Yard and give evidence against Dick unless I paid. Last night there was an appointment made at my flat. The price he needed was greater than I could pay. When he went, I followed him. I knew he had the cheques on him, and I hoped that I might find some way to get them from him. Just before I met you I had appealed to him again. He refused. He had the cheques in his hand. I snatched them, and when I ran into you I passed them to you on the impulse of the moment. That is all, Mr Hallett.’
‘But there is something more,’ he said; ‘something you have not said?’
She shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.
‘I have said all I can—all I dare. You helped me, Mr Hallett, and I have told you more even than the detectives. It has been a relief’—she sighed—‘to tell anyone.’
Jimmie was silenced. Yet a score of questions trembled on his lips. Trained to see the weak points in a narration, he could not fail to realise that there were gaps in the story, gaps that needed filling before one could come to full judgment. She had passed no hint of the blackmailer, the man from whom she had the cheques. That he was closely linked with her in some manner he felt confident. And then speculation was lost in a rush of pity for the girl who had been so unwittingly dragged into a maelstrom from which he could see no way of escape.
That the man Errol was a scoundrel was certain, on her own showing. He glimpsed through her reticence the fresh tragedy that his advent had meant to her life. Vainly he tried to see for what purpose she was being used. Of course, Errol had been bleeding her, but there was something more. It came to him suddenly. She knew the murderer—she had said so. Here was a motive for Errol, a motive more powerful than revenge or passion. She would stand to gain a fortune by Greye-Stratton’s death, and Errol would expect to dabble his fingers in it.
Yet this was the man for whom she was playing with fire. He was not very clear about English legal methods, but he conceived that in trying to shield him she was laying herself open to suspicion. He had judged Menzies acutely. If Greye-Stratton’s fortune were to come to her, that detective would leave nothing undone to be absolutely sure that she had no hand in the crime. Points would arise, actions be revealed, that would look black against her by the very reason that she had carefully concealed them.
‘Miss Greye-Stratton,’ he said gravely, ‘—forgive me for what I am going to say. I believe it is a crime here to be an accessory after the fact. Do you realise that? Don’t you think it would be wiser, for your sake—for your brother’s sake—to be candid with the police? Believe me, all that you have told me is sure to be known sooner or later.’
Her face was irresolute.
‘You think they will find out? That it will be worse because I tried to conceal it?’
‘I do. If you will take my advice—my sincere advice—you will come with me to Menzies now. Understand me. I shall not betray a word of our conversation without your permission.’
She placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her cupped hands, staring across the room in reverie. Then her head sank and her shoulders heaved.
‘I dare not,’ she sobbed. ‘God help me, I dare not …’
NO effective detective organisation is dependent on one man. Co-operation is the essence of all successful detective work, exactly as it is in the carrying on of any great business. Scotland Yard will throw a score, a hundred, ten thousand men into an enterprise, if need be, and every one of them, from the supreme brain downwards, will have an understudy ready at any moment to pick up a duty abandoned from any cause. No individual is vital, though some may be valuable. Every fact, every definite conclusion arrived at, is on record. There is no stopping, no turning back to cover ground already traversed. The spade work of detection is as automatic as book-keeping.
That is why Weir Menzies found time to cover the case against the pickpockets he had captured the preceding evening and to return to headquarters to smoke a quiet pipe and consider things in general. He propped his feet on a desk, leaned back in his chair, and began serenely to go through the reports that had accumulated from every point where information, however remote, might have been gathered on the Greye-Stratton affair.
He liked to have the salient facts of an investigation clear-cut in his mind. That often saved time in an emergency, as well as being an aid to definite thinking. Presently he began to make his Greek notes with a stubby pencil on the back of an envelope. Some of them would have surprised Hallett had he chanced to see them.
‘Statement of P. Greye-Stratton clearly incomplete. Knows much more than she says. Certain that Errol has been for many months constant visitor at her flat in Palace Avenue. (Gould’s report—interview with maid at her flat.) Yet she denies that she has spoken to, or been in communication with, her brother for nearly a year. Lift attendant remembers man calling on her the evening of the murder. Left after short interview, and immediately after she went out, hatless, in a hurry.’
He commenced a string of question-marks across the paper. ‘I’ll see that liftman myself,’ he murmured, and continued:
‘It was the maid’s night out. Lift attendant does not remember having seen man before, but he knows Errol. Description vague. Think possible P. G.-S. alarmed. Must handle cautiously and keep under constant surveillance. If can induce Hallett to cultivate her, may learn something.’
A sharp tap at the door interrupted him. He snapped an irritable ‘Come in!’ and, pencil in hand, surveyed frowningly a young man with a badly bruised eye.
‘Well, Jakes,’ he demanded impatiently, ‘who’s been decorating you? What’s the trouble?’
‘I got this from Hallett, sir. He—’
Menzies’ feet dropped from the table with a crash.
‘What the blazes! Some muddle, I’ll be bound. Where’s Gordon?’
‘Down below, sir. We—’
‘Then you’ve lost the girl?’ He smacked an angry fist down on the table. ‘Oh, curse your explanations! I beg your pardon—you confounded idiot!’ He sprang to the door, and roared down the green-painted corridor: ‘Royal! Royal!’ That individual popped out of a door like a rabbit out of a hole. ‘Come here, Royal. These two cabbages have let Miss Greye-Stratton dodge ’em. Take Smithers and get along to her flat, No. 74, Palace Avenue, and see if you can pick her up. She may have gone straight home, or she may not. I’ve got to come there myself presently, but I’ll hear what this dough-witted jackass has got to say.’
Ordinarily Menzies was courteous to his underlings, but when anything like stupidity interfered with his plans, he let himself go.
‘They remember it, and it’s better than putting ’em on the M.R.,’ he explained once to a colleague, which was his way of saying that he preferred a few hot words to putting the culprits on the morning report for judgment and punishment. ‘Only I sometimes wish that I didn’t swear so much at them.’
Royal had slipped away to carry out his instructions with the swiftness of the well-trained man. Menzies turned with a snarl to the young detective, who was trembling nervously, and as ill at ease as any young clerk ‘carpeted’ before his departmental chief for the first time.
‘Let’s have it,’ he said shortly.
The young man squared his shoulders.
‘They lunched at the Duke’s, in Piccadilly, sir. I went in with them, but could not get near enough to hear what was said. The lady did most of the talking. When they came out they walked towards Regent Street. I was close behind. Gordon was almost twenty paces behind me. They turned into Regent Street, and then sharp back along Jermyn Street. When they reached St James’s Street he said something to her, and came back towards me. I would have passed him, but he caught me by the shoulder, and asked me what I meant by molesting a lady.
‘I