Читать книгу The Lonely House - Arthur Gask - Страница 5

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SOME four days later the Chief Commissioner of the South Australian Police was sitting alone in his room, at headquarters, in Victoria-square.

He looked tired and anxious, and his face was puckered in a frown. He was going through some papers and he signed from time to time.

He was a small spare man of wiry physique, about fifty years of age, and his hair was growing grey about the temples. He had keen, shrewd eyes, and a good chin, but the general effect of strength in his face was marred to some extent by a certain weakness of the mouth. He had a small moustache, spikily waxed at the ends. He was well, indeed almost foppishly dressed, and he sported a large diamond pin in his cravat. His hands were well cared for and white.

A police constable knocked and entered. He handed the Commissioner a letter.

"Bearer waiting, Sir," he announced. "He gives his name as Hunter, and says he would like to see you, if you could spare him a few minutes."

The Commissioner opened the letter and then at once elevated his eyebrows.

"Show him in," he said briskly, adding after a second—"and if anyone wants me now, say I am engaged for a few minutes."

A youngish-looking man was ushered in. He appeared to be somewhere in the late twenties, and had a pleasant boyish face and smiling eyes. He was well dressed and carried himself jauntily, as if life were very happy for him and he were well satisfied with everything. He bowed politely to the Chief Commissioner.

The latter waited until the door was shut, and then with a pleased and interested expression upon his face rose from his chair.

"How do you do, Sir?" he began, smilingly. Then he seemed to start. He looked down, and began to turn over the papers on his desk.

"Colonel Mackenzie suggested I should call upon you, Sir." said the young man. "I have come over here on holiday, and he asked me to see you and give you his kind regards."

"Yes, yes," said the Commissioner, looking up after quite a long pause. "Please be seated. How is my old friend, Robert Mackenzie? I haven't seen him for years."

"Andrew, Sir," corrected the young man deferentially, "Andrew, not Robert, and he's quite well, I am glad to say."

"No more trouble with his heart, eh?" queried the Commissioner. "That excessive cigarette smoking of his hasn't knocked him up then?" and he regarded his visitor very keenly.

The young man smiled and shook his head. "He never smokes cigarettes, Sir: nothing but a pipe, and as for his heart—well, I've known him, almost intimately I may say, for seven years, and never seen him ill or heard him complain."

"Ah!" said the Commissioner, "that's good to know, very good." and he continued to regard the young man with a very thoughtful pair of eyes.

His visitor laughed shyly.

"Oh! it's quite all right, Sir, I am Gilbert Larose. I'm purposely carrying no cards or letters of introduction on me because I am on holiday, as I've told you, and am ordered to keep away from everything connected with my work. I have just got over a bad bout of typhoid." His eyes twinkled merrily. "I certainly have not had the pleasure of meeting you before, but I've handled several cases for you over in New South Wales, also I am well known to Inspector Davis and Sergeant Driller in the force here. If you remember, it was I who found Laurence, the absconding banker, for you last August and you were good enough then to send me a letter of personal thanks, also—"

"Enough, enough," said the Commissioner, and he smilingly held out his hand, "but there were suspicions, you know, and it was best that I should make sure."

"Suspicions?" asked Larose, smiling back. "Pray what suspicions, sir?"

The Commissioner frowned. "Look here, young man," he said with mock severity, "you come in here to interview me with a loaded Yankee pistol in your hip pocket. You give the name of Hunter to the constable, you tell me you are Gilbert Larose, and yet you are now staying at the Southern Cross Hotel under the name of Edgar Barratt." His face broke into an amused smile. "Now isn't that enough to make anyone suspicious to start off with?"

The detective got very red. "Oh! you know then that I am at the Southern Cross!" he exclaimed.

"Certainly," replied the Commissioner. "It is my business to know." He laughed gently. "And I know a lot more about you, besides that. Listen!" He picked up a paper from his desk and scanned down its contents. "You arrived in Adelaide fifteen days ago. To be exact, upon the seventh of the month, and you went off upon a bicycling expedition to a lonely part of the coast. You returned the day before yesterday and put up, as I have said, at the Southern Cross. Yesterday you spent two and a half hours at the Public Library, looking through the newspaper files of the past fortnight. You are interested in the escape of Miles Fallon from the Stockade, and you are of opinion that it is gross carelessness on our part that the murderer has slipped through our hands. This morning—"—the Commissioner leant back in his chair and spoke as if half in fun and half in earnest—"well, this morning you have come to tell me you can find the fugitive, and that in due time you will claim the 500 pounds reward that we are offering for his apprehension. Now is not that so?"

The face of Larose was the very picture of astonishment and he regarded the Commissioner with an expression that was almost frightened.

"You are correct, sir, as to my movement," he said very slowly, "but I won't pretend that I know how you learnt them all."

"Oh! quite simple, Mr. Larose," chuckled the Commissioner, enjoying to the full the detective's discomfiture. "Just one of those chance happenings that come to us all at times. No, I won't try and mystify you. We got on your track simply because of your curiosity yesterday at headquarters here."

"My curiosity!" exclaimed the detective. "My curiosity here?"

"Yes, here!" laughed the Commissioner. He leant forward and pointed his finger at the detective. "You were passing in the square here yesterday morning, Mr. Larose, and you stopped to read the announcement on the notice board outside. You read most carefully through the placard giving the description of the escaped Miles Fallon, and the 500 pounds reward offered for his apprehension. You then walked away but returned twice again at short intervals to re-peruse the placard. Your obvious interest attracted the attention of one of our plainclothes men who was on duty in the station yard—we are all very much on the jumps just now about anything concerning the missing man—and he followed after you the third time when you went away. He watched you go straight into the Public Library on North-terrace and saw you turning over the newspaper files. He moved near to you and saw that you were reading everything you could find about the murder at the Rialto Hotel. He is quite an intelligent fellow, this plainclothes man of ours, and he snapped you with a pocket camera as you came out of the library. Here, by the by, is the snapshot. Quite good enough to enable me to recognise you when you came in here three minutes ago. Your style of collar is rather high, and, if I may say so, at once catches the eye. Well, he shadowed you next to the Southern Cross Hotel, and when you were at lunch made some enquiries about you." The Commissioner laughed again. "And with the connivance of the manager he even went over your things in your room. He saw the obviously recently-purchased fishing rod with Fleming's name upon it, and also the Adelaide railway-station cloakroom ticket pasted on your valise. He then proceeded to pursue his enquiries at both those places. The number on the cloak-room ticket made quite clear how long the valise had been left at the railway-station, and at Fleming's they remembered you at once, when the snapshot was shown. They told him then that you had had a strap sewn on to the case of the fishing rod so that you could carry it on a bicycle. Also, you had asked them about the likely places on the coast where you could catch snapper from the rocks."

The Commissioner leant back again in his chair in great good- humor. "All very simple, isn't it, Mr. Larose? but it just shows how very dangerous chance may be. Of course, we had nothing definite against you, but the incomplete box of automatic cartridges in your valise made us curious enough to want to keep an eye on you, and I have no doubt but that someone even followed you here this morning. We don't like inter-State visitors who carry arms you know. As to your opinions of the Rialto Hotel affair, well,"—he shrugged his shoulders—"you pumped the head waiter of the Southern Cross pretty thoroughly, now didn't you?"

The eyes of the detective were on the ground. He had been expecting far more embarrassing disclosures and he was smiling in his relief. After a moment's hesitation, he looked up.

"I see I'm quite a beginner in my profession, sir," he said humbly. "I shall have to start at the bottom of the ladder again."

"Not at all, not at all," laughed the Commissioner, "you are still the star detective of the Commonwealth, our one and only incomparable Gilbert Larose." He suddenly became serious again. "But your visit to me now. You came to suggest something?"

Again Larose hesitated. "I am on holiday, sir," he said. "I have been very bad with typhoid and I came here to rest." He sighed. "But I am bored, and this is a very interesting case."

The Commissioner nodded gloomily. "A very terrible case, too," he said. "We are just at a dead end. The man has vanished completely, and there is not the ghost of a clue to suggest where he has gone. The public are calling out against us, and we are under a dreadful cloud. Your coming may turn out to be most opportune, for we will clutch now at any straw. No, no," he went on hurriedly, for he saw Larose smile. "I don't mean that at all. You are not a straw. You would be a tower of strength to us if you would help."

"But I act like a child now," said Larose sadly. "Or you wouldn't have been able to turn me inside out like this. My illness has given me a soft head."

The Commissioner spoke impressively.

"Mr. Larose, this should be just such a case as you would love. It should appeal in every way to that strange instinct of yours. Nothing apparently to help you. Nowhere to start off from. Only the bare and naked fact that the prisoner escaped from our stockade here, when all eyes must have been on him—in broad daylight, too."

The Commissioner pulled his chair forward.

"But come," he went on briskly, "you shall hear everything before you decide. I will give you all the inside information from the very beginning, and you can tell me then what you think."

He touched his bell, and the constable who had ushered in Larose immediately reappeared.

"I am engaged," said the Commissioner curtly, "and I am not to be disturbed." The constable retired.

"Now, Mr. Larose," said the Commissioner, folding his hands together and lowering his voice almost to a whisper. "I'll tell you as strange a story as has ever been recorded in all the black annals of Australian crime, a story perhaps without parallel in its easy and contemptuous flouting of the law." He raised his hand protestingly. "But please for the moment forget everything that you have read in the papers yesterday, and try and listen to me as if you had heard nothing of the matter before. I want you to approach everything with an entirely open mind."

He paused for a moment as if to weigh his words.

"Now, to begin with, you know, of course, the social conditions pertaining generally everywhere, all the world over, since the Great War." Larose nodded. "Well, ours here are just the same. Money opens all doors. Our social aristocracy is appraised to an extent on a strictly cash basis, and if you have money to throw about you are assured of a seat among the elect. Well, just about two years ago. Miles Fallon descended on the city. He came as part proprietor and manager of the Rialto, our crack hotel here. He was then about five-and-thirty years of age and a good-looking, polished man of the world. He was a man of personality, likeable and apparently with plenty of money, and was received with open arms. He went everywhere, and was a favorite with everyone. His name appeared almost every day in the social news. He was received in quiet select circles, and he hobnobbed with the rich people of importance in our State. He was lunched and tea-ed by the racing clubs, and at many public functions he was prominently in evidence. In effect, he was a big bug in our little insect world. Well—imagine the absolute amazement of his admirers and friends when just a fortnight ago he was arrested for murder. Yes! Caught at 2 o'clock in the morning, practically in the very act, and seized when the body of his victim was still quivering in the throes of death. He had smothered an old man, a visitor to his own hotel, smothered him with a pillow, and it was only by the merest chance, mind you, that he was caught.

"He had just committed the crime, and was creeping out of the bedroom, attired in a dressing gown, and with his head muffled in a towel, when he banged right into two night revellers who, in consideration of their reputations, were sneaking up the corridor with their shoes off.

"Something about the appearance of Fallon made the two men immediately suspicious—there was blood upon the towel, for one thing—and they barred his way and asked him what was up.

"Then Fallon, quite unusually for him, for he has always had the reputation of being a cool fellow, apparently lost his head and he lunged out instantly and knocked down one of his interrogators, but the other got in one under the jaw and Fallon collapsed.

"Then things happened very quickly.

"The bedroom door was still open, and while one of the men kept an eye on Fallon the other went in and switched on the lights.

"A ghastly sight met him—an old man with a blue-black face, and a bed with the pillows all smeared over with blood.

"Ten minutes later our men were on the spot, with a medical man close upon their heels. It was remarked at once that the manager of the hotel was not present, but the information was forthcoming that he could not be found.

"It was seen immediately that the old man in the bed was beyond all aid, and attention was accordingly turned to Fallon. He was still unconscious from the blow he had received, and had not yet been recognised.

"He was carried into an empty bedroom and his face sponged with cold water. Immediately then, the eyebrows and the moustache came away and, to the consternation of these standing round, the assassin was recognised as the suave and polite manager of the hotel."

The Commissioner raised his hand impressively. "Imagine the bombshell when it became known in the city! Later in the day, Fallon was charged with wilful murder and was lodged in the cells.

"The motive for the murder was quite plain. Robbery, pure and simple. The victim was a well-to-do resident of Kapunda, and it appeared he had come down the previous day to sell some property in the city. The sale had been effected late in the afternoon and as is usual in such cases the deal had been transacted in hard cash. In some way, Fallon must have got to hear of it, and so in the dead of night he had gained entrance into the old man's room with the master-key of the hotel. Absolute murder was probably not intended, although from the contents of Fallons dressing-gown pockets, the wretch was prepared to go pretty far. He was carrying not only chloroform, but also tablets of sulphate of morphia and a hypodermic syringe.

"What we think is, that the old man woke up as Fallon was attempting to chloroform him, and then the latter, in a panic, seized upon a pillow as the only way to quieten him. At any rate the old man had put up some sort of a fight, for Fallon had bled profusely from the nose, and it was actually the wretch's own blood that had made the character of the death look so ghastly."

The commissioner stopped speaking to light a cigarette, and Larose remarked thoughtfully:

"Was there any reason, do you know why the sleeping man should have been disturbed at all?"

"Oh! yes," replied the Commissioner, "I was going to tell you. Fallon was carrying away the old man's money belt that contained 3,800 pounds in Treasury notes. The old chap had undoubtedly been wearing the belt in bed, and from the disorder in the room we think Fallon had searched everywhere else first, before turning to the sleeper and discovering the belt on him."

"But how do you know," asked Larose, "that he had got the belt on him in bed?"

"Because," replied the Commissioner, "it had been torn off so hurriedly and with such violence that the straps were broken."

Larose made no comment, and the Commissioner continued.

"Well, two days later, a verdict of wilful murder was brought in in the coroner's court, and Fallon was committed for trial. Now comes the most disconcerting part of the whole business, and the one which, occasions us such profound disquiet." The Commissioner spoke very slowly. "The prisoner had not been in the stockade for forty-eight hours before he walked out again in broad daylight, as if he had been no prisoner at all."

The voice of the Commissioner took on a bitter and incredulous tone.

"Yes! Walked out as if he were a free man! Opened and shut his cell door and vanished from that moment as if he had never existed at all! No one heard his door open or shut, no one saw him go, no one noticed anything at all and yet—yet the stockade yard was full of people, there were guards on duty everywhere, and it was in the middle of the afternoon."

The commissioner dropped his voice still lower and leant forward across his desk until his face was close to that of Larose.

"Now, what does that mean, sir I ask you? What does that mean?" His voice rose and hardened. "It means, Mr. Larose, and that is why we in authority are in such trouble here—it means that the miscreant Fallon was only one of several. He must have had allies somewhere, confederates both within the Stockade and without. He was one of a gang. We are sure of it. But listen again." The Commissioner spoke now in his natural voice. "Now, what happened after? We at once suspended two of the warders at Blendiron, the assistant chief warder, who was in charge of that part of the Stockade where Fallon was confined, and Bullock, a warder under him, who had charge, amongst others, of the prisoner's particular cell." The voice of the Commissioner was slow and solemn. "Well, Blendiron, too, vanished off the face of the earth within twenty-four hours, and Bullock was found drowned in the Torrens River upon the evening of the next day." The Commissioner sat up with a jerk. "Now, Mr. Larose, ask me what questions you like."

But the detective, it seemed, was in no hurry to ask any questions at all. He was looking out of the window, and from the expression on his face his thoughts were far away. It was quite a long while before he spoke.

"The greater problem and the lesser," he said slowly. "Well, we'll take the lesser first." He became brisk and animated. "Now how much start do you think the prisoner had had, before you discovered that he had got away?"

"Ten minutes," replied the Commissioner promptly, "not a second more. We are sure of that because he had been out previously in the exercise yard, and had just been returned to his cell to be in readiness for a doctor who was coming to see him at 4 o'clock. He had been complaining of a bad cough that would not let him sleep at night."

"And it was certain," asked Larose, "that he had escaped straight away out of the stockade? I mean, he couldn't have been in hiding somewhere in the buildings, and have got away later on?"

"No, quite impossible," replied the Commissioner, shaking his head: "he must have got right away at once, for a quarter of a minute after we had discovered that the cell was empty—not even a mouse could have got outside the prison walls. Every crack and every crevice was gone through with a fine comb."

"And no traces of him were found anywhere, afterwards?"

"None whatever," said the Commissioner. "It was just as if he had gone up in smoke. No one had seen him, and there were no rumors even that anyone like him had been seen outside on the road. He couldn't immediately have got away to the city either, for we had drawn a cordon round Adelaide at once. Nor could he have got out of the State, for every road and every railway- station was watched—as indeed they have been ever since."

"There was the sea," said the detective thoughtfully. "In the description published of him, I remember he is described as tattooed with an anchor upon one arm, and that almost certainly means that at one time he has followed the sea. Yes, there was the sea, and I have always noticed that a sailor-man in trouble turns back to the sea. That is his first thought."

The Commissioner shook his head again. "No chance whatever," he said—"every outgoing vessel was searched."

"But a boat," persisted the detective. "He might have gone off in a boat."

"None was missing," said the Commissioner emphatically. "We thought of that, and most exhaustive enquiries were made."

"But there was a fire," said the detective very softly. "I saw in the newspapers that there was a fire on the night of the fifteenth in the Port Adelaide docks, and that the sailing barque Clan Robert was burnt to the water's edge." The tone of his voice became almost apologetic. "Might not now the fire have been engineered to cover the theft of one of the ship's boats?"

The face of the Commissioner grew rather pink.

"We had no report," he said brusquely, "that any of the ship's boats were not burnt, too."

The detective did not press the point.

"And the warders who were suspended?" he asked. "Had you any reason to suspect them of complicity in the escape? Anything definite, I mean."'

"No, not at the time," replied the Commissioner. "They appeared to be quite as astounded as everyone else. They were both men of long service, and we suspended them only as a matter of routine, until the official enquiry should be held."

"And they are both beyond questioning now. One is missing, you say, and the other dead?"

The Commissioner sighed wearily.

"Yes, it is mystery upon mystery, Mr. Larose, and we can make nothing of it. It looks now as if they had been implicated and were removed violently so that they should confess nothing. The man Bullock was of weak temperament, and if he had had anything to tell we should have got it all out of him very soon. But Blendiron was of quite a different type. He was of the fighting kind, and very sure of himself. He was big and burly in mind as well as in body. He would have been a hard nut to crack, I admit."

The detective stooped down suddenly to adjust the lace of his shoe.

"And have you had no news at all," he said slowly, and without looking up, "of this assistant chief warder, Blendiron, since that afternoon?"

"We know nothing," said the Commissioner, "except that he went straight home that afternoon, appeared to be very depressed, went out again just before 6 o'clock, and has never been seen since. Probably he was murdered in some such way as Bullock had been. No doubt they both knew too much, and were of no further use to their employers, so they were got rid of as speedily as possible." He shrugged his shoulders. "At any rate, that's what we think."

Larose made no comment. He had finished adjusting his shoe lace and was now looking out of the window again. There was a long silence, and the Commissioner chewed fiercely at the cold butt of his cigarette. Suddenly, however, he spoke again.

"But that is not all I have to tell you, Mr. Larose. You spoke just now of a greater and a lesser problem that lay before us, and you were quite right. These events of a fortnight ago were not isolated happenings; they were not events by themselves." He thumped his fist upon the desk. "They were links in a chain of crime: they were two events in quite a long series of crime."

He paused for a moment to relight his cigarette.

"But listen still further. For over a year now we have been conscious of a peculiar current of evil-doing stirring in the city, and we who are in authority are convinced there is a master criminal working here. There have been numerous robberies in hotels principally. There have been crimes of violence, murder has been done." He spoke with deliberation. "They have been all well-planned crimes, too, well thought out and well executed, and we have been baffled every time. No clues to pick up, nothing we could ever follow on. To take only the last few months—all crimes of night—a man drugged and robbed at the Gulf Hotel, a thousand pounds and more filched from two inter-State visitors at the Grand Australasian, a wealthy stockbroker stunned and his safe broken into when he was working late at his office, and the naked body of a man, tied up in a sheet, found under most suspicious circumstances in the Torrens River at the foot of the weir. This last man was never identified, but enquiries are now coming through from London for information as to the whereabouts of a party who was carrying a parcel of precious stones upon him, and who should have sailed from here by the Nestor ten weeks ago, and the description tallies with that of the body found in the Torrens weir." The voice of the Commissioner took on quite a pathetic tone. "Now you can understand how worried we are. The Press is up against us, the public is thirsting for our blood, and the other States are jeering at this city as being the most criminal of all the cities in the Commonwealth."

The detective smiled at the woebegone expression on the Commissioner's face.

"But this escape, Sir, from the stockade," he asked—"surely you have formed some theory as to how, when he had left his cell, he got away from the building itself?"

"We have formed no theory, Mr. Larose," said the Commissioner solemnly. "And it has amazed us all the time that even with the connivance of the two officials he was able to get clear from the buildings. Blendiron and Bullock could have helped him only a third of the way. He had to cross parts of the prison over which they had no control. But see here, I'll draw you a rough plan of the place." and the Commissioner took out his fountain-pen and pulled a pad of paper before him. "Now, here is the outer wall of the stockade, twenty-two feet high with the top four feet made up of loose bricks. You understand, of course, no one can consequently climb over without bringing down loose bricks and at once attracting attention by the noise. Well, here in the middle are the cells and here is the particular one where Fallon was confined. It opens into this corridor, which is about twenty yards long. At the end of this corridor comes the exercise yard. Unlock another door here and you are in the general courtyard. You cross this courtyard and here are the entrance gates to the stockade." He looked up at the detective. "You see, Mr. Larose, Fallon had not only to get out of his cell and along that first corridor, but he had also to open the door at the end, cross over the exercise yard, unlock another door there, cross over the main court-yard, and then induce the guard on duty at the entrance gates to unlock them and let him through. It seems a sheer impossibility, for, granting that Blendiron and Bullock had passed him through into the exercise yard, their territory ended there, and he would have needed more accomplices to see him clear of the entrance gates. The whole prison couldn't have been in his pay, yet he would have been under the observation of a score of pairs of eyes at least while passing through the two yards to reach the entrance gates. Just think of that."

"But if he were disguised," said Larose, "he could manage it?"

"But a stranger would have been remarked," retorted the Commissioner irritably. "And no one saw any stranger at all. Besides, if he were disguised, as you say, what became then of his old clothes? When he was remanded to the stockade he was wearing a light grey suit, and it was not left behind when he escaped, so undoubtedly he was wearing it."

The detective asked another question.

"Who were actually present when the discovery was made that he had escaped?"

"Three persons," replied the Commissioner. "Blendiron and Bullock and Fallon's medical man, Dr. Van Steyne. It was like this, as I have in part already explained to you. Fallon had complained that he was not feeling well, and, taking the privilege of prisoners on remand, he asked to see his own doctor. So they 'phoned to Dr. Van Steyne, who, by the way, is a foremost consulting physician in South Australia, and he arranged to come to the stockade about four o'clock. Accordingly at three-forty- five Fallon was locked in his cell to be in readiness, and within a few minutes—every one agrees certainly not more than ten—Dr. Van Steyne arrived. He was taken straight to the cell, the door was unlocked, and—the cell was found empty."

"And, of course, you asked the doctor," said Larose, "how the warders seemed to take it and whether they showed great surprise?"

"Yes," replied the Commissioner. "Van Steyne happens to be an intimate friend of mine, and I questioned him on the spot. At five minutes past four I got a telephone message from the stockade, and I was down there by a quarter past. I was told at first that the doctor had gone, but, I found he was in the infirmary yard with the prison surgeon. I questioned him minutely, and he was of opinion that the warders were in every way as much astonished as he was. He said Bullock went white as a sheet, and that Blendiron swore savagely."

There was a short silence, and then the Commissioner shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, that is all I have to tell you, Mr. Larose," he said with a sigh, "and I admit there is not much inducement for you to take up the case. As to where Fallon is hiding, as I say, we have not the remotest idea, and we don't know where to start looking." He smiled grimly. "Even you, sir, with that fabled extra sense of yours would not know where to begin. You would be bushed from the start."

"But I'm not so sure of that," said Larose thoughtfully. "There are some things that occur to me, there are some—" He hesitated, and the Commissioner broke in sharply.

"Oh! then you have some ideas, have you? You think that you can succeed where we have failed." He frowned slightly. "Good, then, you shall go down to the stockade at once. You shall—"

The detective shook his head. "No," he said quickly, "no, I'll take it on, but it is not at the stockade where I shall start. It is at the Rialto Hotel where I shall pick up the beginnings of the trail." He looked thoughtfully at the Commissioner. "A man cannot live for two years, you know, Mr. Commissioner, at any one place and not leave something of his inclinations and the tendencies of his mind behind. So we will gather up the threads of his life there, and they will help us to determine most likely what he is doing now." The face of the detective broke into a smile. "Yes, we must go to the place where he lived, and perhaps then we shall hear his voice still, speaking in the rooms that he inhabited, and maybe we shall even see his shadow still moving on the wall."

The frown on the face of the Commissioner deepened. He was at no time a man of much imagination, and he had no room in his psychology for poetical ideas.

"Good!" he said drily. "Then you shall be taken to the Rialto instead. I will detail Inspector Barnsley to go with you. He has been in charge of the case from the beginning and knows all there is to know." A suspicion of sarcasm crept into his voice. "And when you find out where Fallon is, please ring me up at once. It will be the best piece of news that has come in all my life and I shan't mind being disturbed. Now—" and he reached towards his bell.

"One moment, please, before you ring," interrupted Larose quickly. "If you don't mind. I should like as few people as possible to know that I am here. I always work as much as I can—alone."

"Oh! certainly," replied the Commissioner. "No one, indeed, except Inspector Barnsley, need know that you are helping us."

"And one other thing," went on Larose. "Before I meet anyone, I should like to make some change in my appearance." He smiled apologetically. "You see, sir, it is a rule of life with me never to be seen as my own proper self when I'm engaged on a case. My chief in New South Wales is very considerate and even when I am giving evidence in the courts allows me to be, in part, disguised." He laughed. "I have found it most helpful at times that some of my friends, even, don't know exactly what I am like."

The Commissioner smiled. "Yes. I've heard all that about you, Mr. Larose. They say you are the greatest master of disguise since Bousson died." He puckered his forehead. "But is it really true that you can so alter your appearance that I, for instance, shouldn't recognise you, even if I were looking out for you and you stood close near me?"

"I ought to be able to, sir," replied Larose quietly. "That is, of course," he added quickly, "unless you caught my features in repose. I was on the stage once and 'make-up' is my long suit in criminal work." He looked at his watch. "But I'll be back here in less than two hours and you shall judge then for yourself. My name will be Huxley now, until I've finished with the case."

"A rather overrated man, I'm afraid this Larose," sighed the Commissioner when a couple of minutes later he was alone in his room, "and I'm inclined almost to believe now that he owes most of his success to his good luck." He sniffed contemptuously. "Shadows on the wall! Well, he'll find none this time. He's up against something stiff here."

"Quite a pleasant man, the Commissioner," ruminated Gilbert Larose when he was out again in the street. "Smart too in some ways." His face clouded "But weak—rather weak. He's inclined to give up too easily and he's afraid of what people say."