第 22 页

He went along to interview the matron of the nursing home. She was a homely little body, rather birdlike in her manner, and she scoffed at the idea of an abduction.

"Why, of course, she's quite safe. Especially with the place surrounded by detectives."

As they walked out into the hall, a sound of moaning came down to him from above, and the matron smiled. "That is not very serious. In fact, it is no worse than a case of nerves— a young woman who was brought in this afternoon. There's really nothing the matter with her except hysteria. She has an illusion that she's very ill, and she is welcome to that if she'd only keep quiet about it."

"Isn't she rather a nuisance to the other patients?"

"We're moving her to-night. I've seen her doctor and I've told him that I cannot have her here. The wretched creature can walk as well as you and I, yet she insists upon being treated as an invalid."

He went back to his flat feeling more happy about the girl, although he could not wholly disregard the warning of Alice Cravel.

His servant was out but had left a scribbled note on the table:

"Please call up Sergeant Rouch."

He got through to his assistant with little delay.

"I think I've found the communication between the People and the boys." Rouch always referred to the underworld as "the boys."

"Can I come along to you?"

"Come right along," said Betcher, and a quarter of an hour later Sergeant Rouch arrived, bringing with him a pallid man whom he knew as the best "nose" in London. A "nose" is a police informer, and derives a certain amount of financial benefit from his despicable calling. And this man, who was known to the underworld as "the chef"— he had once been a cook in a popular restaurant— was unique amongst noses, for he succeeded in maintaining some sort of respect amongst the very class he betrayed.

"Tell the inspector what you told me, chef."

The chef looked uneasily from one to the other, licked his dry lips, and began in his perennially hoarse voice.

"It's the Perfessor you're looking for," he said. "I've often seen him down Bermondsey and Deptford, and he knows all the heads: Kallini, and Jacobs, and Paul the Greek."

"What is he like?"

"Not so tall as you— a little taller than me," said the chef, "and thin. Always dressed in black with a big tie like them artists wear in the pictures."

"How old?"

"I don't know." The man considered. "Pretty old. His hair's white, and he's got a lot of it. That is why they call him the Perfessor."

He had never been seen in any of the haunts where men meet to arrange their plans or divide or plant their swag. The "nose" knew them all. The Blue Cushion in the Blackfriars Road, where some of the biggest jobs in England had been organized; the Fishpond over at Notting Hill, where you could plant diamonds to almost any value; or that little saloon in the Whitechapel Road, where all the big silk thefts were arranged and the proceeds sold almost openly.

"He always meets them in the open. Near the Canal Bridge is one of his favourite places. They say down in Deptford that he's a big West End fence, but I never heard that he bought anything from the boys, and he certainly never hired anybody except for a roughhouse."

"You know Ruffy the motorman?"

"Sure I do," nodded the spy. "He's a lad from Deptford. He's just got six months for dangerous driving. They say that the Perfessor gave him a hundred for a West End job."

"There is no place where this Professor can be seen?"

The chef shook his head.

"No. When he's coming along he sends a message to one of the heads saying where he is to be met, and they are closer than oysters. I'll tell you who he got a long time ago— Harry the Lancer. Do you know him, Inspector? He's the fellow that a farmer shot in a field by mistake." (This was the version of Harry the Lancer's death which had emerged from the coroner's inquiry.)The Professor again! Of all the baffling features of the case, he was the most difficult to understand.

Betcher gave instructions to the chef that whenever the Professor appeared, or was likely to appear in his favourite haunts, the Yard was to be notified. For the first time since the shadow of Clay Shelton fell across his path, he was worried. It was not extraordinary that this should be the case, for now Nora Sanders had come to be the focal point against which all the ingenuity and villainy of the mysterious People were directed.

He was weary to a point of exhaustion, and he remembered his boast that he would keep awake for four nights as he took off his coat and began to unfasten his collar. One night's sleep, at any rate, could be snatched; he was entitled to that, he thought, with a grin, as he stripped his collar, and, walking into the bathroom, turned on the tap.

Above the noise of the rushing water he did not hear the telephone bell ring until he came back to the sitting room to find his slippers. He picked up the receiver.

"Call office," said the operator's voice.

It must be Rouch, he thought; but it was a woman's voice that spoke to him, and although an attempt had been made at disguise, he recognized it as that of Alice Cravel.

"Is that you, Long? Get Nora Sanders out of that nursing home quick!"

"Why?" he asked.

"Don't 'why'— just do! You've got less than half an hour. If you're not a fool, you will do as I tell you!"

"But " he began, and then he heard the dick of the receiver being hung up.

Chapter 35

A RUSE? Was it a plot to get the girl out of the home so that she would be more accessible? And yet he could not mistake her sincerity, the intense urgency of her tone. If he understood men and women, he must believe she was in earnest, that she was absolutely certain that some terrible and immediate danger overhung the girl.

He called up the nursing home; the matron had gone to bed, but the sister in charge gave him a satisfactory account.

"Yes, your officer is here. Nothing has happened and Miss Sanders is asleep."

He spoke also to the detective, and had the same satisfactory report.

He walked slowly back to the bathroom and turned off the tap, hesitated for a few seconds, then, pulling the waste plug, he began to dress. And for no reason that he could define, he was wide awake again.

It was not until he was fully dressed that he began to feel foolish. He could do no more at the nursing home than the man he had left in charge. Nevertheless, he decided to take a leisurely walk to Dorset Square. It was a fine night; the West End was crowded, for the theatres were turning out their crowds, and the streets were lined with flying cars.

His way led through Berkeley Street and Berkeley Square, and it occurred to him that he might call on his father, who, despite the lateness of the hour, would certainly be in his study. There was a light in the hall and he pressed the bell and was admitted by his father's valet, who usually replaced the footman when Sir Godley was working late at night.

At the sight of the man's troubled face Betcher Long's heart sank.

"Where is my father?" he asked.

"I don't know, Mr. Arnold. He went out about an hour ago to post a letter. Sir Godley always takes his own letters at night for the little walk, but usually he's only away five minutes."

Arnold walked into the library; the lights were all burning— a sure sign that his father expected to return immediately, for he was rather a faddist in the matter of wasted current.

"Did he take his hat?"

"Yes, sir, his hat and his walking stick."

One of the drawers of Sir Godley's desk was half closed, and Betcher pulled it wide open. It was empty. He whistled softly. In this drawer Sir Godley kept a small Browning pistol. In the old days, when Betcher was a boy, it used to be a navy revolver, and once he had been severely spanked for allowing his curiosity to get the better of him and examining the strange and beautiful instrument that the drawer held.

Betcher called to the old servant, from whom his master had few secrets.

"Does Sir Godley generally take his pistol when he goes out to post a letter?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, lately," said the valet.

And then the detective's eyes were attracted to the hearth. The grate was filled with burnt papers. There was no reason in the world why he should pry into his father's business, but he was alarmed more than he dared confess to himself; and though these charred and blackened cinders were probably old bills which, in a fit of energy, his father had destroyed that night, he stooped down and raked them over. One little bundle of letters had been burnt en bloc, and in the centre there were some scraps of scorched paper that had escaped the flames, but only on one could he detect any writing. It was a triangular piece of paper which contained what had evidently been an address and a date. The whole of the address was not there, but he saw the word "...hagen" and the date 12th of January, 1881. He turned the paper over, and half a dozen words written in a beautiful hand were visible:

...least you can do... help... brother... crisis.

Evidently, attached to this, had been some sort of memorandum, an oblong slip, the charred remnants of which Betcher carried to the light. The ink was still visible. It was a bill of exchange, drawn on his father; the name of the drawer, however, he could not distinguish. He threw this back into the fireplace, the old valet watching him.

"You needn't mention to my father that I've been nosing his private affairs, Johnny," he said.

The old man, who in the course of his life had stood between his young master and many troubles, nodded. "Where do you think he's gone, sir?"

"Gay!" said Arnold laconically.

Going out into the square, he walked toward the nearest post box, and here he met the inevitable point man, one of those mines of information without which the detection of crime would be an infinitely more heartbreaking business than it is.

The policeman had seen Sir Godley and had spoken to him, and had rather an alarming report to make.

"I must say your father behaved very queerly, sir," he said. "While I was talking to him a cab came past, and I think he must have recognized the gentleman inside— as a matter of fact, I saw him myself; an old gentleman with white hair and a big black flowing tie and horn-rimmed spectacles—"

Betcher gasped. It was a fairly faithful description of the Professor.

"What did my father do?" he asked.

"That's what I think was queer. He ran across the road and jumped into another taxi, and the last I saw of him he was leaning out of the window, giving instructions to the driver. I got an idea he was trying to overtake the old gentleman."

Arnold Long went back to the house, a very puzzled man. He spoke a few reassuring words to the valet and continued on his way to Dorset Square. The exercise stimulated his mind, and it required more than ordinary stimulation to explain his father's eccentricity.

What did Sir Godley know of the Professor? And why should a glimpse, caught in that prosaic atmosphere, induce him to throw aside all caution and pursue the cab in which the man was travelling? The Professor! The more Arnold Long thought of this unaccountable being, the more puzzled he became. He was the one member of the confederation he could not place. More than this, he was the dominant partner, the brains and the heart of the Terrible People.

Crossing Oxford Street, he walked up Baker Street, and as he came abreast of a line of houses familiar to every lover of fiction, he grinned to himself. How would that supernaturally clever detective have dealt with this present problem, he wondered? A shot of cocaine, a violin obbligato, and this man, like another famous professor, would be revealed.

He heard a clock chime and looked at the illuminated dial of his watch. Half-past eleven! He would satisfy himself that everything was all right in Dorset Square and go back to await the return of his father.

The square was deserted, the only sign of animation being at the Great Central station at the far end, where taxicabs were arriving with theatre-goers on their way to the country. A man outside the nursing home saluted him.

"Nothing has happened, sir," he reported. "They got away that hysterical girl, and an awful fuss she made."

"The hysterical— oh, yes, I know whom you mean!" He remembered the matron's description of her new patient.

The officer on duty in the hall was a useful servant to the nurses, for he answered the tap on the door immediately. He, too, had nothing to report, and the night sister, coming downstairs at that moment, told him that the girl was sleeping quietly.

"I just had a peep at her as I came down," she said. "I was afraid our shrieking sister would keep her awake all night."

"I wonder if I could see her?"

Why he asked such a ludicrous question, he could not explain even to himself. The night sister was not shocked, because she was a member of a profession that has outgrown the processes of surprise. Yet she hesitated.

"I don't know whether the matron would like that," she said, "but— you must only look, you mustn't speak."

He followed her up the stairs, feeling exceedingly foolish. On the big landing of the first floor she stopped and cautioned him to silence. Opening the door of Nora's room, she beckoned him forward.

A shaded nursery lamp was burning in the room and gave just sufficient light to distinguish the figure in the bed. The girl had her back toward the door and only a stray curl showed above the edge of the sheet.

A curl? He frowned.

And the curl was black!

In two strides he was across the room, ignoring the protestations of the night sister.

"Here— you!"

He dropped his hand upon a thin shoulder and shook it. The girl was not asleep. She turned her startled eyes upon the detective. They were brown eyes and the face turned up to him was sharp and pinched.

"Mr. Long, what are you " began the nurse, and then she saw the face on the pillow.

"That is not Miss Sanders!" she gasped.

Nor was it. Nora Sanders at that moment was speeding as fast as a high- powered motor-ambulance could carry her into Berkshire where the manager of Heartsease was prepared to receive her— and this time she would not have Jackson Crayley to deal with, but a man who knew neither pity nor fear.