Читать книгу Marauders by Night - Arthur Gask - Страница 3

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ONE summer morning in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-five, Sir Hartley Bevan, the Chief Commissioner of the Police, was in earnest consultation at Scotland Yard with Chief Detective Inspector Charles Stone, Detective Inspector Gilbert Larose and the heads of the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk Police. He was looking very troubled.

"And please understand, gentlemen," he frowned, "that henceforward a raid upon any of the big houses in the three Eastern Counties is to be regarded automatically as a call to us here. That's the Home Secretary's express order, which he gave to me not half an hour ago. He says that this gang, now operating so successfully in the Eastern Counties, must be speedily run to earth."

"It's all very well for him to tell you that, sir," commented Inspector Stone dryly, "but did he happen to mention how? Did he point out to you anything we have not done that we should have in trying to get hold of them?"

The inspector was one of the Big Four at Scotland Yard. He was a stout man in the late forties, with a heavy face, large and shrewd-looking grey eyes and a strong, determined chin.

"No, he did not," said the Commissioner, "but the Right Honourable gentleman went on to suggest that, with five major robberies in the past six months, it seemed to the ordinary mind that the gang could not have been carrying on for so long without leaving some very definite clues behind, telling something of what sort of men they are."

"It's easy enough to guess what they're like," grunted the inspector, "but that doesn't get us anywhere. They certainly aren't the old-fashioned ignorant tip-and-run burglars, relying mainly on luck. On the contrary, everything points to their being of a good class, with either them or their friends moving among those whom they actually rob."

"And how are you so sure about that?" frowned the Commissioner.

The inspector tapped the sheaf of papers on the table before him. "Because of the undoubted information they have acted upon in all the raids," he said, "and the help from inside which they must have received. Upon each occasion everything has been made easy for them. They have known where the valuables were and the best time to come for them; and, if they haven't actually been admitted into the house by a confederate, where there have been alarms they have been tampered with and rendered inoperative."

"But do you think you are justified," asked the Commissioner, "in completely discarding the idea that this inside help came from servants?"

It was the Superintendent of Police from Ipswich who answered him. "My colleagues from Chelmsford and Norwich are quite certain there, sir," he said, "that is, as certain as anyone can reasonably be. Speaking for my own county, where the two raided houses were near Wickham Market and Halesworth respectively, the staffs of both places were so intensively screened that I am confident no help came from them. Not only did we go into their own lives, but into the lives of their families as well, and found nothing suspicious anywhere. And I understand it was the same with the staffs of the other three raided houses in Essex and Norfolk. Everything suggested that the success of each robbery was due to the help of a guest who was present in the house upon the actual night of the crime or who had been staying there some time previously."

The Commissioner frowned. "That's a pretty bad reflection," he said, "upon the friends of the owners of the raided houses."

The Superintendent shrugged his shoulders. "We know that, sir," he said, "but putting all our heads together, that is the only conclusion which we can reach. These burglars are a type of modern swell-mobsmen and, as Inspector Stone has pointed out, not of the ordinary common class. Probably in private life they follow respectable occupations, with these burglaries being only a sideline."

"And that's why I should say," commented Inspector Stone, "they are probably all youngish men, at any rate not over thirty, who fought in the Great War, and now it is adventure as well as monetary gain which is so appealing to them." He shook his head gloomily. "A most dangerous type of criminal!"

"But you talk as if there were a whole regiment of them," snapped the Commissioner. "Surely they can't be as numerous as all that?"

"Well, there must be a fair crowd of them," nodded Stone, "though most likely only a few of them take part in the actual burglaries. If our friends, the Superintendents here, are right, they must have had 'spotters' in each of the five houses which have been robbed, and a different one every time."

"Yes, that is so," agreed the Ipswich Superintendent at once. "Going through the lists of friends supplied by the owners of the five raided houses, we can light upon no party who has been staying at more than one house upon the actual night of the robbery or many weeks before it."

"But can we be quite certain," queried the Commissioner, "that all these five raids were carried out by one and the same gang?"

"Well, it looks like it, sir, doesn't it?" said Stone. "The choice of the booty they came after, the exactly appropriate time they came to get it, their coming unheard and their vanishing unseen, like shadows of the night. It looks to me like the planning of one master-mind."

"But in the last raid they were seen when going off," pointed out the Commissioner.

"Ah, but that was, so to speak, accidental," said the Superintendent from Ipswich. "Apparently, when they were all preparing to leave, one of them knocked over a small occasional table with a big glass vase on it, and the noise it made at once brought three menservants upon the scene. They thought it was the cat which had been shut up in the room and——"

"But three menservants about in the small hours of the morning?" queried the Commissioner. "Doesn't that seem suspicious to you?"

"Oh, no, sir," smiled the Superintendent, "that was quite explainable. They were playing nap in the butler's pantry, and just didn't notice how late it was getting." He looked grave. "It was bad luck for the butler, sir, as the poor man received a very nasty crack on the head, probably with something like a jemmy. At any rate the doctors say he had a narrow escape from being killed outright. He was in hospital for over a month."

"Ah, I remember," nodded the Commissioner, "and the footman just behind him saw four or five men running up the drive."

"Yes, sir, and he said they were running like athletes and he saw at once he had no chance of catching them, which adds weight to what Inspector Stone says about their being young men. Then this footman, finding the telephone dead, dashed off on his bicycle to the bailiff's house and got through to us at Ipswich from there." The Superintendent shook his head. "And that is what's so puzzling to us. The bailiff's house is not a quarter of a mile away, and the footman is positive he got in touch with us less than five minutes after the butler was struck down. Then, within another ten minutes at the most, calls had gone off in every direction, and we are confident that every road within twenty miles around was being watched and every person found upon it made to give an account of himself." He shrugged his shoulders. "But we got nothing out of it."

"And have any of you," asked the Commissioner, "got any idea of whereabouts the headquarters of this gang might be?" He turned to Gilbert Larose. "What do you say about that, Inspector Larose?"

Gilbert Larose, then in his twenty-ninth year and the youngest Detective Inspector at Scotland Yard, was a good-looking young fellow with a pleasant smiling face. Transferred from Australia to the Criminal Investigation Department in London, in four years he had earned an almost legendary reputation. So many difficult cases had he brought to a successful conclusion that it had come to be believed by the public generally that it was by instinct mainly that he had succeeded where others had failed. It was said that his mind would drop like a plummet on to essential facts and that he would pick up trails invisible to anybody else. He would insist laughingly that everyone was criminally inclined and, in certain circumstances, the most innocent-looking man or woman was often the one to be suspected most.

Replying now to the Commissioner, he said thoughtfully, "I really don't think that matters at all, sir, as they certainly will not operate from anywhere close to it."

"Then where do they go directly after a raid?" asked the Commissioner.

"We have come to the conclusion that this is anywhere but on to the roads," replied Larose, "and that's why all the cordons that have been drawn have proved useless. There'd be no fast cars or even bicycles for them. We believe that whenever they think they may have been seen, they run to earth perhaps only a few hundred yards from the house they have just raided. They hide in some wood or coppice, and most likely don't come out for a long time, perhaps not until late in the afternoon. Then they may dribble back home, or to some arranged place of meeting, one by one. And we think they'll appear then to be very ordinary and harmless people. One may look like a holiday fisherman with his rod over his shoulder and his basket on his back, another may be dressed as a Scoutmaster, a third may be picked up by a passing lorry belonging to the gang and hop into the driver's seat in overalls to look the part. With money behind them they can adopt any form of disguise."

The Commissioner turned to the three Superintendents. "And these are the considered ideas of you all?" he asked.

The one from Ipswich nodded. "Yes, sir, they are. They seem plausible and, looking back now, too durned plausible to be pleasant."

"And you will notice," said Larose, "that all these houses raided were not deep in the countryside, but quite near to the coast, where anyone could slip in unnoticed among the visitors to the holiday resorts." He looked grave. "Oh, yes, sir, we are up against something very hard here, with everything foreseen and everything prepared."

Now Inspector Charlie Stone had not been quite right in surmising that all this little coterie of criminals who were occasioning the authorities such anxiety were youngish men, as the guiding spirit of them all, Dr. Ramsden Hendrick, would never see sixty again. A bachelor and a one-time Professor of Neurology at Oxford University, with a long string of letters after his name, he had been a nerve specialist of almost world- wide reputation. Apart from his profession, too, he was a man of wide scholarship, and his researches into criminology had earned him additional fame.

Greatly respected by his medical colleagues, Hendrick was yet regarded as a very eccentric character, for he made no secret of the fact that his study of crime had, in the course of years, come to imbue him with not a little sympathy and even admiration for the less gross of the criminals themselves. He would say it was the courage of these men that so intrigued him, and he believed that not a little of it had come down to them from their far-off ancestors in the thieving and piratical days of the greatly honoured Sir Francis Drake, when England was well upon the way to becoming the greatest country in the world.

A year previously, and when just sixty-three, following upon a short period of gradually increasing ill-health, Hendrick had learnt that he was afflicted with leukaemia, that insidious and incurable disease of a persistent increase in the number of white cells of the blood. Told that at the most he had only three more years to live, he had at once given up his Chair at the University and retired to spend his last days in a lonely bungalow he had built for himself some time back upon the Essex marshes, about six miles distant from the little town of Burnham-on-Crouch. He had hoped that, cut off from all his one-time friends and acquaintances, his very solitariness, with only the sea and the wide and lonely marsh for his surroundings, would in time reconcile him to his fate and take from him all yearning for a longer lease of life.

His only companion in the bungalow was his servant, Ben Hunter, a man well on into middle age, who had been in his service for the greater part of thirty years and who was blindly devoted to him. Certainly not of an acute intelligence, Ben was thought by many to be half-daft. These clever people, however, were not taking into account that, handicapped all his life by a mild form of epilepsy and occasional severe headaches of a most distressing nature, Ben had always, more or less, been soaked with sedative drugs. He was naturally of a reserved nature, and their effect had been to make him more reserved than ever, so that with anyone but his master he was often taciturn almost to the point of appearing mentally deficient.

Still, Ben was most efficient in his services to the doctor, preparing dainty meals to tempt his appetite and waiting upon him hand and foot in the bad turns of his malady. In his eyes his master could do no wrong, and he obeyed his every order without questioning and even without thought.

However, to Ben there were certain compensations in the lonely life that he was living. Brought up in the Norfolk Fen country and not far from the sea, he was an ardent fisherman, and, there was little in the habits of the creatures of the wild that he did not know. So now he could go out fishing whenever he wanted and, to his great delight, also make use of his other knowledge in many midnight poaching excursions to the estates of certain landed proprietors which were not too far away.

In time these poaching activities of his had become known to those whose preserves he raided, and many attempts had been made to catch him. So far, however, he had always been too wily for them, and not only had they not succeeded but, also, he would seldom return home to the bungalow empty-handed. Many a nice plump pheasant and tender leveret had been served up at the doctor's table, and failing higher game, even the homely rabbit had been included in the menu.

With his queer views of life generally and of crime in particular, Dr. Hendrick never had any compunction about enjoying the proceeds of his servant's unlawful ventures, and sometimes when Ben was occupied in the cooking of a delicious-smelling bird for the evening meal he would chuckle to himself in some amusement. Thinking of those people who would have it that Ben had no intelligence, he would wonder how many of them could have done what he had done and got away with it, with the gamekeepers now always on the look-out for him. Later on, it was this amusement that he derived from his servant's warfare with the landed gentry which was to turn his thoughts into a much more unlawful direction.

The months passed on and, so far from his becoming reconciled to his fate by the peace and quietness of his surroundings, the knowledge that he was doomed to die in such a drawn-out and torturing manner began gradually to fill Hendrick with a bitter and unreasoning spite against the community generally.

Where was the justice, he would ask himself, in that he, with ample means to enjoy the best of everything in his last days, should through his sickness be debarred from all pleasure, while others all around him were well and happy in years beyond those he was ever going to see? At times, in his bad moments, he could hardly contain his anger. How he would love to make some of them suffer as he was suffering now! What happiness would be his if his malady would only sweep through the world like a prairie fire and afflict all mankind!

One day he read in the newspaper of how the Mayfair house of a well-known Society woman had been burgled and a valuable diamond necklace stolen, and it made his blood boil to learn of the sympathy she was receiving.

"The silly, foolish creature," he scowled angrily, "she little knows how fortunate she is! What has she to grieve about in her loss of a few paltry pieces of carbon compared with my ever-increasing loss, day upon day, of my precious health?" He gritted his teeth savagely. "If only diamond necklaces were like hares and rabbits and I could put Ben on to get them! What a laugh I'd have!"

Then, all on the instant, the thought came to him what an exciting thing it would be if he could loose upon Society a little band of competent and well-trained burglars, who had been coached up in what they had to do and were well equipped with everything to carry it out successfully. He would not have any blood-spilling, nothing as coarse as that, he told himself. He would just like a series of burglaries, mysterious robberies from the houses of the very rich and with the robbers getting away uncaught every time.

With the idea growing stronger and stronger the more he thought about it, in time it became a sort of pleasant daydream. The doctor would ask himself what better terrain he could have to work upon than the three counties of East Anglia, so to speak at his very door, and where he could watch everything that was going on. There would be so many houses to choose from there—big, old-world residences of selfish, grasping owners who were hugging to themselves articles of considerable value: jewellery, old china, paintings and many other things that would bring good money wherever they were sold.

What a sensation it would cause if these imaginary burglaries were brought off successfully, one after another! How the newspapers would squeal for the perpetrators to be caught! How the people in other big houses with valuables to lose would quake in their shoes, thinking every night it would be their turn for the burglars to pay them a visit! Certainly the doctor would get a great thrill out of it, and it would fill what he had left of life with an interest he would never be able to obtain in any other way.

But he would have to be very careful, he told himself, in choosing the men to make up this little band. He would have no common, so-called working men, or indeed anyone of known criminal reputation. Instead, he would gather to him young fellows who had never been in trouble before and, for preference, old school-tie men of good social standing. His knowledge of psychology and his long searching studies in the ways of crime had brought home to him most forcibly that the criminal instinct was inherent in everyone and needed only some favourable circumstance to bring it to the surface.

With these thoughts filling his mind for so long, almost to the exclusion of everything else, at last one day he resolved definitely to try to put his plan into execution. First of all he started to consider whom he could find to help him to gather the young fellows together. He was quite prepared to pay well for a suitable man.

After considering everyone with whom he had been brought into contact in recent years, he was very soon of opinion that he had hit upon the right one to approach. He was a man well-born and educated, but as unscrupulous and criminal-minded as anyone could be, named Washington Mainwaring. When a young man, he had come into a goodly sum of money upon the decease of an uncle, and while the money lasted he had lived the gay life of a fast young man about town. Gambling in any form had been his hobby, with the Turf appealing to him most strongly. For two dazzling seasons he could have been found at all the principal race meetings, plunging heavily upon his fancies and, with the luck which so often flatters a newcomer, doing quite well. However, becoming a racehorse owner, it seemed at once that fortune had forsaken him, for everything began to go wrong. Trying to recoup himself in any way he could, he got mixed up in a bad crowd, and ugly rumours began to get about that his horses, when well supported by the public, were being "pulled" in the interests of certain bookmakers. It followed quickly that he received an intimation from the Stewards informing him that the nominations of his horses would no longer be accepted. Indeed, it was said that but for the influence of another uncle, Lord Havildon, he would have been warned off the Turf altogether.

Later came the expected crash, and he was adjudged bankrupt. He now had a wife and child to keep, and was forced to follow several occupations. His last before the coming of the Great War was that of a clerk in a stockbroker's office.

On the outbreak of war he volunteered at once, and as a one-time sergeant in the Artists' Rifle Corps he received a commission. He proved a most capable officer, the war ending with him as Major Mainwaring and decorated with the Distinguished Service Order.

Looking about for some way of earning a living, with the experience of his Stock Exchange work before the war, he had risked his war gratuity and every other penny he possessed in setting up on his own account as an outside broker. Much shrewder now in his outlook upon life, and full of energy, he had achieved a very quick success and in even three years was well established.

Certainly the reputation he had earned was not by any means a good one, as it was well known that his long suit was buying up almost worthless shares and reselling them for the same number of pounds or even more. Advertising extensively, it was generally believed that quite a good proportion of his clients came from among the clergy. At any rate, he circularised everyone whose name was to be found in Crockford's Clerical Directory, and a lot of business undoubtedly came in from that source.

This, then, was the man who one morning received an invitation from Dr. Hendrick to spend a week-end at his bungalow upon the Tillingham marshes. He was curious to see what the doctor's place was like, and he sensed that the old man was now wanting to do some business with him; so he accepted the invitation at once, and late on the following Friday afternoon arrived at the bungalow.

"Good heavens. Doctor," he exclaimed as he got out of his car, "but you've got a lonely place here! Marshes all around you, except for that dreary sea!"

"It's not dreary," snapped the doctor. "Nothing's dreary here, as there are always living creatures about and I get a lot of pleasure in watching the wild life. Yesterday, for instance, a vixen with her two cubs came up close to my very windows, and I watched her playing with them like a cat with her kittens. It was very interesting."

They went into the bungalow, where, to the broker's great satisfaction, a good meal was provided. Knowing something about his host's ill-health, he had been half fearing that the food would be invalid diet.

The meal over, Dr. Hendrick, with no beating about the bush, broached the matter which was uppermost in his mind. When he had recovered from his amazement at the proposition put to him, Mainwaring indulged in a hearty laugh. "What an extraordinary way of acquiring wealth!" he exclaimed. "We might certainly get a lot of fun out of it, but"—he held up his hand protestingly—"just think of its anti-social side!"

"You're a fine one to talk about any anti-social side," scoffed the doctor derisively, "when everyone knows you ought to have been warned off the turf not many years ago. Even now, too, you are probably making a good part of your income by palming off worthless shares upon innocent old clergymen who are foolish enough to believe everything you tell them. To my way of thinking a clean honest burglary is no worse than this share-cheating."

Mainwaring took a long, contemplative puff at his cigar. "Perhaps not," he admitted good-humouredly, "but then burglary is such a crude way of falling foul of the law. If one were caught at it, there would be no possible hope of finding a legal loophole, and it would mean penal servitude every time. Why, man, the risks of burglary are tremendous!"

"Not if we set about it in the way I propose," retorted the doctor sharply. "Then, there would be hardly any risks at all. For instance, take the matter of Lord Raddlestone's collection of gold coins, which I should suggest would be our first venture. I know him and his place near Thetford quite well. He says these coins are worth more than £10,000, and all that would stand between our getting them would be a french window with as flimsy a catch as you could find anywhere. They are all in a handy little cabinet on the ground floor. He keeps no dogs, has only women servants, and the house is lonely in its own grounds, quite a quarter of a mile from its nearest neighbour."

"No burglar alarms?" queried Mainwaring with a frown.

"Not a single one, and all the locks and fastenings about the house are years and years old and very old-fashioned. His lordship's obsession is that, not having been robbed yet—he never will be."

"And apart from the value of the coins as coins," asked the broker, "the gold itself would be worth quite a lot?"

"Yes, quite a bit. There are more than five hundred of them. Still, if they were disposed of in America they would fetch from ten to twenty times the value of the gold."

"And your idea," said Mainwaring thoughtfully, "is for me to help you get hold of a bunch of young fellows who, so to speak, are down on their uppers and ready for anything to lay hold of a bit of money."

"Certainly not," replied the doctor with some indignation. "I want no stony-brokes in shabby clothes and cadging for a pound or two wherever they think they can get it. I want young fellows with good clothes, in regular occupations and who move in good society."

"And who are quite agreeable to becoming burglars," laughed Mainwaring, "if the opportunity is given to them?"

"But the urge will be in them," insisted the doctor, "the same as it is in all of us when we see other people enjoying the good things that we haven't got—the urge to break away from the ordinary conventions of the day and help ourselves to what we want. We are all criminals at heart, and I tell you I know, from my almost lifelong researches into the workings of the human mind, that this instinct, born in us, is never totally eradicated, no matter what our upbringing and education may have been. Look at yourself, for instance."

"What about me?" asked Mainwaring with some truculence.

"Well, you're a definite criminal, aren't you," said the doctor, "as I've pointed out, particularly in your habit of taking money off people for worthless shares?"

"But as I've told you," replied Mainwaring, "that's in the way of business. It all comes within the law."

"But the criminal intent is there," persisted the doctor, "and you push it as far as you dare. These boys I am looking for will dare a bit more. That'll be all the difference between them and you."

"Then you tell me," said Mainwaring, "how I am to pick them out. How am I to start?"

"By just using your common sense," snapped the doctor. "You must know plenty of young fellows who go racing, and that's where you'll most easily find the ones I want. The atmosphere of the racecourse is always an unhealthy one, as no one knows better than you, with swindles continually going on. Horses are pulled one day and allowed to win the next. I am told that the majority of regular racegoers are only too ready to chip in with any cheating that's going on, and that must blur their moral outlook quite a lot."

"But hardly, I should say," commented Mainwaring dryly, "to the extent of making them willing to adopt the calling of burglars all at once."

"I don't agree with you there," said the doctor sharply. "If it is put to them in a tactful way they will quickly see the reasonableness of such a proposal." He spoke with sudden animation. "I'll tell you what. You look out for any likely young fellow and, when you think you've found him, just you bring him down here for me to talk to. I'll see at once if he's any good. Of course, don't you tell him anything. Leave all that to me."

"Good," smiled Mainwaring, "and, as I take it, I've got to produce an aristocratic-looking young Adonis, with well-cut clothes, relations in the House of Lords and without a penny in his pockets." His face sobered down. "But seriously—when I come to think of it, I know quite a few young fellows who were in my regiment with me during the war, chaps who had no fear of anything or anyone, and who I noticed were very keen in the souvenir line. It was rotten bad luck for any surrendering German officer who had got a wrist watch or anything worth having on him. He had to part with it at the pistol point"—he nodded grimly—"and these young chaps meant business, too. The German officer would come off pretty badly if he didn't cough up at once, as ordered to."

The doctor looked pleased. "Probably the very type of young men I want." He laughed. "I knew you were the right party to approach first."

"But one moment," frowned Mainwaring, as if he had just thought of something. He eyed the doctor intently. "If we start on this business what part do you expect me to play? Don't forget I'm forty-four, and much too old for the strenuous job of breaking down doors and cracking open safes."

"You wouldn't be asked to," said the doctor. "All you would have to do would be to help me get the men together and then spot likely houses where they could get to work. And if all goes well there'll be plenty of money for everyone, and your share will be many times greater than all you can earn in that bucket-shop of yours in the City."

"And you yourself won't want anything?" queried Mainwaring.

"Not a penny," replied the doctor. "I've got far more money than I can spend in the short time I'm going to live." He spoke emphatically. "And if you serve me well there'll be a good legacy for you when I die."

The following Friday evening Mainwaring turned up again at the bungalow, this time being driven down in a motor side-car outfit. "Mr. Reginald Barton Belt," he said, introducing the driver. "He was a lieutenant in my regiment during the last year of the war."

Belt was a well-set-up and pleasant-looking young fellow in his twenty-eighth year. It did not seem as if he had a care in the world.

"Awful ride!" sighed Mainwaring, mopping the perspiration from his face. "If I had known what sort of a driver he was I'd have never gone a yard with him. I'm sure I've never been nearer death before in all my life. He took sharp corners at fifty miles an hour and the whole time drove like a demented man."

"Not at all," grinned Belt. "Why, I was just toddling along!"

The doctor liked the look of Belt at once. Just the very type of man he wanted—a reckless, daredevil fellow who would be afraid of nothing! Asked what his occupation was, he said he was in a bank and it was a damned monotonous life.

"And there are no perks," he went on laughingly, "as they balance the books every night."

After a good dinner with plenty of wine, the doctor brought round the conversation to the inequalities of life, how some people could buy everything they wanted, while others had only barely enough to scrape along upon.

"What I say," agreed Belt. "It makes me damned wild sometimes to see people come into our bank on a Saturday morning, draw out a couple of hundred pounds, or perhaps more, and tell the cashier they're going to give them a run that afternoon at the races. Then, perhaps on the Monday morning, if they've had a bit of luck, they'll turn up with a huge wad of notes that'll take the cashier a devil of a time to count, and pay them in with apparently no more interest than if they only amounted up to a few bob." He grinned wryly. "Yes, sometimes I feel like jumping over the counter and giving them a good dong on the head. They don't realise how fortunate they are."

"And I know an old gentleman," supplemented the doctor, "who's got over £10,000 in gold coins, earning no interest and lying in an old cabinet, with nothing to prevent a worthier person getting hold of them except the catch of one single ground-floor window."

"Whew, what a chance for someone!" exclaimed Belt laughingly. "Tell me where the place is, and I'll go round at once and chance my luck."

This was Dr. Hendrick's opportunity, and he was very soon unfolding his plan to a highly interested young man. They talked on for some hours, and this conversation marked the first stage in the bringing together of that little band of thieves which some months later was to cause the authorities so much anxiety.

Mainwaring could not have introduced the doctor to a more suitable man than young Belt, as through him one recruit after another was brought down to the bungalow. They had all been most carefully chosen. All were returned soldiers somewhere about the middle twenties, all were fairly well-educated, and all were seemingly imbued with something of that honour which is supposed to exist among a certain type of thieves. There were five of them in all. One was a fully qualified engineer, two came from banks, another was a medical student and the last—they all thought this was the best of jokes—was actually a clerical employee at Scotland Yard. All were bachelors except Mainwaring himself, who was a widower with a grown-up son; and had their aims not been unsocial they might have been described as a gallant little band of adventurers.

Of course Dr. Hendrick's bungalow was made their headquarters, and at first they spent most week-ends there as his guests. It was the doctor's intention that they should all get to know one another well and become loyal friends. Loyalty was the doctrine he preached to them, and from his conversation it might almost have seemed that he was not urging them to do anything very wrong, but instead was launching them upon a highly moral crusade to punish the selfishness and rapacity of the wealthy classes.

In the course of the years the doctor's mind had, without doubt, become warped by his continual brooding over crime, and his sickness had certainly had a considerable effect on his moral sense. Yet his special pleading was as clever as it could have been, and his reasoning made a profound impression upon his young and impressionable listeners. The one exception was Mainwaring. In his own mind he stigmatised the doctor's talk as all "poppycock," and he chuckled to himself that they were all going to be, as he tersely put it, "bloody thieves."

The many visits of these young fellows to the bungalow entailed a good deal of extra work by the doctor's servant Ben, but he took it all in his stride and without any questioning. Along all the years of his service Dr. Hendrick had never confided in him, and Ben seemed to think there was no reason why he should. On his side, he told his master everything with the frankness of a child, but he never expected to be told anything in return. Devoid of all imagination and with no curiosity either, Ben never wanted to know who these young fellows were or why they came. He was just not interested.

At first these lively visitors had been very reluctant to discuss anything in Ben's presence, but his master had assured them he could be trusted implicitly, as he never repeated anything he heard, and indeed most probably would not even take it in. Very soon, therefore, they became accustomed to speak in front of him exactly as if he were not present among them.

As can have been gathered from the consultation at Scotland Yard between the Chief Commissioner of Police, the heads of the Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk police and Inspectors Stone and Larose, in the ensuing six months Dr. Hendrick's most optimistic hopes were fulfilled. The spoils were of considerable value, and Mainwaring managed to dispose of them to a reliable fence he had found in the East End.

The various members of the band, however, each received only a portion of the proceeds. The doctor was wise and far-seeing there, making sure that no attention should be drawn to any of them by a sudden alteration in his standard of living. For the time being they were being only partly remunerated for their services, with the understanding that when they eventually disbanded the balance due to each would be handed over in a lump sum. The doctor made them understand that whatever attention anyone drew to himself then would be entirely his own concern and would not involve any of the others.

Although, to his surprise, Dr. Hendrick was not getting quite the amount of thrill he had been so confidently anticipating, he certainly could not complain that the burglaries were not catching the public eye. On the contrary, the Press continued to shriek for the perpetrators to be run to earth, and this gave Mainwaring more pleasure than the doctor derived. One thing, however, was annoying Mainwaring very much, and that was that the doctor was evidently determined to trust him no further than he was obliged to. Hendrick kept a close watch upon every penny received from the fence, and was always present when the money was paid over.

Still, the broker consoled himself in the realisation that he was picking up a lot of experience—indeed, so much that he was now going in for a little bit of larceny upon his own. His unsuspecting victim was his sole remaining relation, his aunt. She was a Mrs. Monteith Scrutton, who lived in a big house known as Orwell Hall, situated at the outskirts of Ingatestone, a small town about twenty-five miles from London.

In her sixty-sixth year, the wealthy, childless widow of the late Mr. Justice Scrutton, was a woman of imposing and rather masculine appearance, tall and angular and with a strong intellectual face. Very short-sighted, she wore glasses with very thick lenses, so thick indeed that they gave her an almost owl-like look. Very eccentric and of an unlovable disposition, she was masterful in her ways, liked to lay down the law to everyone about her, and was vindictive and spiteful to all who crossed her. She had no real friends, but as she lived in an old historic house with plenty of servants, and entertained lavishly, invitations to Orwell Hall were seldom refused.

Mainwaring detested her, and had good reason for doing so. Some years before she had been furious with him for the fast life he had been living, and when his financial affairs came to a crash, she had actually taken the trouble to write him a spiteful letter expressing the great pleasure she felt at learning of the mess he was in. Mainwaring replied with a communication of one word, "Bitch," written in large letters upon a single sheet of paper. For years nothing more passed between them. Then, seeing in the newspapers that he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order, she seemed to relent a little and invited him down for a week-end at Orwell Hall.

Very astonished, he had accepted the invitation out of curiosity. There had been nothing effusive in the way he greeted her. Instead, he was curt and stand-offish and, strange to say, she liked him for it. However, she told him flatly he would never get anything out of her alive or dead, as upon her decease all her money was going to charities. He answered scornfully that after the letters which had passed between them he never expected anything. He visited her again later, when he was running his bucket-shop in the city with such success, and he boasted of the money he was making and, to annoy her, even related the unscrupulous way in which he was making most of it.

To his disappointment she was not at all annoyed or shocked, and only remarked that she was always interested in criminals and when her husband was alive she had often obtained a seat at criminal trials. "And one day, perhaps," she added with a sardonic smile, "I may see you in the dock. Then, when you have served your sentence," she went on condescendingly, "it is even possible I may be inclined to help you a little."

"Thanks ever so much," he said dryly. "I'll be sure and drop you a post-card just before I am coming out."

"Oh, but I shan't need that," she said, "as I take an active interest in the Released Prisoners' Aid Society and make a point of being brought in contact with some of the worst of them when they leave the prison. I'm on the committee." She laughed. "It's as good as a play to hear their stories and see the hypocritical airs they put on. However, they don't take me in, as I see most of them have no real repentance at all. Still, they amuse me, and occasionally I invite a real bad one to come here and stay with me for a few days." She nodded grimly. "Oh, don't imagine it's from any sense of pity I have them down. It's just curiosity to see how they react after the prison fare and surroundings to the luxury prevailing here. I like to watch, too, how the thieves among them look gloatingly upon the many beautiful things I possess."

"You have funny ideas of amusement, haven't you?" commented Mainwaring. "Isn't it rather like pinning flies on to the wall and watch them wriggle?"

"It may be," his aunt admitted carelessly, "but as a student of criminal psychology it amuses me. It gives me a new interest in life."

"But with the many portable things they could take away with them," said Mainwaring, "aren't you afraid you'll lose some?"

"Not a bit," she replied instantly. "I keep too sharp an eye upon them for that, both when they're staying here and when they're leaving." She bridled up viciously. "And if I caught them at any tricks, I'd have them back in prison without showing the very slightest mercy, not the slightest." She laughed. "Really, I'd be rather interested if any of them tried to get the better of me."

Mainwaring was now often invited to Orwell Hall, and he always came when he could. The patched-up friendship between the eccentric and spiteful old woman and the selfish and untrustworthy broker would certainly have amused anyone looking on. Neither of them had any liking for the other, but, as she told him, he amused her, while he on his side wanted to keep in with her because, notwithstanding her continued taunting that he would never get anything out of her, he yet thought it quite possible that in her perverse and eccentric nature she might leave him something quite substantial in her will.

Looking round, too, upon her beautiful possessions, the silver, the china, the old paintings and the many priceless things her husband had collected with such care, and in which she seemed to take such little interest, when the little robber band was doing so well in its raids, he would have dearly loved to put them on to her.

However, he dared do nothing there, as at night two savage dogs were always running loose in the grounds, and every door and window upon the ground floor was well protected with modern and up-to-date burglar alarms. For any good chance of success it would mean first getting rid of the dogs somehow and then having help inside the house, and Mainwaring judged that neither of these two things was practical at the moment.

Still, it was always in his mind to help himself to something good one day and take it away with him. In particular, he had his eye upon a small case of King Charles salt-cellars, which were worth, as he knew, quite a lot of money. These were kept pushed away behind a lot of other silver articles in a glass-doored cabinet, the door of which was often carelessly left unlocked.

His chance came at last, a safe and very good one, so he thought. One Sunday when he was upon a brief visit to the Hall his aunt had a sudden heart attack. The local doctor, who was called in immediately, assured the old lady the attack was nothing to worry about; but, knowing Mainwaring to be a relative of hers, he told him privately that things were really much more serious than he had made out. Certainly, he said, Mrs. Scrutton might appear to get all right again, but on the other hand she would probably have another seizure sooner or later, and this might very easily prove fatal owing to the condition of her heart.

Returning to town that same day, Mainwaring chanced it and went off with the salt-cellars in his suit-case. He was quite confident that even if his aunt did get better, it might be many months before she would come to miss them. In any case, he told himself, there could never be any evidence against himself.

The next day he was informed by the housekeeper that his aunt was much better. On the third day, when he phoned up again, to his great disappointment she answered the call herself. She told him that all the trouble seemed to have quite passed away, and she was now feeling as well as she had ever been.

For the next few days Mainwaring was just a little bit nervous that the absence of the salt-cellars might after all have been noticed; but the following week, receiving the nice present of some lovely hot-house grapes from the Hall, his confidence was restored and he was sure everything was all right.

When he rang up to thank her she told him she had lost both her big dogs. They had got out of the grounds three nights previously and killed about twenty sheep upon nearby farms, and the local magistrates had made an order for her to have them destroyed at once.

"But of course you'll get some more," said Mainwaring. "Dogs are the best protectors you can have."

"No, I shan't," she replied sharply. "What would be the good? All the neighbouring farmers are incensed against me, and they'd only poison them if I did."

"Well, I've got a bit of news for you," he said, "and I don't know what you'll think of it." He waited a few moments to keep her in suspense, and then went on, "I'm going to marry again."

"A woman with money, of course," snapped the old lady. "Then I'm sorry for her, whoever she is."

"No, no one with money," said Mainwaring, "and you happen to be wrong for once. The young lady I am becoming engaged to has nothing but what she earns in a milliner's shop." He laughed merrily. "And now I'll shock you. She's only nineteen, and my son Archer is engaged to her twin sister. His fancy is a typist in an office in the city, and so you see we are being democratic in our choices and going for neither position nor money."

"Fools, fools, all of you!" exclaimed the old lady disgustedly. "The girls are much too young to marry, and your son himself can't be over twenty."

"He'll be twenty-one on the twenty-seventh of next month," said Mainwaring, "and we're going to announce the double engagement upon his coming of age. I'm throwing a small party then for a few of our friends. Up to now we've told no one of the engagements."

"I should think not," she exclaimed tartly. "You would be too ashamed. It's disgusting for a man of your age to be marrying a young girl under twenty. The idea of your son's wife as your own sister-in-law makes the whole thing positively indecent." Her anger rose. "And I'll have nothing more to do with you because of it. You're disgracing the family again."

Mainwaring kept his temper, grinning to himself. "But I wanted to get your advice about this little party," he said. "As you know, for many years now I've not been anything of a party-giving man and I've forgotten how to set about it."

"You'll get no advice from me," she exclaimed viciously, "and don't you ever come near me again. I tell you I'm disgusted with you," and she banged down the receiver and the line went dead.

"Old bitch," scowled Mainwaring. "I'd murder her if I only got the chance." He chuckled. "I'm devilish glad now that I did take those salt-cellars, and I hope she misses them and does suspect me. Let her suspect. She'll never get any proof, as I shan't sell them until she dies." He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, that's the last of the old cow for me. I'll get nothing out of her now, for sure."

However, it was not destined by any means to be the last of her, as to his amazement she rang him up the very next day and her voice was oily in its gentleness.

"I'm sorry, Washington," she said, "but I was very sharp with you yesterday and I ought not to have been. Your life is your own and what you do is no business of anyone but you yourself."

Her tone was so conciliatory that he checked the abuse he would have liked to heap upon her. "Oh, that's all right," he laughed. "I'm not thin-skinned, and I never mind what people say of me."

"Very sensible of you!" she exclaimed. "I'm like that, too," she went on. "Now an idea has come to me, and it will perhaps make up for my rudeness to you. A daughter of a very old friend of mine is coming out at a dance I am giving somewhere about the end of next month, and the dance is being preceded by a small house-party here. I thought it would be nice if your engagements were announced then, with you and your boy and, of course, the two girls you are engaged to present as my guests. It would save you considerable bother and create quite a lot of interest among the other guests." She laughed. "Doesn't the world always love a lover? Well, what do you think of my idea?"

For a few moments he was so flabbergasted that he didn't know what to say, and she had to repeat her question. Then, commenting what an unexpected kindness it was, he accepted gratefully.

"And you come down this week-end," she said, "and we'll talk it over. If you like, your fiancee can come, too."

So Mainwaring and his fiancee went down to the Hall on the Saturday and were very graciously received. The girl, Caroline Tracery, was certainly very lovely, with a child-like prettiness that made her look younger than even her nineteen years. With her small little pink-and-white face and large innocent-looking eyes, she reminded Mrs. Scrutton of a cheap and common doll, and it was a good thing Mainwaring was not aware of what was passing in his relation's mind. It was a good thing, too, that she did not know what was passing in his, as, with no dogs now roaming the grounds at night, he had put Orwell Hall down on the list to be the next place raided by the little band.

A week before the date of the festivities at the Hall the five members of Dr. Hendrick's little band were gathered at his bungalow upon the seashore, listening to Mainwaring while the latter unfolded to them what their next piece of work was going to be. The doctor and he had always thought it best not to give them too long notice about anything, to ensure that their morale should not suffer by the waiting. So now it was all news to them that the next victim of their raids was to be an old lady who was giving a house-party and opening the festivities with a sumptuous banquet, to be followed the next night by a grand ball to which about a hundred people had been invited.

"I shall be among the guests at this house-party," said Mainwaring, "so it should be an easy job. I'll see that the burglar-alarm on one of the windows on the ground floor is put out of action." He rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Now there's splendid stuff all over the place, but I almost think you'd better be content with the old silver which you'll find in the big glass-doored cabinet in the drawing-room. As silver things are selling to-day, there's hundreds and hundreds of pounds' worth. Of course if all's going all right you can look about you a bit. In the old woman's boudoir next to the drawing-room there are two Corot paintings which she says would fetch a big price."

"Good," exclaimed one of the men, "we'll get them."

"And if you've got the time," went on Mainwaring, "in this same boudoir there's a smallish safe. Here's a snap of it I managed to get." He spoke impressively. "Now there'll be twenty-four visitors at the house-party, and some of them I know are quite wealthy people. So there'll probably be a lot of expensive jewellery worn, and the old woman says she is going to suggest to them that when it is not in actual use it should all be kept for security in this safe." He laughed. "Oh, yes, you boys have put the wind up her quite a bit. So the safe should be well worth opening if it can be done."

He handed the snap over to the one who was an engineer and asked, "What do you think about it, Harcourt?"

The engineer scrutinised it interestedly. "I know how to set about opening it," he said, "and it wouldn't be very difficult. A professional safe-opener would do it in about five minutes."

"What, in five minutes!" exclaimed Mainwaring. "Why, it's a modern combination one, a Super-Samson!"

"I know that," laughed the other, "but nowadays these little safes are easy meat to a cracksman. He'd knock off the dial with a sledge-hammer, preferably with a lead or copper head so that it would make little noise. Then the spindle would be punched back with a centre punch and mallet. That breaks up the small sockets inside and allows the lock to be opened." He spoke thoughtfully. "How near is this boudoir to the bedrooms?"

"Just underneath some of them," said Mainwaring, "so you would sure to be heard. But couldn't the five of you carry the safe away in slings and open it some distance away?"

The engineer nodded. "Then get us the slings, and we'll see what we can do."

"Now it won't be upon the Thursday night, the night of the dinner-party, that you are to pay us a visit," went on Mainwaring. "It'll be upon the night of the ball, or rather about three o'clock on the Saturday morning. Everyone will be tired out by then and sleeping like logs."

"But how can you be sure they'll all be in bed by three?" asked the engineer. "The dancing may go on until daylight."

"No, no, not with this old party," smiled Mainwaring. "I know her well, and at all her dances the music stops at half-past one to the very minute. She's as hard as flint about that, and will take good care that all those not sleeping the night at the Hall leave well before two, when all the lights will be put out." He laughed. "I'm quite certain of that, as it's her invariable rule, and she's an old party whom no one disobeys."

"All right," laughed back one of the young fellows, "we'll attend to it. Now where is this house and who does it belong to?"

"Next Sunday morning," said Mainwaring, "I'll motor a couple of you over to it for the usual spy-out of the lie of the land. The place is Orwell Hall, near Ingatestone, and it belongs to a Mrs. Monteith Scrutton."

Young Belt looked very amused. "No need to motor any of us over," he chuckled, "as I know both the old woman and her place quite well. I've often been inside the Hall grounds when I was a boy, for Sunday School fetes." He laughed merrily. "You see, I was born in Ingatestone, and my Dad's been the Rector there for over thirty years."