RENDEZVOUS

WITH DEATH

Cedric Goodall

(Louis Charles Douthwaite, 1878-1948)

1935

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

Chapter 25 | Chapter 26

Chapter 27

________________

1

THE JUDGE'S summing-up completed, and the jury retired, his raw-boned length propped unobtrusively against the wall of the corridor outside Court 4 of the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, Chief-inspector Ackroyd waited complacently for the verdict.

It had taken more than five months of the hardest and most intensive work of his career to put Adolf Potsinger in the dock, but as unquestionably that disingenuous man would step down from it only for the most comfortable cell in Pentonville, he begrudged no moment of the time. For Potsinger had poisoned the wife who, in the long years wherein her husband was building one of the largest and most dishonestly-acquired fortunes in the City of London, had given him all she had of youth and attraction, magnificent loyalty, blind trust, and a self-abnegating and wholly devoted love.

A man does not devote twenty years exclusively to crime detection and either retain his illusions, or acquire any particular affection for those among whom his work lies. But though in general Ackroyd had found the criminal classes a shabby and meagre-souled collection of emotional misfits, it was rare for him to feel any particular rancour against any Individual offender.

With Potsinger, however, that detachment did not apply. On the contrary, he had come to feel for that specious and oily recidivist a personal loathing that, in all his years of service, had been approached by no single one of those to whom he was in the habit of referring as his "clients."

For the further he had probed into the history and habits of his suspect, the firmer had become his conviction that, in the sum-total of his offences, the killing of his wife might be regarded only as an incident. Stated briefly, Potsinger stood as the only criminal in an experience as extensive and peculiar as Sam Weller's knowledge of London, who was without a single redeeming virtue. Loving wickedness for its own sake, he was utterly and completely vile.

Well, Ackroyd thought with satisfaction, after to-day, that wickedness would be limited specifically to a space comprised within the passage of three Sundays. Then, one morning some sixty seconds or so before eight o'clock, the door of Potsinger's room would open to a rubicund bow-legged little man carrying straps, who would say "good-morning, old chap; just put your hands behind your back, d'ye mind?" and a few seconds later there would be the hollow clang of a trap-door against brick-work, a rope would shiver, sway, and grow still, and that would be that....

There was a stir among those grouped about the courtroom entrance. The constable in charge of the door signed that the jury were on the point of filing into the box. Leisurely, confidently, Inspector Ackroyd returned to the place that, apart from the time he had spent in the witness box, he had occupied throughout the trial.

Within the court was an atmosphere of strain that, with some, threatened to relapse into hysteria. Whatever his record, it is no light thing to hear a fellow creature condemned to the last and greatest penalty of all. As the usher demanded silence for the judge to take his seat, there prevailed a feeling of acute high-tension. There was the tread of heavy, and, in one instance, faltering feet on the wooden steps that led to the dock. Escorted by expressionless warders, the prisoner took his place.

If more detachedly, in common with those less personally interested about him, Ackroyd watched that central figure curiously, and what he saw did not tend to lessen prejudice. To add to his other offences, the man was that worst type of coward whose indifference to the sufferings he inflicts on others is in inverse ratio to the intensity of his appreciation for his own.

As, his pudgy fingers feverishly clasping and unclasping about the iron rail, Potsinger stood so coweringly there, he was only the abject travesty of the aggressive, loud-mouthed braggart who, until with such devastating unexpectedness Ackroyd swooped down upon him, had been so flamboyantly conspicuous a figure in the more expensive hotels and less exclusive night clubs of London's West End.

Now the once immaculate morning coat fell in dishevelled folds about his gross body; his flabby, once crimson cheeks had degenerated to the colour of plumbers' lead; the wide unpleasing mouth was half-open, and trembling, while every now and then the tongue endeavoured to bring moisture to the thick and sensual lips. For a moment the inspector was afraid the proceedings would be delayed because of the unconsciousness of the prisoner.

So intent indeed was the Yorkshireman's regard of the abject figure that the voice of the Clerk of Arraigns, cold and impersonal, found him somewhat unawares.

"...Have you considered your verdict?" By this the foreman, a thin unwholesome-looking man of early middle age with pale, fallen-in cheeks and a long predatory nose, was on his feet. Through the long-drawn-out trial the inspector had observed this mouthpiece of fate with the automatic minuteness with which he had observed every phase of the proceedings, and had not been favourably impressed. As in an aside, he had observed to Sergeant Oates, whose assistance in bringing Potsinger to the dock had been so invaluable:

"If that fella happens to be a dairyman. I'll bet his pump has ball bearings."

Now, giving him in the unduly pro-longed instant before the reply came the same intensive inspection that a moment before he had concentrated upon the prisoner, the inspector was conscious of a sudden twinge of uneasiness. In spite of proof of guilt clamped down and shouting to heaven, so that any verdict other than the one demanded by law and justice was unthinkable, there was something in the foreman's attitude he didn't quite like― a sharp decision of manner that was badly negatived by eyes that were both uncertain and more than a thought fearful.

"We have," the foreman said at last, and, as though to bolster uncertain courage, in too loud a voice.

"And are you agreed?" "We are."

As though striving to adjust the proof-armour of his detachment, the Clerk of Arraigns also paused. From the tide of keyed-up emotion that flooded the court came neither sound nor movement.

"Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"

Then hoarsely, uncertainly:

"Not guilty!"

In an occupation that above all others tends to render a man shock-proof, Ackroyd was by nature more self-contained and emotionally disciplined than the majority. So that as, immobile in his seat, he continued to look closely into the narrow and now shrinking face of the fore-man, no man might have read that to him the verdict had come as a blow in the dark.

To the public, an acquittal that was the negation of every shred of evidence that had been brought to bear came with such shattering unexpectedness as for a moment to leave the anticipatory hush unbroken. Then, like the sigh of wind to presage a storm, came the mass expulsion of long with-held breath. Followed, instantly, something within measurable distance of clamour; not in all Ackroyd's experience had he known a murderer who, even with the traditional siding of the English with the under dog, had aroused so little sympathy.

After a long glance at the foreman, Ackroyd turned his eyes to the prisoner, who for a moment seemed incapable of assimilating the meaning of the words that would return him to a world whereon, always, he had battened, and to which he had forfeited all claim.

Then, as meaning dawned, the drooping shoulders straightened, the terror-glazed eyes brightened and grew eager, the thick grey lips stretched to a moist, exultant smile.

These signs of triumph, however, lasted only for a moment. Even though reinforced by the harsh voice of each one of the police officers in court, the usher's call for silence proved unequal to the clamour. From the public benches swelled a protest that with every moment seemed more likely to resolve into action. Fists were waved, women shrilled, men leapt to their feet.

Trying to leave the court, in the press about the exit Inspector Ackroyd found himself rather badly hustled; apart from matters appertaining to his trade he was not a thrustful person. Turning, he saw that, though obviously without intent, the one responsible was a man who, from the beginning, and for no identifiable reason, had seemed to stand out rather prominently from the massed faces of those in court. A chubby, rubicund-featured man of middle age and height, soberly-immaculately clad, with bright, benevolent eyes and a certain quiet assurance of manner. A stockbroker or city solicitor, retired on ample means, the detective would have said. And, though for the moment unable to place him, the man's face was vaguely familiar.

"Sorry, Inspector Ackroyd," this genial man exclaimed in cordial apology.

"That's all right," Ackroyd replied, though not so impersonally as he made appear. Then, when they were through the door, where there was more elbow room: "How d'you come to know my name, anyway?"

The chubby man laughed deprecatingly. "I'm afraid that, in common with many modest men, you don't realise your own repute," he returned. "Besides, it was only yesterday that your photograph appeared in the Daily Broadcaster in connection with the Pendarves fire-raising case."

Ackroyd nodded.

"That's right. And you're Mr. Julian H. Oliver, who's behind that big Poplar slum clearance scheme." The gaunt face relaxed to the nearest approach to enthusiasm he ever permitted it. "Good work that, Mr. Oliver. I'm all for it. The less slums there are in England the less work there'll be for me."

In modesty, it would appear, Mr. Oliver was at one with the detective.

"One does what one can," he said deprecatingly. "To be favoured with ample means and the enjoyment of admirable health, to shirk one's responsibilities to those less fortunately situated would be less negligent than criminal." He paused, politely curious. "Speaking of criminals, would it be injudicious to inquire your opinion as to the verdict we have just heard passed?"

Ackroyd, however, shook a gaunt head.

"In a former incarnation I think I must have been the original parrot who was such a beggar to think," he said, and, what in him was unusual, hesitated. There was about this mild and courteous figure some-thing that, while he found it puzzling, rather appealed to him. "Only-that Potsinger's a lucky fella," he added.

They had reached the entrance by now, and the other's mild eyes rested upon him for a moment before, with a friendly nod, he turned in rather bustling fashion to force his way through the assembled crowd in the direction of Ludgate Circus.

Before, however, they were separated by more than a few yards, he turned.

"Oh, I don't know," he said over his plump shoulder, and left Ackroyd wondering exactly what he meant.

He had not, however, very much time for speculation; the press about the entrance was too great, and to that expert interpreter of mass psychology, Inspector Ackroyd, too formidable. So much so, indeed, that despite the accumulation of work that awaited him in that fourth-story office on the Embankment, he turned back into the building. Whatever the justice― or the reverse― of the verdict, the man had been found "Not guilty" by a jury of his peers, and as such was entitled to protection.

He discovered Potsinger sprawling nonchalantly on a bench that ran immediately below the high barred window of a small office below the ground floor, with him a group of police who, from their general attitude, Ackroyd Judged to be un-impressed by his loud and blatant talk.

As his eye fell upon the Inspector, the wide face lighted.

"Enter the baffled sleuth!" he exclaimed exuberantly. Then the gross face darkened to a sneer. "It's a good thing for the liberty of the subject the administration of law is taken out of the hands of you fellers. In that case, no one'd be safe from you."

Ackroyd regarded him without enthusiasm.

"Any more from you," he said coldly, "and I'll have you turned into the street."

Potsinger's face paled. In common with the majority of habitual criminals an enthusiastic protagonist of the doctrine of safety first, what he had seen of the temper of those in court, and what, now, was reaching him from those outside, was more than sufficient to remind him that one of the few good things you can have too much of is freedom.

"No offence intended, and, I sincerely hope, none taken," he said apologetically and in haste. "All I meant was that having no interest in the accused one way or the other, a Judge an' jury's what you might call impartial.... By the very nature of things a detective who's spent months and months trying to rake up evidence against a-a member of the public is pretty well bound to be prejudiced.... But what I said was only my fun."

Ackroyd, continuing to regard him steadily, made no reply, and the gross man moved uneasily in his seat.

"What else could it be?" he demanded plaintively at last.

"Malice," said Ackroyd, and meant it.

Reproachfully, Potsinger's eyebrows shot upward.

"Me? What for should I bear malice?" he cried, shocked, "when as much as anything it was through the fair and impartial manner in which you presented your case that I got justice."

Ackroyd stared at him. It was not often he had to grope for words, but this was one of the times.

"I wonder you don't choke," he said in a strained voice, but this the acquitted man ignored.

"You can't deny," he said in the same conciliatory tones as before, "that more than anything it was the fairness you showed throughout that influenced the jury in my favour. And I'd be guilty of the blackest ingratitude if, in future, I don't pray for you every night of my life."

Conscious of the limitation of human endurance, Ackroyd turned away.

"Pray for me as much as you like," he said unpleasantly, "but I'll take particular notice you don't cook for me."

At which, a snigger went up from those others in the room, for included in his less reputable attainments Potsinger was something of an expert amateur chef, and it was very shortly following upon the consumption of a specially-prepared vol-au-vents that his wife had first complained of indisposition.

A few minutes later a constable entered, bearing a carefully sealed parcel. A moment later still there was outspread upon the table the wafer-thin gold and enamel watch, the ornate gold and platinum chain, the marble-sized diamond ring, the gold hafted pocket-knife, handful of change, gold-bound and corpulent Russian leather wallet, jewelled lighter, and gold cigar-case that Potsinger had carried at the time of his arrest.

It was for this last he stretched an eager hand, and with an affluent gesture proffered the case to Inspector Ackroyd.

"Coronas," he announced. "Fifteen pound a hundred, bought wholesale an' cheap at the price."

Ackroyd, however, with a curt shake of his head, waved the offer aside.

"I should hate one," he said accurately, but the fat man remained unabashed.

"But, then, it isn't close on a couple of months since you had a smoke," he pointed out easily.

His bulk propped aggressively against the wall, fat legs outstretched, Potsinger selected the first cigar of the row; with the cutter at the end of his watch-chain he snipped the end. Then he reached for, and snapped open, the lighter.

But in the two months of disuse the petrol had evaporated, so that there was no flame as a result. Though, covertly, each man in the room was watching him, and he glanced inquiringly from one to the other, none proffered a match. Then, his roving glance perceiving a box on the high mantel-shelf, ponderously he heaved himself to the upright; waddled over to it. Struck a light, inhaled a lung, deep draw of the cigar.

Suddenly, as he did so, the gross jaw stiffened, like those of some grotesque doll the protruding eyes remained dreadfully fixed, the whole bulky frame of the man froze to a terrible rigidity.

With a stifled ejaculation Inspector Ackroyd jerked forward.

"What's the matter, man?" he cried, his voice urgent. "Feeling faint or something?"

The only reply was that, stiffly, the body, lurching sideways, swayed for a moment over the table.

And then, without a sound, pitched to the floor.

2

IT was by caprice of fate that for more than three years Hilary John Fortescue had been a wanderer on the face of the earth. For before that nothing had seemed more permanent than his own stability.

His father, Hilary John the Ninth had succeeded to the small but wholly unencumbered estate of Mearings, in Essex, an unfortunately easily negotiable fortune of some three hundred thousand pounds, a disposition of extreme but wholly unwarranted conviction of his own infallibility of judgment, and an abiding belief in the integrity of his fellows.

During the war, then, in which his father served with distinction, Hilary John the younger, following upon an expensive preparatory school in Sussex, went on to Winchester and shortly after the armistice to Cambridge. In his last term at Pembroke his father, by then a widower, died, suddenly and unexpectedly.

From the first, that was strangely lacking in reassurance, Hilary's interviews with Sir Herbert Evered, the family solicitor, descended progressively to consternation, and from that to whatever resignation his training enabled him to summon. Put briefly, it would have been difficult for things to be worse.

To the outbreak of war all had been comparatively well.

But Hilary John the Ninth had speculated in wild cat companies. When hostilities ceased he was left with £100,000. He used this capital to finance a fellow he'd met at Arras― the best gunner in the brigade, by George, one Sammy Brookes― who was interested in a patent non-refillable bottle that only needed capital to be taken up by every distillery in Scotland... And old Jack Harrison, who commanded the division at Loos, had put him on to a syndicate of American stock operators who, in six months or so, were going to have Wall Street lashed to the mast, and screaming for help...

Unfortunately, however, both these propositions failed to live up to expectations. So that, when all the debts were paid, Hilary found himself with slightly over a hundred pounds in cash, a large and expensive wardrobe, and an estate whose revenue only just contrived to pay the mortgage interest.

With hereditary optimism and his hundred pounds, for no better reason than that it was the nearest British dominion, and the high opinion his father had held of Canadian troops, Hilary sailed for Canada. Three months in Ontario, during one of the worst seasons of commercial and agricultural depression on record, however, found his optimism diminished, and his money at an end. Subsequently he was lumberjack in Quebec, prospector in northern Manitoba, and, crossing the border, cattle herder in Montana and Wyoming. Then, the sea and England calling, he "rode the rails'' to New York, where through the good offices of a ship's steward he had befriended in a rough-house in Montreal he stowed himself away on a homeward-bound liner.

It was while he was lurking in the hold of the Seregambia that, among the fortnight and more old newspapers smuggled him by his friend the steward, Hilary made his stupendous discovery― an announcement in the personal column of the Times of the death of that wealthy and eccentric recluse, Fenner Hammersley, his late mother's brother. Further, that the sole residuary legatee of an estate estimated to run well into six figures was one Hilary John Fortescue.

Yet on that afternoon of late May when he disentrained at Waterloo, he had exactly seven pence in his possession, four pence of which he disbursed immediately at the nearest coffee stall, for it was more than twelve hours since he had eaten. Then he walked to the offices of Halliday, Halliday, Montague and Crew, his late uncle's solicitors, in Bedford Row, only to discover, it being well past five o'clock, that the premises were closed for the day. As, incidentally, were those of Sir Herbert Evered, that were in Bedford Square. So that there was no alternative but to trudge the streets until morning.

And, as for nearly seven days, in an atmosphere that combined the olfactory disadvantages of a disused cheese factory and a guano plant, he had occupied quarters where he could stretch his legs only with difficulty, what he felt he needed next to a square meal and a bath was fresh air and exercise. Nine-thirty that same evening found him upon a hitherto unexplored portion of Hampstead Heath, and more essentially hungry than ever he had been in his life. In addition, he was inclined to think that a little sleep was indicated.

The trouble was― where?

Stopping, he gave the terrain more intensive inspection.

On the right of the, at the moment, unpeopled road, a wild and undisciplined section of heath stretched until it was lost in the half-light. To the left, and for some little distance, was the wall of a large garden. Far back he was able dimly to distinguish, above the trees on the wall's inner side, the red brick old-fashioned chimney of the house itself. And when, twenty yards or so further down the road he came to the tall iron entrance gates of the drive, they reminded him rather startlingly of those of his own much-mortgaged home.

Probably it was from curiosity to discover if the same resemblance applied elsewhere that he passed through and into the drive.

Fifty yards, and a turn in the path bringing the house into view he stopped. On the further side of the lawn to his left was an old thatched summerhouse, and in the past three years Hilary John Fortescue had spent the night in many less comfortable quarters than a weather-proof summerhouse on an English lawn in May. It was all to the good, too, that apart from a narrow ribbon of light that streamed through the join of curtains at a bow window of a room on the ground floor the house itself was in darkness.

Cautiously, he left the drive and crossed the lawn. Outside the summerhouse, equally cautiously, he paused, listening. As no sound came from within, he tried the door.

It yielded.

Pausing a moment to peer inside, and seeing nothing through the comparative darkness, soundlessly he entered. Shielding the flame in cupped hands, he struck a light.

From what that faint illumination revealed, this was certainly a summerhouse de luxe; stoutly built and comfortably furnished; thick Indian matting on the floor; solidly constructed table covered with a variety of current magazines; deeply cushioned basket chairs.

"And very nice, too," thought Hilary John Fortescue, and prepared to take advantage of his luck.

As an old campaigner he loosed the laces of his shabby shoes and the bedraggled remnants of collar and tie. More comfortable, and tired as a wandering dog, he installed himself in the largest chair as snugly as a dormouse in a nest. If only, he reflected pathetically, it wasn't for the large and aching vacuum inside, he'd be jake with the levers up.

It was just as, still resolutely fighting down the hunger, he was drowsing off, that quite suddenly he became conscious of a lessening of the darkness about him. With the alertness of those who have spent any length of time in the wilds, he sat up blinking, and with a queer sense of un-easiness.

Odd, that suggestion of― yes― apprehension. Nothing unusual in the switching-on of another bulb in a house at ten o'clock in the evening, for apparently that was the cause of that slightly brighter light.

But when he heaved himself to his feet from the chair and went to the window he saw that he was wrong about there being an additional lamp switched on. What had happened was that someone had drawn the curtains from the big bow-window of the ground floor room, so that the light from within shone through.

And now that he had an uninterrupted view of the interior, at what he saw he let out an involuntary groan, subdued, but agonised. The most prominent feature of the landscape was a dining-table, beautifully appointed, softly lighted, and glinting with silver and the sparkle of glass; on the sideboard wine decanters from which the light from the many-branched old silver or Sheffield plate candelabra struck tints of gold and ruby.

But it was the good, richly-scented food; the silver tureen of soup; the cold dishes―chicken beneath its canopy of rich white sauce; a great sirloin of beef; the golden brown crispness of perfectly-baked rolls that made him groan. It was a cruelty at which Hilary John's mouth watered, and his vitals yearned.

No one was at the table; the only one present, standing with impeccable rigidity by the sideboard, was a manservant, slim and, unless light and distance was more deceptive than Hilary thought, immaculate as to dress. Nor did that henchman con-vey the impression of being English; he was lithe and slim with the indefinable air of the Latin.

And suddenly, as Hilary watched, the man turned and left the room-and that laden table. And a pitifully few yards away, there was Hilary, with an interior in comparison with which the inside of a drum was overcrowded.

The sight of that unguarded food was more than Hilary could stand.

He reached the window that, fortunately for his purpose, was open to the May night breeze; with a hunger-perfected silence passed into the room, where, once across the threshold, the abnormally thick pile of the carpet further deadened his footsteps... Just a couple or so of those rolls that, on their heavy silver basket, looked so inviting, and about a couple of pounds of so of the Stilton...

It was half way between window and sideboard that he pulled up. From the other side of the door had come the soft slur of footsteps... Like a lizard into a crevice, Hilary darted behind the window curtains.

What, of course, he should have done, was, under cover of the drapery, step lightly through the window and to the wide spaces. Moved by an impulse for which afterwards he was wholly unable to account, what actually he did was to peer out into the room to see who entered.

It was the servant who, from the summerhouse, he had seen standing by the sideboard. And, as he had thought, a foreigner. A smallish man, but slim and virile, with patent-leather hair, thin, dark olive face, and calm dark eyes with, in their depths, something that, if it were aroused, would not be calm at all, but essentially dangerous. Unless Hilary was mistaken that butler man possessed all the earmarks of a Filipino....

The servant stood for a moment with the handle of the open door in his hand. Then there was a step from outside, firmer and less slurring this time, and a second man came in. The master of the house, undoubtedly.

Just for a moment Hilary was seized with an impulse to do what, in the circumstances, unquestionably would have been the one right thing-step out from behind the curtain, and with abject apologies and a convincing resume of his present situation, declare himself. He felt that an old chap with a face like that of the man who now was on the point of seating himself in the chair so respectfully held for him by the Filipino― a countenance so kind and pink and blooming, with such gay, candid eyes, and, when he thanked his servant, such a soft, benevolent voice simply couldn't be anything but understanding.

Later Hilary found cause to marvel at the change in his life that was brought about by his decision to stay put. He was still as hungry as a man may be and live, and when all was said and done the odds were something in the nature of a thousand to one that within three minutes of disclosing himself he'd be either thrown out on his ear or the brown-faced servant instructed to telephone for the police, and in either case he'd go on being hungry.

On the other hand, once the meal was at an end, the chances were the pink-faced master of the house would retire to one of the other rooms. No servant could clear that laden table and sideboard at one go, and while he was out of the room with the first laden tray would be the time for Hilary John Fortescue to dash flat out from behind the curtain, collect the nearest easily-negotiable foodstuffs, and fade at speed into the night.

The chief objection to making his presence known, of course, was the complete bedragglement of his appearance. For though despite this nondescript tout ensemble those with discernment would have had no difficulty in placing the social status of that broad-shouldered, slim-waisted figure with the cheerfully arrogant carriage of head and body, or, when he spoke, his accent as anything but Public School and Cambridge, he had no assurance that the pink-faced gentleman at this moment so placidly and infuriatingly consuming soup at the table a few feet away, possessed that discrimination. And with his late father's solicitors the only people in London with any knowledge of his identity, to Hilary John the idea of his first interview with that doubtless austere firm on his return to England taking place at the police station failed to appeal.

Nevertheless, the owner of the house was a decent-looking old chap; clean and chubby; dinner-jacket cut by an artist; this oaken-panelled room with the perfect appointments of linen and glass and silver, the shining mahogany of the table sublimating the ruby and amber of the wines to an even richer mellowness. A setting doubtless that was entirely adequate to his personality.

When at length, with a sigh of contentment, and stretching plump but immaculate legs to their fullest, the chubby gentleman leaned back in his chair, from somewhere the unseen watcher derived the notion that not only was it from the excellence of his dinner that came his obvious sense of well-being.

Until that moment the meal had been conducted in silence. Either from intuition or long experience the lithe and soft footed servant appeared to know exactly what his master needed, and the moment at which he required it. Yet when, with a well-cared-for hand, Hilary's involuntary host poured himself a glass of port, in the cultured voice was something that came to him with a sense of chill.

"With which, to-night, I shall be vandal enough to smoke a cigarette, Sancho," he remarked in cheery semi-apology, and chose a Sullivan from the silver and tortoiseshell box that, in silence, the man handed him.

And as he did so, the thin and hitherto expressionless face of the Filipino softened. Though behind it was something, as it were, withheld, his face was charged with commiseration.

3

"MASTER'S nerves need extra sedative to-night," he remarked with hardly a trace of accent other than an admixture of New York.

Whereupon between that incongruously matched pair ensued a conversation that showed not only the strength of the bond between them, but in its matter was utterly grotesque and incredible. To Hilary the whole scene, the chubby, comfortable benevolence of the man at the table, the dark wholly respectful servant who stood so immobilely confronting him, was like one of the worst kind of nightmares.

In the act of lighting his cigarette at the tiny spirit lamp the Filipino held out for him:

"You imply I'm disturbed on account of my recent― er― passage with the wholly unspeakable Potsinger?" he demanded with cool cheerfulness.

Placing the cigarette lamp within easy reach, the servant stepped noiselessly back to his accustomed place by the sideboard.

"You will perhaps pardon me for reminding you that, following upon similar― occasions― there have been times when you have not been unaffected, sir," he pointed out.

Slowly, thoughtfully, his master nodded.

"Probably," he said at last. "But you must not overlook the varying degrees of culpability between the subjects of our activities. For one or two, perhaps, and in each instance only when the subject was engaged in enterprises from motives he had deluded himself were in good faith, I must admit to a certain contrition."

He paused with a glance of inquiry at Sancho, who gravely inclined his head.

"But," the chubby man continued, "the Potsinger case was not one of those. Not only do the circumstances of the man Potsinger's decease― at any hands― fail to disturb me, but I am in process of realisation that to be responsible for the reversal of a verdict that in itself is the supreme and unanswerable impeachment of our present system of criminal jurisprudence brings an eminently pleasurable sense of well-being."

Absorbed as from the first he had been, at this amazing speech, Hilary found his grasp on the curtain tighten to the point of discomfort. There was no doubt about it, the old chap wasn't just talking for the sake of it. Indeed, as his theme developed, gradually those kind and mobile lips became thin and hard and tightened, the cheery sparkle in the candid eyes flickered and died down, leaving them cold and implacable. To Hilary, who had some small experience of the type, the new expression was unmistakable. This sleek and chubby man was the complete and authentic killer.

"The man Potsinger," the exponent of revolutionary ethics said judicially, "was a homicide of a particularly deliberate and far-seeing type; one, moreover, who, once his plans were matured, executed them with the same thoroughness as they had been prepared. A mass-murderer who, with practice, had rendered himself as nearly immune from discovery as natural cunning and entire lack of scruple or pity can assume. Except, of course, by discovery from one, if I may say so, as fervent in humanity and expert in criminal psychology as my unworthy self."

As though he'd heard the same thing many times before the Filipino was immobile as ever.

"Or one with your own high mission, sir," he said, and in the nod of the man at the table was a certain self-complacency.

"With, as you say," he agreed, "my own high mission.... And, harking back to the unspeakable Potsinger, it may interest you to learn that through his own paid agent he had heavily bribed the foreman of the jury who tried him― a gentleman, I may say, with whom a little later it is my intention to deal."

In the ensuing few minutes, when the subdued tick of the French clock on the mantel was the only sound to break into that queer brooding stillness, Hilary John Fortescue had never thought so hard or so intensively in his life.

As he had to make his getaway from that room-with every word spoken the necessity for unobserved escape became more urgent. Because he knew that the two in the room beyond the curtains were in deadly earnest, and that were he discovered his excuse that he was lurking there to snatch some food would not carry any weight with them.

The continuation of that bizarre conversation, indeed, went only to confirm this.

"The transaction of to-day was completed so satisfactorily," the man at the table broke into the silence by saying, "what of those others?"

He paused― ominously it seemed to Hilary. Then:

"The man, Theodore Brand, for instance?"

The servant, motionless as to body, but his strange dark eyes luminous, was on the point of reply, but before he could do so his master, his formerly cheerful mouth drawn to an expression of almost fanatical purpose, his whole face that of a visionary― but a visionary of strange and abnormal tendencies― broke in again.

"Not that Brand is alone in infamy, of course," he said, coolly. "Everywhere is the tiger, the shark, and the snake."

He paused, and, watching him intently, the Filipino said nothing.

"You and I, Sancho," his master continued, his voice vibrant, "are getting on in years― young as in some surprising fashion you at least have contrived to preserve yourself."

"As you know, sir," the servant agreed gravely, "I have my own system of mental and bodily control― and exercises. For the servant, and, if the liberty is not too great, the devoted friend of one engaged in a mission so― so fine and at times of such terrible danger, it is necessary to keep each mental and physical quality at its highest."

His master reached for, and, waving aside the Filipino who darted forward, lighted a fresh cigarette.

"Probably you're right," he agreed, and corrected himself. "No, not probably― assuredly. But how fortunate for me, Sancho, to have in my service one who always has preferred the role of watcher in the market place to that of slumberer in the temple."

The man made a gesture of repudiation. "What I do, and what I am, that you have taught and made me," he answered quietly.

When, following upon another of those brief and contemplative pauses, the older man resumed, once more the level voice was tinged with passion.

"A few years more or less― what matter?" he said. "We have money― far more than for our comfort or our work we are ever likely to need. In the past, subtly, swiftly, and, so far as possible, humanely, we have dealt with some sixteen of those without whose presence the world is a sweeter, cleaner place― cheats, exploiters of the needy, preyers upon the weak and defenceless― carrion whom the law could not, or would not, punish. Searching your mind, can you find any reason why we should cease our activities?"

His voice lowered, now, to a tone that, to Hilary, watching so intently behind the curtain, vibrated with a strange and awful tensity.

"Any reason, for example," he supplemented, "why we should withhold our hand from a certain associate of Potsinger, who has been too self-Inflated to heed our warning?"

Face and voice bore the inspiration of the devotee; an enthusiasm apparently that Sancho had no object other than to foster.

"As master chooses," he said quietly, and the other's face lighted to a more determined purpose still. But, to the bemused Hilary's relief, with the cigarette still smouldering between his fingers, he rose to his feet.

"In my study," he said, "I have data collected since I first began to explore possibilities. Come―"

The closing of the door left Hilary still wondering blankly what in the name of fortune he was to do about it.

One thing at least was certain. With so much at stake, he could not now spend the night in the summerhouse. It was up to him to get away― at once, and at speed. Whatever the motive behind the actions of this pair of madmen, the sooner they were put where those enterprises were impossible the better for society in general.

Meanwhile, however, the excitement of those revelations had made him, if possible, more hungry even than before. The door was closed. From the whole house came no sound of any kind. Probably by this the pair would be too wholly en-grossed over the "data," whatever that might be, to give heed for anything else. And almost within reaching distance of that famished wanderer, Hilary John Fortescue, was food.

Coming out from behind the curtains, he tiptoed softly to the sideboard, and swiftly possessed himself of the leg of a chicken and a couple of rolls, folding the prize in a handkerchief that fortunately was within measurable distance of cleanliness.

Then, just as he was stuffing his prize In his pocket, from the corridor outside came the soft shuffle of feet. So soft, indeed, and so close to the door, that they could not have been more than a couple of yards away. Actually the door was swinging open as the bedraggled but swiftly-moving figure of Hilary John Fortescue shot through the window.

As he sped through what now was the comparative darkness of the drive, he glanced over his shoulder. No one, however, was in sight, and when momentarily he stopped to listen there was no sound of pursuing footsteps. Apparently then he had not been seen.

Distinctly that was a relief. And as, munching his stolen meal, he plodded down the road, it came to him that he was more closely approximating to the condition known as "breeze-up" than was altogether good for his self-esteem. But there had been something about that amiable and chubby man-something that in the few moments it had been allowed to rear its head through the veneer of respectability he affected, had chilled Hilary to the bone.

Yes...

It was at this point that somewhere behind him a twig snapped sharply. Hilary spun round, a sudden fear leaping into his mind. He just caught sight of a dark form with arm upraised. Then came a terrible pain at the base of his skull. Without a groan, Hilary John Fortescue pitched face downwards on to the road.

4

CONSCIOUSNESS came back only slowly, and by progressive stages.

The first factor of which he was aware was that where before his head had been, now was only a pain― a searing, agonising pain, as if his whole skull was surrounded by a tightly-drawn red-hot band that was rapidly burning its way to the brain centre.

Then, at last, slowly but definitely, the worst of the pain wore itself out, leaving his mind comparatively clear. And if the first and few subsequent efforts towards constructive thought left him more exhausted than ever in his life, at least he found himself able to move.

With returning consciousness, also, came recollection. Dimly he remembered that chubby, smiling, and immaculate man at the table, and the lithe, dark servant who attended him; of the conversation that, cowering behind the curtains, he had heard between them.

He remembered the pair leaving the room together to examine that "data" the chubby but no longer smiling man had mentioned; his own quick dart into the room and hasty pocketing of the rolls and chicken; the sudden opening of the door and his lightning getaway. Lastly, that frightful clump on the head.

As best he might, he put disturbing thoughts aside. He could come back to them later, when, having settled to something more approaching normal, his mental and physical mechanism would better be able to cope with them. Also, for the moment, it was more important to discover where he was and what, exactly, had happened to him.

Opening his eyes, he found that the white patch above his head was a portion of a ceiling, so that, at least, he was within doors. Rendered a shade more confident by this confirmation, he tried turning his head on his pillow, to discover the movement accompanied by only momentary pain.

It was broad daylight, and with the sun streaming through only partly-drawn curtains the objects within range were clearly discernible. He was in a bright and comfortably-furnished room.

Only― in the name of Sam Hill― whose house was it? More important still, who had brought him here? And for what purpose?

Desperate to discover the answer, with a sudden convulsive heave he sat up in bed, only, with a bitten-off groan, to sink down again; in comparison with the pain that action had brought what had gone before had been only twinges.

Then, as he lay fighting down the agony, he heard footsteps outside. A moment later the door opened.

As he turned to see who had come into the room, pain left him as though it had never been. For in his whole life he had not seen a girl who in loveliness began even to compare with the one who, a moment later, was at his side and looking down at him.

Yet, when later he came to analyse his first impressions, he realised that it was not so much her shining, red-brown hair and corn-cockle blue eyes and the ultimate perfection of teeth and figure that had gripped him, as the so much less easily de-finable charm that as an aura invested her, and that was so indissolubly bound up in her personality. There was, too, in the wholly unselfconscious grace of her, as in the peering imp of mischief that lurked in her eyes and the curve of her lips, something he found beyond measure stimulating.

"So you've decided to come to, have you?" this vision said, and her voice― to Hilary the supreme test of personality― was golden, low-pitched, and faintly husky; he noticed, as well, that her cheeks had a darker flush than before their glances had met.

From somewhere Hilary managed to summon a grin, if a slightly dubious one.

"Until you spoke, I was wondering if I was dreaming, or just dead and― rewarded," he said.

Her colour deepened still.

"Whichever it is or was, you've got to come down to earth now, anyway," she said practically, "because I've brought a doctor to have a look at you. In the meanwhile," she added, "I'll be with you again in― say a quarter of an hour?"

"That, I anticipate, will be ample," the doctor agreed, and almost before the door closed behind her the examination was in progress-one wherein Hilary was delighted to give his attendant credit for the sensitiveness with which his fingers strayed and felt about the storm-centre of pain-a lump half the size of a hen's egg Immediately above the base of his skull.

The examination concluded, the doctor nodded non-committally.

"Nothing especially serious, anyway," he said easily, "or that a few days' rest and quiet won't remedy. For which, incidentally, you have to thank a skull of the apparent strength and consistency of reinforced concrete. Meanwhile my immediate job is to send you a sleeping draught."

"I should have thought," Hilary said, regarding him with aversion, "I've had enough sleeping draughts already. However, if you say so...."

It was a good fifty minutes after the doctor had left that the girl returned. Then, a brimming medicine glass in her hand, her advance to the bed was soft-footed but purposeful.

"As I'm instructed that on no account are you to talk, I kept away until this was made up," she explained. "After you've drunk it― not a word until, your mind cleared of delusions, you wake up."

"Grant me fortitude!" Hilary murmured, but drained the glass obediently. Then, as he handed it back: "What do you mean― my mind freed of delusion?"

"That heaven stuff you were wandering about just now," she said innocently. Then as he looked at her very hard indeed. "And you are not to talk!"

"Just―" he pleaded, "one little question."

She hesitated― and fell.

"Well?" she said, dubiously.

"If not in heaven, where am I?" he said, looking at her harder than ever.

"Bed," she said, and stole out of the room.

Within three minutes of the closing of the door Hilary was asleep. When he awakened it was to discover the girl beside him again, this time complete with break-fast tray.

"If that's what the doctor ordered," he remarked with sincerity after they had exchanged greetings, "it's the right prescription, I'm all for it."

"Don't talk, eat," replied the girl, who looked even lovelier than on the previous day.

"Surely you know," Hilary said, spearing a piece of kidney, "that intelligent conversation is nature's ozone to the gastric juices? ... Or don't you?"

"Is it necessary to the process that it's intelligent?" she asked dubiously. "What I mean is..."

"I know exactly what you mean, and I deplore it," he broke in severely. "Besides, eight o'clock in the morning is no time for repartee, anyway. And, by the way, though I should simply hate to appear before you in the light of Inquisitive Isadore, I should be really grateful if I had the remotest idea of my present whereabouts. In other words― where am I?"

Her face suddenly serious, she looked at him for a moment in silence. After-wards he knew that she was attempting to reconcile those deplorable clothes of his with a Public School accent and a certain inconsequent savoir-faire she found rather stimulating. It was not every man, she told herself, who, following a crash on the head that would have sent nine in ten to the mortuary, could have adopted that attitude.

"I was driving home from a dance," she said at last. "At exactly what awful hour of the a.m. I'd be ashamed to tell you; anyway, it was quite light. And suddenly I saw something lying in the middle of the road, a few yards ahead. I managed to pull up with a few feet to spare, and, risking the chance of a hold-up, got out of the car to investigate."

"And it was me?" Hilary inquired. "Or should it be I?"

"It was you," she confirmed, shuddering a little at the recollection. "Apparently you'd been hit on the head, and with some considerable violence, with the usual blunt instrument. A particularly large and knobby one, too, I should imagine. Fortunately, however, there's very little traffic about these parts― ours is a road that doesn't lead to anywhere in particular― otherwise you'd probably have been run over."

He regarded her incredulously, and with admiration. Clad as he had been in what must have appeared to her as the discarded stock of a rag-and-bone merchant, the obvious course, that would have been followed automatically by nine hundred ar ninety-nine people in a thousand, would have been to lug him out of harm's way to the side of the road, and by telephoning the news to the nearest police station disclaim all further responsibility.

He said, quietly, but with intense sincerity:

"Words being so entirely inadequate, I'm not going to attempt to thank you; you must take my gratitude on trust. Am incidentally, I'm not sorry about the absence of traffic. One of the few human experiences I've never exactly hanker after is to be well and truly run over...

"And then what did you do?" he went on to ask, following upon a pause where the imps that dwelt in her eyes came dancing to the surface. Apparently there was something about this lad with the keen unshaven face, steady grave eyes, an poverty-stricken wardrobe that rather appealed to her.

"What would you expect me to do in such circumstances?" she said. "Jump on your face, or practise driving backward and forwards over your unconscious body? One of the servants helped me to lug you upstairs, incidentally― and get you out of your clothes.... And there between us, we― well, we kind of washed you. Probably it was the shock of such unskilled labor that brought you round. Neither of us had ever washed anyone before. Except, of course, ourselves.

"The rest you know... By the way, my name happens to be Moreland― Sarah of that ilk. whatever an ilk may be. Sally to my friends," she added, and was glad that his breeding rose superior to the unintended invitation.

"Then all I can find to say, Miss Moreland," Hilary returned, "is just― thank  you. Of course I know it's frightfully inadequate, only in this case it happens to mean rather a lot more than it sounds."

Before she had time to reply there were footsteps outside-a quiet as it were, confident tread, that in some odd fashion suggested benevolence and good will. A moment, and with the silence demanded by a sickroom, the door opened

"And how is the patient?" a gentle and cultured voice inquired softly.

It was a moment before Hilary was able to reply. Before, on the previous night, the shattering darkness closed in upon him, his most poignant impression had been of that same pleasant tone, and of those same eyes that now beamed down with such obvious concern for his well-being. And though for so large a proportion of the time he had remained hidden behind the window-curtain those eyes had not been benevolent at all, but had glowed with the flame of a cold and terrible purpose, without any doubt whatever the owner of that chubby, smiling face was the master of the house wherein he had overheard those unimagined things. By some ironic gesture of the high gods he had been taken back to the very house from where, so precariously and so short a time before, he had made his escape.

Later, when he came to think over the incident and his own conduct of it, he felt entitled to a small bouquet for the rapidity with which, in spite of his condition and the blank unexpectedness of the encounter, he pulled himself together. Perhaps it was, he thought, that the cherub detailed for his protection had reminded him of the unwisdom of giving any hint of recognition.

"The doctor tells me that thanks to a skull of solid ivory and a constitution of reinforced concrete there's not much harm done, thank you, sir," he replied.

As if reassured by this satisfactory report, his host's smile broadened. Then chidingly, he shook his head.

"In which, I'm afraid," he said, "you're somewhat of an optimist. The most robust of constitutions is subject to the law of reaction following upon shock."

As, then, with a quick, bird-like jerk of his head, he turned to the girl, there was a genuine kindliness in his tone.

"And so, my dear," he added, "now that in some measure our anxiety is allayed perhaps it would be as well to allow nature to complete in quiet her work of restoration."

Anxious to discover the exact, as it were atmosphere of her response, Hilary, too turned his eyes to the girl. To find, though the tone had been that of a father in speaking to a much-loved daughter, that in some indefinable fashion her reply was lacking in a corresponding warmth; to Hilary it was as though she had erected a wall between them against which those plump, well-tended hands battered in vain

"Probably you're right," she said with cool politeness, and with a quick and friendly smile nodded to Hilary and went quietly from the room. But as she opened the door he saw that for an infinitesimal moment her eyes met his own. And if he was capable of interpreting the human expression, in that glance was something of warning.

As soon as they were alone the chubby man introduced himself, skirting lightly also, on his career. His name, it appeared was Septimus Sainter, his business, from which he had retired some five years previously, that of cotton importer from the Southern States of America.

In return for this information Hilary gave his own story. Immediately Mr Sainter was all sympathy.

"Dear, dear!" he murmured, before speaking giving consideration to what had been told him. "Am I to take it, then, Mr. Fortescue, that you're so unfortunate as to have been left quite alone in the world? Or, at least, in this country?" He spread white hands In a gesture of commiseration. "Not a single relative or friend to― er― extend a welcome to the returned wanderer?"

"Not a soul who knows, even, I'm back in England― or, beyond one or two school and Cambridge friends, who by this probably have forgotten my existence, to give a hoot if they did know," Hilary said.

The voice and expression of his host radiated only kindly interest as he said:

"Not even your― er― lawyers?"

Hilary shook his head.

"Well, well, well!" Mr. Sainter exclaimed cheerfully and, for one well into middle age, slid with surprising agility from his seat on the bed. "We'll soon put that right, at all events."

"You mean you'll be good enough to telephone?" Hilary questioned.

Mr. Sainter screwed his chubby face into a look of mild annoyance.

"Unfortunately, my servant is even now engaged in using a neighbour's instrument to report that my own phone went out of commission only half an hour ago," he said ruefully. "Now, I suppose, I shall have to wait the usual unconscionable time before it's repaired. In the meanwhile, suppose you drop Mr. Crew a line? He happens to be a personal friend of mine, and the only active partner remaining in the business." He fell into one of his reflective pauses. "And as, following upon your unfortunate experience of last night, it is essential you shall have a few hours in which to recuperate, perhaps you'd better make the appointment for to-morrow afternoon. So if you'll allow me I'll bring you pen and paper."

So saying, he went out of the room to return in a few moments with the necessary materials.

His head still confused and his brain uncertain, Hilary wrote that note only with difficulty. When at last it was completed he handed it to the solicitous Mr. Sainter, who rather obviously refrained from glancing at the contents before carefully folding the sheet and putting it in the envelope.

"Splendid!" he exclaimed cheerfully, and slipped the letter into his pocket. "Something accomplished― in this case a very pleasant and necessary something, too, I should imagine― something done, it is fervently to be hoped, has earned you a― er― long repose."

Was it the question flashed almost sub-consciously through Hilary's brain, due to a slight feverishness caused by his crack on the head that it was as if behind those gay and kindly words lurked something not quite as their face value would suggest; or that, as with a friendly, quiet smile his host stepped soft-footed through the door, it was as if some shadow which had seemed to people that comfortably-furnished room left with him?

As Hilary lay back among his pillows he realised that, even had he not overheard that amazing conversation of the previous evening, the genial and ultra-sympathetic Mr. Sainter would have occurred to him as being just a shade too good to be true. So strongly, indeed, had he come to feel that the sooner he was out of this house and trudging the long road to London the better it would be, that but for the girl who had befriended him he would have tried to leave immediately.

But not only would such a surreptitious exit be the blackest ingratitude for such genuine kindness, but a distinct and inexcusable breach of faith. And to break faith with a girl like Sally Moreland was not to be thought of.

Figuratively, at this mental pronouncing of her name, he sat up with a jerk. Exactly who was she, anyway, this girl with the lovely face and figure and exquisite voice and breeding? What precisely her connection with the genial Mr. Sainter?

Hilary decided he was not going to leave Greensward Lodge until he'd seen her again and, in addition, had a further and private talk with her. A perfectly absurd idea on the face of it, but somehow he felt he would not be all the world surprised to find there was something rather special she wanted to say to him.

Gradually, at that, speculation faded, and he drifted into sleep.

5

FOR the first moment of renewed consciousness he had no idea of what, with such completeness, had awakened him. One moment he'd been as sound asleep as ever in his life, the next, here he was with every faculty stretched to the limit of alertness― and with everything about him entirely silent.

Then, with a suddenness equal to that of his awakening, from the door behind him came a click― subdued, furtive; followed a moment later by a second. Instantaneously the room flooded to light.

And though still there was no sound at all, and, in the position in which he lay his view was circumscribed by the wall immediately opposite, he knew he was alone no longer.

When, jerked to a seated position, swiftly he turned his head, it was with no particular surprise he found himself staring into the dark-skinned face of the Filipino.

Nor did it require any subtle sixth sense to tell him that he was in danger, and danger urgent and deadly at that.

For it was in this first instant that, In a flash of intuition, was revealed to Hilary that the previous night he had not escaped from that room as wholly undetected as he had imagined; that it was this inanimate body-servant who, with muffled feet and such perfected cunning, had trailed him down that lonely Hampstead road, savagely and expertly "coshed" him, and, under the impression that he was dead, left him where he lay. His muscles contracted.

"Hello! what is it you may happen to want?" he inquired in just the correct tone between guest and servant. And even if, his pulse quickening, he read the answer in the sheer blankness of the other's eye, he was careful not to betray that knowledge.

Standing quit motionlessly by the door, the Filipino made no reply. So, stifling a synthetic yawn, but with his brain working under forced draught:

"Whatever it is, I'd be obliged if you'd get about it quickly. I'm tired, need sleep and plenty of it," Hilary said, and stretched luxuriously, and, as though to relapse once more among his pillows, feinted to turn sideways―the exact position he judged that would be most to that still, motionless man's liking. Instead, however, of throwing himself back, with a frantic call on his muscles and a split second to spare, he propelled himself feet foremost to the floor.

With one reservation, the move was admirable tactics. Not only did it transfer the element of surprise to the opposition but it had the still greater advantage of placing the bed between them. In the preoccupation of the moment, however what Hilary had omitted to take into account was the effect of such violent movement on that damaged head of his.

Actually, for that first moment his feet touched the floor, when his brain felt as if it was being squeezed hard between two red-hot flat irons, he thought― and hoped―  he would swoon dead away. Then, the pain infinitesimally relaxing, came the two further difficulties, first of keeping his feet, and then of regaining the upright. His own blindly swaying form as axle, the bed revolved about him like a merry-go-round out of control, and with the walls swinging as wildly in the reverse direction, dazed and pain-ridden, helpless and impotent, he crouched there awaiting the inevitable.

Nor had he long to wait.

When the Filipino moved, it was quickly. Silent as a panther, in one incredibly lithe spring he was over the bed. Simultaneously with his list-covered feet hitting the floor his hands shot out and thrust the bemused Hilary shatteringly backwards. It was a special misfortune to the latter that his head should strike the carpet almost on the exact spot where, on the previous night, his assailant's cosh had descended. A flash of white-hot light, blinding, agonising, lacerated his brain.

Fingers of steel fastened about his throat. His senses drowned in intense and ultimate darkness.

Except that it seemed Incredibly long, he never knew for what period that darkness lasted before, together with the relaxation of the pressure about his throat, the blackness faded to an indeterminate semi-luminous grey, and from that to a quivering, uncertain haze.

It was when in some measure he had succeeded in pulling himself together that from somewhere invisible a voice came― a voice that even through the still undisturbed mists of his brain he would have recognised from ten thousand other and similar sounds.

"And now, Sancho," that voice said, coolly, "you shall lift him up. And, if you're wise, it'll be gently, because if you happen to show even a very little roughness I'm liable to quiver so with indignation that the tremor'll communicate itself to my trigger finger."

A second voice, entirely unemotional, but, to Hilary, distressingly familiar, said:

"As madam wishes."

Arms, not predominantly muscular,' but teak hard, were thrust beneath Hilary's Inert body; with neither strain nor jar he was raised to the seated position.

Presently the mists of pain to some extent dissolved, and he was able to look about him.

The cold light of battle in her eyes, and a quite steady hand and automatic pistol directed undeviatingly at the Filipino's mid-section, it was The Girl who stood there.

BLINKING uncertainly, he watched her in amazement. Though she did not meet his eyes it was evident she was aware of his scrutiny.

"Sorry I can't look at you while I'm speaking," she said practically, in that golden voice of hers. "Only, in dealing with friend Sancho, it doesn't do to let your eyes wander. He moves too suddenly and with too much speed. I call him 'friend,' incidentally, because I think that, pretty soon, he's going to need one.... There's some cord on the bed there. If you haven't forgotten the knots and lashings of your O.T.C. days, perhaps you wouldn't mind getting busy with it."

Dazedly, under the protection of her pistol, Hilary complied. Sancho made no attempt at resistance. But when, having completed what he was inclined to think was quite a satisfactory job, Hilary propped the now helplessly-bound Filipino in a corner, it was with a gesture almost of collapse that the girl subsided into a big basket-chair.

"And that's that," she exclaimed, her tone a mixture of relief and weariness. She searched Hilary's face. "And now what?"

Not quite catching her meaning, for a moment he did not reply.

"It seems," he said at last, "that as the atmosphere of this house is not particularly healthy for the young and innocent, something in the nature of a rapid and unobtrusive exit is indicated for me. After, that is, I've assured myself there's no trouble in the offing for you. If there is, you don't get me out of here with a dragrope."

She nodded, her eyes, so vividly blue, and yet, now, so clouded, still intent upon his.

"As apparently you've gathered something concerning my uncle it's to his ad-vantage to suppress, his last intention is for you to leave here alive," she said coolly. "I should imagine his reaction to my own interference will be-unpleasant. If, that is, I had any intention of waiting for the interview."

To the last degree concerned, he would have broken in, but she gestured him to silence.

"Listen," she said, and now her voice was urgent. "As I've no idea where in the house my uncle's parked himself, I think, to avoid further trouble, it would be as well to get a move on, and at speed."

Hilary agreed wholeheartedly, and, while the girl was out of the room collecting a few necessities, dressed himself for flight.

Sally returned just as he was ready. With her in advance, they passed swiftly down a corridor to a flight of softly-carpeted stairs; at the bottom, they crossed a panelled hall from whose walls looked down the portraits― admirably executed so far as by a passing glance Hilary was able to distinguish― to a large, oaken, nail-studded door.

"This way," Sally said, when they were on the terrace.

Here, following a gesture that demanded silence, Sally, listening intently, stood for a moment peering into the gloom ahead. No sound coming to her, however, she led the way past the french windows, behind where Hilary had cowered on the previous night, to the end of the building and to the right.

There, confronting them through the gloom, was a garage, with the door ajar.

"Splendid!" Sally whispered, relief in her voice. "I was afraid we'd find it locked."

She switched on the light. The car was a high-powered two-seater of recent make. The only trouble was that, unlike the door, it was locked.

"I should have thought of that." Sally said despondently. "It's a way uncle has since he had a car stolen from a park in town. Furthermore, he keeps the key on his watch-chain."

Hilary's mouth set grimly.

"If you'll give me a rough idea of where I'm likely to find him, I'll endeavour to persuade Uncle Crippen to hand over that key," he said. "And if I'm not back hen in ten minutes you'd better make a quick departure for the nearest telephone-box and ring up the police."

To his surprise the protest she was on the point of launching died swiftly away.

"I think probably you're right," she said slowly. "Particularly as, even if the worst comes to the worst, the fact of me being still outside the house is bound to cramp his style."

She handed over the pistol.

"Probably you'll find him in his study― the door's in the far right-hand corner of the hall. And unless I hear from you in precisely ten minutes it's me for the telephone."

Hilary took the gun and passed softly out of the garage to the drive.

He had not gone half-a-dozen paces, however, before, like a lizard into a hole, he had darted back to her side.

"Look!" he whispered, pointing, and, as she followed the direction of his arm caught the quick catch of her breath and a tautening of the flesh to his touch.

For in the light of the full moon that a moment before had broken through a cloud-bank they could see, turning the curve of the drive, three men.

6

UNOBTRUSIVELY, the two slipped round the angle of the garage where they were in the shadow.

By the time the three figures had covered only half the length of the drive, it could be seen that they were toughs of the worst order; a few more yards, and the unpleasant nature of that trio became more apparent still. One-who occupied the middle position-was without exception the biggest man Hilary had ever seen, six feet six if an inch, with a colossal breadth of shoulder and gorilla-like length of arms and huge tree-trunks of limbs. Nearer still, he saw that the countenance of the man was entirely at one with the frame― a hugely broad, high cheek-boned face, with the faintly blue tinge of the quarter-bred Oriental: Pathan or Anglo-Sikh, probably.

A tremor passed through the arm beneath Hilary's fingers.

"Chimp Fargus," she breathed, and shrank further into the shadows. "If we get away now, we're going to be lucky."

Pressed into the shadow, they waited tensely, but the three passed without a glance. And the instant they turned the angle of the drive to the terrace the arm beneath Hilary's fingers urged him forward.

"Not a sound," she whispered, and made cautiously for the open. Unwise, it occurred to Hilary, without preliminary reconnaissance; but, because he would not risk her safety, he followed at once. In a few seconds they reached the road.

Running strongly now, they came at last to a broad, lamp-lit path that on its further side was backed by a line of trees, and tall, closely-growing shrubs; here, evidently, Sally's experience of the neighbourhood told her there would be sanctuary.

And here, with not a soul in sight, it seemed likely they would soon need all the sanctuary there was going. From the direction of the house came the throb of a high-powered engine.

It was a few moments later that, devastatingly, their luck turned. Within a couple of hundred yards or so of safety Sally tripped over a loose stone, stumbled blindly forward a few paces, and, with a stifled cry, crumpled awkwardly to the ground. In the livid moonlight Hilary saw the pallor of her face.

"And that, of course," she said through pain-twisted lips and with an attempt at a smile at which he wanted to burn joss sticks, "puts the tin lid on it. My ankle's sprained all out of shape."

Even in that distracted moment Hilary did not instantly reply. His attention was taken by the blare of a motor-horn, and, as he swung round, the glare of headlights, as the big car turned from the drive into the road.

Hurriedly, but with the extremity of care, he raised Sally to the upright, only, once that position was painfully attained, to realise the hopelessness of their situation. Instantaneously, with the injured foot touching the ground, he saw how involuntarily she winced from the contact. She had about as much chance of using her feet as he of growing wings.

Supporting her weight, he turned to face the house; watched the car turn right until it reached the beginning of the path by the side of which, now, they stood; saw them get out-the whole five of them, Sainter, Sancho, Chimp Fargus, and the two others. And against the white glare of the moon he knew their own motionless figures stood out as sharply as silhouettes on paper.

Without a word, he slid his hand beneath her knees, swung her into his arms, and. surrendering every last ounce of his re-serves, streaked desperately for the line of trees at the further side of the road ahead. With a natural gift for silent movement that had been perfected in the wilds, he knew that once he could gain this shelter it would take very expert trackers to trace him.

Though Sally, with her slim, lithe form was lighter even than he expected, the handicap slowed his speed by half, so that with every step the pounding feet of the pursuit became more evident. Even then, but for one element that in his preoccupation he had not taken into account, it is possible he might have made sanctuary.

It was when he was within a hundred yards or so of what might otherwise have been safety that a further sound super-imposed itself against those rapidly-gaining footsteps. A dull, hollow, pluppp uppp.

Two bullets from a silencer-fitted pistol, fired, however, from too far a range for accurate shooting.

With relief Hilary saw that, however remote, there was the vestige of a chance. Some distance down the path towards which he was making, two faint lights were crawling-and even in the moment of his first sight of them it seemed to him that they gathered speed. Bicycles, or the twin, dim lamps of a horse drawn vehicle, and the driver or cyclists coming towards him.

Remote as his chances appeared, the only thing was to carry on; the distance between hunted and hunters was so reduced that in the time occupied in putting down his burden and groping for his automatic the saffron-tinted Goliath who was leading the pursuit would be on him. Even in the remote event of his being able to cope with that gargantuan man, the reinforcements who still pounded in the rear would very rapidly turn the scale.

Then, with devastating unexpectedness, came still another shot. This time, however, not from behind, but so close to his ear that, startled and deafened by the explosion, he stumbled, so that it was only with difficulty he wrenched himself to the upright again. A voice cried, vibrant with mingled excitement and disappointment:

"Missed!"

"Moses' moccasins!" Hilary panted, "where did you collect the cannon?"

"Out of your pocket," she replied perkily. "That's learnt him a bit, I think. Anyway, he's not coming on so fast as he was..."

From the tail of his eye Hilary saw that the twin lights from the path ahead had drawn appreciably nearer; that now, instead of side by side, they travelled one behind the other. Not a horse and cart, then, but a couple of cyclists. As assuring more mobility, and probably doubling the measure of help, all to the good, that.

Now, feverish to find her target, Sally's head was so high above his shoulder as to frustrate his object in shielding her.

"For the love of Mike, keep your head, do..." he panted, and because the bullet that crashed into his shoulder pitched him face forward to the ground, and that, in falling, that already badly misused head of his encountered a stone, was unable to complete the warning.

He had a nightmare impression of the rush of heavy feet from behind; footsteps less heavy, but even swifter, from the opposite direction; of what seemed like an enormous shadow hovering about the place where, by his fall, his burden had been thrown; of hoarse cries and furious shoutings; of a mass of grunting, straining, struggling bodies; of a pistol shot, sharp and resonant; of a further shot, and still another; of the slow slump of a second body beside his own; of heavy footsteps retreating; of whisperings and purposeful movements.

And then, slowly at first, but cumulatively, as if the whole world was being swept to disintegration, everything about him went grey, and when that grey rolled back it gave place to a sable-black pall that, closing suddenly down on him, enveloped him in its own impenetrable blackness, and he was shut out from all knowledge of time and space and life itself.

He had no idea how long it was before, dimly and uncertainly, he became re-aware of that greyness. Then, slowly as fog-clouds from the sea, it advanced, and as it rolled forward so, gradually, it dissolved, and with that dissolution it was as if someone was pumping intensely hot air into his shoulder; if the old but intensified pain in his head had permitted him to speak he would have yelled for them to stop.

With what later appealed to him as surprisingly good sense, he lay quiet for a little, trying to collect himself, and with each passing moment his senses cleared. At last, then, as preliminary to an attempt to rid himself of the discomfort of whatever pressed into his head, he risked opening his eyes.

His first impression was of a star sprinkled sky of deep, dark blue, in which rode a full moon that lighted the landscape to a white, uncanny clarity; his next of a row of highly-burnished brass buttons set on a vast acreage of thick blue cloth. Tilting his head still further backward, he encountered an enormous red face, whose natural good nature was for the moment subordinate to a quite unofficial solicitude, and a badly-discoloured eye and nose. Surmounting that rubicund sphere was a policeman's helmet.

" 'E's comin' round, m'lord." said a voice that issued from that same wide face.

"That's good," said another voice in a tone of satisfaction, and, turning his eyes in the direction from whence issued the sound, Hilary saw, a little to the side but on a level with his own, a second face.

Not round and red, this time, but brown and lean, and, had it not been that the keen grey eyes looked rather strained and anxious, and that there was a distinct and evidently rapidly-developing swelling on the lower jaw, and a large but apparently superficial bruise on the forehead, a face of unusual good nature. About the same age as himself, this stranger, it came to Hilary; dressed with that immaculate carelessness that of all nationalities only those of these islands may attain, and only then to those of certain upbringing, in tweeds and violently-collared polo sweater.

Then, suddenly, with a rush, everything came back-the whole stark horror of it. Hilary craned his head eagerly-and did not see what he sought.

"The lady who was with me?" he gasped, struggling with a wave of faintness that threatened to overwhelm him again.

He found no reassurance in the long pause that followed.

"I'm sorry to say, mate," the policeman said soberly at last, "that she's gorn."

With a jerk that racked his shoulder in a red-hot surge of pain and his head in a white-hot stab of agony, Hilary sat bolt up-right.

"Do you mean," he cried hoarsely, "that those thugs have got her?" And when the policeman's enormous hand would have forced him back into his former position, thrust it aside, and contrived somehow to stagger to his feet. Once at the upright, moreover, it was not to that good-natured officer he turned, but to the man in the polo sweater.

"Tell me about it," he said shortly, and saw with what good-humoured shrewdness the stranger looked at him.

"As a matter of fact," the latter said, in a voice whose pleasant drawl was unable wholly to disguise a genuine concern, "it all came so sudden-like I don't quite know what's happened myself. I was cycling along the road, and just as I caught up with this Malefactor's Menace here, there came the sound of ordnance by night. M.M. pricked up his ears so high they lifted his helmet. 'What's that?' he said, with the alertness of the born investigator.

" 'Oh, father'," I said, "I hear the sound of guns.' "

With a more extensive knowledge of that imperturbable raconteur, Hilary was able to appreciate that, far from an example of his lack of sense of the fitness of things, this recital was intended to give his vibrating and much-battered audience a chance to pull himself together. At the time, however, all Hilary was able to realise was a positive fury of impatience.

"Would you mind very much," he quavered hoarsely, "getting on with it?"

Instead of showing resentment, following another quick glance at him, the other's manner became more brisk.

"Right!" he said. "We started flat out for what, as almost at once there was another shot, we were prepared to accept as the scene of conflict. Just as we pulled up on the road opposite to and a hundred or so yards from what by this time seemed the focal-point of excitement the final shot came. The leading figure, who gave the impression of being slightly handicapped by the carriage of some large and heavy burden, stumbled and fell. You don't have to set yourself an examination to know who that someone was. Then the leader of the hounds― a fella who looked like Goliath's big brother Alf― rushed forward and gathered someone, who I presume was the lady concerning whom you're inquiring, into his arms. By that time we were within distance, and for a few moments a happy time was enjoyed by all. But though one or two of them will remember us with pain for some little time to come― for the Burglar's Bugbear here wields a snappy truncheon, let me tell you― as we were outnumbered by some two to one, we each took a liberal allowance over the ten-seconds' count."

In spite of the calculated inconsequence of his tone, this tune, when he paused, Hilary saw that his eyes were troubled.

"Then we came to where you were, a wounded an' unconscious body, if I may be permitted the expression... And so-what do we do now? After, that is, we've seen you well and safely to hospital?"

For the moment, due to the circumstance that something ice-cold and numbing seemed to have closed about his heart, Hilary did not reply. In common with all those who have attempted to wrest a living from the wilds, he had taken his share of hard knocks, material and spiritual, but never one with even a quota of the sheer defeatist qualities of this one.

Sally was in the clutches of that smiling, pink-faced fanatic who, so that he might continue his crazy scheme for the cleansing of society, would have about the same compunction in eliminating her as the ordinary man would have in killing an insect pest!

"Hospital nothing!" he said, and then, again, all about him went black, the whole world rocked and swayed, and he was falling through illimitable space.

Police-Constable Apps, looking down upon that crumpled form, said doubtfully:

"This is a go and a 'alf, m'lord, this is! Under the circumstances what I think is the best thing to do is for you to give me permission to use your telephone, so's I can call up for the ambulance to get 'im to 'ospital straight away."

It was quite a moment, however, before the other replied. As he, too. stood looking down upon the derelict's pain-ridden face it was as though as well as sympathy for one who had put up a quite satisfactory scrap against an opposition that must have represented a quite considerable shade of odds, an instinct for adventure was urging that here was some-thing that, followed to its conclusion, might prove very much worth while. Additionally, the poor bloke had made it so desperately clear that hospital .as the last place in which he wanted to find himself.

"Listen to me for a minute," the stranger said slowly. "Instead of to a hospital full of iodoform and efficiency, what about bedding him down in my house? Three acres of bedrooms just shrieking for tenancy; it's only a quarter of a mile or so away, and with, as your exact local knowledge will confirm, a perfectly good M.O. within a quarter of an hour's walk."

Officially, P.C. Apps looked doubtful. That this poor bloke at his feet had been shot and wounded raised the affair above the category of a private "frakkar" to the dignity of a "serious charge," and as such could be dealt with only by the properly constituted authorities. In other words, essentially this was a job for the super.

"I take it you'll be, as it were, responsible for 'is whereabouts, m'lord?" he conceded at last. "See as 'ow 'e's there to answer any questions it may seem fit ultimately to put to 'im, an' all that?"

The other bent to Hilary's feet.

"Catch hold of his head," he said curtly, "and neither jolt nor jabber more than you can help."

7

THE LODGE, one of the most beautiful and best-preserved examples of Tudor architecture in the Home Counties, had been built by the first Baron FitzRalph― who for the last few years of his life had been one of the chief financial advisers to Queen Elizabeth― as a retreat from the unceasing preoccupation of the Court.

Now, mellowed by the years and standing in five or so acres of well-kept grounds, long and low, half-timbered, tree-embowered, and warmly austere, it was as gracious a house as could be found in all southern England.

Through a wide, arched doorway they helped Hilary to a square hall, panelled and portrait-hung; in the wide, open hearth a log fire burnt cheerfully. As he was being lowered into a chair, a servant hurried discreetly from a corridor on the right.

"Bring drinks and sandwiches," Lord FitzRalph instructed. "Then telephone and ask Dr. Ward to come here."

As if his master's arrival home in company with a policeman and a dishevelled, exhausted, and blood-stained tatterdemalion was as customary as meal times, the rotund and precise little man with the egg-bald head and libellously port-wine complexion bowed attentively, withdrew, and a few moments later reappeared bearing a silver tray whereon were several plates of sandwiches, decanters, syphons, and a large bottle of old ale.

FitzRalph poured a man-sized portion of pre-war Scotch into a cut-glass beaker, added a child-sized modicum of soda, and handed the glass to Hilary.

"And no heel taps," he said. "After that if you're fit enough, you might tell us something of what all the trouble's about."

P.C. Apps nodded a somewhat battered head.

"I'll be glad to 'ave partic'lars, m'lord," he said, "to hand on to the super."

"As soon as Banks is through," FitzRalph pointed out, "you can get through from here.... Incidentally, he seems to be having some slight difficulty. That's the worst of those doctors, they will expect a decent night's rest."

From a nearby room came the rattle and re-rattle of a telephone-hook, and "Hello" constantly repeated in Banks' fruity but, towards the end, slightly-exasperated voice. Then his subdued foot-steps from the corridor, and reappearance.

"No reply, m'lord," he announced.

"How do you mean, no reply?" Fitz-Ralph demanded sharply.

"No reply from Exchange, m'lord," Banks explained deprecatingly.

FitzRalph got up and went to the instrument. They heard the click of the hook, followed by his voice, but with the tone lacking In confidence. It was only a moment or two before, his face thoughtful, he was in the hall again.

"The fact that the line's cut," he said slowly, "rather gives one to think, if you know what I mean."

Pain and fatigue disregarded, bolt upright, now, in his chair, Hilary's face was paler even than before. It was, however, the policeman who spoke.

"Those crim'nals want time to make their escape before the 'All stations' call's sent out," he said shrewdly. "That means they're makin' for somewhere in London." He looked across at their host. "And the nearest phone from 'ere is the call-box a mile or so down the road. I'll slip straight along there an' report."

"Only that it's away to be re-painted, I'd take you down in the car," FitzRalph said regretfully, and went out of the room.

"There's a bicycle at the front door all ready" he said when, a few minutes later, he was back with them. "So now I think it would be as well to have Mr. Fortescue's story."

WELCOMING the opportunity for arranging the whole series of events into more orderly sequence in his mind, Hilary told his tale, ending with a description of his second rescue by Sally Moreland, and their escape....

"What happened after that," he said feelingly at the end, "I guess you know a bit better even than myself."

As, after emptying his tankard, P.C. Apps heaved himself from his chair, his wide, red face was a mask of mingled amazement and protest.

"This is a do, an' no blinkin' error," he said decisively. "Out o' my line, anyway, an' the sooner I gets it off my chest to the super, the more comfortable I'll feel."

"Unless, of course, you receive other orders. As soon as you've telephoned you might report back here," FitzRalph suggested.

"I'll do just that, m'lord, and return the bike," Apps responded, and strode quickly from the room.

The road surface was good, slightly downhill, and what wind there was in his favour, so that in less than five minutes he could see a little way ahead the dim light of the roadside telephone kiosk. Having reached it, jamming on his brakes, he dismounted and, as the only place available, leaned the machine against the side of the booth.

It was as he turned to reach the entrance that, from the shadow in the rear, silently, glided the lithe figure that had been waiting there.

IN the bedroom to which FitzRalph showed him, the doctor discovered that, so far as Hilary's shoulder was concerned, no medical attention was necessary. By one of those amazing vagaries with which all accustomed to gun-shot wounds are familiar, the bullet had been deflected by the buckle of his braces that, intended originally for a man far taller than himself, was situated well over the curve of the shoulder. From there, ploughing a gory but superficial furrow to the left, it had made an exit through the cloth immediately below the arm.

"No M.O. for me," Hilary pronounced with decision and satisfaction. "Just a spot of first aid and iodine, a bath and a few hours' sleep, and it's me for the road."

A not inconsiderable knowledge of men bringing it home to FitzRalph that to one in as hard bodily condition as, palpably, was this stranger, a period of forced inactivity would do more harm than good, he made only tentative objection. It was, too, with surprising gentleness and skin that he bathed, disinfected, and bound up the injured shoulder.

It was while doing this that he glanced at his wrist-watch. "It's taking Apps a long time to telephone," he remarked.

"How long has he been away" Hilary asked quickly.

"Over an hour," FitzRalph said. "And, frankly, I'm not too happy about it."

"He may have had orders that kept him away," Hilary suggested, stifling the sudden fear that leapt up in him.

FitzRalph got up from his chair.

"I'll go and have a look at that phone box, anyway," he said. "And you needn't say you'll come with me, because I shan't take you. You job at the moment is to get fit, because in the next few days you may need all the vitality there's going."

Hilary had the sense to accept this.

"Then I leave it to you, partner," he said reluctantly, and in spite of physical pain and mental turmoil was asleep within five minutes of his host leaving the house.

There was a clear moon now, so Fitz-Ralph was able to see for some considerable distance down the road ahead. The fact that there was no sign of a cyclist nor anyone else did not detract from his now very active uneasiness.

As with his long-striding gait he put that straight road behind him, and for a good half of the distance was able to distinguish the faint light of the telephone box, and still the constable did not appear, that unrest developed cumulatively to a conviction of disaster.

Drawing closer still, he could see that there was no one in the immediate vicinity of his objective; closer yet, the light that shone through the glass of the upper door showed that there was no one in the booth itself.

When he pulled up, his unrest became crystallised to something far more active. He looked up and down the road, gave a searching glance to the Heath on the one side, and, crossing the road, peered over he railings to the line of shrubs and trees in the other, but there was no sign of human presence.

Then it occurred to him to examine the road for bicycle tracks, for though the path was tarmac the tyres were new and deeply patterned. Ridden by a man as heavily built as P.C. Apps, it struck him there were bound to be places where they would leave an impression.

His first downward glance revealed, immediately outside the door of the booth, lot the imprint of a tyre, but a flat patch of hard-beaten mould; at right angles from where he stood, between the booth and the edge of the heath, another smaller but otherwise similar patch. It was at the sight of these that the sixth sense, perfected in his long months of stalking big game, urged that here was something wrong.

Why, in weather that had been dry for a week, and on a hard tarmac path, he asked himself, should there be patches of mud?

Eyes narrowed, mouth grim, he stooped, manipulated the larger blade of his penknife between that patch and the road, skirted its outer edge, so that, thus loosened, he was able to lift it from the road.

He had not to ask himself what, distinct and horribly shining in the moonlight, was the patch of brown beneath. He had seen blood too often to be mistaken.

And when he came to make similar examination of the second patch it was to discover beneath it the same grim evidence of foul play, so that he knew that here had been lurking the one who had determined that no message concerning the activities of the cherubic Mr. Sainter should reach the police; one who to that same end, and as best he might had covered up the in-evitable result of his crime.

White-faced, FitzRalph stepped from the path to the heath. Five or six yards away there was a darker patch on the tangle of coarsely-growing grass; a few yards further, another. When he came to take a line on these with the two on the road it pointed to a patch of shrub a hundred yards away. And when he made directly for that tiny clump he found all but the worst of his anticipations realised.

So concealed by the bushes he might have remained unnoticed by nine passers-by in ten, P.C. Apps was sprawled face downward to earth, projecting from the wide and now coagulated stain beneath the shoulder-blade was the haft of a tiny-hilted brass-wire-bound dagger. A dozen or so yards away, not quite so efficiently concealed, was the bicycle.

With an Infinity of care, and without removing the knife, FitzRalph turned the body over and placed his hand upon the heart.

To his relief there was the shadow of a sign of life there; when he poured spirit between the rigid, drawn back lips, the eye-lids flickered.

That was enough. There was nothing more he could do to help this stricken man, and he was within fifty yards of a telephone.

Fortunately, both as a liberal subscriber to police charities and an intermittent of-fender against the traffic regulations, he was well known to Carter, sergeant in charge of the local police station, so that within twenty minutes Apps was on his way to hospital in an ambulance.

Though by this time dawn was coming, there was a long interview at The Lodge with Sergeant Carter. Hilary was wakened to take part in it.

"A Yard job, this," the sergeant said when the full story had been told. "As a matter of fact they're busy with it already. The inspector― whom I got from his bed, an' he didn't half curse me, either― says will you call on him first thing in the morning. Ackroyd, the name is."

"We'll go," Hilary broke in to promise, "just as soon as I've seen my solicitors and got some money. Besides, I want to find out if that letter I gave Sainter ever reached there. Personally, I'm betting nine to two it didn't."

"I'm not taking the odds," the sergeant said, and left.

8

IN a comfortable but unconventionally-furnished room on the third floor of New Scotland Yard, Inspector Ackroyd, chair tilted to the exact point of balance, generously-proportioned feet on the table-desk in front of him, his bony and hard-bitten face as devoid of animation as habit and natural proclivity had rendered it, was occupying himself with a spell of what, not too optimistic-ally, he hoped would prove constructive thought. And, just now, there was more than enough to call for very constructive thought indeed.

Following upon the forcible abduction of a girl, wherein shots had been fired and a civilian wounded, in circumstances of appalling brutality a police officer had been stabbed to within measurable distance of death, and at whatever cost in time, trouble, and physical risk, the inspector was out to find the one responsible.

Although as yet he could see nothing to connect these outrages with any previous crime, it had of late been increasingly apparent to Inspector Ackroyd that the police were up against a new and unsuspected force.

And the staggering thing was that predominantly it was not against Scotland Yard this new and bizarre element was fighting; it was against those wrongdoers whom some flaw in criminal jurisprudence had rendered immune from official punishment.

So that, if his suspicions were as authentic as he had come to believe, he would be required to camp on the trail of one whose life and energy was engaged in putting where they belonged the very type that he himself would have had the utmost satisfaction in seeing in the dock. Almost as much satisfaction indeed― because there was nothing more calculated to arouse this usually placid sleuth's ire than amateur competition― as ultimately he would feel in putting in that same place those responsible for this amended but unofficial Criminal Code.

There was a knock at the door. A uniformed messenger came in and, without speaking, handed him a card.

Ackroyd, leaning as far back in his chair as was permitted by the law of gravity, stretched out and took the card.

Having assimilated this, he made a characteristic but unrefined noise that intimated he was not impressed.

Included in the gaunt detective's knowledge of the personnel of London's West End was an exact appreciation of the man who now sought an interview. And though as yet the inspector had been unsuccessful in formulating a charge that would assure Theodore Brandt (to employ the pre-war and naturalisation spelling) a residence in prison that would be commensurate with his career and character, part of that realisation was that the man was of the worst type of swindler and share-pusher.

"Show him up," he instructed curtly, and occupied the next few minutes in speculating as to what particular form of fear brought this unpleasant criminal to the one place he might have been expected to avoid.

There was a tap at the door. It opened to disclose the messenger, who stood aside to allow his charge to enter.

As the visitor hurried across the floor, the inspector, watching him from lowered and expressionless eyes, was impressed by the change that, since he last saw him, that plausible man had undergone.

In the ordinary way a beaming man, this Theodore Brand, with a voice of vehement geniality and wide and expansive gestures. The type, Ackroyd conceded grudgingly, you were inclined instinctively to trust― until you looked into his eyes and read so much of the history he hoped was buried there.

He was not in the least ingenuous, however, as, his wide face mottled and sweat-ridden, he halted pantingly before Ackroyd's desk.

"You are the high official for protection to appeal to, ain't it?" he jerked when he had sufficiently steadied himself. In moments of exceptional excitement he was inclined to deviate a little from the well of pure English.

"It depends on what you want protection from," replied Ackroyd easily, his lazy eyes taking in every line of the man.

Except that his breath came gustily, for a long moment Brand was silent-steadying himself for the big revelation, the inspector suspected. When, eventually, he spoke, however, it was to launch a surprise.

"No doubt you will my good friend Schümm remember?" he said tentatively. Then, as Ackroyd did not reply: "The man who― who..." he recommenced, but broke off. When it was necessary to make any reference to death he preferred to substitute some other and less intimidating term. Now, inspiration burnt up by excitement, he did not immediately continue.

Ackroyd decided to help him out. "I remember a whole lot about him," he said deliberately. "Including that about two-three weeks ago there was a common bond of dry eyes and a refusal to send flowers between Whitechapel and Mayfair."

Simultaneously with the noisy expulsion of long-withheld breath, Brand nodded a head that had too little back to it. Some element Ackroyd was able to read into both sound and action went to render that gaunt man's eyes more closely veiled even than usual.

"Curious, to me, that a feller whose whole career proved so conclusively that that was the one organ he hadn't got should have been pronounced to die of heart-failure," he said unpleasantly, and saw Brand's forehead bespangled suddenly with moisture, and that he was struggling uncertainly for words.

When at last these came, Ackroyd, whom experience had rendered almost shock-proof, had to admit to being startled.

"Heart-failure nothing," Brand cried, his voice as loud as it was uncertain.

Ackroyd, however, conveyed no impression of anything more compelling than his customary detachment.

"How do you mean― heart failure nothing?" he demanded with more scepticism than, actually, he felt.

"Schümm was murdered," Brand jerked hoarsely, and swayed a little so that it was necessary for his hands to close about the edge of the writing-table for support.

Unmoved, Ackroyd regarded him through half-closed, deceptively lazy  eyes. Actually there had been so much in connection with the passing of the dead swindler that had struck him as dubious that it was only following upon prolonged consultation with Sir Redvers Conquest, the Chief Commissioner, that it had been decided to take no official action. And even though Ackroyd had been able to console himself with the reflection that Schümm was better dead anyway, the circumstances were pigeon-holed very neatly and accurately in his mind.

"What precisely leads you to spring a suggestion like that, Mr. Brand?" he asked. "Any definite grounds, or is it just native dramatic instinct plus a desire to butt in?"

"What would you say," his visitor demanded, after a moment's hesitation, "if I was to tell you that about a couple of weeks before they― found him as you saw him Schümm received a letter threatening that, on a certain day, he'd be put on the spot. And that the day mentioned was the very one when he died?"

As he reached for and filled a short and ill-favoured pipe, there was in the inspector's manner nothing but a certain rather bored scepticism.

"I'd say," he said, striking a match "that, being from Missouri, you've gotter show me."

Brand's thick lips drew back into a sneer. "You've no need to worry about that," he said. "I'll show you all right." And then, because the other's manner had goaded him, as it was intended to goad him: "Because, just as soon as he had that letter, Schümm came to me―"

With the realisation of how much more he had been bluffed into saying than had been his intention, he broke off.

Ackroyd, however, remained unmoved.

"No need to go all coy," he said imperturbably. "It's no news to me you were his partner in that swindle. I haven't been able to prove it to the extent of having a cast-iron case to present in court, or the locale of this interview'd be the 'Awful Place.' But because I can't prove it doesn't prevent me from knowing."

At this, the colour in Brand's face approximated a little less closely to putty. Ackroyd heard his quick sigh of relief.

"Then you know wrong," he said blusteringly. "Schümm was just a― an acquaintance― nothing to do with business at all. That was why he rushed to show me the letter; no question of competition, see?" He groped in his pocket. "I've brought it along for you to have a look at."

Ackroyd's only reply was, at arm's length, to take the note between the points of the long paper-scissors. It was a gesture into which he contrived to bring the high water-mark of disparagement.

Headed "London," with the date fifteen days before Schümm's death, the note, on paper that was without distinctive feature or water-mark, had been typewritten on a machine with no single peculiarity of lettering. Following upon a list of names, the smaller proportion of which were in red, and against each an amount in figures:

Within fourteen days of this date you will refund or cause to be refunded, to each of the firms and individuals enumerated above the sum set out against those names, these being the amounts of which you robbed them, together with the interest at the rate of ten per cent, for one year.

In connection with such of those names that are typed in red, and wherein doubtless you will be able to recognise those who, due directly to your defalcations, were forced into bankruptcy, you will remit the amount stated to whomever is administering the estate. Additionally, as compensation for inconvenience and mental agony, in the case of each private bankruptcy, you will remit to the individual concerned an amount similar to that which you have to remit to the trustee, and in the case of limited companies send anonymously to each shareholder― whose names I need not remind you may quite readily be obtained― their due proportion of a corresponding amount.

Additionally, as a fine for dishonesty and as working expenses to my campaign of restitution and retribution, you will pay to the writer in Bank of England notes, by a method in accordance with which, later, you will receive instructions, a sum that will be the exact equivalent of the gross total thus disbursed.

Failure rigidly to comply with these instructions will be followed by your sudden and violent death at some period during the day following the expiration of the fifteenth day from dispatch of this letter.

'Fiat Justitia'.

Even to the hard-boiled and disillusioned inspector this was something new-Robin Hood in twentieth century guise.

Struck by a sudden thought, he looked up.

"And when it came to a point where either he had to give up his money or his life, what did Schümm do, anyway?"

Brand's thick lips quivered.

"Pretended to laugh it off," he replied. "Said it was just a bluff from one or other of those― er― creditor firms― trying to scare him into giving back ..." Coughing a little, he checked himself hurriedly.

Ackroyd, his face blank, nodded a gaunt head.

"No need to go all coy," he said practically. " 'Some of the loot' was what you stopped yourself from saying. And it was the right way to put it. What happened on that fourteenth day?"

The Adam's apple in Brand's thick neck quivered; the wide face took on a tinge of grey. To the inspector it was apparent the memory of that particular occasion was more vivid than reassuring.

"Schümm just― died," he said, his voice hoarse and uncertain. "And from no ascertainable cause at that."

9

AS, breathing heavily, Brand broke off, Ackroyd pressed down the tobacco in his malodorous pipe with an asbestos forefinger.

"When you've sufficiently recovered," he suggested in his level everyday voice, "suppose you retail the circumstances. They should be interesting."

This time Brand broke into something like a laugh, bitter and unpleasing.

"They were interesting all right, believe me," he said. "He'd finished dinner and gone into his library. When he was settling down into his chair he reached for a cigar from the box on the table by his chair. As he lighted it he pitched face forward to the hearthrug. When they picked him up..."

"It was to find he'd handed in his dinner pail," Ackroyd concluded brutally, as, gulping, the other broke off. "And no cause for death could be found. No external wound of any kind, and the post-mortem showed no evidence of poisoning-only that he had something of a C3 heart. Marv'lousl"

"Heart nothing! That wasn't what caused it."

The assertion came raspingly from somewhere far back in Brand's throat, and now the grey of his face had deepened. His hands were unsteady, and his limbs trembling.

Feverishly then he plunged a hand into his breast pocket to produce a further letter, and this he thrust roughly across the table to the inspector, who at the moment was excavating the sodden tobacco from the bottom of his pipe bowl with the paper-knife.

"For me?" he enquired disinterestedly, looking up.

"Read it, man, read it!" Brand snarled. Dated some fortnight previously, the letter was on similar paper, and of the same type to the one that a few moments previously he had laid down.

HE read:

If you will carefully examine the cigar-lighter the arch-swindler and robber of the helpless, Schümm, was using at the moment of his elimination, you will ascertain exactly by what means that retributive end was accomplished. If you are not too deeply impregnated with cowardice to do so, as a practical and convincing demonstration I would suggest that you endeavour to use it also. There can be no danger-the instrument was charged only with sufficient poison to effect the immediate purpose in view, and, even if through miscalculation should any minute portion remain unused, as its substance is extremely volatile, by this time it will have evaporated.

This communication then is at once an explanation and a warning. For, if at the expiration of the fourteenth day following upon its receipt you have not completely fulfilled the instructions, for the ignoring of which Schümm was called to his account, a similar retribution― though upon dissimilar lines― will be meted out to yourself.

Within the next few days you will receive instructions as to the method you are to employ for handing over my own proportion of what, I feel sure, you will be pre-pared to regard as "conscience money."

FIAT JUSTITIA.

Slowly, his gaunt face still expression-less, Ackroyd laid this second letter by the side of the first one.

"Well! Well! Well!" he said amiably. "Quite a litteratoor, that feller with the motor car name, isn't he? I suppose he got busy on his typewriter again a few days later?"

There was an element of despair in the quick nodding of Brand's gross head.

"I was to have the cash in notes at a clearly specified time on the top of a certain sarsen stone on the Wiltshire Downs," he said uncertainly, and spreading an ordnance map on the inspector's desk, with spatulate forefinger indicated the exact location. "If, instead of coming through with the money, I advised the police, I should be put on the spot same as Schümm was."

Ackroyd, folding the map into its original creases, instead of handing it back to Brand, slipped it into his writing-table drawer.

"Got that cigar-lighter on you," he asked, "or have you had it refilled to use one someone else?"

Brand either ignored or failed to notice the insult.

"I happen to be trustee under Schümm's will," he said, and, producing the gold and ornately diamond-studded trinket from his pocket, laid it on the table.

"You would be," Ackroyd said, and put on a pair of thick but dissipated gloves he took from the writing-table drawer. Then, gingerly holding the lighter, he pressed the catch that, by releasing the cap, brought the flame into being.

Instantaneously with that cap's release, he felt, thrusting through that protective hand-covering, something that was extremely minute, but of an incredibly fine point. When, a moment later, he came to make an examination, it was to find the glove infinitesimally punctured.

"Real Lucrezia Borgia stuff, this!" he murmured admiringly, and pressed the catch of the lighter again. This time, using the blade of his penknife where previously had been his thumb, he saw, swift is the tongue-stroke of a tiny snake, a needle shoot out and as instantaneously disappear.

"You see?" Brand cried fearfully.

Turning a slow glance on him, Ackroyd nodded.

"You know, you coming to ask help from Scotland Yard's pretty much the same as if I was to fly for sanctuary to a Thieves' kitchen!" he observed dispassionately, and, picking up the second of the two letters that had been the inspiration of Brand's presence, confirmed his impression that this day was the second one following upon the expiration of the time-limit for payment.

"And here's another thing," he went on, and now his tone had passed from detachment to one more personal. "Having braced yourself to come here, why leave it to the last minute?"

PAUSING, he watched with interest the pulse of sheer terror that like tiny hammer strokes throbbed in the other's forehead.

"It was only this morning I was able to find the lighter," Brand faltered. "Until then I thought that― " he flung out a trembling hand at the letter that had come to himself― "it was just a bluff― that Schümm's death was a coincidence someone in the know about that first letter was taking advantage of to― to get something for nothing.

"You don't think, actually, there's any― any― real danger. Mr. Ackroyd?" he stammered abjectly. "To― to me, personally?"

Ackroyd did not reply immediately, but here was no misreading his air.

"You― you think there's maybe something in that letter?" Brand gasped.

As an intimation that he was not pre-pared to allow the interview to last indefinitely the inspector knocked out his pipe, put it in his pocket, and sat more upright in the chair.

"Yes― and so do you," he said uncompromisingly. "Otherwise you wouldn't have come here― a place where at the back of what you like to call your mind you've often pictured yourself being interviewed without the preliminary necessity for sending up your card. Do you want protection?"

All the while he had been speaking, Brand's eyes, so small and shallow and terror-dilated, had not left his face.

"Not only do I want protection, I demand it," he said at last. "A man to― to keep me in sight."

"Have a couple― you'll maybe need 'em," Ackroyd replied promptly, and reached for the house telephone.

Johnson and Applegarth, each an outsize in detective-constables, presented themselves, received the inspector's instructions, took stock of their man, and left.

"I'll go straight home now," the pallid Brand muttered.

With Detectives Johnson and Applegarth trailing unobtrusively within distance, he passed from the entrance to New Scotland Yard into Whitehall. There, a sick feeling in the lower part of his anatomy and something impeding the free passage of breath to his throat, he glanced fearfully up and down the street.

Nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary; to all appearance what pedestrians were in sight innocuous; no ominous looking car prowling.

In the state his nerves were in, the only vehicle that brought any addition to his enervation was the flat lorry coming towards him from Trafalgar Square, and that only because the steel rails with which it was loaded made such an intolerable din as completely to drown all other sounds of traffic. Wasn't there, he demanded of himself petulantly, a regulation directed specifically to put a stop to that sort of thing? Characteristically, it did not strike him as ironic that he should feel annoyance for this minor breach of the law.

Actually what did strike him was something far more material― and deadly. One moment there he was lumbering along the pavement, the next, with a cry of consternation, Applegarth, who was in advance of the two guards, rushed forward. For, without an instant's warning, Theodore Brand had clapped hand to mouth; blindly groping, swayed forward― forward; then the big knees bent from beneath him, and he was half kneeling, half lying, an obese and shapeless heap, in the mud of Whitehall

IT was the passage of that metal-laden lorry, they decided afterwards, that drowned the detonation. Except that it must have been from the road, none knew from whence had come the bullet that made the tiny, purple-rimmed hole in the dead man's forehead.

None, that is, but the pink and smiling man seated so comfortably in the back seat of one of the half-dozen taxis that were speeding in the direction of Parliament Street..

A doctor was sent for, and with Johnson in charge of the body Applegarth went to break the news to Ackroyd. And though for the life of him he could not see where either he or his colleague had failed, it was an interview he did not anticipate with anything within measurable distance of confidence.

For once, however, the lank inspector was sympathetic. "Tough luck," was his comment. "I know you couldn't help it. The trouble I'm likely to have is to induce the Chief to see eye to eye with me."

10

THOUGH there was no indication of it in his manner, it was in a father and mother of a temper that Ackroyd returned to his office from an interview with the Chief Commissioner.

With a close personal resemblance to the late Earl Roberts and usually the kindest and most understanding of his kind, on this occasion he had found Sir Redvers Conquest very hot and bothered indeed. He was more so still when, as in duty bound, the inspector gave a categorical account of his interview with Brand, and the dead financier's statement as to the passing of Schümm.

But it was not until he read the two "Fiat Justitia" letters that the harassed official went really off the deep end.

"What do you think the Press are going to say at a man, under our own protection, being murdered at the very gates of Scotland Yard itself?" he demanded.

"After the way they tooth-combed the dictionary for adjectives over the Potsinger killing," Ackroyd said evenly, "they're going to tear the hide off us, if I may use the expression. Because, of course, the same man's responsible for the two murders― and for Schümm's as well."

From below snow-white tufted eyebrows, the Chief Commissioner shot a keen glance at him.

"I'd like you to enlarge on that theory, Inspector," he said, more evenly than he had yet spoken. "Forget I'm Chief Commissioner for the time being, smoke your pipe― I planned several gas attacks during the war, so it won't worry me― and just follow the sequence of events that led you to that suspicion."

Ackroyd nodded, respectfully and appreciatively. There was a very warm personal attachment between these two, and a close understanding, so that though by no means the senior officer on the Criminal Investigation side, the gaunt and laconic Yorkshireman was able to open out to the little martinet in a man-to-man attitude that no superintendent ever had succeeded in establishing.

"However fantastic the idea may seem to you, sir," he said slowly, "Just lately I've become afflicted with the conviction that, working in London here, is a kind of twentieth century Robin Hood, but, unless I'm mistaken, with a distinct leaning towards homicidal mania. A man of brilliant brain who's become obsessed with the wide gaps in our Criminal Code as it relates to frauds of a commercial nature. But when, combined with a spot of blackmail, it comes to a feller not only administering a private code of his own, but killing by murder all those who don't see eye to eye with him, it's time the Yard here sat up to demonstrate we're still doing business at the old stand."

"That," the Chief Commissioner remarked dryly, "is precisely the attitude that, with the customary superfluity of adjectives, will be adopted by Fleet Street. And don't forget," he went on gravely, "that I'm due for an interview with the Home Secretary. It doesn't need me to tell you that, on top of the Potsinger case, his reaction to a kidnapping, the serious wounding by stabbing of a police officer, followed by the murder almost on our own precincts of a man supposed to be under our protection, and all within twelve hours or so, will have to be seen to be believed."

He paused, his face more troubled than in all their years of association Ackroyd had seen it.

"Go out after that killer, Inspector," he said at last, "and at all and any cost don't let up until you've put him where he can do no more harm. You are in charge, and with my authority to take any steps you think fit."

Back in his office, Ackroyd sat down and thought hard. Behind the series of crimes, each instantaneously executed, and, until his interview with Brand-himself, now, an addition to the list of victims― inspired by no apparent motive, in each case the murdered man was a criminal outside the law, with the one responsible far too brilliant to make one of the stereotyped mistakes through which ninety-nine per cent, of depredators are brought to the dock. Incredible as, in Ackroyd's experience, it was, in that chain of dead there had been left behind not one suggestion as to who was the slayer.

He was aroused at last by a knock on the door. It was his immediate assistant, Detective-Sergeant Broadribb, who was looking puzzled but interested.

"There's a couple of― of gentlemen, by appointment," he said seriously "A Lord FitzRalph and a Mr. Fortescue. Am I to show 'em up, sir?"

As though resigning himself to the worst, Ackroyd nodded a gaunt Lead.

"I suppose so," he said pessimistically. "Perhaps there's a thousand-to-one chance they'll have some slight grounds for suspecting some ten per cent of what they'll unload as Bible-sworn fact. Even at the worst they can't know less than I do  myself, and so far's concerns this case I'm not even a good guesser."

"Lord FitzRalph an' Mr. Hilary Fortescue, sir," the sergeant announced a few moments later, holding the door for the two to pass through. Unless forearmed with an extensive knowledge of that deceptive man, no one could have suspected the assimilative quality of the slow and apparently disinterested glance the gaunt detective gave them as they crossed the floor.

"And what," the inspector said, "may I have the pleasure of doing for Lord Fitz-Ralph?"

"First of all," replied the visitor, who was not unaccustomed to recognition by strangers, "you can let me introduce you to Mr. Hilary Fortescue― a lad, I don't mind telling you," he added confidentially, "who, instead of in your own office, you should be interviewing in hospital."

The inspector shook hands.

"Any story of blood and slaughter appeals to me, either here or in a hospital," he said, his gaunt length well back in his chair. "Smoke if you want to, but omit no detail however apparently irrelevant. All detectives say that― it's part of the formula."

Categorically, in detail but with characteristic absence of elaboration, Hilary told of all those strange adventures that had come to him since his landing in England.

"If you don't mind," the detective said quietly when the tale was complete, "I'd like a description of that man Sainter. In detail, as if you knew every hair of his head by its middle name. And one of the dago servant."

When, in response to that demand, Hilary drew acutely upon his recollection, it was to discover the personality of his late host stamped as clearly upon his recollection as an engraving upon steel. When, also, he rounded off that word-picture with an insistence upon all the tiny peculiarities of voice and manner that are the soul of personality, it was to hear Ackroyd expel a long-withheld breath.

For in that commendably photographic description to which so intently he had listened, incredulously at first, but with ever-increasing surety, Ackroyd had come to recognise the chubby and benevolently cheerful gentleman as the one who, at the acquittal of Adolf Potsinger, had expressed doubt as to the late prisoner's good fortune. Nor did it escape his quickly moving thoughts that within a few minutes of that intriguing mistrust. Adolf Potsinger had been a very dead man indeed― of cyanide of potassium introduced into the end of a Corona cigar by a newly-appointed warder in charge of prisoners' effects, and of whose whereabouts following the return of those belongings to their owner had been discovered no trace at all.

"Sainter, you say his alleged name is?" he went on to repeat. "It was Oliver when he bought all that slum property at Poplar, turned out the bitterly protesting tenantry, and housed 'em in a block of workmen's model dwellings he'd previously built for the purpose― and at a rent so low every member of the Property Owners' Association ordered an image of him in wax so they could stick pins in it. At that time he had a pretty large flat in Artillery Mansions, Victoria Street."

The inspector reached a bony hand for the telephone.

"I think we'll go out to Greensward Lodge," he said.

11

INSPECTOR ACKROYD spoke into the telephone, and a few moments later Sergeant Broadribb reappeared.

"Cars here, sir," he announced.

"I'll go first, with you in charge of the second," Ackroyd instructed. "Avoid the risk of arrest for furious loitering, do you mind? Seven men, have you detailed?"

"That was what you instructed, sir," said the red-haired, freckled sergeant, who was six feet two and slightly broader in proportion.

"Then let's get on with it," said Ackroyd, and reached for his hat.

Nothing more innocuous could well have been imagined than the appearance of Greensward Lodge, Sainter's home, as, having parked the cars on the quiet road outside the gates, Inspector Ackroyd and his party turned the angle of the drive to the shallow terrace that fronted the house. The day was delightfully warm and sunny, the green lawns closely mown and trimmed and the flower beds in full bloom. But about the whole house and grounds was neither sound nor sign of life.

"Everything in the garden's lovely," Ackroyd remarked dryly, running his lazy eyes over that unresponsive facade. "I wonder if the same applies to the inside.

"Seems to me like a bad woman made up to look pretty," that dour and forth-right Yorkshireman continued as he stepped forward to the door. There, rather to Hilary's surprise, he neither rang nor knocked Instead, his knobby fingers closed over the handle.

To Hilary's greater surprise still, the door yielded. As the inspector swung it open Sergeant Broadribb brushed past him.

Never afterwards was Hilary able with any clarity to reconstruct what so instantaneously followed; the whole thing was too unutterably horrible. One second there, at the head of the file of men, keen, alert, purposeful, was the broad and splendid form of Detective-Sergeant Broadribb. The next, like an inexpert diver, the whole bulk of the man seemed to plunge forward and downward; there was a frantic scuffling of heavy-soled shoes.

Then, as though the novice had clumsily overbalanced, in a sweeping arc, head and shoulders disappeared. Mingling inseparably with his frenzied cry came a hollow, reverberating clang as the trapdoor that had given to his weight crashed against the wall of the shaft.

Nor did Hilary ever know how long it was before any one of them made a move; did anything at all, in fact, but with numbed and speechless horror stare blankly each into the face of his neighbour. And when at last the inspector took the situation in hand, his voice, hoarse and dry and a thought uncertain, came from lips that were uncertain, too.

"You fellers stand back-right back," he ordered, "while I see."

With unsteady hand he produced an electric torch, moving carefully to the opening shone it low. And as in the bright sunshine that streamed through the door from that flower-bedecked garden, he was able to distinguish what that space held, his customarily immobile face was infused with such deep-seated and inextinguishable anger that, hard-boiled as years of rough usage had rendered him, Hilary, too. turned cold. Nor, when at last he spoke, did Ackroyd's voice, low and bitter, do anything to dissipate that horror.

"Step forward, fellers," he said In a voice that all his years of training were unable to keep within control, "and take a glance at hell."

And as cautiously they peered into the depths, in the combined light of their torches shudderingly they saw that the collapse of the trapdoor had precipitated Sergeant Broadribb face downward to a chevaux-de-frise of spikes that, when later these came to be examined, proved to have been ground to razor-edged spearpoints.

At last, as, white-faced, they drew back from the death-trap, Ackroyd turned his stricken face to them.

"He can't be anything but dead," he said, and miraculously he had collected himself. "He must be pierced in twenty different places. So the only thing left is to collect him ... Go and find me a rope, one of you."

There was one In an outhouse near the garage, and it was characteristic that be-fore trusting himself to it Ackroyd should have examined every inch of its length. Satisfied at last, however, and supported by their full strength, he was lowered into the shaft.

Lord FitzRalph, his usually pleasant face as grim now as that of the inspector, followed, and together they released the body. Mercifully one of the longer and keener spikes had penetrated the heart, so the victim's shriek must have been cut off by death.

Together they carried the dead man into the hall and reverently placed him on a settee. As Ackroyd turned away from covering the still face he said quietly:

"Not so long ago there was a Commissioner sitting right here in London to determine whether or not to abolish capital punishment. If they'd asked me, I'd have told them that whereas in the majority of murders I'm all for it, at odd times come across killers who on no account should be hanged. And this, I may to you, is one of them."

The words came so quietly, and with such admirable restraint, that for a moment Hilary and FitzRalph were deceived. Then the inspector concluded: "Because what I could think out for the man who killed Broadribb would make death by the dislocation of the third clavicle vertebrae look like a day at a Fun City."

He stood for a moment in thought.

"Now we'd better take a look-see through the house," he said at last. "And the only thing we're likely to find is trouble, and after the style we've just seen. Because it's a dead sure thing that the man― I call him that because I can't think of anything bad enough to fit him― with the type of brain that contrived the particular form of hellishness that killed poor Broadribb― isn't likely to have left anything of a clue to his present address, if any."

Cautiously testing what lay immediately in front of and behind each door before standing well back, he opened it, they explored rooms and passages.

The only room where there was the least sign of disarrangement was one on the first floor of an annexe to the east wing, ant that, to judge from its furnishing, had been used as a study.

But here, indeed, were indications of the haste of sudden departure; drawers pulled out and not replaced, the contents tossed carelessly here and there as discarded; blanks in the bookshelves where volumes had been taken down and not replaced: the door of a filing cabinet― so as not to clash with its surroundings, especially made in old mahogany― swinging on its hinges.

"Take all but Adams and Porter and make a close search of the grounds," Ackroyd ordered; and to the two who were the drivers named, "Porter will bring his car to the garage here to find out why she's knocking. I noticed the engine on the trip from London... Hullo― here's one habitual criminal that hasn't made his getaway, anyway!"

He bent to stroke the cat which, having appeared from some mysterious aerie of its own, was stropping a sleek back against his trousers.

"Reticent animals, cats― except, of course, to their girl friends," he remarked, and watched the tabby as, tail erect, it stalked over to the hearthrug and, having selected the most inviting spot, curled luxuriously to sleep. "I bet this feller could tell us a lot if only he could open out."

Even when his subordinates had left to carry out orders, the inspector continued for a few moments silently to regard the room. Long and narrow, two sides were taken up by the book-cases. At one end was the door, and the other, panelled in mahogany, with at the corner of each square a magnificently carved Tudor rose, was unoccupied.

His inspection was broken into at last by Lord FitzRalph.

"If you don't mind, I think I'd rather like to scout around on my own for a bit," he suggested. "Probably it's frightful cheek, but I can't quite rid himself of the idea that, even though we've been through the whole place, we haven't seen all there is. In other words, as Mr. Robey says, there's more in this joint than meets the eye."

Busy with his own thoughts, Ackroyd's consent was only casual.

"Just as you say," he said abstractedly, for, with every moment he was becoming more impressed with the conviction that, harmless as from its outer aspect this room appeared, once he was able to penetrate below the surface he would find something well worth the search. And, judging from the disorder, it would be according to luck whether that search was long or short.

FitzRalph left, and, with Hilary hovering discreetly in the background, Ackroyd passed slowly to the writing table, and, beginning at the left hand top drawer, began methodically to go through the contents.

Suddenly he looked up.

"Why not take a look at the books, Mr. Fortescue?" he suggested.

"Splendid," said Hilary, more than, anxious for anything that, however remotely, would help in tracing the one girl who counted or mattered.

"Take each in turn," the inspector instructed. "Begin from the first book on the top left-hand shelf, and work downwards. Have a good look at each volume in turn― don't miss one."

As, having moved the ladder to the required position, Hilary was in the act of mounting, he heard the police car back into the yard upon which the room abutted. Then, oddly distinct, there was the sound of it backing into the garage. Two or three minutes later, as he was turning over the leaves of the fourth volume in the row, came the loud beat of an engine, footsteps, and the sound of voices, all appearing to originate from immediately behind the panelling at the unoccupied end of the room.

Slowly, lazily, but with an odd Impression of alertness, Ackroyd looked up from the papers he had laid out on the desk.

"Suffering Saul!" he exclaimed. "The garage must be immediately behind that wall― that's less a wall than a partition." The lazy eyes narrowed, and for a moment the gaunt face was intent. "Now why in Sam Hill," he said ruminatively at last, "did Oliver or Sainter, or whatever his nom-de-crime happens to be at the moment, choose to build his garage close to his library, where you'd think what he'd need more than anything is silence."

Though he said nothing more for the moment, as he turned that gaunt face once more to his papers, it seemed to Hilary, watching him, that he was attending less to what lay before him than ruminating over the influence that from the first had struck him in the atmosphere of this quiet room.

Well, that was Ackroyd's pigeon. All he himself could do was continue his own job. So, on top of his ladder, he went on systematically to run his fingers through the leaves of each volume in turn.

One factor he observed as he passed from one volume to another: all had one thing in common. However indirectly the guiding thought behind, each was an indictment of individual wealth and rebellion against the social or spiritual order of the time in which it was written.

The contents of the shelves appearing to have so intimate a bearing on the attitude of mind of the one they were out to trace, it occurred to him it might be as well to bring them to the attention of Inspector Ackroyd. And, as for this purpose, he turned to look down at that lank figure, it was to receive such a shock it was only by an instinctive clutch at the ladder head he was able to check himself from falling.

12

INSPECTOR ACKROYD was slumped face downward across the desk. And what little of his countenance remained visible was a ghastly pale leaden colour, the eyes, glazed and without life, staring unseeingly at nothing.

For a moment, as though literally stricken with the sudden and so wholly unanticipated horror of it, Hilary remained staring speechlessly at that rigid and so obviously lifeless figure. Then, with a supreme effort collecting himself, as swiftly as his wounded shoulder permitted, he swarmed down the ladder.

Two steps across the floor, however, and he jerked to a halt; in that momentary hiatus he had caught sight of that which, because of the inspiration that enabled him to correctly interpret it, so certainly saved his life:  the cat, lying immovably on the hearthrug.

Even in that first quick glance he was able to realise in the attitude that, far from the sinuous pliability of sleep, this sleek tabby was stiff and rigid. And when, quickly, he came to make a more intensive examination, he saw from whence that strange impression of immobility was derived.

The cat had ceased to breathe.

AS he stood there, a cold sweat breaking out on him, the monotonous beat of the Wellesley car came to him, though now without the accompaniment of the voices. It struck him, also, that it was quite a few minutes since last he had been aware of them― a fact that in the ordinary course he would have attributed to the circumstance that having completed their repairs the two officers had attached themselves to the posse who were searching the grounds.

In this case, however, that wouldn't do. Ackroyd's instructions had been definite that once the car was ready it was to be driven back to the road, and since he had heard it backed into the garage not for a moment had the engine ceased to throb.

Another arresting thought, this. Because you can't repair an engine while it is running. And if they had found occasion to leave the garage, why had those two expert mechanics not switched off the engine? In tune with that persistent throbbing on the further side of the wall, the question came again and again so that almost instinctively he turned his head in the direction of the sound.

And as he did so, suddenly the breath caught sharply in his throat. Covering each end of the panelling was a flimsy Indian curtain, and so rhythmically to and from the wall was the lower portion of this swaying, it was as if it was keeping time to the beat beyond.

It was this last thought that, in a flash of revelation, brought solution― also, in al] probability saved the life of Inspector George Albert Ackroyd. For from that instant Hilary acted with speed and decision.

Holding his breath, and despite the quick stab of pain the action brought to his shoulder, he lugged the limp, gaunt form of the detective from the chair and slung it across his shoulders; staggered with him down the corridor to the door and into the open air. There, lowering his burden, he expelled the air from his lungs and, gratefully and in great gulps, breathed in a fresh supply. Then, shouting to the others for help he began the work of artificial respiration.

And hard work it was; grey faced, lank, strong body inert, the inspector was very far gone. It was while Hilary still sweated and gasped from the sheer muscular exertion of the job that a voice came from behind him.

"Moses' moccasins, what's happened?" Hilary turned to discover FitzRalph.

"Gassed, and badly. Lend a hand, will you." he replied shortly.

It was a long time before they were able to detect the first sign of life; a further delay before dazedly, but even then with a suggestion of the old humour in the lazy eyes, the inspector was able to sit up.

"Apart from a head like an inexpertly filled gasometer, what might be the matter with me?" he demanded unsteadily, and so far as he was able to diagnose Hilary told him.

"But where in Sam Hill did the gas come from?" Ackroyd protested, his voice still uncertain

"As soon as you're able to walk," Hilary said grimly, "I think I'll be able to show you. You'll find it interesting."

"Once I'm on my feet I'll walk ten miles if necessary," he reassured them.

In spite of many resolute attempts, how-ever, it was a good quarter of an hour before he was able to move off, and even then but uncertainly, so that they were obliged to help him to the garage where the car engine still throbbed rhythmically.

Here Hilary passed directly to the far end, to where the car was backed, bent to peer down at a point a few inches from the floor. And as he made his examination his expression changed to one that comes only with the vindication of a long-shot theory.

"Have a look at this," he said, raising himself to the upright, and pointing.

As, rather precariously, he dropped to his haunches, into Ackroyd's face came a look that was a restrained mingling of comprehension, professional appreciation for a master mind, and an abiding anger. He had seen that to the exhaust-pipe of the car was attached a length of tubing which, passing through a hole in the wall, extended into the library beyond.

"That diverting of the carbon monoxide from the exhaust to within a few feet of the library desk shows pretty good staff work all right," he said, at length addressing himself to the as yet unenlightened FitzRalph: "We've to hand 'em that all right. So good, in fact, that if Mr. Fortescue here had been on the ground instead of standing on top of a ladder― to where the heavy gas couldn't reach― there'd have been two fresh slabs under occupancy in the Hampstead mortuary. Carbon monoxide being both tasteless and colourless, we should have passed out― as in my own case, of course, actually happened― and within a very few minutes have handed in our dinner-pails."

HIS face expressionless, eyelids half lowered, he paused.

"But now that the angels have decided to take 'No' for an answer," he added, "what I'm immediately concerned with is how Sainter and his crowd were able to put it over. In other words, while this arrangement was being fixed, where were Porter and Adams? It doesn't look too good to me."

More firmly than a few moments previously had seemed possible, he strode to the door, produced a whistle, and blew it vigorously. There was a hail from some-where not far away, followed by the pounding of heavy footsteps. A few moments and the sergeant arrived, panting, and with him the larger number of his men.

"Have you seen anything of Adams or Porter?" Ackroyd asked quietly, for neither of these was of the party.

Startled, the sergeant, whose name was Bird, shook his head.

"No, sir," he said promptly. "I thought they were in the garage here."

"Go and find ..." Ackroyd began, but broke off, turning sharply at the low cry that came from Hilary, to whom it had occurred that, to render the library safe for further exploration, it would be as well to switch off the car engine. In stepping on to the footboard more conveniently to put his hand through the window, he had happened to glance into the tonneau. Ackroyd saw that the knuckles of the hand gripping the door stood out with the same whiteness as had come to his face.

Hilary pointed a shaking finger of his uninjured hand.

"Look!" he cried hoarsely.

His own face controlled in advance, the Inspector stepped forward, swung open the car door, and for a pregnant moment stood rigid.

Sprawled starkly across the seats within lay the two drivers, and from the cheek of each protruded a tiny, tufted dart.

Ackroyd took one look, and swung round on Sergeant Bird.

"First aid, and quick about it," he snapped. "One of you phone for a doctor."

The youngest and most active constable left at speed.

"Not," Ackroyd added, after he had felt the unresponsive pulses and listened for heart-beats that did not come, "that the whole Medical Register'd be able to help these poor chaps; I've seen death too often not to know it at sight."

He turned again to Sergeant Bird.

"You saw no trace of anyone, in the grounds or elsewhere?" he asked quickly.

The sergeant shook his head.

"Not a hint or sign of a soul, sir," he said definitely.

Ackroyd looked down at the still figures of his murdered men.

"They were there, or here, anyway; they couldn't have materialised out of thin air," he pronounced savagely. "And not so blame many minutes ago, either; we weren't in the library all that long." His half-closed eyes travelled from one to the other of the little group. "Even now we're one short," he said suddenly. "Where's Lord FitzRalph?"

THEY looked at each other dubiously. It was Sergeant Bird who replied.

"He was here a minute ago," he said.

"Full of information, you," Ackroyd rasped. "And you're doing no good here, anyway. Take your men into the grounds and put every blade of grass through a fine toothcomb. I'll wait here for the doctor."

THE SEARCH, in which Hilary assisted, revealed nothing. The only unusualness about the whole premises, indeed, was a large, artificially-heated room that had been made by knocking two large coach-houses into one. Here the walls were surrounded by cages of all sizes; in them a collection of the smaller tropical birds, animals, and reptiles, all in admirable condition, sufficient in quantity to stock a small zoo; monkeys, marmosets, mongooses, chipmunks, birds of paradise, lyrebirds, Canadian bluebirds, Chinese pheasants, gorgeously-collared lizards, and an infinite variety of snakes. Almost without exception the specimens were so friendly to these strangers as to prove the kindness of their treatment.

Ackroyd grunted when the result of their search was reported to him. The doctor had come and gone-having been able to do nothing but confirm the death of the two constables.

"Meanwhile, I'm getting back to the Yard," the inspector said. "I've an interview with the Chief Commissioner ahead of me, and, as it's not a chat I'm looking forward to with any particular pleasure, the sooner it's over the better." He glanced at one of the remaining constables. "You'll drive, Wilkins. Take the car in the garage. Well meet you at the gates."

If their progress down the drive was not distinguished by hilarity, they had still less cause for light-heartedness when they reached the road. However trained to self-suppression, the inspector needed all of it there was available. Even then, grim and voiceless, he stood for a moment before he was able to command himself.

The second car had gone.

With no soul in sight from whom to make inquiries, slowly and without sign of emotion other than that the line of his jaw was more rigid perhaps than usual, Ackroyd swung round slowly to Hilary.

"I'd give a couple of months of what's humorously known as my pay to know which of those two swiped that car," he said levelly.

"What two do you mean?" Hilary inquired, surprised.

The reply came with more deliberation even than was customary from the laconic Ackroyd.

"Lord FitzRalph or the feller who murdered my three officers," he said.

Illogically, Hilary found himself resenting this. To the last degree inexplicable as was FitzRalph's disappearance, the confidence he had come to feel for that self-contained Samaritan convinced him that at least there was good reason for it, and but for the interruption furnished by the throb of powerful cylinders and scraping of tyres on gravel as the newly-repaired car swung out of the drive, would have had no hesitation in saying so.

"Pull up at the nearest call office," the inspector ordered as they climbed aboard, and from the A.A. box that, some three-quarters of a mile away, stood at the junction of this byroad with the one that led directly to London, gave a description of the purloined car, and instructions if and when found as to how the occupant or occupants were to be dealt with.

"Not," he said pessimistically, as he rejoined Hilary, "that It'll be any darn good."

"How's that?" Hilary asked quickly.

"Because it'll be empty," prophesied the Inspector as one who knew. A forecast that, in common with the bad luck that from the beginning of this appalling case had conspired to blight each effort in turn, was to prove only too accurate.

It was not far down the Finchley Road that, with a sudden exclamation more excusable than printable, Hilary grabbed the inspector's arm.

"There you are!" he shouted and pointed.

13

PULLED in neatly to the kerb was the police car. When they came to examine it, it was to discover it unoccupied, nor was there any clue as to who had driven it there.

"Still, there may be some fingerprints or other evidence not visible to the naked eye," Ackroyd said, unconvincingly, as he climbed to the driving-seat. Adding, cynically, "I don't think. And with me having put every officer in London on the qui vive for just this very car, our ride to Cannon Row's going to be just from one policeman to another.

Between there and the Embankment, indeed, they were pulled up a good score of times, and on each occasion Ackroyd cursed and complimented the policeman in the same breath.

His stabbing apprehension as to what, in all this interminable delay, was happening to Sally, becoming with each moment more acute, to Hilary the journey was funereal. When eventually he was left in Ackroyd's office what time that still non-apologetic official went to keep his appointment with the Chief Commissioner, as near as made no matter he gave way to despair. In the light of the smiling Sainter's methods, this further call on his endurance was to the last degree In-tolerable.

Nor when at last Ackroyd returned was the lank man's attitude calculated to raise his spirits.

"If something doesn't break for us soon, it'll be me that'll be broken," he said; "if to be led out and shot at dawn does break you, that is. Already news of what no doubt they'll headline as 'The Hampstead Holocaust' has reached the papers, so that every vulture in Fleet Street's waiting out-side the Yard here to settle on the carcase― I'm the carcase. I found the Chief Commissioner biting pieces out of the furniture from what the Home Secretary had just finished unloading on him...." He broke off as the telephone buzzed; wearily he lifted the receiver.

That, however, was the last sign of indifference he displayed. Hilary observed how suddenly the gaunt frame stiffened, the controlled alertness of him. Then for a few moments that seemed so terribly long drawn-out, he listened to a dialogue wherein, at his own end, the only contribution, and at extended intervals, consisted of some sharply drawled question.

"We'll be with you," the inspector said at last, "just as soon as our fastest car can carry us. Until then, content yourself with doing nothing at all."

He replaced the receiver, and turned to Hilary, who at the suggestion of action had sprung to his feet.

"This is where we get busy again, my lad," he said, and in the lazy eyes was a gleam. "Wait a bit, though, while I phone." Then into the receiver: "Instruct Detective-Sergeant Oates to come to my room at once."

Chin sunk to chest, heavy lids veiling his eyes, bony legs stretched before him, Ackroyd did not speak again until, following a knock on the door, Sergeant Oates entered.

Oates proved to be a fresh-faced and fair-haired giant, who appeared to have adopted as his life's slogan the maxim that speech was given to conceal thought Except at rarest intervals to ask a question, each framed in the minimum of words, he listened to all Ackroyd told him with-out comment or movement.

Finally, the inspector scribbled a list of names that he handed to his subordinate.

"These men good enough for the job?" he inquired.

The sergeant's quiet eyes examined the list for a good three minutes. Then he gave back the paper to Ackroyd.

"No better men at the Yard or elsewhere, sir," he said with decision.

"Good!" Ackroyd said, equally business-like.

"Have them choose suitable disguises and report to me. Not outside, but in the office here. I want to give them a look over, and their operation orders, and to make sure they've got them right."

When the sergeant had saluted and left, Ackroyd moved over to a wardrobe-like cupboard which stood in a corner of the room, and from the large and representative assortment of clothing hanging there selected coat, vest, trousers, shirt, boots, muffler, and hat, each separate article as it was produced dingier and more out-worn than the one previously selected.

And, having chosen his own, he picked out a similarly uninspiring assortment for Hilary.

"Get into these-― you'll need 'em― if you're coming along to the scene of conflict, that is," he said.

"Believe me," Hilary said, and even In speaking beginning to undress, "it'd take more than a change of costume to keep me from any place where there's a chance of a few words with Sainter."

"The prospective star guest at the forthcoming Pentonville necktie party who murdered my two boys," announced the inspector as he dressed, "appears to've been your friend from the Philippines."

This did not come to Hilary as any great surprise. "I shouldn't wonder if you're right," he said bitterly.

There was, however, a genuine surprise In store.

"It seems," Ackroyd went on conversationally, "that Lord FitzRalph caught a glimpse of the little dago sneaking out of the summer-house in a corner of the grounds― the one nearest the boundary wall. His lordship's first stirring impulse was to break from cover and put it across him straight away, and no questions asked. Fortunately for the course of justice and the continued appearance of my monthly pay envelope, better counsel prevailed, as they say in the thrillers. As, by a stroke of luck, the dago hadn't spotted him, it struck FitzRalph that If he followed along there was a pretty good chance he might be led straight to the new headquarters."

AT this clear demonstration, not only of his new friend's good sense, but of his enterprise and courage, Hilary, a large proportion of the dead-weight of Impotence lifted from his heart, beamed appreciation.

"Splendid chap!" he cried. "And then what did he do?"

"What," Ackroyd said, "it had come into his mind to do― and apparently with some small amount of skill. He followed-but not as you might say directly. As the dago was swarming over the wall, obviously FitzRalph couldn't make for the same place. Instead, hoping to find cover until they struck the ordinary traffic, he hared down the drive to the road. Only, as the dago dropped over the wall, to run into a snag that, if he hadn't shown the initiative that'd make him a success even as a policeman, would have scuppered him from that moment."

That was good again. Hilary liked to hear Scotland Yard's most outstandingly successful detective handing it to this new friend of his.

"And that snag was?" he questioned, as the inspector paused.

"The fact that the first thing the Filipino made for was a motor cycle he'd cached in the lee of the wall," Ackroyd said dryly.

"And unless there was someone camping on his trail, once he was allowed to get his legs across that he'd be over the hills and far away, and with the time that was the very essence of the inquiry gone for good. Casting about for inspiration― I'll be get-ting lyrical if I'm not careful― he remembered that, just round the corner of the wall was our car― and that by another stroke of luck it was camouflaged to look like one of those mass-production makes that'll pass unnoticed either by a crook or an honest man― if there's any left, that is."

Hilary nodded.

"Good again!" he said. "Only― once he was in it and on the trail, why abandon it?"

"I've hinted to you already," Ackroyd replied, "that that feller's threatened with intelligence. Anyway, in the mile or two he was driving fifty yards or so behind the Filipino, it seemed to him that more than once the dago glanced round a bit suspiciously. As it didn't do to take chances FitzRalph made up his mind the only thing to do was wait for a traffic block where there was an empty taxi, leave his own car, and keep on the trail in that."

"To me," Hilary commented, as the detective paused, "that seems a pretty bright idea."

"But he is bright," the inspector pointed out patiently. "That's what I've been trying to tell you.... Anyway, a little further on, he had one of those strokes of luck that've won most of our leading detectives their reputation. It so happened that he came to a cab-rank where he knew every driver by his middle name. Anyway, in about ten seconds he was inside a driver's cap, coat, badge, and cab, and was hitting the trail again."

Now, it seemed to Hilary, that it was in spite of himself the inspector paused. When he looked up it was even more apparent that FitzRalph was a man after his own heart.

But what Hilary needed was action, immediate, and plenty of it.

"What became of Sancho, anyway?" he demanded impatiently.

BY way of reply the inspector, who by this, his make-up completed, was so exactly in character that not even his day-to-day intimates could have recognised him for anything but the won't-work-cum-jailbird he was out to represent, drew a large-scale map of London from a drawer at his side, unfolded it, and spread it on the desk in front of him. And as, after poring over it for a moment, the point of his pencil came to rest at the end of the route that had been given him through the telephone, his expression was of one confronted by a problem whose solution remains maddeningly a bare inch from revelation.

"Turned into a house― if such a demesne in that fair neighbourhood may be termed― between the New Cross Road and Griffen Street, Greenwich," he said slowly at last, and remained for a long moment motionless and without speaking.

Then, suddenly, and for the first time in Hilary's experience of him, that long, immobile face lighted to vividness. More surprisingly still, he brought his clenched fist to the desk with a crash that all but upset the inkpot.

"I knew it'd come if only I went on talking long enough," he cried triumphantly.

"Just what is it you've got?" Hilary questioned, endeavouring to suppress eagerness.

That rare animation dying under pressure from his will, Ackroyd looked at him.

"I've got on to," he said slowly, and as though bringing uncustomarily chaotic thoughts to sequence, "what for the last half hour has been playing blind man's bluff around remote corners of what in moments of enthusiasm I like to call my brain."

His pencil point hovered, and then stopped at a point on the map.

"Here's where the dago went to earth," he went on to explain as Hilary joined him at the table, "and here"― the pencil point travelled a fractional quarter-inch eastward― "in the same street and on the same side of the road are Oliver's Model Dwellings.'

"I'm afraid I don't get you," Hilary told him shortly.

Intent, the inspector brooded for a moment.

"What I'm trying to make out," he said slowly, "is why Oliver― who, as you know is your own little playmate, Sainter― should have gone to the trouble and expense of importing a squad of hairy-faced artisans from Albania to work inside the block?"

"How do you know he did?" Hilary asked, spurred to a quickened interest by some-thing in the gaunt man's manner-a certain ever-accumulating excitement that, suppressed as it was, was yet too urgent to be wholly under control.

Pursuing, however, his own line of thought, Ackroyd allowed the question to go by default.

"Two months and more these fellers were here," he said, "and among the whole sixty-odd, not one with a word of English, or any intention of learning. Dumb from the neck up, every baggy-breeched one of 'em."

"Then how did they get on outside― finding their way about the streets, and buying things and so on?" Hilary asked. "I've never heard that the average East Ender makes a speciality of Albanian."

"And there," Ackroyd said, folding the map into its original creases, and replacing it in the drawer, "is where you may be said to've put your finger on the one crucial point. Because, from what I learned later, it was part of their contract they were to be housed inside the building, and never allowed outside. At the time I heard it that didn't mean a thing to me. Knowing the sainted Oliver's proclivities, or, at any rate, those he shows to the world, I took it for granted he wasn't having his unspoilt mountaineers exposed to the temptations of our wicked city."

Purposefully he got up from his chair.

"But now I know― and let me tell you it's not the first time in my experience a similar thing's happened― that the man, who handed me that apparently useless and irrelevant piece of gossip gave me the one item of information that ever since poor Broadribb's murder I'd have given my eye-teeth and Sunday bed-socks to learn."

He stood for a moment in one of those unanticipated periods of thought that by now Hilary had come to recognise as characteristic. Then, suddenly and without speaking, he went back to his chair, produced and respread the map, and with this as model made a rapid sketch, rough, but astonishingly accurate.

Just as he had finished there was a sound of feet outside, a knock at the door, and Oates ushered in the men who had been detailed for the work on hand.

Though temporarily as typical a bunch of hobos as the four-ale bars and dosshouses of slumdom could have produced, if, in the combined police forces of the world there existed a physically finer lot of men than those who within a few minutes were grouped about Ackroyd's table, it occurred to Hilary he would like to see them. Tall and broad, and steel-hard and mentally alert, the toughs who rough-housed with that bunch and got away with it would have to be very tough indeed.

Ackroyd, however, looked them over with no visible display of enthusiasm.

"I suppose you'll have to do, failing any better," he said, and turned to the map that once more he had outspread across the desk. When they had assimilated the district wherein their work was to lie, he transferred their attention to the more detailed pencil sketch of what he termed "the area of occupation," allotting to each his place and duty.

"Listen, you men," he wound up, his usually indifferent voice crisp and incisive. "In dealing with a killer of Sainter's calibre, and one who keeps a tame assassin on the premises, it won't pay you to take unnecessary chances. From the word go it's gloves off, and no heel-taps. Get me?"

Apparently they did; received the instructions moreover, with every sign of satisfaction.

"Then let's get on with it," Ackroyd said, and they followed him to the cars that were drawn up in the yard outside.

14

Though they ignored traffic signals, it took them longer to reach their destination than Hilary had anticipated; perhaps it was in that tense ride that for the first time was brought home to him the vast extent of London.

In a district that was damp and flat and squalid, one by one those plainly-dressed men dropped off the cars; it was against Ackroyd's policy to attract more attention than was necessary.

After, with the same unobtrusiveness, the cars were garaged, Ackroyd and Hilary turned sharply left into High Street. Some distance down this lugubrious thorough-fare, sharp right into Dragon Street. A hundred yards of this, and they passed into a street that ran directly towards the railway-a thoroughfare that presented an amazing mixture of the old and pitifully derelict with the machine-made trimness of the ultra-modern. The houses― if those befouled, outworn derelicts of brick hutches could be so described― were in the last stage of decrepitude, with no trace of paint on their perished wood, what windows remained unbroken, coated and begrimed; doors hanging crazily.

It was from this collection of insanitary disease-traps that, immediately following upon the repatriation of his semi-imprisoned and wholly inarticulate Albanians, the in-credible Sainter had transferred the tenants to the accommodation prepared for them on the other side of the street. Here, in-congruously, was a long line of buildings, so glaring, new, and red-bricked, so up- to- the- minute trim, they were as though poured from some gigantic mould.

"Oliver's Model Dwellings," Ackroyd pointed out, with a jerk of his head.

"Marvellous!" said Hilary, with sincerity.

From the cover of what was left of one of the doorways from across the street a little way ahead, a figure detached itself; hands in holes that once had been pockets, slouched across. A scrubby and, to the ultimate degree, down-and-out derelict, with unclean face and dishevelled hair, whose cap was like an engine rag, with what was left of his boots heelless and gaping at the toes; coat and trousers but the tattered and greasy reminiscences of the gaudy cheapness of their long-ago emergence from some East End slop-shop. When this figure reached the pavement, instead of lurching past, he swung slowly round to fall in beside them, and, in speaking, amazingly revealed himself.

"Beat it about twenty yards ahead," Ackroyd instructed, "and don't bother to look round to see if we're following, because we shall be."

"And that," Lord FitzRalph replied cheerfully, but without relapsing from his slouch, "will be splendid. Especially," he added, with a complacent contemplation of his own repellent person, "as I joined you less for instructions than admiration. An at-tractive figure, don't you think?"

"Where did you get the Savile Row outfit, anyway?" the Inspector growled.

"Ah, there it was, I'm inclined to think." the pseudo-derelict explained placidly, "where I may be said to have reached the high watermark of genius. Immediately before I telephoned to you, I took the precaution to put a call through to my own man at Virginia Lodge. With commendable quickness on the uptake, he arrived here one-time, complete with tramp-cyclist suiting. To waste as little time as possible before making personal application for admittance to the tenancy of one of these desirable suburban residences, I changed in the car."

"You mean," Ackroyd said quickly, "that you've called on Sainter already?"

"Quite, of course, an informal visit," said FitzRalph.

"And a useless one, I'll bet a pretty long shade of odds," Ackroyd said confidently, though Hilary suspected he awaited the reply with some eagerness.

The soiled and, Hilary noticed with distaste, slightly malodorous peer raised grimy eyebrows.

"As ever, your deduction is masterly. Mr. Holmes," he said. "My knock and ring remained unanswered."

"I'll bet!" said Ackroyd confirmatively.

The dejected figure of the peer shuffled off. When he was a few yards in advance Ackroyd strolled casually over to a further figure of similar dishevelment whose shoulders supported the perished wooden shutter that covered what once had been the windows of a tenement, and repeated the instructions he had given in his office. From here, so unobtrusively that only the most interested observer could have suspected purpose behind that lounging tour, he inspected each post in turn― posts that were established in the tenements facing their objective, and concealed among the equally squalid houses at the back.

Almost at the corner of the third of the by-streets, Arbour St., the long block of new dwellings departed materially from type. Here, rearing importantly against the uniform line of the remainder, and still further bedizened by the electric standard that fronted the entrance, was a veritable model dwelling de luxe, six-story, clean, airy, and in its essential solidity so much more than weatherproof. Now that dark had fallen, there were lights in the various windows; over the rails of fire-escapes wisps of laundry flapping ghost-like in the half light, and while the larger proportion of windows shone dully through lack of occupancy, others were brightly lighted; sometimes a shadow passed across a blind.

They were within a few yards of the entrance now, and more decisively than his normally lethargic movements, Ackroyd swung round on Hilary.

Ahead, Hilary saw FitzRalph reach the entrance and pass by it. Not until they themselves were at the same point was he able to see what, previously, this outstanding building had concealed. Next to it, and fronted by what optimistically had been designed as a strip of front garden, was one of the craziest dwellings in all that crazy street― the only one on that side― forlorn, tumble-down, grime-befouled, and showing no sign of life.

It was when he reached the door of this ruin that FitzRalph paused to light a short and blackened pipe, so that his profile stood out flame-like against the gloom. Then, wraith-like in the unbroken dimness, he shuffled to one side and, propped inertly against the broken railings, stared contemplatively at nothing in particular.

By this, having converged unobtrusively from various hide-ups across the road, other figures had joined Hilary and the inspector, noiselessly keeping to the shadows, trailed behind as they approached the door. And though in the uncertain light that door bore every evidence of crazy unsubstantiability, when he came to run his hand over the surface Hilary discovered how to the last degree superficial that frailty was.

Without comment, however, Ackroyd produced from his pocket a miniature oil-can and a skeleton-key. From the first he squeezed lubricant into the door-handle and hinges, thrust the key through the keyhole, and, following careful manipulation, succeeded in disengaging the catch.

He turned the handle. It yielded, and, inch by noiseless inch, he pushed open the door.

Nothing confronted them but an oblong of not too sweet-smelling but sound-unbroken darkness. He risked a flash from his torch, to discover the door opened directly into what, originally, had been designed as the "parlour," empty, and with no sign of recent occupancy.

With a backward glance at the others to follow, and Hilary close at his heels, he tip-toed into the house. When the last of his men had passed through it was in the same soundless fashion that he reclosed the door.

Comprehensively he swept the tiny room with his torch-beam. There were some remnants of furniture― an uncovered deal table, three or four elmwood chairs, and, on the mantelpiece, in tin candlesticks even dirtier, a couple of dirty wax candles. Reversely, the room itself was not as wholly unkept as might have been expected.

Noiselessly still they stood for a moment listening. No sound came to them.

Signing to the others to wait, the inspector passed through into the room beyond, but in a few moments wherein the only sign of his presence was the flicker of his torch-beam here and there about walls and flooring, he was back with them.

"No cellar," he whispered, "so now I'm going to have a look-see upstairs. Alone, so that if I happen to run into a rough-house there'll be reinforcements at hand."

But these last few minutes had been too much for Hilary's fortitude. Here he was under, probably, the same roof as Sally, and she enduring heaven knows what. And now he was asked to stand about while someone else went into the very heart of things. Simply, it wasn't good enough. He sprang forward.

"No― me!" he said, and before the detective could protest, pistol at the ready, was four treads up the stairs.

There he paused; it was so dark it was necessary to risk a flash from his torch. This showed him that the flight opened to a tiny landing having doors on either side.

Swiftly, but, to reduce the risk of creaking treads, keeping well to the wall, he negotiated the remainder of the flight.

At the top. with no sign that his presence had been detected, or, indeed, that there was any one there to detect it, he paused outside the door to the left, examined it by torch and touch.

No result, and his fingers told him why; the door, that from the feel was of a construction and state of repair in strange variance with the dilapidation elsewhere, fitted so closely in its frame that no glimmer of light could penetrate through. Nor was there a keyhole.

But as, motionlessly, he stood there, it seemed to him that, very slightly, the silence was disturbed, and that the sound came from the other side of the door.

And when, stepping forward, he pressed his ear to the panel, his heartbeats accelerated. Muffled almost to extinction as it was, the sound was unmistakable.

Voices and, more occasionally, the clink of a glass.

15

FOR what probably was three minutes, but that seemed to him more like a quarter of an hour, he stood there straining to distinguish each voice as it came, and, in particular, if one of them was that of the amiable Mr. Sainter. Or― the blood thrummed in his ears at the thoughts― Sally.

But it was quite impossible; the sound was too muted even to convey an idea of how many were speaking; there might have been two, or half a dozen, in the room beyond.

His hand went to the handle; taut in his grasp, there was small fear of it rattling. Fractional inch by fractional inch then he turned it until, having reached its limit, he could turn no more.

Then, with the essence of caution, and to a very small extent indeed, he pushed. The door yielded. Instantaneously, then, with his left hand he flung the door to its widest, the revolver in his right, passed inside.

At the head of a bare deal table, and furthest from the door, the fingers of his enormous drab-blue hand curled about a thick glass tumbler, and a cigarette drooping pendulously from enormous empurpled lips, sprawled the half-caste, Chimp Fargus, who on the previous night had retrieved Sally for the retribution of that blood-lustful altruist, Septimus Sainter.

Had it not been for the gigantic proportions of that leader the remaining members of the quartet sitting there might have been accounted to the last degree formidable. No one of them was below six feet in height, nor of a build not to scale, and, judging from their features and expression, of a mentality that would have made Attila look like a churchwarden.

Even in the tense preoccupation of the moment it occurred to Hilary that certainly Sainter was an expert in selecting his "droppers."

the slamming open of that door there had come the clatter of chair-legs on boards, but at the sight of the dishevelled and blazing-eyed apparition who, a large revolver pointed steadily at the chest of Chimp Fargus, had impinged into their midst, it seemed to occur to them that to-morrow, also, was a day, for with one movement they sank back into their chairs. Regarding him, their jaws dropped and their eyes boggled.

"Put 'em up," Hilary said, and there was that in his voice that carried conviction.

With commendable promptitude the arms of the others shot upwards, only the left arm of Chimp Fargus followed suit. With the other he made a lightning dive for the automatic pistol that was on the table at his side.

This was no moment for hesitation, and Hilary was commendably prompt. Calamitous as the explosion might prove, there was nothing else for it, and Hilary shot. The bullet, that after carrying away the first joint of the sausage-like finger, ricocheted from the table to bury itself in the wall behind, deterred Chimp Fargus from any extension of enterprise. With a bellow of mingled rage and agony the column-like arms shot up.

"You-lil―" he blubbered, but at what he read from Hilary's eyes broke off abruptly.

From the Instant of the pistol-shot Hilary had been aware from the tramp of feet that, caution discarded, those left below were swarming up the stairs. A moment, and, though he was too wise to take his eyes from those at the table to discover exactly who these were, Hilary heard them grouping through the door. A further instant still and Inspector Ackroyd was on one side of him and the tatterdemalion figure of Lord FitzRalph at the other.

"And very nice, too," Ackroyd remarked complacently. "All old college chums together, what?" His lazy eyes travelled from one to the other of them. "Chimp Fargus and Tuppy Wang, Mick the Malay, and the Yellow Peril― each with a crime record long enough to choke a goat. Although," he added reproachfully, his glance resting once more upon Fargus, "I'm surprised at you, Chimp. Yes, hardened as I am, I'll admit to a certain mild astonishment at having to 'knock you off your perch.' Up to now I've never known you charged with anything more reprehensible than 'knocking off' an odd car or two, absent-minded like, and on the spur of the moment."

Suddenly his voice hardened.

"But now I'm taking you on a real charge," he said definitely. "You're in for trouble, Chimp, with a big T, all wool and a yard wide," He paused, and when he spoke again, for one customarily so self-contained the look in his eyes was revealing. "And if I can prove you had any hand in what happened in Hampstead yesterday you're going to take the eight o'clock walk if I have to pull the lever myself."

Fargus, his flattened, high cheekboned face leaden-coloured with fear, scowled.

"What you got on us, Ackroyd? And where's your warrant, anyway?" he growled, almost inarticulate.

If the expression that brought such grimness to his gaunt face could be said to constitute a smile, then Ackroyd smiled.

"I don't need a warrant to pull a man for shooting with intent," he said briefly, with an explanatory jerk of his head to indicate Hilary's wounded shoulder. "Or as accessory after the fact in five separate killings, even if, in more than one, you weren't actually the principal." His thumb and forefinger closed about Fargus' enormous ear. "In any event, you can make up

your mind to fifteen years of the 'Awful Place'― if you're luckier than I'm all out to see you're not, that is"...

Hilary saw how the Inspector's words got home; the giant's knees and hands were trembling, the gross face distorted.

"Fifteen years," Ackroyd repeated slowly. "A hundred and eighty months, or seven hundred and eighty solid an' sordid weeks between the same four walls, every minute of every day under orders; doing the same thing at the same time; no smokes, no drinks, no girl friends; a plain and simple diet." Eyes boring into those of the cowering Fargus, whose wide face had broken into tiny pin-points of sweat. "Fifteen years of it. Chimp," he repeated slowly, and then paused to allow these ominous words to sink in.

"Unless―" he added at last, with slow deliberation.

The giant snapped at the tentative hope like a starving pike at a minnow.

"Unless what, Mr. Ackroyd?" he burst out eagerly, but even then it was another long moment before the reply came.

"Tell us the way to reach Sainter from here," Ackroyd said levelly, and, watching, Hilary saw the eagerness in Fargus' face give place again to terror.

Apparently, also, that reversion was not lost upon Ackroyd.

"No need to be scared at opening out," he said coolly. "There's no harm coming to you from Sainter, because once we lay hands on that bird he'll be put where he can't harm anybody― not even himself."

At which it seemed to occur to Fargus that If his terrible master was due for the coop there couldn't very well be any come-back from him. So it was safety first for Chimp every time.

"Pull out the damper above the oven in the kitchen," he said, not letting his glance stray to the three other crooks.

Eyes boring into that huge apprehensive face:

"And Miss Moreland― where is she?" Ackroyd said, and to Hilary, at least, the pause before the reply came was interminable.

"With Sainter," Fargus replied, but only after another and more prolonged pause still.

Ackroyd's expression remained unchanged as he turned to Sergeant Oates.

"Tie his feet the same as you've done the others," he instructed, and waited until that was done before, the others at his heels, he led the way to the kitchen below, leaving Chimp and his friends bound and handcuffed.

There the range was large and old-fashioned, rust-encrusted, and with every appearance of disuse; the middle portion the fireplace, with the hot-water boiler on the left and the oven on the right. Six Inches above this latter was the knob of a damper.

Without moving, for a little time Ackroyd studied it. The door and library of the Hampstead house had had just that same appearance of innocence― and three men had died through over-confidence.

"Any of that cord left?" he said over his shoulder at last. "Plenty, eh? Good. Tie an end round that knob. I don't suppose there's any man-trap and spring-gun stuff, because, in that case, Chimp would know what to expect from the survivors. Nevertheless, I'm taking no more chances in this joint than I have to."

When, standing immediately behind the door, he pulled hard on the cord, the damper came out to its fullest. Nothing more deadly happened than that the whole structure of the range swung outward, leaving an opening that loomed dark and unpromising.

After an interval of a few minutes, and no delayed-action phenomenon developed, Ackroyd went forward.

Descending from immediately within the opening was a flight of steps.

His face alive with relief that here, at last, the way was open, Hilary would have thrust past him, but Ackroyd's large hand prevented.

"Stay put a minute," he said curtly, tip-toed to the back door that hitherto had been left unexplored, unlocked and unbolted it, and peered Into the reeking alleyway that was Arbour Street. Like a substantial shadow, Sergeant Bird detached himself from the gloom of the opposite building and came across. His fingers round his subordinate's arm, Ackroyd propelled him through the door and to those newly-disclosed steps; showed how the opening could be closed and reopened.

"Telephone particulars of this to the Yard," he instructed. "Meanwhile, If you hear nothing of us within half an hour, collect your men and bring them to find out why. I needn't warn you to watch your step or as to who you'll be up against. If you happen to bump against any of the gang― get them. Treat them rough if you have to, but get them! Follow?"

Bird said that he did, saluted, and went out Into the street again.

16

HIS pistol poised and at the ready, Ackroyd disappeared through the opening. Hilary followed, with Lord FitzRalph and Sergeant Oates taking up the rear.

There were not many steps, and when they reached the bottom it was to discover that a passage ran sharply to the left-in the direction of that new and ornate Model Dwelling-a passage shored and beamed that had been made by those who manifestly knew their business. And except that from somewhere a little distance ahead came an intermittent glimmer which, but that it seemed to originate from the wall, was faintly suggestive of standing water, they were in darkness. Actually it was this faint guide that enabled them to grope forward without the torches Ackroyd did not think it advisable to use.

As they drew nearer the reflected light enabled them to distinguish that the short passage to the left ended in a cellar. At what was transpiring in that brightly-lighted room, all caution disregarded, Ackroyd rushed forward.

So, also, did the others.

Hilary arrived at the entrance in time to see Ackroyd standing in the centre of the floor staring at a loop of rope that was on the point of disappearing through a small trapdoor in the ceiling. When, an instant later, with a loud, metallic clang the trapdoor fell, it fitted so exactly Into its frame as completely to conceal that any opening had been there.

Signing to Oates, Ackroyd turned, dashed down the passage in the way they had come.

In the face of his own preoccupation, however, Hilary was not interested; he was on his knees before the figure who, the lovely face a pale mask of pain, was prone upon the floor there.

Sally Moreland.

A moment, and his knife was out, the cords that tightly bound her severed. With infinite gentleness he lifted her to a seated position.

In those first few moments when they massaged her arms and wrists she did not speak for the pain of returning circulation. Then, faintly, but with an attempted smile that went to Hilary's heart for the sheer, dear gallantry of it, she said:

"If you'll be perfect little gentlemen and turn your backs for a moment, I'd like to― er― extend the scope of your ministrations. Then I shall be all right and able to tell you all about it. And, incidentally to thank you."

"You're going to have a drop of this first, anyway," FitzRalph said, and held out the silver cup of his spirit flask.

Not making any bones about it, she drank.

"And they talk about cocoa being grateful and comforting!" she said scornfully as she passed back the cup.

During the work of self-restoration they stood making a more or less desultory examination of the cellar. Presently:

"Now you can turn round." Sally said and they helped her to her feet. She swayed rather dizzily for a moment, so Hilary put his arms about her shoulders A supreme, head-singing moment!

"Who were those two who shot out of the door?" she asked at last in a strengthened voice.

"Inspector Ackroyd and Detective Sergeant Oates, of New Scotland Yard," Hilary told her.

The corners of her mouth went down, and, gazing thoughtfully to her front, she made no immediate comment.

"So they've got busy, have they?" she said at last. "Well, after that shooting party over at Hampstead coverts, I'm more grateful than astonished. And I don't mind telling you that, for me, the last twenty-four hours or so haven't been exactly a riot of fun and laughter. Apart from the slight physical discomfort, I'd too much reason for pessimism regarding my chance of ever drawing the old age pension.... Who's the second of my gallant rescuers. Hilary?"

The name slipped out unconsciously, and, because it went to show that even in her distress he had been in her thoughts, he thrilled to the sound of it.

"Lord FitzRalph," he said in introduction― "Miss Moreland."

"Probably, later on, I'll learn just how you happen to come into this," Sally ob-served as the two shook hands. She shuddered a little. "It's just as well you arrived when you did, too, because with only a very little delay conversation with me would have had to be conducted through a medium. My revered uncle's resentment at the abruptness of Hilary's departure from Hampstead was about to take practical form."

"And so will Scotland Yard's against him once they lay hold of him." Hilary assured her. "Incidentally, we had a general idea he'd be here."

The corners of Sally's mouth drooped eloquently.

"So he was, until he heard― and saw― you coming down the passage," she said. "And if your two friends who made such a rapid exit are hoping to cut off his retreat they're going to be unlucky."

Hilary gazed at her incredulously.

"Sainter here― a few minutes ago!" he gasped.

"Didn't you see him disappear through the trapdoor in the roof― like Harlequin at the pantomime?" Sally demanded, and indicated a small iron stud that was let into the floor.

"His emergency exit― just in case," she explained. "All he had to do was put his foot in the looped rope, touch the button, and he was drawn to the upper floor.... And it's no use pressing that gadget now, because the trap'll be clamped down with butterfly nuts."

"Don't you think we'd better try and find Ackroyd?" FitzRalph broke in to suggest, but Hilary was not listening.

Against the dark curtains at the further end of the cellar was a huge glass case.

"And what, precisely, is that?" he inquired. "An aquarium?"

"Except that, to me, there's something unexplainably beastly about it," Sally said shortly, "I've no idea." There was the return of fear in her voice as she added: "For some occult reason that contraption occurs to me as a very good thing to keep away from. And in any case, I've had all of this luxurious apartment I'm able to stand."

Instantly contrite, with his arm about her shoulder, Hilary led her down the passage, through the opening of the range, into the kitchen of the sordid house that had beer their starting-point, and to a chair.

The door opened and Ackroyd came in. With him was Sergeant Oates and a tall, red-faced, ramrod-straight man. with bristling moustache and eyebrows.

"Miss Moreland, I presume?" Ackroyd said courteously, indicating Sally, who gave him a friendly smile.

"I felt more like Livingstone when you broke in on us," she said, "only probably more grateful. Any sign of my sainted relative?"

Ackroyd swung round to the tall stranger. "Repeat what you've just told me, do you mind?" he instructed. "Who you are, and where you last saw Oliver."

Two solid heels clicked together, the third fingers of two enormous hands rested rigidly on the seams of the trousers. A large and audible breath was exhaled; two wholly expressionless eyes gazed straight to their front. An excellent type of the time-serving soldier of the old school― whom for some unknown reason Hilary disliked at sight.

"Sir," the man began in the voice that for so many years had brought the delinquencies of "other ranks" before the colonel, "my name is Sergeant-Major George 'Orace Parker, late of the Gren'deer Guards. On the fifteenth of May last, bein' out of employment, I answered an advertisement in the 'Situations Vacant' column of the 'Mornin' World.' invitin' applications for the position of caretaker. In doo time I received a reply instructin' me to call at Oliver's Model Dwellin's at height-thirty the follerin' evenin, bringin' copies of recent testimonials, an' to arsk for Mr Oliver in person. Dooly presentin' myself at the time specified, I was engaged at four pun ten a week."

Ackroyd held up his hand and the flow ceased. All very convincing, but for Hilary's thinking just a shade too glib and, as it were, well-rehearsed.

"I'm not for a moment suggesting you're not worth it, Sergeant-Major," the inspector said reassuringly, "but for that particular job, and as wages go nowadays, four pounds ten a week's rather a lot, isn't it?"

Something of an additional flush came into the already rubicund face of the ex-soldier; for a moment the expressionless eyes became wary.

"Very good wages indeed, sir," he agreed heartily. "After Mr. Oliver 'ad gorn into partic'lars of my career, 'e said what wages was I arskin'. When I told 'im two ten a week, 'e said could I be trusted to obey orders implicit an' without arskin' questions? I told 'im respectfully that if there was a man who'd ever risen to Warrant Rank in 'Is Majesty's Brigade of Guards by insubordination an' back-chat, I'd like to meet 'im."

"And then?" the inspector invited, as the stolid man paused.

"Why then 'e sorter surprised me, sir, if you know what I mean," the sergeant said slowly. "Said as 'ow 'e wasn't goin' to 'ave a man in 'is employ who wasn't in a position to live comfortable an' self-respectin'. an' as no man could do that under ninety bob a week, just as long as I be'aved meself an' obeyed orders, that'd be my wage."

Though, the exposition ended, the voice ceased, with the finality of water cut off at the main, Hilary observed that the defensive look remained at the back of the eyes.

"And what were the especial orders ho was so particular you should obey without question?" said Ackroyd.

"From the vestibool, where I was stationed," the ex-guardsman told him, without any pause for reflection, "there is a door― always locked it was, anyway― that led to Mr. Oliver's private soot. My orders was never to attempt to gain entry thereto."

Slowly, contemplatively, Ackroyd nodded. "I see," he said at last. "Did Oliver use the door to any great extent himself?"

" 'E used that there door, sir," Sergeant Major Parker stated definitely, "maybe once every fortnight or three weeks, but always from 'is side to mine, an' never from mine to 'is. In other words, it was always to come out, an' never to go in."

"And your employer having emerged from the depths, as it were." Ackroyd went on to ask, "what then?"

The sergeant's face became even more blank than before.

" 'Ow do you mean, what then?" he asked. "Where, as a rule, did he go? Upstairs, through the front door, or where?" Ackroyd asked patiently.

"Sometimes," Parker said, after another brief interval for reflection, " 'e went one way, an' sometimes another; sometimes both, an' sometimes, on the other 'and, neither."

To disentangle this it was necessary for Ackroyd, too, to put in a little thinking.

"You mean." he said, "that after he'd made his inspection of the upper quarters he used the front door into the street?"

"Or through to nex' door," Parker revealed stolidly.

Only by keeping a tight rein on himself was the inspector able to prevent himself from shooting up from his seat.

"You mean." he said quickly, "that without the necessity of using the front door there's a way through into the next block?"

Parker nodded

"Sure there is, sir," he said unemotionally. 'And into the nex one after that. And the nex'."

"On the ground floor?" Ackroyd demanded.

"Just opposite the door 'e used to come by," the janitor told him. "An' the reason why you didn't spot it just now is because it's, as you might say, concealed "

Ackroyd stood up

"Show me," he said shortly, and they filed into the street and round to the entrance of the flats-a wide, square vestibule with stairs running up from the left, and, in the right-hand corner, a door with a tiny keyhole but no knob!

Ackroyd pointed

"That's where Sainter emerged into the light of day," he said, and turned to the ex-soldier "And now show me the way he went "

Parker strode stiffly to a wedge-shaped space under the stairs where the light had difficulty in penetrating. Each wall of the vestibule was lined with a kind of mass-production panelling in oak, and in that dim light here, to all appearances the continuity of that work was unbroken.

The janitor, however, placing the tips of sausage-like fingers in the centre of one of the panels furthest from the stair-foot, exerted gentle pressure There was a click, and from some three feet from the corner the triangle of wall opened to a narrow stone passage that was lighted dimly by a single overhead bulb Parker pointed

"There's another o' these doors at the further end" he told them, "that opens out same as this one-under the stairs An' so on-to the end of the block-and the street."

As Ackroyd turned away, his gaunt face was as without expression, almost, as that of the ex-soldier himself. Yet Hilary, who by now had gained some insight into that odd mentality, could sense the bitterness of his disappointment.

"Fat lot of good me surrounding the house!" he grumbled. "By this he's two or three miles away, and still going. What makes it worse still is that at the time he must have used this emergency exit the sergeant-major here was out at his tea came back just as I was leaving for next door. So naturally when I asked him if he'd seen anything of our man, he hadn't." He turned to Parker. "Any telephone anywhere?" he inquired.

"In the flats office, sir, centre entrance in the block," the ex-guardsman told him.

"Stay here while I use it, do you mind?" Ackroyd said, and passed into the street. Five minutes or so later, when he returned, his expression impenetrable:

"When it comes to thoroughness," he said, "I'll certainly give Sainter full marks and a bonus. He's cut the blinkin' wire. I've told Sergeant Bird to send out the 'All stations' call from the nearest box while I take the same route as Sainter, making inquiries as I go. A full-time job, that, in itself for one evening― and, for all I shall learn― a useless one. The trouble is, it has to be done. Have you thought where you're going to sleep to-night, Miss Moreland?"

"In the quietest and most comfortable bed I can find in London," Sally said promptly, and Hilary saw that the lovely face was pitifully white and strained. Small wonder, either, it occurred to him.

Ackroyd took a card from his pocket and, followed by a series of cabalistic signs, wrote a few words on the back.

"Listen, Miss Moreland," he said, his customary detachment momentarily abandoned and his voice impressive. "These last few days you must have had about all the excitement you'll need for quite a while, so the last thing I want is to scare you. But there's no getting away from it, by this time any affection your revered uncle may once have felt for you could be packed in a very small compass. So as he's one of those who're inclined to allow their feelings scope I think it probable any unsupervised interview that takes place between you is likely to be more episodic than tranquil, if you see what I mean."

Sally met the lazy eyes directly.

"In other words." she said calmly, "you think that, ignoring any danger to himself, he's likely to come gunning after me?"

The inspector's hands groped for, and found, his pipe.

"That's my one big hope," he said piously. "That may not sound particularly chivalrous, but it has the merit of truth. Meanwhile, you can take it from me you're going to be well looked after― very well indeed."

"Thank you very much," Sally said, and so demurely that the inspector's eyes twinkled.

"I want you to take this card," he went on, putting it into her hand, "to 19C Clanricarde Gardens, Lancaster Gate, and give it to Mr. Duff there― Detective-Inspector Joseph Angus Duff he was not so long ago. Only instead of setting up in opposition to Scotland Yard, as so many of us do when we're too old for real work, he had the sense to take this select boarding-house, and, being a Scotsman, is making a very good thing of it. The beds are good, I know, because I've stayed there, and the food's to scale. By the time you arrive he'll have been advised, so you won't have to go into a long account of yourself. And once that old Highlander's taken you under his wing the man who approaches within a hundred yards without authority is due to be as busy as a moth in a lighthouse."

Looking, for the first time in Hilary's knowledge of him, distinctly embarrassed.

Ackroyd coughed a little so that Sally hurried to the rescue.

"I know!" she said understandingly "You want to ask me how I'm off for  money, and not knowing quite how to put it without hurting my feelings."

Ackroyd nodded.

"You're quite the thought-reader, Miss Moreland," he said quietly.

"Fortunately," Sally said, "you've nothing to worry about, because when my father died and I went to live with Sainter, who incidentally was only his half-brother, I was left almost vulgarly well off, and one thing I'm able to say for my uncle is that he always refused to have anything to do with my money; wouldn't handle a penny for investment or even advise me what to do with it...."

Her brow creased into tiny lines of thought; she was silent. Then, suddenly, she looked up.

"You think he's mad, of course?" she said.

Ackroyd was silent.

"There's still another necessary question it's not going to be pleasant to ask you," he said at last, and again she seemed to know instinctively what was in his mind.

"If there's insanity in the family?" she inquired, and, as silently the inspector inclined his head, Hilary's breathing checked.

"After his father died in an asylum his mother married my grandfather," she said.

"And, though I have my doubts about it, that's where I hope it will be his good fortune to finish," Ackroyd observed soberly. "Now I'm going to have a look at that trapdoor."

The passage through the door on the right of the vestibule ended in a loft-like space that actually was the ceiling of the cellar. In the centre of the floor the trap-door, secured now by butterfly nuts, was surmounted by a grooved rope-surrounded drum, the end of this, weighted and looped, roughly coiled nearby, in the far corner was the dynamo from which it was operated.

17

HILARY accompanied Sally to the large, old-fashioned house in Clanricarde Gardens, where, despite his rough appearance, they were shown at once into a small office at the back of the reception-desk. Here at a businesslike roll top desk was seated ex-Detective-Inspector Angus Duff, a hatchet-faced, keen-eyed, rather saturnine man who in height and general boniness was second only to Ackroyd himself.

"I'm glad to see ye safe," he said to Sally as he rose to shake hands. "And as long as ye re beneath my roof I'll see that's what ye remain. But, maybe, before ye do anything else ye'd like to see your room."

"And immediately after that, a bath," said Sally, and without further discussion Duff led the way to the lift. When they reached the room that was on the third floor it was to find it large, airy, comfortable, and of a cleanliness that would have passed muster from the captain of a battle-ship. Not only was a bathroom leading from it, but on the dressing-table were all those brushes and combs and bottles and miscellaneous cosmetics that are so essential to the feminine toilet. A sleeping-suit and dressing-gown lay on the eiderdown.

"Things I keep for leddy veesitors who for any reason arrive without baggage," Duff explained. "The last thought of the landlord of hotels and boarding-houses in this country seems to be to make their places as much like a stay with friends as possible― and that's the whole difference between a good house and a bad."

"What would be real Samaritanism," Hilary pleaded, "would be to show me, also, to a bathroom, and then us both into a private room where we can have a meal. Failing that, I'm afraid it'll be a coffee-stall for me. If the owner isn't too particular as to the personal appearance of his clientele, that is."

Then a thought came that he could not but regard as inspiration. Apart that the house was too far from the centre of things, he couldn't wish himself on FitzRalph indefinitely. Further, to remain where he was would have the merit, inestimable and unassailable, of keeping him within immediate touch of Sally. Until Sainter had been put where he could do no more harm, the closer he was to her the safer she'd be.

"Although I can't think that, with the way you look after people, there's ever a room here that isn't booked about ten deep," he said to Duff, "if it has so happened that one of your other beneficiaries has died of old age or too soft living or something, do you think I might have his room?"

The Scotsman's keen eye twinkled; the more these two saw of him the better they liked him.

"Folk don't die at the Waverly House, 'ere," he said. "They're like old soldiers, they just fade away. Mr. Bennison, the actor, who's been wi' me ever since I opened, happens to have faded away to a thirteen weeks' tour of the provinces. Though he's keeping his room on, I'm entitled to let it to a selected guest.'

"I hope he gets twelve calls before the curtain every night and fourteen at West Hartlepool. God bless his roving spirit," said Hilary with enthusiasm. "And please can you lend me a pair of pyjamas?"

THE FOLLOWING morning, armed with the substantial cheque he had drawn from his lawyer, Hilary drove to his father's bankers. This, despite his dishevelment, successfully negotiated, with a heartening wad of Treasury notes in his pocket, he drove then to one of those universal outfitters that have sprung up since the war, and bought and changed into a complete out-fit. Then he drove to Sackville St., where he was measured for several suits of what he called "real" clothes; to Duke St. and Burlington Arcade for socks and shirts and ties, lastly to a great craftsman in a tiny shop in, of all thoroughfares, Little New-port St., and here he placed a substantial order for shoes.

When, about a quarter-past one, he arrived back at Waverly House, in the same sitting-room where they had dined on the previous evening, and that subsequently Sally had engaged as her own, it was to discover Ackroyd, and with him Lord Fitz-Ralph. Following her first half-incredulous glance of recognition, Sally's eyes lighted with laughter.

"But look who's here," she cried, and only then it came to Hilary that this was the first time she had seen him in anything but what closely approximated to rags.

"I always wear my Sunday suit at a party," he explained, and turned to the inspector. "Any news of Sainter?"

The detective shook his gaunt head.

"About as much as you'd learn of any one pilchard in a glut," he said. "And there are about seven million people in London."

A waiter brought a tray of cocktails, and until he had left the room they switched the conversation to commonplaces.

"Do you know who I spent a most interesting hour or so with this morning?" the detective inquired.... "If you don't, I'll tell you. It was Sir Leonard Harland."

HAVING been for so long out of touch, the name conveyed nothing to Hilary. Lord FitzRalph, however, said quickly: "The Harley St. man?"

"The greatest alienist of this or any other country or age," Ackroyd said, with unusual impressiveness, "knows more about the working of the human brain and― and spirit― than a skilled watchmaker about the mechanism of a clock. Obscure reactions and pre-natal influences and all that. It seems that Sainter's is a clearly-recognised pathological condition. I've forgotten the scientific name for it, something obsession.' It means that, to the exclusion of every other interest, the whole life and soul of the sufferer are given over to one object. And, if in his strivings to achieve that object he finds himself thwarted, the original purpose becomes transformed to a possession of lust for revenge against the one responsible." He turned directly to Sally. "That's why, for the time being, we've got to be so careful of you."

"As how?" Sally asked interestedly. "What I mean is, am I prisoner within these four walls with trusty big-booted guardians at my portal by day and by night? Or do I have a breath of fresh air some time?"

"Just for a time," the inspector said gravely, "I'd like you to rest quietly here. But only for a few days if my idea and Sir Leonard's is correct. If Sainter's― well― his affliction, if you like to put it that way, has taken the course usual in such cases." he continued "you can bank on it that he isn't just sitting waiting for the clouds to roll by. So, at least until we see what's going to happen, the only safe place for you is here in Waverly House."

A telephone buzzed on the side table. When Sally went over and lifted the receiver they saw her face grow suddenly more intent. Hand over the transmitter, she turned to Ackroyd.

"Sergeant Oates," she said. "Speaking from Scotland Yard."

The inspector took the receiver, announced himself, and listened.

"Who?" he said sharply, and went on listening. "Ask him," he said at last, "if he'll come with you down here?"

There was another period of waiting, punctuated only by the low indistinguishable voice that crackled into the receiver. Then that sound died, so that all to break the expectant silence was the hurried ticking of the little gilt clock on the mantel.

At last:

"Right. We'll wait for you." Ackroyd said, replaced the receiver, and swung round to them. "Anybody here know anything of Lord Kilnsyde?"

FitzRalph looked up.

"I do," he said. "Sir Henry Prior, who has the distinction of being my maternal uncle, is quite a big noise in the shipping world, if, that is, with every country but our own paying subsidies to their merchant fleet there's any voice left in British shipping but a groan of anguish."

"I know all about Sir Henry Prior," Ackroyd said "A good man, too. if I may say so. But what's his connection with Kilnsyde?"

The peer's good-tempered mouth was grim as he said:

"When next you meet my revered relative, I don't think I'd suggest there is any connection. He was at sea himself for a time and learnt the vocabulary and how to use it. His idea of Kilnsyde corresponds with that of a high priest of the Brahmins towards an Untouchable discovered slaughtering a Sacred Ox."

"As, before I interview a man officially, I like to know as much as possible about him. P'raps you'll tell me why, exactly," Ackroyd suggested, as FitzRalph paused.

"My uncle happens to be of the old type," FitzRalph replied. " 'Integrity of British Business.' 'An Englishman's Word Is His Bond' sort of thing. Kilnsyde has sold the pass― and his own men. In this country there's a pretty strict law regarding the overloading of ships; also, before a vessel is allowed to leave port, it is required to pass a high standard of seaworthiness. The Board of Trade scale of wages and food, too, comes pretty expensive. In Greece, however, the laws are not so stringent, and the officials suffer from epidemic myopia. They can't see the rotten hulls and over-laden holds for palm-oil. So, as soon as the trade winds blew cold, Lord Kilnsyde let it be known that he'd sold his ships to a Greek syndicate. One item of interest he omitted to mention, however, was that nine-tenths of the syndicate is Lord Kilnsyde himself.  In the three years, since the port of registry was changed four out of those ten ships have been lost with a large percentage of their hands. In the meanwhile, Lord Kilnsyde has purchased the late Marquis of Hannaford's estate in Sussex for £45,000."

"He's on his way here with Sergeant Oates," said Ackroyd, and this time it was Hilary who cast a quick glance at him. "It seems that our Mr. Sainter is even more enthusiastic in the cause of reformation and applied assassination than we'd thought. He's sent one of his far-famed 'demanding money with menaces' letters to Lord Kilnsyde."

To Hilary, in the fashion that extremes in most things are able to gather attention to themselves, the personality of the man who, about half an hour later, Oates showed in to them, was of absorbing interest.

Physically, the first-generation peer was almost completely square; as nearly as possible broad as he was tall, and of a depth of body within measurable distance of his breadth. He had a wide, yellow face, with coarse, upstanding black hair, protruberant lips, and eyes deeply embedded beneath overhanging brows. His voice was thick and lisping, and Hilary took an instant dislike to him.

He stood in the doorway for a moment without speaking, his eyes darting from one to another of them. It was characteristic of Sergeant Oates, Hilary realised later, to test his charge's reaction to the company before introducing him.

Eventually, however, he looked across at Ackroyd.

"Lord Kilnsyde, sir," he said formally.

The inspector's acknowledgment was short and without enthusiasm.

"Sergeant Oates tells me there's something you preferred not to wait until I get back to my office to communicate," he said. "Also, that you declined to discuss the matter with any of my colleagues."

"You Inspector Ackroyd?" the visitor demanded.

"That's me, m'lord." the inspector replied. "Won't you sit down?

"I understand you wish to see me regarding a blackmailing letter," Ackroyd went on when the other was seated, and Kilnsyde nodded easily. It occurred to Hilary that if he was afraid he was very successfully disguising it.

"That's right," he said. "Real money or your life stuff-just the same as..."He broke off; quite obviously he had been on the point of saying more than he intended. Slightly to Hilary's surprise, however, Ackroyd made no comment.

"Show me, please." he said, holding out his hand.

Hands thrust deeply into his trouser pockets, lolling easily back in his chair, the shipowner made no move.

"Who're our other friends," he said, his eyes turning to Sally.

Casually as the question was put, it was an ultimatum. Nothing more was to be forthcoming until he knew with whom he was dealing. And it was so essential Ackroyd should have a sight of that letter.

"My warrant card," he said, producing it.

The other regarded it unmoved.

"I might remind you that as it was Sergeant Oates who brought me here it's not your bona-fides that are in question," he said coolly. "What I want to know is who are these others, and why it's necessary for them to be present. At least until after the criminal's arrest I should have thought that the fewer outsiders with an exact knowledge of the terms of a blackmailing letter the better."

As in general, this would not have admitted of dispute, it had the effect of put-ting Ackroyd at a disadvantage. Something in the shipowner's attitude as well led Hilary to wonder if he had any suspicion as to how vital to the inspector that letter was.

It did not surprise him, then, when, his voice official and unmoved, the inspector made the necessary introductions.

"Upon whose discretion you may rely," he promised, "and who it is possible may be immediately concerned in the object of your call here," he supplemented coolly as he did so.

It was only to Sally that Kilnsyde's glance turned.

"May I venture to hope," he said, "that at some not-too-long-delayed date I may have the honour of looking back upon this as only our first meeting?"

Sally flushed, and her dark eyes were dangerous. Her reply, however, was checked by Ackroyd, whose voice had an edge to it Hilary had not heard before.

"I'll be glad to see that letter Lord Kilnsyde," he said curtly.

The shipowner settled more comfortably in his chair.

"Apparently my impression that in a case of blackmail secrecy's the one thing the police insist upon is all wrong," he observed lispingly. "However, if it's all right with you. I've nothing to hide."

He dived a square, squat-fingered hand into his breast pocket and produced an envelope; handed it to Ackroyd, who, opening it. discovered the sheet it held to be of an exactly similar make, and in the same unblemished typescript, as that which a few days previously had been handed to him by the crook financier Theodore Brand.

He read:

Since you saw fit to transfer the port of registry of your steamers from London to Athens, no less than twenty-eight British seamen have lost their lives in the subsequent wrecking, either through over-loading or deliberate barratry, of four separate vessels of the fleet. Thus it is necessary that as far as is humanly possible the relatives of those victims shall receive compensation.

It is, then, my intention that in each case the legal representatives of these murdered sailors shall be paid the sum of £1000 (one thousand pounds), and that I myself will distribute Additionally, you will include a further sum that shall be equivalent to the total amount thus disbursed, and this I shall make myself responsible for dividing between the various maritime charities.

On Tuesday next, the 14th of May, you will proceed to Lewes, in Sussex, and drive to Alfriston. There you will alight at the Star Inn, and by the lane of which those premises are the corner, proceed on foot to the Downs. From thence, timing your arrival for twelve noon precisely, you will go directly to Firle Beacon.

You will carry with you in denominations of $100, $500  and $,1000 in United States currency, the sum of $300,000, an amount that represents, approximately the £56,000 as mentioned in a preceding paragraph of this letter, plus, roughly £4000 as compensation for the present below-par value of the dollar.

This money, wrapped securely in white paper, you will place on the ground at the extremest southerly point of the beacon, after which you will return, without looking back, by the same way you arrived, and having reached Alfriston, will return at once to Lewes.

Should you fail implicitly to carry out these orders, or communicate directly or indirectly with the police, you will cease to be alive within forty-eight hours of that failure or betrayal becoming manifest.

Fiat Justitia

"And what," Ackroyd remarked, placing the document on the table, but without re-moving his hand from it, "could be fairer than that?"

The shipowner's brows contracted.

"Am I expected to accept that comment as official?" he sneered.

The inspector's eyes remained as wide open as was permitted by their habitual somnolence.

"The only thing I ask you to accept," he said coolly, tapping the letter with the heel of his hand, "is this ultimatum."

HIS dark face flushed to an even darker shade, Lord Kilnsyde Jerked bolt upright in his chair.

"You mean," he cried, and now the lisp in his voice had degenerated to shrillness, "I'm to run the risk either of losing three hundred thousand dollars, or my life. Because, let me tell you, that letter means exactly what it says."

"And let me tell you, Lord Kilnsyde," Ackroyd said unemotionally, "that I meant just exactly what I said. If it is of any interest to you to save your money and your life, at precisely twelve o'clock noon on Tuesday next, the 14th of May, you will place a parcel of the requisite size, wrapped in new white paper, at the top of Firle Beacon, on the South Downs of Sussex. Except that, should actually the parcel contain United States or any other currency, you will have rendered yourself liable to prosecution for compounding a felony, I am indifferent as to what that parcel contains."

Staring straight to his front, his fingers about the arms of his chair, and some part at least of the frown still creasing his forehead, for a long moment the shipowner made no reply. Then, slowly, he hoisted himself to his feet.

"You mean," he said, "that, having defied the terms of that letter by communicating its contents to you, and having received your instructions, the whole matter is out of my hands? That I'm to be told nothing of what you intend doing about it?"

Hilary smiled inwardly as Ackroyd, too, got up from his chair. By following that example the inspector had transformed a gesture of emphasis into one preliminary to departure.

"You know all we're going to do about it already― so far as it concerns yourself, Lord Kilnsyde," Ackroyd said briefly. "Except that instead of money the parcel will be a dummy, you are to carry out the instructions contained in"― his hand moved to indicate the letter he had no intention of surrendering "this."

Lord Kilnsyde's eyes rested for a moment upon Sally, who avoided them.

"You don't happen to have overlooked what's likely to happen to me when my correspondent discovers the deception?" he lisped ironically.

Ackroyd reached over and, collecting the shipowner's hat, handed it to him.

"I've overlooked nothing― not even that Miss Moreland is waiting for her lunch," he said.

Contemplatively the shipowner's eyes rested upon him for a moment. Then, the glance shifting to Sally, he seemed to think better of an intention to protest. Instead, he bowed ceremoniously from the waist.

"I hope, Miss Moreland, to have the honour of seeing you again," he said with Sincerity.

In the one brief moment Sally's eyes travelled from the unduly small and ornately-shod feet to that square and bristling head, there was no flamboyancy of apparel or imperfection of personality they did not expose or depreciate.

"I am much engaged, Lord Kilnsyde," she said.

Incredibly, in face of that snub, as the shipowner minced over to the door, he was smiling.

"That, at least, does not surprise me," he said, bowed again, and disappeared.

But even before the door had closed Ackroyd caught the eye of Sergeant Oates.

"Have him tailed," he said soundlessly, and, without waiting to ask questions, Oates, too, disappeared.

A moment, and the inspector, lean face inscrutable, turned to Hilary, and from him, in turn, to the others.

"Notice his hands?" he demanded. There was a pause.

"Only that they were square, thick, short-fingered, and too meticulously manicured," Sally said at last, as they seemed to wait for her.

Ackroyd turned an inquiring eye upon Hilary, and then upon Lord FitzRalph.

"That go with you as well?" he asked shortly.

"Quite," said Hilary.

"Entirely," corroborated FitzRalph.

"Nothing curious about 'em?" the Inspector persisted.

"Not apart from that, as Miss Moreland pointed out, they're almost square," said FitzRalph.

"Why do you ask?" Hilary inquired.

"Except for one omission in detail, a most convincing performance," Ackroyd said quietly. "You can take it from me, nevertheless, that if the enthusiastic feminist who's just passed through that door is Lord Kilnsyde, then I'm Little Lord Fauntleroy."

18

THEY knew sufficient of the inspector by this to realise he was unlikely to make so staggering a statement without adequate foundation. Eventually it was Sally who broke into their astonishment.

"How do you know that?" she asked, and the inspector smiled grimly.

"By the fact that the real Lord Kilnsyde lost the little finger of his left hand in the war," he said. "Also, from the circumstance that the girl he was engaged to having bolted with her real boy friend on the morning they were to have been married, he's the only man ever I met who honestly and definitely dislikes your sex."

Sally threw back her head in the husky, golden laughter that of all human sounds Hilary loved most.

"I'd hate you to think I was taking more to myself than I'm entitled to," she said, "but to me that last sounds almost more conclusive than the missing finger."

"Certainly there weren't no blinkin' misogamist about that artist," Lord Fitz-Ralph agreed.

"Only― just what was his idea, anyway?" Hilary demanded blankly. Then, as Ackroyd made no reply, a thought came that was the reverse of reassuring. "For the love of Mike you don't think he was from Sainter― just spying out the lay of the land?" he cried.

"I shouldn't be all the world surprised," Ackroyd admitted. "But I'll know more about that when I've heard from Oates." He had reseated himself, and now he looked across at Sally. "But one thing, at least, I'm definite about," he added.

"And that is?" she said, as he waited for her to speak.

"That you've to take fewer chances even than I'd thought," he said gravely. "Until there's about half a dozen locked doors and twenty feet of wall between you and that uncle-by-marriage of yours, you're staying very put Indeed, and with all kinds of willing helpers to see you don't get careless."

Sally got briskly to her feet.

"Mr. Duff'll be thinking I've got very careless about that perfectly good lunch I ordered in your honour," she countered.

Promptly Ackroyd put aside his pipe.

"That's what my stom― inside's been telling me for the last twenty minutes," he agreed.

They were almost at the end of that cheery meal before they heard from Oates, who reported by telephone.

Owing to the fact that he had not dared risk calling attention to the guard placed over Waverly House by instructing one of the detective-constables on duty outside, he had been obliged to undertake the tailing of the pseudo Lord Kilnsyde himself, and had not found it easy.

His quarry had turned into the Bayswater Road, and there boarded a bus. With a keen look-out for any colleague in sight. Oates had followed in a taxi.

Not until Piccadilly Circus, however, had he been successful in his quest for assistance. There, crossing the road, was Detective-Constable Bertram, only lately transferred from the uniformed to the plainclothes branch, and as yet untried.

Beckoned into the taxi, however, and the situation explained, the lad had greeted his first departure from routine work with enthusiasm.

At Leicester Square, ignoring lunch, the quarry had turned into a billiard hall. Bertram had followed him inside, and as for successful shadowing three persons are necessary, and it was so essential Oates should keep in the background, he had drawn two more men from Scotland Yard by telephone.

"Stick to him, brother," Ackroyd urged encouragingly, and rang off.

There was more shopping to be done before Hilary's outfit would be complete. Included in the afternoon he spent in the West End was a second call at his boot-maker's. About six o'clock, when having left Little Newport St., he was passing through Leicester Square, he ran into Ackroyd outside the Queen's Hotel.

"Our bird's having a drink In the Cavour," the inspector announced. "Care to wait and see what happens? Not much risk of him seeing us, anyway, because it isn't him I'm here to keep in sight. Only the rear one of the three men I've out on to tail him-none of whom he knows from Adam."

IT was nearly an hour before Ackroyd received a signal from the figure who lounged so unobtrusively by the Shakespeare statue. At an easy stroll "Lord Kilnsyde" covered the distance between Leicester Square and the Florence restaurant in Wardour St. It was obvious that he had no suspicion of being under observation. After an excellent dinner he rounded-off with a cigar and liqueur brandy, so that it was not until approaching half-past nine that he emerged from the Rupert St. entrance and in his short-stepping, mincing gait, walked in leisurely fashion to Jerrard St.

As the inspector and Hilary waited, Oates came hurrying up.

"Turned into the Riviera Club, sir," he announced.

Ackroyd whistled contemplatively below his breath.

"That joint, eh?" he said at last, and Hilary saw the glance the two exchanged.

"What's the matter with the Riviera, anyway?" he demanded.

Before replying, Ackroyd completed the bar of alleged music that, following a brief silence, he had recommenced.

"For wickedness, naked and undiluted," he said quietly at last, "that place has any other joint in London packed in a parcel and addressed to the Church Army Home.'

"What do you think's the best to do now, sir?" Oates inquired.

Ackroyd heaved his shoulders from the shop-front against which he had been leaning.

"Let's have a look at the place, anyway," he said morosely, and turned to Oates.

"Post one of your men at the entrance to the alley there," he ordered. "Send the other to find out if the joint has a back exit, and, if so, to stand by. You wait outside here; if you hear my whistle or other tumult come right in, because may-be I'll need you." He turned to Hilary. "Care to join in the fun and laughter of one of London's haunts of pleasure and habitual criminals?"

"There's nothing," Hilary assured him truthfully, "that would appeal to me more."

A few steps brought them to the place they sought. Ackroyd turned the handle of the door. It yielded, and they stepped Into a dimly-lighted vestibule. There was a hatch in the wall on the right, and a flight of stairs on the left.

The hatch shot up. A bullet-headed, pasty-faced larrikin with a flattened nose and shallow, green eyes peered aggressively out at them. Hilary noticed that, hanging back a little, Ackroyd was outside this guardian's range of vision.

"Well? Wotisit?" truculently demanded the keeper of the pass.

Judging from the inspector's uncustomary diffidence that a few moment's delay might be indicated, Hilary swayed a little as he stood.

"Heard sounds o' revl'ry by night," he said gravely. "An' lads and lasses trippin' a stately measure. So I said to myself 'Shall us?' 'Oh, indu'b'ably,' I replied def'n'tly. An' here I am."

"Buzz off, Clarence!" the man said, and very obviously meant it.

Hilary seemed to endeavour to collect himself. Also, it was apparent he resented the other's tone

"When I speak to a man civ-civ'ly," he said with dignity, "I expec' civil answer. An' what's more," he added in a loud voice, "I see I gerrit."

"You'll gerrit all right," the man said unpleasantly, and, his mouth ugly, slipped from the stool and through a door some few feet from the wicket and so into the vestibule, and at sight of Ackroyd could not have stopped that advance more abruptly if he'd run against an invisible wall.

"Well, well, well! If it isn't Happy Jagers. In youth the Beau of Borstal, in maturity the Darling of Dartmoor, and, doubtless, in old age, the Bane of Broadmoor," Ackroyd exclaimed cheerfully and darted forward just in time to intercept his man as the latter dived for his cubby-hole.

"Those warning bells shall not ring out!" he said chidingly. Then, in the tone of one who meant precisely what he said: "And raise your voice in just one little sound, Happy, just one tiny squeal to let Toni know we're here and you'll only be sorry once, but that'll be for ten years. Or, if I've any influence or eloquence, fifteen."

Happy, whose mouth was open preliminary to a view-halloo, seemed to think better of it.

"You've nothin' against me, Mister bleedin' Busy," he snarled.

Ackroyd's voice was chiding again as he said:

"With the proofs I've collected you were 'spotter' for the Danahar gang, I wonder if you'll be able to convince the Judge of that without my evidence to the contrary?"

Happy clutched at the straw held out.

"But it was your case, Mister," he pleaded. "If I'd 'ad any notion there was to be shootin' I'd never 'ave been in on it. I may be― what I am― but I'm no gunman."

Ackroyd's eyes remained fixed upon him. "Come quietly now. without opening your mouth, and maybe I'll put in a word for you," he said.

Happy's reply was to tip-toe to the door and wait there. Ackroyd followed and outside delivered him to Oates.

"Who's the square-faced, black-haired man with small feet and a mincing walk who went into the so-called club a few minutes ago?" the inspector asked curtly.

Instantly Happy's hard-bitten face be-came blank.

"S'welp me, Mister, you can search me as to 'im," he said. "I don't know 'im from a 'ole in the ground."

"Then why admit him to the club?" Ackroyd asked, and for a moment the crook doorkeeper hesitated.

"Because I was told to," he said sullenly.

"By whom?" Ackroyd pressed.

Again there was hesitation, so that the inspector turned to Oates.

"Put him in the cooler," he instructed ominously.

Narrow face fear-ridden, but for the detective's detaining arm Happy would have taken an eager step forward.

"Toni told me. The bloke's Pav Martin," he said, but with the acme of reluctance.

It seemed an unconscionable time before Ackroyd spoke. When he did so, it was in a tone so purposeful, so coldly menacing, as to turn Hilary rather cold.

"Listen, Happy," he said. "I know the two who, besides yourself, were in that Brill Street killing. The dragnet's out for them and within a week they'll each be occupying rent-free, one room flatlets. That's certain. I know, too, that your own contribution to the affair was small; that you were just a 'spotter', hired to give the signal if there were any police about, and that no one was more annoyed there was a killing than yourself."

"Believe me, Mister..." the crook burst out excitedly, but Ackroyd checked the flow.

"So far as concerns the police and that particular case, you just don't matter," he continued in the same coldly judicial voice. "Or didn't, anyway. But now it rests with yourself whether you find yourself in the dock or whether we― just forget you."

He paused, and for the first time in Hilary's experience of that tracker of men, the usually veiled and lazy eyes were merciless.

"The shortness of our memory is going to depend on the shortness of yours, Happy," he added quietly.

"Woddyer mean, guv'nor?" the other demanded quickly.

"I mean," Ackroyd said, "that if you're wise you're going back to your cubby-hole with no recollection that we've been asking questions about Pav Martin. Then, maybe, I'll be equally forgetful that you were anywhere near Brill Street on the night of the murder."

The crook's face lighted to eagerness.

"I've forgotten already," he cried, with emphasis.

"But if, before we get upstairs," Ackroyd went on unheedingly, his words coming more slowly and impressively than ever, "Toni or anyone else gets the least inkling that Pav was followed here, I'll have you on a charge of murder. There's a valuable life― maybe two or three lives before we're through― dependent on your silence, Happy, and if ever I meant anything in my life I mean the warning I'm giving you now... Let go his arm, Sergeant."

Impressed, and, Hilary could see, considerably awe-stricken, by the Inspector's manner, Happy stood for a moment without speaking. Then suddenly, something like resolution on his face, he looked up.

"If it's a matter o' lives," he said, "you could bank on me keepin' me trap shut anyway. It's no use me sayin' I'm not a crook, because you've 'ad me 'inside' mort than once to prove me a liar. But I'm no killer― an' well you know it― not even in self-defence. An' I'm not out to 'elp them as is."

There was a certain sincerity in this, and as such apparently Ackroyd was pre-pared to accept it.

"Very good," he said. "Get back to the club before Toni gets on to it you've left your post."

The "hook" was half-way back to the entrance when Ackroyd quietly called him back.

"Know anything of a man named Oliver, alias Sainter?" he demanded.

Happy thought for a moment.

"Not by that name, mister," he replied at last. "But then names don't mean anythin' 'ere, as you know. What sort of a lookin' feller?"

Briefly and comprehensively Ackroyd described the pink and blooming man. And, as that adequate word-picture developed. Happy's face showed a quickened interest.

"If it's the same bloke as I think," Happy volunteered, "lt's 'im wot Pav's 'ere to see now."

"Where?" the inspector demanded quickly.

"Go through the main room, if Toni don't stop yer, that is," said Happy, "an' to the passidge at the far end. Mr. Smiler's waitin' in the third room on the right."

"If that's the real Mackay, Happy," Ackroyd said, "I'll remember it in your favour. Get back to your cubby hole now."

At this, more than ever, Happy's expression belied his name.

"For the love of 'Eaven, sir," he pleaded hoarsely, "let me stay out 'ere― in charge of one of the busies, same as if I'd bin 'knocked-off.' I was put there to give Toni the office if― if you fellers blew in, an' if I 'aven't done so...."

"You're goin' to get it where the chicken got the axe," Ackroyd finished for him. "Very good. You'll find Detective-Constable Bertram at the end of the alley there. Wish yourself on to him, and tell him I sent you."

When, thankfully, the little crook had left them:

"Don't make more noise than you have to," Ackroyd instructed, passed into the club, and, followed by Sergeant Oates and Hilary, began noiselessly to mount the stairs.

At the head of these was a small square landing, the wall facing them taken up by double doors, the upper halves of frosted glass. It was from behind these came the strains of a syncopated orchestra of the red-hot variety, the slur of feet, and upraised voices.

Without preliminary, Ackroyd pushed open the door, and. the others close at his heels, went inside.

About the waterfronts of the world― Marseilles, Montreal, Pernambuco― there may have been gathered faces as vicious as those of the men and women assembled there, but surely not all in the same place at the same time. The men, vice-ridden, brutal, cunning, and degenerate, clad with the flamboyancy that is one of the sign-manuals of the type; the women hard-eyed and predatory of mouth, ornate, exotic, strident, bore the impress of the "hazer," the "gyp," the "broad," and, predominantly, the most ancient of professions.

It was a fairly large room, the windows to the left overlooking the court. There was a double row of tables against either wall, the continuity of those on the right broken by a platform whereon performed an orchestra of negroes. To the left was a bar. Facing the intruders at the opposite end of the room was an archway, concealed by heavy curtains of dull red.

Seated at an ornate knee-hole writing table immediately to their right as they entered, so that the whole room came within his purview, and that he would be in a position to intercept unauthorised entrants, was Toni Remardi, the proprietor.

Of medium height and build, with a smooth, pale, clean-shaven face and black hair beginning now to recede from the forehead, a well-shaped, but thin-lipped mouth, and dark brown eyes of exemplary candour, he was clad in a dinner jacket suit that was just right. He might have been, on appearances, the respectable manager of a foreign branch bank. It was not indeed until he was crossed, or stood in danger either of losing money or of frustration in gaining it, that the real man behind that rather pleasantly commonplace exterior obtruded.

Now, beyond a momentary stiffening of features, and an infinitesimal narrowing of the eyes, there was no change in the countenance that glanced up into the more than customarily expressionless face of the detective. Nor was there any sign of recognition, though Hilary thought that, in the instant before getting up from his chair, one of Remardi's long-fingered hands travelled below the desk top, and that simultaneously the two barmen, of abnormally powerful build for this profession, glanced quickly across at them.

19

"WHO are you?" he said, his voice neither unpleasant, nor the reverse.

Ackroyd's reply was official and business-like.

"No fooling, Toni," he said. "You know very well who I am. Who's with Pav Martin? And where?"

As, unobtrusively, Remardi's hand travelled again to the underside of the desk, his face had whitened a little. It whitened still further as, before his finger could reach the button that was its objective, Ackroyd's hand closed about his wrist.

"You give just one little warning to Pav Toni," the inspector said slowly, "and within a quarter of an hour you'll be in Vine Street. As you will be if you don't stand away from that desk. Jump to it!"

Quietly as it was spoken, there was an edge to this last from which perceptibly the Italian flinched. But as reluctantly he did as he was ordered, there flamed into his eyes a light that to the last degree rendered understandable the reputation he had. From his initial appearance of respectable well-to-do ordinariness, the man was transformed to an unleashed devil.

"Have you a search-warrant?" he said, and this was the first time Hilary had heard words spoken literally from between clenched teeth.

"Do your talking to Detective-Sergeant Oates," Ackroyd said, and made his way swiftly down the room.

But by the time that, Hilary at his heels, he reached the curtained archway, the barmen were threatening their passage.

One of them, an enormous broad-shouldered plug-ugly whose flattened nose and faintly leaden colouring was suggestive of the mulatto, thrust out jaw and an enormous forefinger at Hilary.

"You can't come tru' here, sar!" he said unwaveringly.

Ignoring the flesh wound in his shoulder Hilary seized the outstretched hand of that finger; locked the arm; pulled the huge body swiftly forward; applied the necessary leverage. Like a nose-diving plane, the mulatto shot over his sound shoulder, to reach the floor with a thud that shook the room.

Seeing this, the other, who was of similar build, and a bare half-inch shorter than his fellow, made a swift dive for his left arm-pit. Wise to, and watchful for, the sign, Ackroyd's fist crashed to the angle of that prognathous jaw; the thug hurtled backwards through the curtains to the passage beyond, there to lay spreadeagled, "out to the world." Disregarding anything and everything but regret for the noise made by those separate crashes, Ackroyd hurried forward.

"Collect his gun," he instructed hastily over his shoulder, and with the unconscious man's coat wide open, Hilary had small trouble in doing so, a short-barrelled heavy-calibre automatic.

Nor when, in a few quick strides, he reached the third door on the right, did the inspector hesitate.

If, except occasionally in conversation, this was the first time Hilary had seen Ackroyd anything but slightly somnolent, he made up for that lethargy now. Already his revolver was out, and, without an instant's hesitation he crashed four bullets into the lock. Then, backing to the opposite wall, he hurled his full weight against the door.

From the top to perhaps a couple of feet from the bottom, it bent open. Only the bolt held. Before Ackroyd had time completely to gather himself together from that first assault, Hilary had repeated it.

This time the door crashed open.

At what the interior of that small, brightly-lighted room disclosed, Hilary experienced the supreme surprise of his life.

Except that there was no stage adjacent, this was the complete theatrical dressing-room; full-length and side-arm mirror beneath shaded electric lights; down one side a mirror-crowned bench, with laid out on it an array of grease paints, hares' feet, spirit gum, and crepe hair; at the end further from the door an enormous ward-robe filled with― as in his first instinctive glance it seemed to Hilary― every conceivable variety of costume; a washing bowl, complete with running water, in the corner.

And by the wardrobe, a tense expression on the face that momentarily turned to them, was a figure at the sight of whom they checked in sheer amazement.

For, while in colour and texture the face was that of the pseudo Lord Kilnsyde, the countenance was not square, but chubbily rounded; instead of the coarse, black up-standing hair of that spurious shipowner, the head-covering of this man, which retreated from the forehead, was fair and fine.

As well as the face, the body, too, was different. While the victim of the black-mailing letter had been almost square, this man's frame was chubby and rounded.

The first to gather himself together, without a word, Ackroyd made his spring. Begun in that bright revealing light, the movement finished in impenetrable darkness, so that he fetched up shatteringly at the edge of the half-open door of the wardrobe. He fell back breathless and gasping. Superimposed upon that painful respiration, and from slightly to the left, came a thin, creaking whine.

There in the darkness Hilary stood for a moment uncertainly. Ten seconds or so passed. Then suddenly, but with intense conviction, it came to him that, apart from himself and Ackroyd, the room was empty.

The inspector's raucous breathing stilled; there was the shuffle of feet. The white beam of his torch showed let-in to the edge of the wardrobe a highly-polished switch. The next moment the room flooded to its former brilliance.

As Hilary had known would be the case, the two were alone. But in the left-hand half of the wardrobe now was a yawning space. The whining had been that made by a descending lift.

"Help me to shift this," Ackroyd panted in an attempt to reach the window so that he might warn the watchers outside.

But, clamped to the floor, that heavy ward-robe was immovable.

Inside, among the array of clothing that hung there, they found the cables of the lift; at the back the switch that worked it. Pressed, however, there was no response; the fugitive had disconnected the power.

All this had happened so quickly that, as swiftly they returned down the corridor, the man who had taken the knock-out from Ackroyd was only beginning to stir; on the dance floor side of the curtain the one dealt with by Hilary was propped against the wall nursing a badly bruised shoulder― that their activities had not been interrupted was explained by the fact that from his place by the entrance door, a police whistle in his mouth, and a regulation pattern revolver held very steadily in his hand, the imperturbable Oates was engaged in discouraging any too ambitious movement on the part of the assembled revellers.

As he approached Remardi, whom Oates had ordered to stand with his back to the room, Ackroyd's lank face was unpleasant.

"Fetch Constable George here," he instructed Hilary. When, accompanied by the detective, the latter returned: "This man is in your personal care until you receive orders from me to the contrary," Ackroyd said.

Then to Remardi:

"Where does that lift-shaft lead?" There was a pause.

"I not know which lift-shaft you mean," the Italian said very slowly.

Ackroyd's lips drew back in a snarl.

"I'll give you just ten seconds to answer," he said. "After that you'll be on your way to Vine Street."

His own activities in mind, and with no knowledge of how much the police had against him, the threat was effective.

"Come," said Remardi quickly, and the constable, gripping his arm, and the inspector and Hilary close behind, he strode down the room, through the curtains, and, passing the dressing-room, turned into one at the far end. In the corner was a built-in cupboard, that, when the door was opened disclosed the head of a flight of steps running downward.

The Italian pressed a switch, and a light sprang on.

Thirty steps Hilary counted before the flight ended in a narrow passage to the right, that terminated in a door.

Remardi stopped, pointing.

"Be'old!" he said, and they saw that the door opened to a cellar, and that let Into an alcove; at the far side was an open hand-worked lift.

For the moment at least Ackroyd did not trouble to examine it.

"Now for the exit to the street," he said, and again from the Italian was the same hesitancy that had been apparent upstairs.

Ackroyd buried the muzzle of his pistol in the Italian's mid-section.

"Get a move on, or I'll blow your back-bone out," he said, and the sheer savagery in his voice bluffed Remardi into the conviction that he meant it.

His always pale face now paper white, Remardi strode over to the corner farthest from the entrance door, and indicated another one that, brick-covered and white-washed was hardly to be distinguished from the surrounding wall.

There was no knob, but the Italian opened it with a Yale key he took from his pocket. On the further side was a three-feet square of space that on the right communicated with an ascending flight of steps. At the top, on ground level, these in turn opened to a short passage, leading through a door at the end to a kitchen, dank and unfurnished, and from thence to a small lock-up shop, stocked with the miscellanies of a cheap tobacconist.

When Ackroyd went to the window it was to look out upon Denman Street, a dozen or more yards from the entrance to the court where was the Riviera Club.

"Keep your man here until I come back, Constable," he ordered curtly, opened the door, stepped into the open, and called to the two detectives who guarded the en-trance to the alley.

"Seen anyone come out of here?" he said curtly.

"Yes, sir," one promptly replied. "Chubby-looking middle-aged respectable-looking feller we took for granted was the proprietor." Then at what he read in the inspector's face: "Why― who was it, sir?"

"Sainter," said Ackroyd, and laughed.

20

"WE go back by the way we came." the inspector pronounced. "We've got to lock up, anyway. First place I want to give the look-over now is that fancy dressing-room. Hold your man in the corridor until I call you. Constable."

The "dressing-room" door closed behind them, Ackroyd pointed to the bottom of the wardrobe, where was a neat pile of pads each shaped to fit some specific part of the human anatomy. Then he indicated various oddly-shaped pieces of wax on the bench.

"To build himself to the necessary squareness," he pronounced, as to the former, and took two of the pieces of wax to the bowl, and, having washed them, slipped them into his mouth and cheeks. The effect was to transform that lank and melancholy countenance to a full-fed oval.

He picked up one of the body pads, examining it minutely.

"But what an artist!" he exclaimed, with the appreciation of one craftsman for another.

"The wanted murderer who has the immortal gall to walk into Scotland Yard itself, and afterwards hold a long interview with the chief of the detectives who're hunting him down, has to be that, and then some," Hilary remarked.

"You're telling me," Ackroyd said, and relapsed into thought. Then, without speaking, he went to the door, called tho detective in charge of the Italian.

"I want Remardi here," he said. "Stay outside yourself, but within call."

Remardi advanced into the room only hesitatingly; there had been something in Ackroyd's voice not reassuring, and now he confronted him, something in his eyes and in the set of the mouth that didn't look too good, either. More than once he'd encountered that look as prelude to an inquest.

"There are one or two questions I'm going to ask you. Toni," the inspector said, but in so quiet a voice that the Italian took heart.

"Oh yeah?" he said lightly.

Ackroyd gave one of his slow nods.

"Just one or two questions," he confirmed. "Quite simple to answer, too. The first is― where's Sainter hanging out?"

There was noncomprehension in the Italian's dark, hard eyes. He, too, shook his head.

"The man who's just made his getaway from here?" Ackroyd pressed.

Hilary watched the Italian's expression change to one of incredulity, and from that to stark and overwhelming fear. Hand pressed to heart, he swayed a little as he stood.

"Pav Martin, Sainter!" he breathed at last, and there was no doubt as to the shock brought by that realisation. Ackroyd, at least, appeared content to accept it for that.

"Why Pav Martin?" he demanded.

"I think, with your so kind permission, I sit," Remardi said uncertainly, and lowered himself to a chair.

"Why Pav Martin?" Ackroyd repeated. As if overweighted with some insupportable load, Remardi's head slowly raised itself; as if to clarify his thoughts his eyes blinked dazedly.

" 'E say, when he come 'ere first," he said, "that years ago― before and during the war― 'e was a quick-change artist on your 'alls, and that many times 'e appear at the Pavilion. So many times "e say this that the boys get to callin' 'im Pav." He shuddered. "Did I know 'e was the terrible Sainter― that assassin in the newspapers who kills for the 'appiness 'e gain from his killings, what, think you, would I have done?"

" 'Put the black' on him," Ackroyd re-plied promptly, "for that's half of your living. But... Who sent Sainter― Pav Martin― here?"

During this speech, those hard, brown eyes with their now wildly-distended pupils had been fixed upon the Scotland Yard man with such abject fear that with every passing moment Hilary expected Remardi to faint. He gasped inaudibly before he was able to command his voice sufficiently to reply.

"You get me all wrong. Mr. Ackroyd," he protested fervently.

"I've got you to rights, Remardi," the inspector corrected, significantly. "But that's nothing to how I'm going to have you before you're out of this room. Who sent Sainter here?"

There were pin-points of sweat on the other's forehead as, after a moment, he burst out desperately:

"I not tell you. That man Pav Martin― 'e was terrible. So soft an' so smiling always― so that one would think he was― what you say?― easy. But when that 'appened 'e not like, though 'e was still smooth and smiling― and that but made 'im the more terrible― that smile meant death. I know, for before I come to London I live with the gangs in New York an' Chicago, where there are men 'oo kill, as the great French assassin Lecenaire said of 'imself, as they drink a glass of wine― Fiv', ten, twenty times, some of those American 'droppers' 'ave kill.... But not in one of them did I see the look as so many times I read it in the eyes of the one who call 'imself Pav Martin. There's not'ing will make me tell, you 'ear?"

Ackroyd's expression, or lack of it, remained unchanged.

"How much money do you owe him, Toni?" he said, and now the Italian's forehead shone damply and his limbs and lips were unsteady.

"It is not I who owe my clients, it is they who owe me," he said with a pitiful clutch at dignity.

"How much did you drop on Wall Street in this last slump?" the inspector asked in his cool voice. "And how did you pay your stockbrokers? Nathan and Rubinstein, aren't they, of London Wall?"

As so frequently is the case, the strength of the Scotland Yard man's position lay in the ignorance of the opposition as to how much he knew.

"And when the London and Metropolitan Bank were on the point of filing your petition, how did you reduce your overdraft?" Ackroyd pressed, still in that everyday tone.

The Italian's dilated eyes stared into those calmly detached ones, but he did not reply.

"As I estimate it. Toni," Ackroyd said, "it must be only a few hundred on the right side of £10,000 you're in Sainter's ribs for, and that's a pretty big hold for one man to have over another. Particularly a man who, apart from any monetary obligation, is as scared of his creditors as so obviously you are of Sainter. Nevertheless, you're going to tell me who sent him here in the first place."

Remardi, however, continued to retain a trembling but obstinate silence.

"His bedroom was on the floor above, I take it?" the inspector suggested, breaking in at last.

Dumbly, the Italian nodded.

"I'll go and have a look at the room as soon as I'm through with you," Ackroyd said conversationally. "Not that there'll be anything there― with all your crook staff about. Who sent Sainter here, Toni?"

There is cumulative force in the same question constantly reiterated, and it was obvious that with every repetition the Italian was becoming more uneasy. Ackroyd then proceeded to press his advantage.

"I don't see what you've to be scared of," he said reasonably. "You're going to save yourself― well, quite a lot of trouble― by unloading all you know. How can it harm you, anyway? Except by suicide, no wanted man― get that, Toni, because it's interesting― whose identity was known, has ever escaped arrest by Scotland Yard. Once we've got Sainter, how can you come to any harm from him? Especially as you'll be safe in prison. It isn't as though he's any gang behind him to carry on the good work when you come out. Apart from that Filipino, Sancho, who'll stick to him so close that when we 'knock off' one we shall 'knock off' the other, and Chimp Fargus and his three hazers, whom we're collected already, he's single-handed. Who sent Sainter here, Toni?"

Still the Italian evaded the question.

"Because no man has yet escaped your Scotland Yard is not to say none ever will," he pointed out in a voice of fear. "And Sainter is no ordinary man. The devil incarnate, that apache, an' with all a devil's cunning. An' when you say be-cause I shall be in prison I shall be safe, it is to laugh." He paused, eye-pupils suddenly so dilated that they seemed veritably to throw back the light from the powerful bulb overhead. "Was the man Adolf Potsinger safe? Even when he was surrounded by police?"

Ackroyd seemed to reflect for a moment. "The man responsible for poisoning Potsinger," he said, "was Sancho, who, disguised by Sainter, gained admittance to the Old Bailey through his impersonation of the officer they'd abducted when he came off duty the previous day, and well, we'll say, 'persuaded,' to give them an exhaustive description of his duties. But, as I told you a moment ago, when we get Sainter we shall collect Sancho as well. So you needn't worry about him. Who was it sent Sainter here, Toni?"

The Italian's trembling Ups hardened; became a thinner line across his face.

"Still I no' tell you," he said.

When, in response to that refusal, the Inspector leaned forward in his chair, his mouth, too, was firm, the lank jaw protrudent, his eyes implacable.

"If you take my advice, Toni," he said, "you'll bite on to it that, before you leave this room, you're coming through with that information."

Apparently the Italian was impressed by the detective's manner, for the eyelids fluttered and the lips fell slightly apart.

"What is it that will make me speak what I no' wish to say?" he said, his voice a mingling of fear and derision.

"Me," said Ackroyd, his glance undeviating.

"Wit' what your commission instruct for the protection of― of suspects― 'ow they need not to answer anyt'ing they no' want to answer; 'ow they must be warned that anyt'ing they say may be used against them; 'ow, if it pleases them, they may 'ave their own 'mouthpiece' to 'ear all that passes, 'ow can you make me?" Remardi demanded, with a shrug of ex-pertly-tailored shoulders. "An' I 'ave no 'mouthpiece' 'ere, an' I no answer your question."

Slowly, ominously, Ackroyd got to his feet. Going to the door, he beckoned the detective-constable from his post outside. When the latter joined him inside the room, followed intently by the dilated eye! of the Italian, he turned the key in the door. Then, carelessly, he indicated the seated man.

"Put the irons on him," he instructed shortly, and Remardi shrank from the handcuffs as a child from a threatened blow.

"You cannot do that!" he cried desperately, and now it was apparent the inspector's manner was beginning to tell "I do no wrong 'ere in the Riviera Cafe." He shuddered visibly. "I 'ave no idea the man to 'oom I let a room is the murderer Sainter. An' may not a man take roomers wit'out bein' a crim'nal?"

Apparently the detective-constable was not unaccustomed to protests at being handcuffed, for, taking no manner of notice of the outburst, he quickly had those Instruments about the Italian's wrists.

Then, stepping over to confront him, Ackroyd said:

"Listen, Toni. I'm not arguing, I'm telling you. You are going to answer that question. That's definite― and final. If you're wise, you'll answer it quickly. But in any case you'll answer it."

But for his shackled wrists Remardi would have wrung his hands. The viciously good-looking face upturned to the inspector's was dead white and glistening with sweat.

"This isn't America," he shouted. "Or even France. There's no Third Degree in England."

"Isn't there?" Ackroyd said quietly, and took a small blue eight-sided bottle from his pocket― turned it about so that the Italian might read the label.

Had he been an ill treated hound confronted by a whip in the hands of a sadistic master, Remardi could not have shown a greater intensity of terror. The white of his face turned to a livid grey; he thrust out his manacled hands as if to ward off the supreme and ultimate horror. For the two words that stood out so starkly from that printed label were "Sulphuric Acid."

Desperately, frenziedly, the Italian made an attempt to pull himself together.

"But you dare not," he mouthed. "Bluff― that's what it is, and I no' fall for it. For what would your 'Ome Office say your newspapers, to what I should 'ave to tell them?"

Ackroyd's short bark of a laugh was one of the most terrible sounds of Hilary's experience.

"You wouldn't be the first arrested prisoner who attempted suicide, and, when the humane police strove to deprive him of the weapon, injured himself in the struggle," he pointed out callously. "And in this case the evidence of two police officers will be reinforced by that of an independent civilian witness of good position."

"You― you, an Englishman so humane, you couldn't!" Remardi moaned, and but for the hands of the young detective pressing on his shoulders, would have sprung from his chair.

"If you're banking on that humanity stuff, Toni," Ackroyd said levelly, "you're making the mistake of your life. While it's true that, up to now, those Sainter has murdered are better dead than alive, it isn't undesirables I'm out to protect. In comparison with the life he's after now, anything that can happen to a dope and white slave trafficker like you simply doesn't count."

Though Remardi seemed on the point of collapse, he appeared still to retain some faint hope that Ackroyd was bluffing.

The inspector, stepping forward, poised the bottle.

"Who sent Sainter here, Toni?" he said, seized the Italian's chin, thrust the head backward so that the white face lay level beneath the mouth of that sinister blue phial. Slowly, inevitably the bottle tilted, so that the eyes into which he gazed so implacably widened to irresistible panic.

"Monkey Baines," he shrieked.

It was as, his frame suddenly relaxed from the strain, Ackroyd stepped back from the chair that climax came. Climax so unexpected, so monstrous as for a moment to leave impotent one as hard-bitten even as Inspector Ackroyd.

It was from the lift shaft the sound came― a soft plup-p-p-p, not unlike the drawing of an easily extracted cork. Simultaneously, in the centre of the Italian's forehead appeared a tiny blue-rimmed mark from which sprang a trickle of blood. The terrified eyes glazed and protruded; the thin-lipped mouth gaped as one smitten with some devastating surprise. Then, inertly, the body slumped forward.

The first staggering shock assimilated, Hilary swung round to face the point from which had come the sound.

By a fractional instant to catch a glimpse of the lividly triumphant face of Sancho, the Filipino, before, silently this time the lift descended.

21

LIKE a flash Ackroyd was through the door and down the corridor and stairs to the cellar.

But with all his haste there was no sign of Sancho. By then probably that devoted henchman of murder was lost in the crowds of Shaftesbury Avenue. It was with a curse at his own lack of forethought that the inspector remembered that, following the escape of Sainter by that same route, he had not only thought it unnecessary to put a guard on the shop, but had withdrawn the watchers from the passage end. And, though he spoke to the police-man outside the Palace Theatre, that efficient regulator of traffic had seen nothing of the man described to him. Nor had the officer on the beat between the end of Jerrard Street and Piccadilly, "Not to notice 'im, sir, anyway!"

So that was that, and, after he had put through the "all stations" call there was nothing but to return to the Riviera Club, clear it of its unsavoury "guests," and close its doors-permanently, as it proved.

Also, and as he had anticipated, Sainter's bedroom, that was on the floor above the dance-hall, yielded no information. Plain carpet, enamelled iron bed, plain oak ward-robe meagre of clothing, and with nothing in the pockets; washstand, chest-of-drawers, simple toilet accessories, the room might have been the one-night resting place of some obscure commercial traveller.

And all the time he was engaged In this Hilary had the impression the man's thoughts were elsewhere. It wasn't that he spoke so little for, except on rare occasions Ackroyd was never particularly communicative. But now the lazy eyes were abstracted, and when he was addressed his replies were abstracted, too.

After they had seen the cafe closed, but with a guard at each en-trance and exit, his face blank, the inspector stood for a long time in silence.

"Monkey Baines," he said at last, speaking more to himself than to Hilary.

"Who is he, anyway?" Hilary asked quickly. "And what?"

"Importer of wild animals," Ackroyd said slowly. "Sells to travelling menageries and circuses and things― both here and on the Continent. Shows 'em first though. Threepence a head, on his premises in Lamport Street, Hoxton, where he sells birds, and guinea pigs, and rabbits. And dogs― practically every one of 'em pinched in the provinces and shipped to London in exchange for those that are pinched and shipped from here."

"Pretty bad hat, apparently," Hilary agreed dubiously. "But not half big enough to be mixed up with a super-criminal like Sainter, I shouldn't have thought. Like the First Lord of the Admiralty arm-in-arm with the stoker of a Fishery Protection sloop, if you see what I mean."

Ackroyd, however, did not immediately reply.

"Of course," he added at last, "though, apart from receiving dogs knowing them to've been stolen, Monkey's outside the crook game himself. He knows more about the criminal side of London than the crooks themselves. Funny how invariably the little fellers― the 'dips' and the 'whizzers' and small-time con-men― all seem to have a soft spot for pets. You've only to take a walk down Club Row any Sunday morning to discover that half the fellers buying bullfinches and linnets and things are crooks― or were, before the sale of caged wild birds was stopped.

"At one time or another the greater proportion of these petty thieves drift into Monkey's place, either to buy, look round, or meet their old friends. And each of those little crooks is connected more or less intimately with crooks a stage above them, and those, in turn, with those higher up still, and so on in an unbroken chain to the top. And as news travels from one stage to another, so it percolates down.

"And you can take it from me that the sum-total of what's collected into Baines' place is considerable. If that little baboon had any bent towards authorship, the book he could write on the underworld of London would be a blinkin' encyclopaedia of crime. In the last year or two it hasn't been only the little fellers who gather at his place. If there's any information they need, and that they can't get elsewhere, there's quite a number of the big fellows call in on Monday for expert counsel, and are willing to pay big money for it."

Hilary whistled below his breath.

"Sort of cross between an Advisory Bureau and a Clearing House for Crime, eh?" he suggested.

"Run by one of the shrewdest and most reticent associates of thieves in London," said Ackroyd. "Apart from his dog-stealing transactions― and it's next door to impossible to prove he knows any one animal is stolen― he keeps himself on the right side of the law; but, providing the consideration's big enough, helps others to break every statute in the Code."

There was another long silence. Knowing the inspector as well as by now he had come to know him, Hilary realised that there was some question, special and urgent, that lank man was groping to answer.

Presently, with a shake of bony shoulders, Ackroyd roused himself.

"Anyway, late as it is, we'll go and have a talk with him," he said. "Hours don't mean a thing to Monkey, anyway."

It was on their way there that Hilary put the question which, ever since the Italian's passing had exercised him.

"That bottle," he said, "where you really going to― well, disfigure Remardi?"

Ackroyd's sigh was one of intense relief. "Do you know," he said earnestly, "I thought the little swine was going to have guts enough to call my bluff. And that one piece of information he was with-holding was absolutely vital for Miss Moreland's safety."

He blew out lean cheeks in an audible expulsion of breath. "We owe a special prayer of thanksgiving that we found his yellow streak. Otherwise―"

"You'd have poured a drop or two of that stuff on his face, just to encourage him?" Hilary suggested.

Ackroyd gave one of his slow, negative headshakes, put his hand in his pocket, withdrew the tiny sinister bottle, took out the cork and, before the younger man could prevent him, tilted the contents into his palm.

Those contents were pure water.

"But as good a weapon as a battery of field guns," the inspector stated, and somehow Hilary felt glad.

LAMPORT STREET proved to be one of the innumerable minor streets in the triangle formed by the Walworth-Camberwell Roads. Camberwell New Road, and Kennington Park Road-dark, dismal, ill-lighted and paved, the continuity of ill-conditioned back-to-back houses broken occasionally by one of those newsagent-cum-tobacconist shops which seem to exist chiefly through the sale of betting tips, of second-hand clothing stores, or one of those establishments which in a diffused odour of lamp-oil and pickled onions, sells pills and bacon, dog-powders and tin-tacks, cheese and tinned salmon, firewood and margarine, black-lead and soap flakes, with equal impartiality and in the minutest possible quantities.

In the four or five streets, each for general unsavouriness the twin to the other, through which, after dismissing the taxi in the main thoroughfare, they passed, the "Hoxton Zoo and Domestic Pet Depository" of their objective were the only premises that had not one or other of these enterprises as their raison d'être.

Arrived there, strange animal sounds and still stranger smells came out to them, uneasy shufflings of lithe bodies among straw, gruntings and yappings; the pungent reek of wild things in captivity.

"Not exactly attar of roses, this place," Hilary observed, as the inspector pealed the bell.

"Wait till we get inside," Ackroyd re-plied with feeling, and, no response forth-coming to his summons, stepped back so as to bring more of the house within his vision. No light shone from within; over the windows the shutters were tightly closed.

Ackroyd reapproached the door, this time reinforcing his ring at the tinkling bell with a thundering knock on the panel. Even this could be heard only faintly above the pandemonium of barking and yelping engendered by the summons.

Then without any preliminary sound of approaching footsteps, there was the grating of bolts. By a bare three inches the door, still on the chain, opened to them. Dimly through the gloom appeared the blur of a face.

"Wodisit?" a husky voice demanded truculently. "And 'oo?"

"Detective-Inspector Ackroyd, of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard," Hilary's companion replied brusquely: "I want a word with you, Monkey."

There was a pause before the reply came. Hilary had the impression that the in-formation as to identity was unwelcome.

"Wotisit you want? You ain't got nothin' on me," the voice said at last.

"At the moment," Ackroyd said dispassionately, "it's information I'm after. Open the door. And get a move on."

"I've no information to 'and out," the man said, but drawing the chain as he spoke. Grudgingly the door opened sufficiently to allow of their thrusting through -to be assailed by a malodorous wave that, to Hilary, appeared to consist of a mingling of every animal-smell known to zoo-logy

There came the sound of a handle turning to their left, and with the opening of that further door the stench seemed literally to rush out at them. The scrape of a match followed, the pop of a lighted gas jet, and the open doorway showed through to a dimly-lighted interior.

Ackroyd entered, and Hilary followed. The only furnishings of the room consisted of a treble row of wire-fronted cages about the walls. Within were specimens of practically every one of the smaller mammals known to science: dogs, cats, weasels, mice, guinea pigs, mongooses and monkeys. If, apparently, adequately fed, so far as concerned cleanliness one and all were in a state of indescribable neglect.

Yet of all the creatures of that bizarre stock not one was so wholly grotesque or suffering from more prolonged personal neglect than the figure who waited to receive them. Truculently, yet, Hilary sensed, not without some underlying trepidation.

There could be no doubt as to why he had been rechristened "Monkey." With his stunted, barrel-chested body, short, bowed legs, and in-turning feet, the short, thick hair with which almost the whole of his face was invested, and that with no difference in colour or texture covered his head, his long, flat mouth, and short, wide-nostrilled nose, and the tiny twinkling brown eyes that beneath craggy, over-hanging brows were so alert and inherently suspicious, he was so incredibly akin to a baboon as at first glance to appear to have some direct relationship with the simian.

"Let's be hearin' from you, Mr. Busy," the proprietor growled, before Ackroyd could speak.

"What do you know of the man Pav Martin you wished on to Toni Remardi a few days ago, Monkey?" Ackroyd said steadily, and looked for a flicker of fear in the twinkling brown eyes into which his own so directly bored.

Instead, following a quick and rather startled change of expression, he read only caution.

" 'Ow do you mean what do I know about 'im?" the animal-dealer demanded.

"Who sent him to you in the first place?" asked Ackroyd.

The other replied, irritably.

"That's a good 'un, that is!" he exclaimed. " 'Ow did he come 'ere in the first place, I'm asked! 'Ow does everyone 'oo comes 'ere come? Becoz 'e either wants to sell a animal or to buy one. An' for the reason that I'm the best-known an' the straightest dealer in livestock in London or elsewhere. That's why Pav Martin come 'ere in the first place. And the second place. And the third."

There was the ring of truth in this, and in view of those cages of assorted livestock that had been such a feature of that terrible house at Hampstead, to an extent the inspector was prepared to accept it.

"That your only connection with him?" he demanded. "As a customer?"

"Course it was," Monkey replied shortly. "What did you think it'd be? That 'e was my long-lorst uncle from Australia or somethin'?"

"What made you send him to Toni's?" Ackroyd demanded, reaching the crux of his inquiries.

Now, for a moment. Monkey seemed to hesitate.

"Well," he said at last, slowly and judicially " 'e wanted some place where 'e could..."

"Lie low?" suggested Ackroyd, breaking harshly into the other's groping for the exact word.

"Stay a while," the animal-dealer substituted. "Where 'e could stay a while, an'― an' rest."

"What you mean," Ackroyd said un-pleasantly, "is that he came to you and said that as the busies were after him he wanted a hide-up where he'd be safe, and so you sent him to Toni's. Get your hat and coat."

"Get me 'at!" The man's protruberant jaw dropped, and his eyes were wide open and staring. "What do I want me 'at for?"

"For the reason," Ackroyd said uncompromisingly, "that I'm going to 'knock you off.' Here and now"

Though a persistent and unregenerate law-breaker, by guile and cunning beyond the ordinary Monkey had contrived never yet to see the inside of a prison cell, and now that record seemed upon the point of breaking, the shock was transcendental.

"But― but, what for?" he shouted at last. "I ain't done nothin'... What sort of a charge can you bring again' me?"

"The charge," Ackroyd said, and for the second time that night, "of being an accessory after the fact of-murder.

"A man doesn't assist by every means in his power a criminal of the calibre of Sainter unless he's in sympathy with murder!"

"Sainter!" The other's voice rose to a roar of protest. "The bloke the papers 'as been so full of this last day or two?" he went on to demand. " 'Oo's wanted for a good 'alf-dozen killin's?"

Gazing in horrified protest in the unmoved face of his questioner, he paused, struggling for self-mastery. The grotesque head shook slowly.

"I don't know that bloke, mister," he asserted solemnly, "from 'Enery the Eighth. An' if I 'ad known 'im, an' 'e'd come into my shop 'ere, I'd bin outer the back door so quick you wouldn't 've been able to see me trousers for steam."

"Pav Martin was Sainter," said Ackroyd.

Again there was no mistaking the genuineness of the astonishment that crowded into the grotesque face. Amazement, and― again― a suggestion of some other emotion Hilary could not quite capture.

"Yer mean ter tell me that― that 'armless-quiet-spoken bloke was Sainter?" Monkey demanded with, for more complete emphasis, a pause between each word.

"Was― and is," the inspector confirmed shortly. "And you've still to convince me you didn't know it."

"I never!" The man was trembling with excitement and protest, as was his voice. Then he came to an abrupt halt. "I don't believe it," he said definitely.

"You've never seen him in any character but Pav Martin?" Ackroyd  demanded sceptically.

"Listen. Mister!" As if with sudden realisation of his position, the animal-dealer's hoarse voice was earnest and impressive. "First time 'e come to me was a year or so ago― in the character of Pav Martin. If you was to give me a 'undred pound I couldn't tell yer 'oo sent 'im. Tole me 'oo 'e was― one of the old Music 'All turns 'oo'd saved a bit of money in the years 'e was in reg'lar work, an' when the pitchers ruined the business, retired on 'is savin's. As a nobby 'e'd taken up wi' keepin' a bit o' livestock, an' would I show 'im what I'd got.... Well, 'e bought one or two oddments― a mongoose an' a few birds, if I remember right-an' took 'em off with 'em in a motor-car.... Since then, 'e's dropped in pretty frequent, an' I've sold him quite a bit o' stock. An' that," he concluded, "is the beginnin' an' end of all I know about 'im. As for bein' a murderer... why, a quieter-spoken or pleasanter feller you couldn't find anywhere."

He met the detective's glance directly, and did not lower his eyes. But again, Hilary was possessed of that same sense of something withheld.

"And what," Ackroyd went on to inquire, "made him― when already he'd told you he'd retired to his own little house― come to you in Poplar, to inquire for lodgings? And if he was the decent, respectable sort you say you thought him, why recommend him to a place like The Riviera― or to a man like Remardi? The one a notorious resort of crooks, the other a notorious criminal?"

This time the bright eyes drooped before the direct and searching gaze that con-fronted them; he moved a little uneasily on his feet.

"Well, seein' 'e's the man you say 'e is a murderer many times over-I'll be straight with yer," Monkey muttered at last. " 'E came to me an' tole me 'e was in a bit o' trouble― with you fellers― an' wanted to lay low for a while. Nothin' serious― just a matter o' smugglin' a couple o' dawgs through from France by airplane, an' forgettin' to put 'em in quarantine. 'E'd done it before two or three times, 'e sez, an' so the 'busies' were on to 'im, an' it wasn't just a matter of a fine. An' wi' what I know about them so-and-so Customs blokes, I was only too glad to 'elp 'im. So I put 'im on to Toni. Toni may not be a lily-'anded saint, but any feller 'e takes in 'oo pays what 'e asks is as safe as if 'e wat, in a bank strongroom."

"When did you see him last?" Ackroyd asked.

"Not since 'e went from 'ere to Toni's," Monkey replied quickly.

After a few moments' thought: "Any objection if we take a look round?" the inspector asked, and the animal dealer's response was immediate.

"You're not takin' me along wi' yer?" he demanded quickly, the dawn of relief In his voice.

Though Hilary had the idea that at no time had Ackroyd had any intention of carrying out his threat, again he seemed to consider.

"We'll let that go― for the moment, anyway," he said curtly. "In any case I know where to lay hands on vou."

Monkey made a wide gesture to indicate the treble row of cages that surrounded him.

" 'Ow could I run away― wi' all these to feed?" he demanded.

"If you'd do a bit of cleaning at the same time it wouldn't do any harm," Ackroyd pointed out.

"This way," said Monkey, and passing through the door made his way down the passage to another door at the end. Opening this, he disclosed a yard that at one time might have been used by a builder or marine-store dealer.

It was here the low, uneasy mutterings and an occasional deep-mouthed growl that more than once during the interview had developed into a full-throated roar, were traced to their source.

Here again were cages, though owing to their size, but a single row of them. Temporary homes of the larger animals that within a few hours or days would be conveyed to whomever had ordered them, by the light of the powerful arc lamp that, in passing through to the open air, Mon-key switched on, Hilary's startled glance saw reflected the cold, yellow gleam from the eye of a half-grown tiger; pacing unceasingly back and forth from the cage adjacent were a couple of Canadian timber-wolves; a pair of puma cubs were stretched in the abandonment of sleep; a chimpanzee rattled angrily at the bars of its cage.

"What's in there?" Ackroyd asked, and pointed to a cage that was higher than the rest, and whose narrowly-placed bars were reinforced by stout plain glass.

"Go an' 'ave a look," Monkey replied.

They did, and what they saw was unpleasant.

22

THE following morning found Ackroyd with the commissioner, who, having just emerged from a spot of bother of his own, was having something to say about it.

"What the Home Secretary didn't say to me doesn't come within the category of language. And small blame to him either. Six murders― to say nothing of poor Apps, who, I'm glad to say, is doing well― and the attempts on your life, on the life of Miss Moreland and young Fortescue. And the man known to be responsible, with a

clean getaway every time, and we without the remotest idea of his whereabouts. With the newspapers what they are, can you wonder the Home Secretary's running round in circles?"

He broke off to glance at the lank inspector in mingled commiseration and affection.

"And unless by the time questions come to be asked in the House, as inevitably they will be, he's in a position to quell the tumult and the shouting by a report that the murderer's in custody, he's got to find someone to lay the blame on," he added, feelingly. "And you're in charge of the case."

Ackroyd's mobile mouth drew down at the corners.

"Then it'll be the high jump and silver tea-service from my regretful colleagues on retirement for me, all right," he said resignedly. "What's more, I shall have deserved it. The high-jump, I mean, not the tea-service."

"But..." the commissioner began, when the telephone broke into the sentence.

"For you," he said, and handed Ackroyd the receiver. Watching, Sir Redvers saw his subordinate's jaw-muscles tense; the gaunt face whiten; the hand that held the receiver grow unsteady. When, at last, he spoke, his voice, too, was uncertain.

"I'll be right along," he said quietly, and slowly and with deliberation replaced the receiver. The face he turned to the commissioner was of an older man than a few minutes before.

"Sainter's got Monkey Baines," he said. "I'm going there straight away."

Sir Redvers, his florid face distorted, said several things quickly, and none of them printable.

"If we don't lay hands on that madman before many days are out," he said with conviction, "it isn't only you who'll be for the high-jump. And after all these years I should loathe to be superannuated for incompetency." He got to his feet and reached for his hat. "That's why I'm coming with you. Not that I can do anything that you can't. It's that I'd like to be able to give a first-hand report."

It was Sir Redvers' own car that carried them to Poplar. There, outside the animal dealer's premises, they found a constable keeping back the crowd. He saluted respectfully as the two stepped to the pavement.

"Who's in charge?" the commissioner inquired.

"Sergeant Pryor, of this Division, sir," the constable told him.

Except that, if possible, the animal smell was even more pungent, inside the ground floor room, where Ackroyd had interviewed Baines the previous evening, was just as it had been then, with the stock full-fed by one of the constables. In the passage, Sergeant Pryor, tall and sandy-complexioned, with a long and rather melancholy face, hurried to meet them.

"In the yard, sir," he said, "the doctor's with him now."

The commissioner looked at him in surprise.

"I thought Baines was dead," he said sharply.

"So it was thought, sir, at first," Sergeant Pryor replied. "Forehead smashed in, and no sign of life― our call to Inspector Ackroyd was put through before the doctor came, so's to lose no time. But Doctor Armitage says that it's only unconsciousness, and that probably, with an operation, he'll recover."

"We'll go and have a look at him," Sir Redvers decided, and followed the sergeant through the door and into the yard where were the larger animals.

Monkey, his simian face composed, now, in the death-like aloofness of those whose awareness of all pertaining to life has fled, but with an ugly purple depression above and immediately to the right of the right eye, was lying on a rug with, ministering to him, a cheerful-looking man of middle age, who greeted the newcomers with the detachment characteristic of his profession towards officialdom.

"The ambulance'll be here in a few minutes," he said. "The man must have a head like high-speed steel to take what was handed him and still go on living."

But after the briefest glance at the injured man, Ackroyd had left the side of his chief, and now was engaged with the sergeant and a typical East-ender of the street-trader type the latter had fetched from the kitchen premises.

"Here's the only man who seems to have any information but guesswork," Pryor said in introduction. "George Perkins, sir."

A broad, bow-legged and bright-eyed little man of forty or so, Perkins possessed the bird-like look of alertness that seems the especial providence of those who wrest a living from the London streets.

"Well, what d'you know?" Ackroyd demanded, sizing up his man.

"It was this way, sir," Perkins explained. "My pitch is the Ludgate 'ill end o' Fleet― sellin' whatever fruit 'appens to be in season. An' to get good stuff cheap you've ter be on the job bright an' early.

"Well, early this mornin' just as I wuz aht o' me 'oughter-be-wed', wot should I see drawn up ahtside Monk's plice 'ere but a motor-van. There was a bloke just crossin' the pavement from it to the yard door, so I only see 'is back. Shortish, tubby build o' feller, far as I c'd mike aht."

"Was it Baines' own van you saw?" Ackroyd enquired.

"Old Monk didn't 'ave no van― not of 'is own," Perkins said definitely. "Wouldn't 'ave paid 'im to 'ave 'ad― 'im wantin' the use o' one so seldom. When a ship came up wi' anythin' for 'im aboard, or if 'e 'ad anythink to deliver, 'e uster 'ire whatever van was, as you might say, available."

A grin, cunning and appreciative, came into the coster's perky face.

"I'll tell yer somefing else, too," he confided. " 'E didn't always 'ire from the owner, ether. There's bin many a quid earned on the side by the drivers around 'ere― lettin' Monk use a deliv'ry van wot didn't 'appen to be needed by the reel owner."

Perkins winked knowingly.

"Larst night it was one o' Thompson's tea vans..."

"And then?" Ackroyd prompted.

"That's about the lot, sir," the coster said with finality. "I went dahnstairs an' 'ad a bit of a wash at the kitchen sink, an' when I was in the yard collectin' the old bow-an'-arrer I 'eard the van ahtside Monkey's plice drive away. An' that's all I know."

So that was that, and, with nothing more to be extracted, Perkins was dismissed. And as together commissioner and inspector made their examination of the premises, already the coster's description of a "shortish tubbish-build o' feller" had gone only to confirm their knowledge of the identity of the one responsible for the outrage.

Yet as they drove away something deeply within Ackroyd's inner consciousness remained unsatisfied; urgently, insistently, he was possessed of the feeling of having missed something, and that, could the omission be rectified, the result would be illuminating.

23

"WELL, I don't envy you the experience," Sally said, and meant it.

She was seated with Hilary in the cosy sitting-room at the Waverly House, and he had been relating the happenings of the previous night.

"What do you suppose is going to happen now?" she went on to ask, and there was unwonted anxiety in the question.

Hilary shrugged his shoulders reassuringly.

"It's the beginning of the end, I should hope," he said.

He felt a sudden trembling of the fingers that now were clasped tightly about his own.

"But not before my worthy uncle has had another shot at me," she said.

Then, for the first time, it came to Hilary how fundamental was Sally's dread of that abnormal man; for the first time was able to appreciate as well the almost super-human courage that, when he himself was in peril, had been able to put asides that terror and drag him literally from the jaws of murder. And with this so-gallantly concealed fear in view, he was able to realise what inroads this last period of suspense had made into her nerves.

Hilary put his arm about her shoulders and drew her to him in the first intimate contact of their association. His heart pounded when she made no demur; seemed, indeed, to find comfort in nearness, for she rested quite contentedly against him.

"But, my dear," he protested, "what possible danger can you be in here― with outside a couple of the heftiest C.I.D. men in captivity; in his cubby-hole at the entrance an ex-policeman of brawn and Highland determination; and here in the room with you, as often and as long as you'll have him― me? I may not be a camera to look at, but you can take it I'd do my best to give anyone who tried to get gay with you a pretty brisk time of it."

Very gently she pressed his fingers.

"You needn't tell me that," she said gratefully. "And I know all about the bodyguard downstairs; each and severally ready to die in my defence. And yet I'm scared stiff."

HE glanced at his wristwatch to find that it was well past noon.

"What you need, my dear, is a cocktail," he diagnosed. Gently releasing her, with the intention of ringing for the waiter, he got up. "Just one of old Duff's side-cars, and you'll feel like a strong man about to run a race."

As, to return to his place on the chesterfield, he reached the window, he noted idly that a red Post Office van was on the point of drawing up outside, and, leaning against the gatepost at the bottom of the short flight of steps from street to entrance door, the stalwart figure of Sergeant Bird, with one subordinate between the hotel and Bayswater Road, and the other lounging nonchalantly against the railings a little down the Gardens.

Added to this protection, the alert and experienced ex-Inspector Duff, immediately within the entrance, not much danger to a girl on the second floor, it occurred to him comfortably.

Barely had he taken his seat again― an interval when the sound of the changing gears of the Post Office van came up to him, so that he knew that it was turning, than there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," Sally called, and, not the waiter, as he had expected, but the hall porter, came in.

"Will you be good enough, miss," he said, "to come downstairs and sign for a registered parcel."

"But why can't one of your people sign for me?" Sally inquired, wondering whom the parcel was from and what it might contain.

"The postman won't accept any signature but yours, miss, the porter explained. "Says he wouldn't mind if it was an ordinary register― for a £5 insurance. But this is insured up to the maximum of £400 so he's got to see you sign for himself."

Sally looked her astonishment.

"But who on earth's sending me something worth all that much?" she exclaimed, and stood up. "I came of age a long time ago, so it isn't anything from the lawyers."

With Sergeant Bird on duty immediately outside, Hilary did not hesitate.

"Let's go and collect the valuables, anyway?" he suggested.

The lift was moving upward when they were on the landing, and with only two downwards flights to negotiate it wasn't worth waiting for it. Presumably it was the thickness of the walls of that substantially-built early-Victorian house, combined with the running of the engine of the Post Office van outside, that muffled the sound of the three shots, in rapid succession that otherwise would have reached them from a point further down the Gardens. As they passed the office, that was immediately to the right of the entrance door, but cut off by the projecting porch from view of the street, they noticed only casually that it was unoccupied.

Parcel in hand, the postman handed Sally his book of receipts.

"Sign here, please, miss," he said respectfully, pointing, before handing her book and pencil.

AS she bent to do so, with a quick movement he seized her round the waist, and, a podgy hand of incredible strength clapped over her mouth, scampered with her down the steps.

Wholly unprepared as he was, Hilary, with a tremendous shout, darted forward.

Only, blinded and impotent, stricken with a more agonising pain than he had known himself capable of enduring, to stagger back. For, with that movement, a second figure had darted out from behind the pillar that supported he porch, and with deadly accuracy flung a handful of pepper directly into his eyes, and the next instant was flying down the steps in the wake of his heavily-laden but swiftly-moving accomplice. A moment later still Sally was thrown incontinently through the open door in the rear of the van.

Swiftly the van moved off; red doors slamming, turned left into Bayswater Road.

Guided only by the sound, Hilary staggered blindly and hopelessly down the steps and futilely after it.

Had he been able to follow its progress he would better have been able to realise the fiendish ingenuity that had inspired the capture. For the van continued only a few yards down the main road before turning sharp left up Ossington Street, and from thence into Moscow Road. Only a little way up there, and then into the tiny stretch of quiet Salem Road.

Here the driver pulled up; glanced keenly about him. No one in sight, nor at any of the windows. His finger went to a button on the switchboard; pressed it.

Each of the scarlet sides and end of the vehicle consisted of two narrow strips of metal, each pivoted through the centre. And with that pressure from the driving-seat, simultaneously these sheets revolved, each on its own axis, so that what a moment before had been the outer side now faced inward; what had been crimson with the Royal Arms and G.R. in gold, now was cream-colored, with, in a replica of hand-writing scrawled diagonally across the surface, "Thompson's Tasty Teas."

A shabby raincoat slipped over the blue Post Office uniform, a peaked cap drawn down over the narrow face of the driver, the van proceeded in leisurely fashion into Queen's Road.

24

WHEN Bird and ex-Inspector Duff came panting back to Hilary, to an extent the pain had diminished, and though his eyes were streaming, dimly he was able to distinguish the larger objects about him.

Frantically, to the now pallid Sergeant Bird, he explained what had happened.

"But what were you doing away from your post?" he demanded furiously when, in all its stark menace to the girl he loved, his story was assimilated.

The sergeant pulled himself together.

"We were all in our places, sir, when suddenly there came a shot from down the street. Mr. Duff and myself rushed out and saw a man pointing a gun at Miss Moreland's window. Our two detectives were going for him, and we followed, fearing he might get them with a bullet and make his getaway. Instead of that, he fired twice more at the window, and then ran. My two fellows went after him. Mr. Duff and I came back and found you..."

"Yes, I know."

In his fear for Sally, Hilary was curt. The sergeant passed a trembling hand over his brow.

"That man with the gun was only a decoy," he said. "Someone to draw us all out of the way, while the abduction took place. Well, I'd better get through to the Yard."

"In here," said Duff, and turned them into the reception office, and through a further door, to his private one.

"Wait," said Bird. He went to the telephone, and was put through to Scotland Yard. Oates, to whom he spoke, appeared to take the news more to heart even than Bird had anticipated, which is saying much.

"We'll have a call put through for every Royal Mail van in the Metropolitan Area to be stopped and examined," he promised, pessimistically. "But what the inspector's going to say when he gets back to find Miss Moreland gone won't be found in any book of moral fables for the young."

"Where is the inspector?" Bird asked sharply.

"Sudden call out to Hoxton-to Monkey Baines' place― where he was last night," the Yorkshireman told him. "If I were you, I'd be back here waiting for him."

"A pleasant reunion, I don't think!" Bird moaned, and rang off.

THERE was a knock at the door, and, his face troubled at the news he had heard from the hall porter, Lord FitzRalph came in.

"We'll get back to the Yard right away, Bird said. "The inspector's been called away, but let's hope he won't be long."

Arrived there, Ackroyd had not re-turned, and it was a full hour before he did so. The gaunt face was gaunter, now, even than usual; there was a tenseness about him, and an air of strain.

"More trouble," he said, and flung his hat into a corner. "Sainter's done in― or as near as makes no matter― old Monkey Baines. Smashed his head in, and left him lying spread-eagled in th' yard among his menagerie.... Sainter arrived and left in a van in the early hours of this morning."

Bird started.

"A van!" he repeated. Then, quickly: "What colour?"

From the glance Ackroyd cast at his subordinate, it was apparent he realised the question was significant.

"Cream " he replied. "Got up to represent one of Thompson's Tea deliveries. Why?"

Bird's face registered disappointment.

"Not the same," he pronounced "The one Sainter carried Miss Moreland off in was a GPO parcels van."

Ackroyd who had thrown himself dispiritedly into his chair, leaped to his feet. He had come straight from the street to his office, and, not yet having glanced at the papers on his desk, this was the first he had heard of Sally's abduction.

"What!" he shouted, and from his tone there was trouble coming for somebody.

And Bird had been in charge of Sally's guard.

"I know!" the latter muttered resignedly. "I deserve everything that's coming to me."

He cleared his throat. "But, even now, I'm blamed if I see how I could have acted any way different from what I did.... After all, when you're made responsible for a young lady's safety, and someone starts pumping shots through the window of the very room she occupies, it's not unnatural to make a bee-line for the marksman. And look at Mr. Fortescue's eyes..."

Ackroyd, relowering himself slowly into his chair, said:

"Let's have the full bedtime story, anyway. Including what steps you've taken to trace her?"

Whereupon, categorically, Bird related what had occurred. Towards the end, rather to his indignation, the lank inspector seemed almost to lose interest. Head tilted backwards, eyes fixed unseeingly upon the ceiling, the two vertical lines between his brows seemed to grow deeper and ever deeper.

"A van," he said slowly, as Bird fell to silence. "A van!" Then, more slowly still. "Now, why in Sam Hill did Sainter choose to drive to Monkey's place in a van?"

"Instead of drawing attention to himself, you'd think a man who went to commit murder would be out to attract as little notice as possible," Sergeant Bird agreed.

Ackroyd's glance shifted from the ceiling to his subordinate.

"I didn't ask for a string of platitudes," he said shortly. "I asked a question. I'll put it to you again. In calling at a house or shop, ninety-nine times in a hundred, why does a man call with a van?"

Illumination dawned upon the never very obtuse brain of Sergeant Bird.

"Either to deliver, or to collect," he said promptly.

A strange, eager light in their depths, Ackroyd's eyes narrowed. It seemed to Hilary that the next question was for the purpose of clarifying his thoughts.

"Deliver or collect what?" he said.

"Either to deliver the goods he deals in, or to collect those the other party deals in," Bird elucidated.

Ackroyd visualised a malodorous East End yard; the sheen of moonlight glinting on greasy cobblestones, a row of cages, behind the bars of which, eyes shining balefully in that same moonlight, captives of the wilds stirred and whined uneasily. Of one cage in particular, higher than the rest, and narrow-meshed; of how, the previous night, it had been occupied by the deadliest and most dreadful denizen of all.... And of how, this morning . . .

A cry, bitten-off before it could find outlet, bony face drained suddenly of colour, he shot bolt upright in his chair. Insistently, dreadfully, Sergeant Bird's last words rang in his ear.... "To collect those the other party deals in," he had said.... Another memory, more vivid still... Of another East End cellar, approached through the concealed entrance of a kitchen-range; of a murderer disappearing like Harlequin through a trap-door in the roof; of a lovely white-faced girl, bound and helpless in the corner... Of a high, narrow plate-glass case divided into two....

Like a flash his hand went to the telephone.

"And hurry!" he jerked, when he spoke Into the receiver.

The door opened and Sergeant Oates came in.

Quickly, concisely, Ackroyd gave his orders.

Oates saluted; left at the double.

Ackroyd's eye collected those of Lord FitzRalph

"That your Rolls outside?" he asked. FitzRalph nodded.

"Sure," he said quickly. "Want it?"

Already Ackroyd was at the door.

"Drive like hell!" he said, and they followed him down a series of corridors and flights of stairs, to the Embankment entrance, where Oates awaited him.

Ackroyd beside him, FitzRalph sprang to the driving-seat. The others piled inside.

"Let me get this without possibility of mistake," FitzRalph said quickly. "Just exactly where am I to drive like hell?"

"Oliver's Model Dwellings," said Ackroyd.

25

IT was a wild ride to Poplar, speed-signals treated as of no account, rules of the road ignored, so that, however long-drawn-out it seemed to those sweatingly anxious men, it was well under the half-hour when FitzRalph drew the Rolls to a standstill outside the main entrance to the block.

Parker, the ex-Sergeant-Major of Grenadier Guards janitor, was not in the vestibule.

"Probably slipped out for a quick one." Ackroyd pronounced, and made for the concealed door that would bring them to the trapdoor through which, upon that previous occasion, Sainter has escaped them.

"Excellent vantage point that," Ackroyd pronounced. "Commands the whole cellar, so that one or more of you can keep him covered while I swarm down the rope."

But when they came to the trapdoor it was to discover that, without disclosing their presence and wasting invaluable time, that course was impracticable. The butterfly nuts by which, when not in use, the trapdoor was held in place, had been sawn through level with the floor.

Though only for a moment, brows contracted, the inspector contemplated that disappointment, judging from his expression the situation did not look too good.

Then abruptly he turned.

"Through the kitchen of the tenement," he ordered abruptly, and hurried back in the way they had come, through the big entrance hall to the street, and into the crazy house where was the range. That they had no difficulty in forcing the door did not appear to afford Ackroyd the satisfaction that might have been anticipated.

"In conjunction with that trapdoor, just a bit too easy," he said meditatingly, when in the kitchen he had manipulated the damper and the mouth of the passage yawned eerily before them. "Keep your eyes skinned and watch your step."

Ackroyd in the van, then Sergeant Oates, Fitz-Ralph hard on his heels, and Hilary in the rear, they passed through the opening.

To Hilary at least it was an experience to the last degree eerie, and, because of Sally and that sickening fear of what might already have befallen her, one of feverish impatience.

A little way ahead the uncertain form of Ackroyd looming only a shade more darkly than the surrounding dimness, and above all the strange sense of something impending that from the first moment of their entering had closed in upon him, insistent, compelling, as though he was in the clutch of spiritual warning from some inner sixth sense, combined to maintain him at a hair-trigger of alertness. But, to rescue Sally from what would, or al-ready had come to her, he would have faced a battalion of fiends.

Yet, as happens so frequently, prelude to climax came prosaically enough. The medium was the loose stone against which he stubbed his toe, so that, unable by reason of his injured arm to save himself, he fell face forward to ground. By the time he picked himself up he was well behind the others.

Actually, it was just as, having reached the upright, he was peering ahead to discover them that the sound came― a low swoosh from above, and in advance of him. As he hurried forward he heard, and dimly perceived, the others check speculatively in their stride. They were still some distance ahead, however, when that rushing sound came again, this time from immediately overhead, and considerably louder than before― high-pitched and whining.

It was at this instant that the sub-conscious in Hilary clamoured the most urgent warning yet. For a split-second he checked in his stride. Then, like one possessed, flung himself not forward, but backward, and only by that feat of spontaneous acrobatics was able to save himself.

Even as it was he felt on his cheeks the disturbance of air as, swiftly and smoothly as the blade of a descending guillotine, something brushed past his face, came to ground, and there motionless remained so that he was possessed of an odd sensation of being confronted with some impassable barrier.

Gropingly he advanced his hand― to find that his fingers closed about the thin steel bars of a grille that, extending as high as he could reach on tip-toe, entirely cut him off from his companions. That was the moment also when shatteringly the faint glimmer that from time to time had shone out from ahead was reinforced to a strong and garish light.

The reflection came from the same arrangement of mirrors that on their first visit had shown the interior of the cellar into which, at right angles, the passage turned. The additional light enabled him to see that, as well as the grille that isolated him from his party, they, in turn, were cut off from advancing by a further grille that had descended some twenty feet or so ahead of the first, so that it was as if they were in a cage.

Hilary stood without moving. For a moment his capacity for thought seemed frozen at its source. At what so clearly was revealed within that brilliantly-lighted chamber itself he was capable only of horror, gripping, numbing.

Backed against the high dark curtains at the further end was the glass case, high and narrow, to which Sally had expressed such prophetic aversion when they had rescued her from this same room, and that, by a partition of the same material, was divided into two equally-sized compartments. Now, feet clamped immovably to ground, she was gazing in benumbed terror at the supreme and ultimate horror that, in the second compartment, confronted her.

Even Hilary, who had lived in a snake infested country, had never seen or imagined a boa-constrictor as gross, or so untellably loathsome as the writhing avid monster that curled about the iron column that ran from floor to roof of the compartment.

"And so, gentlemen," said a smooth and pleasant voice that, by some peculiarity of acoustics was rendered as clear as if they had been in the same room with him, "you have been clever enough to discover my retreat."

A smile of genuine pleasure on his pink and chubby face, Mr. Sainter was lounging comfortably in an armchair immediately confronting the case. Rigid and motion-less in a smaller chair beside him was Sancho.

Having spoken, Mr. Sainter half-turned his head, so that in the mirror his benevolent face appeared in half-profile.

"And I can only express the hope, gentlemen," he added sincerely, "that having found your way here you will have no occasion to question the genuine warmth of your welcome."

In the mirror they saw him smiling again.

"And now about this grille," he continued. "Although the barrier itself is strong, the material into which it is set, alas, is more liable to breakdown. Hence, if you are sufficiently interested to cast your glance upward, you will discover the method I have adopted to counteract that weakness."

THEY looked to see that from the top bar of the grille, running the full length of the passage and into the chamber beyond were insulated wires that terminated at a switch within easy reach of Mr. Sainter's hand.

"I will give you exactly thirty seconds to remove your hands from the bars," that bland person observed pleasantly.

There was that in his voice which induced even that fighting spirit to obey. That it was as well he did so was shown a few seconds later, when, reaching out his delicate hand, Mr. Sainter pressed down the switch, and there followed the low, ominous hum of the dynamo.

"Over two thousand volts, gentlemen," he said complacently. "One finger on those bars now and the result from your point of view would be more episodic than pleasant."

There, then, they were, as Impotent as any other caged creatures, with the bland and cherubic Sainter free to bring to fruition whatever devilishness his madman's brain had prepared.

It was apparent, too, from the widened smile and the excess of geniality that shone from his eyes as, by a slow turn of the head, he brought his face into half-profile, that the scheme was on the point of climax.

And now, for the first time, Hilary saw that between his thumb and forefinger their captor held a small india-rubber bulb that by a thin tube communicated with the glass partition that separated Sally from the snake.

"A slight demonstration of what― though I deprecate the self-commendation― I like to think of as my ingenuity," he said happily, and slightly pressed the bulb.

The result came with a horror less mitigated than any of which Hilary had known or imagined. Ahead he heard the sharp intake of Ackroyd's breath, a deep animal-like growl from Oates.

For where, before, the two halves of the glass partition had met so closely as to render the dividing line almost imperceptible, now, consequent upon that faint pressure, they had drawn a fraction of an inch apart.

Curiously, perhaps, that proved the one circumstance that had been necessary to arouse Hilary to action. Devastatingly clear it was that, after he had sufficiently slaked his sadistic spirit with the long-drawn-out threat of it, Sainter's intention was slowly to widen the breach until there should remain no barrier between the snake and its victim.

It was in a sudden flash that Hilary received his inspiration. There was just the hope that, separated and well back from the others as he was, the madman had not seen him; a stronger hope that, even if his presence had been detected, in the very short interval of absence he would not be missed.

Swiftly but unobtrusively he edged back from the grille, and, catching FitzRalph's eyes as he did so, motioned him to cover the space he had left. Then, keeping to the shadows of the wall, swiftly but silently he ran back to the steps, to the kitchen, the street, and to the vestibule of the main block. Fortunately for his purpose the street was deserted.

To his relief, the janitor had returned. Standing immobilely in the middle of the floor, there was startled suspicion In the glance he threw at that dishevelled figure.

With no time for preliminaries, Hilary dug the barrel of his automatic a good couple of inches into the ex-soldier's barrel-stave-like ribs.

"I'll give you just one minute," he said, in unconscious emulation of Mr. Sainter himself, "to put me wise as to the other entrance into that underground room of Sainter's."

Instantly, and with exultation, he read from the mingled fear and consternation in the coarse, red face that Parker knew. He was able to realise, also, the conflict the demand brought with it; knew the man between the devil of Sainter's vengeance and the deep sea of this more imminent peril.

The ex-soldier's staring glance roved desperately for the help that, fortunately for Hilary, was not forthcoming. But the time limit went, and still Parker had not spoken.

"Time," said Hilary. He pressed the pistol-muzzle into the fleshy part of the janitor's forearm, and pressed the trigger.

With the report, the stabbing, burning pain, and the instantaneous spread of blood to extinguish the smouldering sleeve, Parker screamed― a high-pitched yelp of pure terror.

Hilary's response was to lower the pistol muzzle an inch or so down the forearm.

"Five seconds," he said, his voice cold and level. "It'll be through the bone the next time. After that― through the head. And if you make the mistake of thinking I don't mean it, it'll be the last mistake you'll make."

A subscriber, apparently, to Miss Chick's dictum that there is a time when endurance becomes ridiculous, if not culpable, the Janitor gave way. He pointed to the concealed door under the stairs, by which access could be gained to the whole range of flats.

"Next door. Cellar. Second peg on left behind the stove. Press in and half-turn to right," he said hoarsely.

Hilary jerked to the upright.

"Good," he said, though his voice remained ominous. "But if you've sold me a pup I'd recommend you to occupy the Interval until we meet again in prayer, because you'll need all of them there are."

The man was subdued now, and made no bones about showing it.

"It's right what I've said," he muttered, but already Hilary was through the hidden door.

26

IN the vestibule of the next flat a door was situated in the place that corresponded to the one which, in the main entrance, led to the trap-door that was in the roof of the torture cellar. Here, however, a flight of steps led downward.

A moment later, his torch showing the way, he was speeding down the steps to discover with satisfaction that the flight corresponded in depth with that from the tenement kitchen to the underground passage.

At the bottom, his torch showed a tunnel to the right that ended, at last, in a cellar that by its comparatively new condition he judged to be immediately below the vestibule.

It was large and cold, but dry. On the wall immediately in rear of the furnace was a row of implements-a sieve, a saw, an axe; Hilary's heart pounded as he ob-served that of the row of pegs from which these hung the second one was vacant.

He strode over to it, pushed it violently, and felt it sink a couple of inches or more into the wall. The limit reached, he gave it a sharp half-turn to the right, and felt it catch so that it stayed put.

Simultaneously, as smoothly and even more silently than a theatre curtain, the whole section of wall slid gently upward. And there in front of him, not six feet away from where he stood, were the heavy, dark curtains that he knew must be those that were the backing to that dreadful glass container.

And, even as for an instant he stood, gathering himself together for the final, decisive move, Mr. Sainter's voice, cultured, suave, but with an underlying malevolence that now as the devilish climax approach came sheerly demoniac, was drawing to its close.

Cautiously, brain and body tensed, Hilary peered through the tiny opening between the curtains. There was a note in those smooth, cultivated tones that was Immeasurably wild and un-disciplined. Now what he saw told him that had he been delayed for but a further few minutes he would have been too late.

In the time of his absence, Sainter's face had undergone an amazing transformation; it was as if some latent demon had arisen to the surface and taken possession. Formerly so pink and jolly and smiling, that countenance was white and fallen away; the eyes glaring, the lips thin and drawn back, so that the teeth gleamed beneath; at the mouth corners were little flecks of foam.

"At last, I confess to finding more joy in the punishment of the evildoer than in the redress of the wrongs for which he was responsible," that smoothly jarring voice continued. "It was a joy that, because the retribution had necessarily to be so swiftly executed, never could find lasting satisfaction."

Suddenly, again, that strained voice broke off; watching, Hilary saw flood into the distorted face a look of such untellable malignancy as, literally, to turn him cold.

"Then, on the night of a few days ago," Sainter went on, "and from what doubtless the unintelligent would proclaim as the goodness of her heart, my niece brought back to my house the very man whom, only a few hours previously. Sancho, my valet and loyal comrade, had reported as having been dealt with adequately in return for the interference that had rendered his continued existence dangerous. In other words, apart from Sancho himself, he was the one man living who was in possession of my secret. It was only a day later than the one that saw him installed in my house that I discovered by niece to be planning, not only to turn him loose to disclose my secret to the world, but actually to accompany him. So that when, by the exhibition of qualities with which I must admit not hitherto to have credited her, she effected that purpose, it was to the last degree essential they should be recaptured."

Unexpectedly, then, and horribly, he broke into a thin and high-pitched cackle of laughter.

"But while of necessity our unfortunate failure to regain custody of the chief of those two busybodies must mean the end of our activities," he went on with, in-credibly, a return to something of his old bland smile, "at least I remain in a position to stage a fitting curtain to my career."

He waved a white and now unsteady hand towards the case.

With that slight but unremitting pres-sure on the bulb, the partition between the serpent and the bedazed and immobile girl had separated now by some couple of inches. And even as Hilary watched, to his inexpressible relief slowly Sally's eyes closed, the face, from which already all trace of colour had fled, became suffused with grey.

She had fainted.

Steadying himself, Hilary took deliberate aim with his automatic at the yellow, un-blinking eyes of the serpent. Then he pressed the trigger and with the shock of the failure that resulted, thought for a moment that he, too, was on the point of fainting. The cartridge was defective.

When he attempted to clear the breech the pistol jammed.

And now, however slowly and with whatever calculated cruelty, the space between the snake and its unconscious victim was opening ever wider.

For a moment frenzy seized him; he Jerked and tore at trigger and breach like one demented. Then in the hard, cold light of necessity reason flooded back, and he was able to pull himself together. Not only Sally's life and his own, but the lives of FitzRalph and those good comrades of the C.I.D. were dependent upon his inspiration.

Turning, he tip-toed swiftly back to the cellar; there glanced about for any weapon that might happen to be at hand. His eye rested upon, and an instant later his hands had closed about, the heavy iron furnace rake.

He turned swiftly back to the curtain and without attempt at concealment flung it aside. Then, his wounded shoulder forgotten, with a strength derived from some hidden well of energy, he swung that iron bar as easily as if it had been a lath, so that he smashed through not only the glass close to him but that on the other side of the case. A piece three or four feet square shattered to pieces at the feet of Mr. Sainter.

With a low, inarticulate cry that startled and wholly demented man jerked to the upright, as though unable to realise the situation, took a couple of quick steps towards the breach in that awful cage.

What instantaneously transpired came too quickly for the eye to follow, too sheerly terrible for the dazed brain to assimilate. To Hilary it seemed that the serpent, blinded on the one side by splinters, maddened by the trinity of fear and pain and hunger, struck instinctively at that which was the nearest to hand.

Something like a streak of light shot forward, solid, but scintillating; there was an inextricable convulsion, a writhing and a seething. It must have been little more than a second of time from his first movement that Sainter, philanthropist, multiple murderer, and maniac, was held immovably and without hope of release within those irresistible coils.

What, at the time, contributed the last culminating horror was that predominant in the confusion was the lithe and utterly frenzied figure of the Filipino. Simultaneously, as it seemed to Hilary, with the striking of the snake, came the crash of his overturned chair; the detonation of his pistol as he pumped shot after shot into those ever more closely constricting coils.

But for any practical help he was able to give to his master, he might not have been there. Rage and hate and excitement at his attack on the one to whom his devotion was not so much an emotion as a religion rendered his hand unsteady; the bullets neither severed the spinal cord nor crashed into the brain. By the time an emptied magazine rendered the weapon useless, Sainter was beyond aid.

Hilary cast a glance, quick and anxious, at Sally. Not yet showing signs of returning consciousness, and with that which was more urgent to hand, she could safely be left for a moment. He thrust through the opening in the glass on his own side, and with the rake smashed one of corresponding size on the other. Then, poising himself for an instant on the ledge, he leapt upon the Filipino.

Unprepared and, through the calamity that had come to him, to the last degree indifferent to anything else that might transpire, Sancho crashed to the ground. His head hit the stone floor.

This accomplished, leaving him there Hilary switched off the current that fed the grille; carrying the heavy rake, strode over to it.

"Stand back!" he said, and with all his strength battered at the lock. This was substantial, but, from his own side, projected so far from the gate as, with the force and weight he was able to bring to bear, soon to give way. Within three or four minutes Ackroyd, Oates and FitzRalph were through.

"Good for you, Mr. Fortescue," the laconic inspector said briefly, and pushed past him round the turning to the cellar. As, with the others close behind, Hilary turned to follow, a light shone brightly from the further end of the passage.

There was the sound of hurrying foot-steps.

"Bird and his men," he said, and pointed to the rake that lay where he had dropped it. "Break down the further grille so they can come through."

Once in the cellar again, Hilary was just in time to release Sally before he, too, fainted. So that he did not see Ackroyd, his hand steady as though at target practice, bring death to the already wounded serpent.

27

IT was three days later.

Hilary, shoulder expertly bound, was lying on the chesterfield in the library of Lord FitzRalph's house at Hampstead. As well as that good sportsman himself, Inspector Ackroyd was there, and with him those other stalwarts, Detective-Sergeants Oates and Bird. By Hilary's side, pale still from her experience, but looking, as FitzRalph pointed out, "like flowers that bloom in the spring"― Sally.

"There's just one point left I've simply got to be satisfied on," Hilary was saying. "What made you determine so suddenly that Sainter had doubled back to the cellar?"

Ackroyd coughed a little.

"Genius," he said modestly. "When I came away from seeing poor Monkey Baines, it was with a vague feeling of something not being in that yard that ought to be. Something missing. Coupled with that was the question why, when he's so obviously been out for murder, when you'd think he'd want to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, had he driven up In a van? Then, all of a sudden it flashed upon me that what was missing from Monkey's place was a snake; that when I'd called to interview him there was a tall, narrow case in the yard that held a big boa-constrictor, and that after Monkey was coshed, while the case was there still, the snake was not. That in those two hours between my visits to the shop, Sainter― whom you must remember was supposed to exercise a wonderful control over livestock― had called with a van! Then, like a flash, it came to me that in his cellar at Oliver's was a glass case that, in size and shape, was a replica of the one in Monkey Baines' yard... . And as he had Miss Moreland in his clutches it occurred to me the sooner we were at Poplar the greater our chance'd be of saving her life. Voila!"

Behind his monocle FitzRalph's eyes caught Ackroyd's; from there turned for an instant to the two on the chesterfield. Sally was staying with a relative in Clarges St., and because of what she had so recently endured had given promises of an early return for bed.

"There's a room in this house that ought to interest you three sleuths," FitzRalph observed, turning to the inspector, who raised lazy eyebrows.

"The wine cellar?" he said.

"I said 'interest,' not 'absorb'," his host pointed out. "The one I have in mind is one of the few examples of a genuine secret room in the London area― for the reason that most of the really old houses have been demolished. It was used as a hide-up for Jacobite refugees after the '45 Rebellion― it has the further interest, too, that it was there those more efficient predecessors of yours, the Bow Street Runners, ran Ben Callaway, the highwayman, to earth, two days after he'd held up the Lord Chief Justice's coach on the Heath here. I've still got one of his pistols and his gold-laced three-cornered hats. Like to see the room?"

Ackroyd got up from his chair.

"After the way our present incumbent of that office summed-up in favour of the last murderer I had before him," he said bitterly, "I'd like to see the relics of anybody who put one over a Lord Chief Justice."

Left to themselves, those two on the chesterfield talked a little in desultory fashion, for, on this first occasion they had been alone together since the night of that wild dash across Hampstead Heath, there was an odd sense of restraint; some invisible barrier that neither seemed able to beat down. So far as concerned Hilary, her nearness had such an affect on his heart's action as to make him rather breathless; her nearness and the dearness of her. And after what so recently she had endured, the shock of it, and the loss, how possibly could he intrude?

Eventually, however, it was she who broke into the silence.

"Would you mind awfully lending me my hand for a moment?" she said. "I shan't keep it long, of course, only I've dropped my hankie, and I can't get at it with the other one."

Though it was only then he realised he was still holding it, it was with reluctance he released it.

"I shall want it back the moment you've done with it," he reminded her.

Following upon those altruistic reflections of a moment ago, he was never able to understand the unanswerable impulse that urged him; the words seemed to come outside his own volition.

"For always," he added.

Busy with the interior of her vanity-bag, she was so long before she replied that, bleakly, it came to him that with this entirely premature move he had dished any chances that, but much later, he might have achieved.

Yet when, slowly, she turned to him, swiftly, incredulously, that impression was dissolved at something he read in her eyes.

"Why?" she said, and could not have put a question more easy to answer.

"Because," he said, "I loved you, desperately and irrevocably, from the first moment I saw you."

Now her eyes, turned from his, were looking intently at the floor.

"Didn't something tell you that?" he said. Pausing, she met his glance. As, holding it, she read his eyes, the colour came into her face. If there was a glint of humour in hers, her mouth was very tender.

"I'll own I didn't have to look into the teacups to know I was going to have trouble with a dark man," she said.

It was some quarter of an hour later that the door opened, and a face, lean, and with deceptively lazy eyes, projected for a moment into the room. Then, with a kind of hasty deliberation, the door closed again.

Outside, Inspector Ackroyd turned a lank and expressionless countenance upon his friend and host.

"What, exactly, might be the trouble in there?" the younger man inquired, his face as devoid of expression as that of the detective.

Ackroyd thought for a moment.

"I don't quite know," he said at last. "Unless, of course, they've been taking lessons from that snake."

The End

Source: Australian Women's Weekly, Saturday 29 June 1935

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27