Читать книгу Inspector Dickins Retires - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 3

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Sub-Commissioner Colonel Maurice Larwood was depressed, and with adequate reason. He made no attempt at spurious cheerfulness as he waved the official, for whom he had sent, to a chair.

“Sit down, Dickins,” he invited gloomily. “Time we had a few plain words together, I think.”

Detective-Inspector John Dickins seated himself in silence. It was not the first of such conferences to which he had been summoned, but this time every one knew that the situation was critical. He remained silent, waiting for his Chief to continue.

“Three years ago this month, Dickins,” the latter went on, “I had to send for your predecessor, Benskin. We were pretty well in the same trouble then. He made a great coup, and we saved our bacon. To-day things are worse. We’ve got to accomplish what I’ll admit seems almost impossible, or walk out.”

“Bad as that, is it, sir?”

The Sub-Commissioner was a man of reserved habits who seldom swore. His departure from his usual custom on this occasion was significant.

“It’s damn well as bad as it can be,” he declared. “There’ve been half a dozen questions asked in Parliament, the Home Secretary’s had the Chief on the carpet—which hasn’t improved his temper, as you can guess—and the Press are gibing at us every day.”

“That doesn’t do any good.”

“It does a great deal of harm,” the Sub-Commissioner agreed vehemently. “Makes the public uneasy, and it gives the men we can’t lay our hands upon confidence. It wasn’t your fault, of course, Dickins, that you were on leave when Martin’s Bank was sacked, and Peggy Scott’s jewels were stolen and her maid strangled. I dare say it wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d been on the spot, but there the ugly fact remains. One show’s a month old, and the other three weeks, we haven’t made an arrest, and I can’t honestly tell the Chief that we have a line on any one.... I don’t want to discuss those two affairs particularly. Unfortunately there are several others behind them which have never been cleared up. I want to speak of the situation generally. What are we up against, Dickins?”

“Got any theory yourself, sir?”

Larwood pushed the heavily-shaded electric lamp which stood on his table a little farther away and leaned back in his chair. Perhaps he was anxious to conceal, even from his trusted subordinate, the deeper lines which seemed to have stolen into his sensitive face during the last month and the harassed droop of his mouth. For years Maurice Larwood had been considered the smartest and best-looking of the higher officials at the Yard. During the last few months, however, the anxiety had been too much for him, and he had perceptibly aged.

“Here’s a confession, Dickins. Every theory I’ve ever had has been upset. The only conclusion I can come to is that a different type of man is making a profession of crime.”

“That’s quite all right, so far as it goes, sir,” Dickins assented; “but there’s something more than that behind it all. I believe that the most agile brains in the criminal world have tumbled to the folly of the opposition gang system—one side giving the other away all the time. I believe they’ve sorted themselves out, and come together. What we’re up against now is a criminal combine—the whole brains of the underworld pitted against ours.”

“Not a bad idea,” the Sub-Commissioner reflected. “Scotland Yard’s a combine after all. Why attempt to fight us in sections? The idea’s all right.”

“I tell you where it seems to me that it works in their favour, too,” Dickins continued. “There’s no squealing. I needn’t remind you, Chief, that the majority of the criminals whom we bring to justice are there, if not through a downright squeal, by just a hint or a word from some unexpected place. We got a line on the Harwood affair, if you remember, entirely through an anonymous letter.”

The Sub-Commissioner nodded pensively.

“That’s quite true, Dickins,” he acquiesced, “and, when one comes to think of it, we’ve been short of that sort of information lately.”

“You can see why, sir,” Dickins persisted. “The very fact of those whispers having ceased means discipline, and discipline is the result of combination.”

“It all sounds very probable as a theory,” the Sub-Commissioner sighed, “but it doesn’t help us very much, does it?”

“It helps us to understand the situation,” Dickins pointed out. “I’ll tell you a conclusion I’ve come to. There aren’t more than a dozen criminals in England, and one at present on the Atlantic, who count. I believe these particular men have been at the back of every one of these outrages which we can’t fathom, because they are working together as one society, and I believe that they have a trained band of gangsters under them. They are top dogs for the moment, sir, I’ll admit, but I’ll get them if you’ll have patience, and let me work my own way. I’ll tell you how, too. I’ll get them through their one unconquerable weakness—CONCEIT.”

“Conceit?” Larwood echoed.

“With a capital ‘C’, sir. It’s the same in the higher grade criminal as the lower, and as time goes on it develops—self-pride in his own exploits, an invincible desire to brag about what he has done, to match his accomplishments against those of his fellow-criminals. It’s a form of individuality which will always prevent any great combination against us succeeding permanently. It’s hung more men than any other in the whole gamut of human weaknesses. In the end I believe it will break up completely this dangerous crowd who I’ll admit have got the upper hand of us for the moment.”

“You know something?” the Sub-Commissioner almost spat out.

“What is the good of knowledge, of conviction, if you like, without being able to obtain proof?” Dickins rejoined, with almost the first sign of feeling he had shown. “Yes, I know something. I believe I could tell you the headquarters of the very men we are up against, but I couldn’t bring any of them in. There isn’t one of them against whom we have a single thing.”

“Dickins, you’re talking like a man,” Larwood declared. “Get on with it.”

“What I want to do,” the detective explained, “is to think out some way of getting them all together. It’s no good taking one. The rest would all melt away, find another pal, and start again. Not only that, but I’ll have to get them after my own fashion. We can’t go on working as we have been. Our methods are too old-fashioned. The other side know every move we make. They’ve bluffed us long enough. We must try a bluff on them, and not an ordinary one either.”

The Sub-Commissioner was a changed man. The anxious lines which had saddened his face were smoothed out. His eyes were brilliant. He seemed to be looking into the promised land.

“You shall have a free hand, Dickins,” he agreed. “You shall go your own way. But tell me about this one man on the Atlantic. Do you mean Nick Conklin?”

“He is due here to-morrow on the Majestic,” Dickins replied. “We can’t stop his landing. There’s not a thing against him that I know of.”

The Sub-Commissioner smiled. It might have been forgiven him if there was the slightest shade of condescension in his tone. It was so often that his subordinate held the trumps.

“I have later information,” he confided. “Conklin has changed his mind. Wisely, too. He disembarked at Cherbourg. By this time he is on his way to Paris.”

Detective Dickins looked thoughtfully out of the fog-dimmed window.

“A pity!” he murmured.

His Chief stared at him.

“Why on earth is it a pity?” he demanded. “Aren’t our hands full enough as it is? Surely we don’t want another accomplished criminal working in our midst!”

Dickins sighed gently. He edged his chair a little closer to the table.

“Chief,” he asked, “when you were a lad, did you ever try to catch sparrows and stray birds under a sieve-trap?”

“Of course I did,” the other admitted. “What properly brought up boy didn’t?”

Dickins leaned still farther forward, and his gesture was almost dramatic.

“You are well hidden behind the hedge,” he went on, “and you are holding the string attached to the piece of wood which supports the trap. The bait underneath is good soft bread-crumbs, and a few pieces of raw meat which the cook has given you. The sparrows hop up nearer and nearer. At last they are underneath. Your fingers are itching to pull the string, but still you pause. You shiver with excitement. With slow, ponderous hops a fat starling approaches the rim of the sieve. You let the sparrows play. You let them even hop away with the bait. You want the starling. Nick of New York is my starling!” ...

A police commissionaire, in indoor uniform, entered hastily, carrying a scrawled telephone message which he handed to Dickins.

“Excuse me, sir,” he begged the Sub-Commissioner, saluting. “This has just come over the line, urgent, for the inspector.”

The latter glanced it through, and sprang to his feet.

“Report later if I may, sir,” he exclaimed. “There’s a job on I’ve been watching for up Roehampton Lane.”

Larwood nodded assent, and his subordinate made a hurried exit.

The rain was falling gently when Dickins, in the plainly painted black car of familiar design, shot out of the Park, and, with his badge freely displayed, dashed along towards Hammersmith. The traffic was held up for him on the bridge, and he slackened speed only when he reached the far end of Roehampton Lane. Eagerly, and with the same purpose in view, Dickins and his policeman chauffeur both leaned forward, gazing at the bleak-looking residence standing a little way back from the road. There were few lights in the windows, and, considering the early hour in the evening, the two men seemed surrounded by an impressive silence. Little wisps of fog drifted by. The rain dripped from the leaves of the trees and shrubs. Just as the car was brought to a standstill a muffled report came from behind one of the screened windows of the house.

“They’re at it, sir!” the chauffeur exclaimed. “Shall I drive right up? The gates are wide open.”

Dickins sprang lightly from the car, and beckoned his companion to follow him.

“We’d have gone up if the gates had been closed,” he muttered. “Seems to me as though they’d left them open for their get-away. We’re too late for the scrap in any case. Listen!”

There was another report, and then silence. Dickins looked around searchingly.

“They have a car hidden somewhere here,” he whispered. “Get your gun out, Burdett, and crawl after me.”

Dickins’s surmise was correct. They had scarcely gone half a dozen yards when they came upon a small coupé drawn up by the side of the avenue in the shadow of a great elm tree, its bonnet facing towards the gate. There were no lights shining, and even the outline of the vehicle was undistinguishable until they had almost blundered into it. Dickins opened the door carefully. The interior was empty. He flashed an electric torch upon the name-plate, and smiled to himself.

“I’m looking after the occupant of this car,” he told his companion. “You get up to the house in case you’re wanted. If you meet any one coming down, keep out of sight if you can.”

The man started off, running on the narrow grass edge underneath the trees and shrubs. Dickins stood with his eyes fixed upon the house. Suddenly the front door was opened, letting out a blaze of light, and, for a single second, the slight figure which leaped into the darkness was intensely visible, like a shadow picture thrown on to a screen. Then there was darkness again, the more complete because of the faster-falling rain. Dickins crouched back behind the car, into the obscurity of the dripping trees, and waited. His head was a little thrust forward, his nostrils dilated with the effort of listening. Presently came the sound which he was expecting—the sound of flying footsteps drawing nearer and nearer. The waiting man made no movement, only his limbs became a little more tense. The figure came panting to the side of the car, tore open the door, and flung into the space at the back of the driver’s seat the attaché case she had been carrying. She flashed on the lights, and pressed the starting button. Dickins’s entrance from the other side had been so noiseless that she was unaware of his presence until she heard him subside into the place by her side. A half-stifled scream escaped her.

“Who are you?” she demanded breathlessly. “How dare you get into my car?”

He caught a glimpse of her face, white and terrified, under her closely-fitting black béret, the large eyes flaming, the lips parted and quivering. The engine was started, but her right hand had left the gear handle. He leaned over and caught her wrist. Quick though he was, he was only just in time. The tiny ugly-looking weapon upon which her fingers had already closed was lying on the rug between them. He kicked it towards himself, and, picking it up, slipped it into his pocket.

“Rather a desperate young woman, aren’t you?” he remarked.

“I carry a pistol to defend myself against such people as you,” she said coldly. “What are you doing here, forcing your way into my car?”

He caught her sideways glance, her face dimly lit by the small electric bulb on the dashboard—a glance of almost venomous hatred. Up at the house lights were now showing from every window.

“There has been a burglary, perhaps worse,” he said, moving his head backwards. “I came down to inquire into it.”

“You’re a policeman then?” she scoffed.

“Precisely. And seeing you arrive from the house in considerable haste, and carrying that bag which you have just thrown behind your seat, it becomes my duty to ask you a few questions.”

“A safer job than going on up to the house,” she retorted, with the same look of scorn shining in her eyes. “There might have been men to be dealt with there.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “I always choose the safer places when I can. Supposing we start?”

“Am I under arrest?” she demanded.

“Unofficially,” he assented.

“Where do I drive to?”

“Over Hammersmith Bridge. I will direct you afterwards.”

She pushed in her gear, and they swung out of the gate. She drove with one hand, the other dangling by her side, and Dickins seldom took his eyes off that hand. Occasionally he glanced at her face, brooding now and perplexed with thoughts. She felt herself under icy but ceaseless observation, and she hated it. Her eyes were like javelins.

“You’d handcuff me, I suppose,” she mocked, “if it were not that you need me to drive the car?”

“I could drive the car myself perfectly well,” he assured her, “and I shall handcuff you the moment I think it necessary.”

She relapsed once more into furious silence. Nine o’clock was striking as she pulled up on Hammersmith Bridge. She glanced at him questioningly.

“My strict duty,” he remarked, “is without a doubt to tell you to drive to the Hammersmith Police Station. I am inclined to modify that, however. You can go straight ahead, and drive to Number 8 Pembroke Crescent, if you know where that is.”

“And then?”

“That will be my business,” he answered, in a slightly harder tone. “Drive on at once, if you please.”

She obeyed, and they proceeded without speech of any sort to the door of Dickins’s house. There she relinquished the wheel, and looked about her with apparent listlessness. All the time, though, he could envisage the thoughts which were passing through her brain. He leaned out of the window and called to a policeman on the opposite pavement. The man promptly obeyed the summons.

“Johnson,” he directed, stretching out his hand for her attaché case, “put that down on my step, will you. Afterwards, come back, and guard the car whilst the young lady and I are inside. Don’t allow any one to interfere with it in any way.”

“Very good, sir,” the man replied respectfully.

Dickins turned to the girl. His hand closed upon her wrist.

“Having spared you the handcuffs,” he said, “you will forgive me if I take the ordinary precautions. You will descend with me now. I shall just hold your wrist like this. Good! Now we mount the steps together. Excellent! Constable, don’t lose sight of the car.”

He opened the green front door with his latch-key, the attaché case in one hand, and guiding his companion with the other, crossed the hall, and ushered her into his pleasant little sitting-room. She looked around her, and shrugged her shoulders.

“If this is to be my place of detention,” she said, “I suppose you don’t mind my making myself comfortable?”

“Not in the least,” he assured her. “Pray take my easy chair. Perhaps you would like to smoke?”

“My own cigarettes,” she answered curtly, producing her case and lighter. “A quaint sort of prison, this, isn’t it?”

He looked across at her keenly and thoughtfully. A new suspicion was beginning to frame itself in his mind. He turned the valise upside down upon the table, went through its harmless contents rapidly, slit up the lining with his clasp knife, and tore it open. She watched him with derision in her eyes.

“I can’t think what you’re suspecting me of all this time,” she observed. “I ran away from that terrible house because I was frightened when the burglars came. You can’t blame me for that, can you?”

He stood on the hearth-rug by her side, and looked down at her. She was leaning back in her chair, swinging her long, silk-clad legs ceaselessly, glancing up at him now with laughter in her eyes and a good-humoured twitching at the corners of her lips. All her anger seemed to have gone—or was he merely being fooled?

“You look as though you still wanted something,” she murmured. “Yes?”

“I want the seven Rosenthal diamonds and the three emeralds that your friends went after to-night,” he confided. “I know that they’re somewhere in your possession. Will you hand them over quietly? I mean to have them.”

Her bluff was good enough, but there was a light in his eyes which chilled her.

“You are talking like a fool,” she declared. “I never heard of the Rosenthal jewels, and if you dare to lay a hand upon me you shall die for it. I promise you that. Do you hear?”

He made no immediate reply, but moved a few feet away, and rang the bell.

“I haven’t the faintest desire to interfere with you, or your secret hiding-places,” he told her coldly. “That is not my affair. As it happens, my housekeeper was a female searcher at Bow Street for years, and she will do all that is necessary. She is a civil woman, but, believe me, she will find all that there is to be found.”

The girl sprang to her feet. Now indeed she was seriously alarmed.

“No one shall touch me,” she insisted. “It is an indignity, this! I can explain myself, and my presence in that house. My name is Martha Dring. I am a well-known artist and designer. I have a flat and a studio in Chelsea, and many friends who will make you suffer for this. A police searcher, indeed! You are mad!”

He remained silent, tapping a cigarette upon the mantelpiece, and lighting it casually.

“Do you hear me?” she called out. “I will not allow your housekeeper to touch me. How dare you think of such a thing?”

“Hand over the jewels then,” he suggested.

She looked at him murderously, then turned swiftly towards the woman who stood upon the threshold. The latter was neatly dressed in black, and her air was one of respectful attention, but she was nearly six feet in height, with a hard face, and a stalwart body.

“Mrs. Boyce,” Dickins explained calmly, “this young lady has concealed about her person seven large diamonds and three emeralds. You will kindly search her for them.”

The woman advanced into the room. The girl held out her arms to him piteously.

“Ten minutes—just give me ten minutes,” she begged. “Send her away. Let me talk to you. I can explain everything. I couldn’t bear her hands upon me.”

Again she inclined her head towards the street, and again Dickins had that curious conviction that she was listening. For what? He strode to the window and pushed back the curtain. The car was outside, and the policeman was still standing there on duty. Otherwise the neighbourhood seemed deserted. He turned back.

“If you prefer it, you can hand over the jewels to me,” he reminded her.

“I haven’t got them,” she shrieked. “I’ll kill her if she touches me.”

He pointed to the clock.

“It seems to me,” he confided, “that you are a very clever young woman, playing for time. I confess I don’t know why. You see the hour. I give you ten minutes. At twenty minutes to ten I shall return. It will be your fault if the affair is not concluded. I shall give you no other warning.”

She stood as though paralysed. Dickins turned away, closed the door behind him, and stepped out into the street. All the time he was haunted by a peculiar sense of disquietude, for which, indeed, there seemed no reason. The faithful constable was still standing stolidly by the motor-car. The Square and the street itself were both deserted. There was nothing to be heard except the rumble of traffic from the distant main thoroughfare.

“Everything O.K., Johnson?” he asked, looking searchingly around.

“Everything, sir,” the man replied. “Begging your pardon, sir?”

“Well, what is it?”

“Have you noticed that little red, dragon-shaped light in the front of the bonnet—looks like a kind of mascot? I’ve seen the same sort of thing before, but this is different. It lights from the switchboard—one turn green, two red.”

Dickins felt a shiver of apprehension as he examined the burning mascot. He was an unintelligent-looking man, this constable, but he had discovered the one thing which Dickins himself had missed. All the way from Roehampton they had come with the red light aflame.... Dickins asked only one more question.

“After we had entered the house, Johnson, did you notice any one about who might have been following us?”

“Well, in a kind of way, I did, sir,” the man confessed. “I wondered afterwards whether I ought to have mentioned it. There was a man on a motor-bicycle turned into the Square as you did, got off as you stopped, had one look at the car, and away he went. Perhaps——”

Dickins broke into the man’s deliberate speech. Time counted now. His words rattled out like pistol-shots.

“Leave the car, and run to the nearest telephone station,” he ordered. “Speak in my name to Scotland Yard, giving code word ‘Zebra’ S.Y.Z. Department. Order Main’s Emergency Men in a police wagon, with maxims charged, round here in ten minutes. Stay away yourself. It isn’t your job, and there may be trouble.” ...

Dickins, tensely alert, ran up the steps, entered the house, and knocked at the door of the parlour.

“Twelve minutes,” he called out. “I’m coming in.”

There was a confused tangle of feminine voices, the girl’s shrill, vociferous protest.

“Sixty seconds more then,” he conceded. “After that I’m coming.”

He stood with his watch in his hand, and, at the expiration of the time, disregarding her angry cries, he entered the room. It seemed to him somehow, in the light of what might happen at any moment, an utterly insignificant thing that the girl was standing clad only in a torn chemise and black chiffon knickers a few feet away from his landlady’s extended arm. Yet he remembered for long afterwards the fury in her eyes and the shivering of her passionate body.

“I’ve got the three emeralds all right,” Mrs. Boyce announced, “but I can’t find no more than six of the diamonds. An obstinate young hussy, she is, too!”

He stuffed the stones into his pocket. The girl was sobbing now as she feverishly drew on her frock.

“If ever I get the chance,” she moaned, “some day I shall kill that woman—and you.”

Mrs. Boyce disappeared, with the satisfied air of a woman whose task has been well accomplished. In the silence of the room the two faced one another. The girl’s eyes were filled with hate.

“Well, you’ve got your jewels,” she muttered, with her hands at her throat.

“I was bound to have them,” he answered.

“And now?” she demanded.

“You can go.”

“I can what?”

“You can go. I don’t want you.”

“You aren’t charging me?”

He shook his head.

“I ought to, I suppose, but I don’t want to. Listen!”

He paused for a moment. A motor-horn hooted below, but the car passed on. Some pedestrians crossed the Square, but the sound of their footsteps grew fainter.

“You’re a fool, Martha Dring,” he admonished. “You’re a clever artist. I’ve seen your work. It’s good. Stick at it, and cut this underworld out. I know why you came in. Excitement! You’re all craving for it—your sort. Find it elsewhere. If we wanted you you’d be in prison now. Prison’s damnable, you know. You’d never be any good afterwards. Get back to your job. Wash yourself clean of this business.”

Once more they listened. Then she leaned towards him, and neither Dickins nor any other living man could have told what thoughts were passing behind her flaming eyes, her quivering lips, or whence the swift rising and falling of her bosom.

“Listen,” she begged. “I suppose I’m still squeamish. I hate you, but I am going to save your life. Out of the house—this moment! From behind, if you can. Never mind how I know. Don’t stop to ask me questions. Costigan’s gang are on their way here. You know that they’re killers. Leave the stones, and they may leave you alone. My God!”

This time they both rushed to the window. Three abreast they were coming down each side of the Square on motor-bicycles, and three abreast along the narrow street. Dickins waved his hand from the threshold as he sprang backwards.

“I’ll remember next time I drive behind a red mascot,” he promised....

Ten minutes later, when the police van thundered into the Square, not a trace was left of the coupé car with the red mascot, or of the nine motor-bicycles which only a few minutes before had been leaning against the railings of the Square. There remained instead a portentous silence, the front door of Dickins’s house wide open, and in the kitchen the dead body of Mrs. Boyce with a cord around her throat, and the one remaining diamond of the Rosenthal burglary concealed in her garter.

At a little before midday on the following morning Major Eustace Grant, D.S.O., well known in certain West End circles, an occasional patron of the arts and a reputed millionaire, sat in an easy chair in the library of his luxurious suite in Berkeley Square, languidly glancing through some book jacket designs from the portfolio of the girl who sat opposite to him. In the distance, visible through the open door of the bedroom, a valet was moving noiselessly about. Closer at hand a waiter was arranging a tray and a cocktail shaker. Grant studied the last of the designs through his horn-rimmed eyeglass with somewhat disparaging nonchalance.

“Good stuff, yours, of course, Miss Dring,” he acknowledged. “Modern—quite the futurist touch, and all that—but if I permitted myself to find a fault with it, I should say that your last efforts have been a little too florid in design, too arabesque, if you follow me, a forsaking of the beauty of line—the quality in your work which first attracted me—for the vulgarity—I use the word in its academic sense—of curve.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” the young woman admitted listlessly.

“Nevertheless,” her patron concluded, “I will add the last two to my collection.”

The waiter, who had finished his task, departed. The valet had closed the connecting door between the two rooms. Grant laid down the designs. He looked severely across at his visitor.

“It was the schedule which was at fault, not I,” she declared. “I was in my car three minutes after I had received the jewels, but Dickins was there before me. He must have had some one waiting who had telephoned up to Scotland Yard.”

Her companion frowned.

“The schedule would have worked out to a second,” he insisted, “if Sam had not mistaken the combination—a thing which I have never known happen to him before. Describe exactly what took place in Dickins’s rooms.”

“He had a female searcher there,” she confided, “and whilst the beast of a woman searched me he went outside and discovered the red mascot lamp. He came back at once, collected the jewels, with the exception of the one diamond which the woman had slipped under her own clothes, and went off.”

There was a brief pause. Major Eustace Grant was occupied in studying his carefully manicured finger-nails.

“And then?”

“Costigan’s men came in. How they got there so quickly I can’t imagine, but they did it. They made not a sound, and they filled the place like rats. They started me off. I told Costigan that the woman had kept one of the diamonds. I’m sorry now that I did it, but she was such a beast. I suppose they got the alarm just as he was searching for it.”

“Our first failure,” Eustace Grant sighed, “and it disconcerts me. It must never happen again. I do not blame you or Sam particularly, Miss Dring, but to me any one who is associated with a failure has committed a crime.”

She shrugged her shoulders as she picked up her portfolio.

“After all, I was only the get-away,” she reminded him, “and I was on time.”

“By the by,” he asked, as she turned towards the door, “why didn’t Dickins take you in?”

“I have no idea,” she assured him.

“I wonder,” he speculated.

The Sub-Commissioner asked Dickins the same thing, at about the same time, in his office at Scotland Yard.

“Why didn’t you bring the girl in?” he demanded.

There was a peculiar light in the detective’s eyes as he leaned forward.

“Because I fancied that she would be of far more use to us free.”

Colonel Larwood stroked his chin.

“It was a fine coup to get hold of the jewels,” he admitted. “It will give us a leg-up just when we need it. All the same, an arrest would have been useful. We might have got a squeal out of her.”

“She would never have squealed,” Dickins declared confidently. “We don’t want her, Chief. Not yet at any rate. Besides, I’m sure she’s not really one of the gang. She’s only one of these amateurs who’ve gone crazy about crime just now.”

“You don’t think she had anything to do with strangling the old woman then?”

“I know she didn’t,” was the prompt reply. “That was one of the young gangsters who got scared when he heard us coming along. Leave the girl free, sir. She may work into our scheme.”

“What is your scheme,” Larwood inquired, “and who are the men you want? Have you any idea whom you are looking for?”

“Just an idea,” Dickins admitted. “I am going to begin, sir, by handing you in my resignation.”

“What the devil use is that?” his Chief demanded irritably.

“Can’t you see, sir, they’ve got us too well staked?” the detective pointed out. “For five nights I’ve been on duty, watching for them to bring off that Rosenthal affair, and nothing happened. The sixth night I came round for that chat with you, and the job was done. True, they didn’t make a success of it, but it was only a matter of seconds. The fact of it is, their intelligence department is better than ours. They’re so damned clever, too. That young woman merely switched on her signal lamp before my very eyes. One of Costigan’s men was waiting on Hammersmith Bridge with his motor-bicycle, and followed us right to the door. All he had to do was to telephone, and the gang very nearly scooped us. Let me work from outside, sir. We’ll have a code, and whenever I want help I can send for it.”

“It’s unusual,” the Sub-Commissioner reflected.

“So are the circumstances,” was the quick retort. “We’ll never get these men the ordinary way. They’re much more likely to get us. I haven’t a shadow of evidence, but I believe I know who they are. I want to get closer to them. I can’t as Detective-Inspector Dickins. I may in a new personality. At any rate, that’s what I want to try.”

“You’re taking on a great risk, Dickins.”

“So I am now, with the odds all against me. In a matter of thirty seconds that motor-bicycle crowd would have got me last night. Take that job for an example and see how easily they worked it. They entered the house just as they liked, although we were watching it, helped themselves to the jewels, frightened old Rosenthal and his wife to death by firing a few shots, and got clear away without leaving the ghost of a clue behind them. We’ve got to change our methods. I have my plan worked out, and, with the Yard unofficially behind me, I think I have a chance. What I want to do is to get some of them bragging, pit them against one another, and make them talk. I think I know how to do it. They’re going to dig their graves with their own tongues.”

The Sub-Commissioner affected to deliberate, but his mind was already made up.

“Well, Dickins,” he decided, “I suppose you must have your way. I shall have to get the Chief’s consent as a matter of form, but I think I can promise you that. Tell me exactly what it is that you want from us?”

“First of all, a grant of money. I am going to put my house and furniture up for sale, enter a nursing home, and find some rooms in London where no one will think of looking for me.”

“No difficulty about the money. What else?”

“My resignation through ill-health announced in the Press.”

“Agreed.”

“A complete force of fighting men, with guns, ready at any hour, and under the strictest discipline. That five minutes’ delay last night cost us the coup.”

“You shall have Martin’s special flying squad made over to you. Martin boasts that he can beat any Fire Brigade in London on his start.”

“Last, and most important, don’t hurry me, sir,” the detective concluded. “I believe in cultivating ambitions, Chief. I have one now. There may be big things doing, and I may know about them, but I want to keep my mouth shut. I’ll have things fixed so that if anything happens to me you’ll get every scrap of information I’ve collected, but I want my sparrows and starling at one throw. Give me time and I’ll get them.”

“I’ll do my best,” the Sub-Commissioner promised, a little dubiously. “You must remember we’ve got the Press abusive, the Home Secretary rampant, and the Chief blasphemous. The recovery of the Rosenthal jewels may calm them down for a time. It won’t be long before they’re fuming again, though.”

“Stick it out, sir,” the detective begged, as he rose to his feet. “I promise you that it shan’t be for a day longer than I can help. The trap shall be baited and the string in my hand in less than a week. Unless they get me first, Chief, I promise I’ll bring them in before you’re wearing your first bunch of violets.”

In his very luxurious masculine bedroom, with his valet hovering in the background, Major Eustace Grant paused for a moment in the tying of his white cravat. He looked steadily into the glass. The same thought which had haunted him throughout the afternoon was back again.

“I wonder,” he reflected, “why the devil that detective fellow didn’t take Martha Dring?”