. ‘A detective officer levying blackmail. We’ll have to do something you know. The Home Secretary—’
‘Do what you like after we’ve got the concession,’ said Coyne. ‘We can’t do anything till then—though we might give him a scare—what? Look here, if you three conceal yourselves, it would be a good idea to have him in here. When he learns that there have been witnesses to his attempt—’
‘We can shut him up till the deal goes through,’ said Dalgaren. ‘I think that’s the right idea. What about those portières for you, Dainton? Palton, you might take the window—and the screen will do me.’
‘That’s splendid,’ agreed Coyne. ‘I hadn’t arranged this little entertainment for you folk, but it ought to amuse you. Now, green lights. Enter the villain—or, rather, I’ll go and fetch him.’
No one of the three concealed gentlemen could have supposed that their host was filled with contemptuous amusement as he left the room. He chuckled as he received the waiting inspector.
‘Gad, Freddie, you’re a wonder. If I didn’t know, I’d think you were the real thing. Come along.’
Ansoll obeyed with docility. As they passed into the dining-room he straightened his shoulders.
‘You’ll guess what I’ve come about,’ he said.
‘I’ve a sort of idea,’ said Coyne imperturbably. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong man. However,’—he thrust his hands in his trousers pockets,—‘what’s your price?’
There was nothing forced about Ansoll’s grin. He had caught a movement beneath one of the portière curtains. ‘I fancy you are making a little mistake,’ he said pleasantly. ‘You can’t buy me off. I am a police-officer, as you know, and it is my duty to tell you that unless you can give a satisfactory explanation of certain facts that have come to my knowledge, I shall take you into custody on a charge for attempted fraud. You understand that you are not obliged to answer any questions.’
Three lines bit vertically into Coyne’s forehead. He regretted there had not been a more complete rehearsal of the scene they were now playing. Somehow it was running off the lines.
‘Fire ahead,’ he said.
‘You claim to be able to obtain a concession to build a railway across certain districts of Chile, but that, prior to obtaining the necessary signatures, a deposit of £100,000 must be paid to you.’
‘That is right.’
‘You have practically induced three gentlemen to entrust you with that deposit?’
‘Well?’ Coyne meditatively surveyed a well-fitting dress shoe.
‘I have today received information that it is not and never has been contemplated to grant a concession—that the Chilean authorities know nothing about it.’
‘I suppose,’ said Coyne, ‘that all this beating about the bush is for a purpose. You want me to pay to keep your mouth shut. Would you like me to write a cheque?’
‘Not exactly,’ laughed Ansoll. ‘I would like you to prove to me that this is no fraud. Otherwise—’
‘Otherwise?’
Ansoll stepped to the door. ‘Jimmie,’ he called softly. And then to Coyne: ‘I think, Wolf, if you tell these gentlemen who are so interested in our little conversation to come out, we can drop the curtain on this farce. You see, Freddie has let you down.’
Not often in his career had Wolf Coyne been taken at a loss. It took him a full second to realise that it was Ansoll in reality and not Flash Freddie. He stared unbelievingly at the detective.
‘Hell!’ he muttered. ‘Hell!’
Then he was galvanised into action. With a couple of strides he cleared the room, jerked the amazed Palton from his hiding-place, and turned the handle of the inner door. But Jimmie Cotterill and Ansoll moved as quickly. They flung themselves upon him and pulled him back. Both were powerful men, but Coyne was no less so, and he was driven desperate. They surged, a tangled mass of humanity, over the soft carpet, the two officers in grim silence, the ‘con’ man cursing fearfully.
Dainton flung himself into the fray, and received a kick in the face that sent him half-stunned into the fireplace. Ansoll spat out a tooth and took a fresh grip on the place where the collar of Coyne’s dress-coat had been. Cotterill, with his knee momentarily on the ‘con’ man’s chest, succeeded in adjusting one cuff of the handcuffs. A second later the flying other end caught him in the mouth.
‘Aw,’ he gurgled, and clenched a fist.
‘None of that, Jimmie,’ ordered Ansoll sharply, and the sergeant, who had lost sight of the tradition of the Metropolitan Police, stayed his blow. Two minutes later he got the prisoner’s wrists together and the handcuffs clicked again.
Ansoll stood up, breathing heavily. ‘I’m not so young as I was,’ he sighed. ‘In the old days I’d have enjoyed a scrap like that.’ He wiped the blood from his lip. ‘Now, gentlemen, if you’ll follow us on to King Street police station I shall be grateful. You can reckon that this job has saved you at least £100,000.’
To three disillusionised men Ansoll vouchsafed explanations in his office. ‘You gentlemen,’ he said, ‘don’t think yourselves in the same class as a countryman who buys a pawn-ticket for a gold watch outside Waterloo Station. Yet, except that it was a concession instead of a pawn-ticket, it’s just the same old game that this crook down below has played on you. They say it’s better to be born lucky than rich.
‘We had Wolf Coyne tipped off to us when he came across. Now, he’s a free-born American citizen, and there’s no law that we could use against him, though we were pretty sure he had something up his sleeve. He just laughed at me when I warned him off.
‘Of course we kept a pretty strict eye on him. We couldn’t do anything till he overstepped the law, but we were just watching for a chance. The awkward thing was that we didn’t know in just what direction his talents would break out. We could only wait and watch, and the longer we waited the more evident it was that it was a big thing.
‘Now, though we could learn nothing of the stunt—all of you took pretty good care to keep that secret—we worried Wolf. He knew that we were right on his heels, and it got on his nerves. You see he was alarmed lest we should get a hint to put you wise before he got his hooks on the money. He actually stood in Bond Street this, morning and threatened me with a pistol. When he found that didn’t work he tried something else.
‘He sent for a man named Mullins—Flash Fred—who was an actor before he took to drink and went on the cross. That gave us our first hold. When Freddie left the hotel we followed him, caught him up after awhile, and made him drunk. There was very little Sherlock Holmes work in this, I can tell you.
‘Well, first we made him drunk and then we got his goat. It all came out like drawing a cork from a bottle. The scheme had all the marks of Coyne’s genius. First of all, he wanted to increase your confidence in him. And secondly, lest I should get a line on him, he was to destroy your faith in me. Freddie was to make up to resemble me and then to put up a blackmail show with you three gentlemen in unimpeachable positions as witnesses. Clever, wasn’t it? Supposing I’d found out afterwards, and come to you with a story that Coyne was cheating you, would you have believed me? To make the blackmail convincing he had to entrust Freddie with rough points of the scheme, and that gave us enough to work on.
‘We cabled the chief of police at Valparaiso, and got in touch with the Chilean Ministry here—’
‘But,’ interrupted Dainton, ‘he told us that for reasons of secrecy this matter of the concession was being conducted direct from headquarters. There was a matter of a—er—bonus.’
‘Bribery, in plain English. The old “con” stuff. When you buy a brass ring you have to keep quiet because it’s been stolen from Streeters. Anyway, that stopped you making inconvenient inquiries here. As I was saying, there was never any idea of a concession. A week after you’d made over cheques, you’d have looked in vain for your Mr Arthur. He’d got a pal in Valparaiso who sent the cables that kept you keen, and his other papers are forgeries.
‘Well, that’s all. We rearranged things a little and I took the principal part instead of Freddie.’
‘I wish, Mr Ansoll,’ said Palton dryly, ‘you had chosen some other method. For men in the public positions of ourselves it will be a little—ah—humilating to have to confess how we were duped.’
‘Why,’ smiled Ansoll, ‘that’s exactly why I did it. Wolf has had too long a run to escape again because—forgive me—three suckers hate to tell how close they came to being stung.’