THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume)
as he imagined Ling would reason, it would be perfect policy to lay up in one of those illicit dens which in spite of police vigilance exist near the docks of every great port. For his own sake the versatile Chinese takes ample precautions against a raid. In ordinary circumstances such a place would be the last in which Ling would be looked for.
"That looks good to me," he said. "I don't think I'll be able to stop for that drink, after all. You ever smoked opium?" He addressed Cincinnati.
"I've tried the dope," admitted the "con "man. "I keep off it now. Bad for the nerves."
"Then you're the man I want. You'll know the gags and'll be able to prompt me. Come along." He seized the other's coat-sleeve. Cincinatti sat tight, passively resisting the pressure.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Find if there's any opium joint round about here and run through it with you."
Cincinnati did not seem to find the programme enticing. He was too close to the bad quarter of an hour spent recently on the same quest. "Nix," he said emphatically. "It's your business, Mr. Menzies, and maybe you'd like to see it through. But it isn't mine by a long chalk. I've had all the excitement I want tonight and the quaint little yellow man won't be disturbed by me."
"Afraid?" sneered Menzies.
"I am," admitted the "con "man bluntly. "I've done all you asked me to, but I'm no sleuth and there won't be any pension for my widows and orphans if somebody hands me one. Why don't you take one of your staff?"
"Because they've mostly cleared away home and I don't want to spend an hour or two hunting for the right man. I want to get after Ling right now."
"Say," drawled Jimmie. "Aren't you getting on too fast. You don't even know that Ling is in an opium joint, and if you did you don't know where the joint is."
Menzies' brow corrugated. "I'll find it," he answered grimly. "It isn't the finding of it that worries me."
"Then, Sherlock," said Jimmie, "since our friend Whiff en has waived the honour why not let me be M. C. I'll own that I didn't know, or have forgotten, the meaning of ' en she quay,' but I'm no tenderfoot when it comes to opium joints. I think I might bluff any Chinaman you're likely to run across. I have had some experience in San Francisco."
"You think you can get us in if I find the j oint? I don't want any trouble so that he can slip out a back way while we're arguing at the front. It's got to be done quietly. Remember, he's killed one man in order to get away to-night and he won't stand on ceremony with us."
"I'll be discreet," promised Jimmie. "I shan't make any trouble unless it comes. You bank on little Willie."
Menzies gave a curt nod. "Very well. That's a bet. You wait here and I'll be back in an hour or less. You needn't stop unless you want to, Cincinnati. I'll not forget you did your best for us to-night." He moved swiftly away.
"Queer chap, your chief," commented Jimmie to Royal. "How can he expect to find the place in an hour? If the police had any information about one I suppose they'd have raided it long ago."
"If he says he'll locate one in an hour you bet he'll do it," declared Royal. "He's that kind of man. There's very few people who can walk over Weir Menzies and get away with it, and Ling isn't one. The guv'nor's always got something up his sleeve. Once he gets his teeth into a case like this one you can break his jaw but you won't make him let go."
"I owe him something," said Jimmie, "though I like getting at that everlasting dignity of his. He doesn't seem willing to admit that he can make a mistake. Here's a bad blunder to-night, for the instance. Surely on a job like this it would have been simpler to take the house with a rush instead of messing around and letting everybody of any importance slip through his fingers."
"I wish I was an amateur detective," said Royal solemnly. "It looks easy, don't it. Just chew on this, though. All Mr. Menzies knew about that house was that Ling had been there last night. That was no proof that he was there to-night. If we'd raided that place and found neither Gwennie nor Ling there where would we have been now?"
"Just where you are," argued Hallett doggedly. "You haven't got 'em now, have you?"
"Oh, deliver us," ejaculated Royal wearily. "Can't you see that he had to make certain before running a raid? The news would have been all over the shop in two ticks and if our birds had been laying up elsewhere they'd have flown and we wouldn't have stood the ghost of a chance of catching up with 'em. Got that? Very well. The guvnor arranges to see if they're at home before jumping. If they hadn't been we'd have waited for 'em to walk into the trap. You turn that endways and upside down and inside out and see if there's any flaw in it. As it is we've bagged one of the small fry of the gang, filled up practically all our evidence and got the tip where to look for Ling."
"Luck," persisted Jimmie. "I never said he had no luck."
"It's the sort of luck that's got a way of following Weir Menzies. Of course, he goes off the line sometimes, but he's only human. It's only in books that detectives never go wrong. If Weir Menzies was that sort of detective why, he wouldn't be in the C. I. D.; he'd have Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and Rothschild in his vest pocket. The C. I. D.," he concluded gloomily, "never gets justice done to 'em in print except perhaps in ' Judicial Statistics '."
Jimmie grinned at the heat of Menzies' defender. "I never said he was a dub," he declared.
"You never said so. That's what you meant all the same," replied Royal with warmth. "You've just seen seme of the surface parts of his operations and you don't know either the resources or the limitations of the machine he is driving. No detective that was ever built could stand for a day alone against organised crime. You let a marked grasshopper down in a tenacre field and set somebody else the business of catching him. That's about as easy as some of the jobs that come our way. Luck! Huh!"
"You've convinced me," said Jimmie solemnly. "You've got Vidocq, Sherlock Holmes, Dupin, Cleek, Sexton Blake and all the rest of 'em beaten to a frazzle."
"You ready?" said the voice of Menzies from the doorway.
Chapter XXX
It is no reflection upon the activity of the divisional police that there should be an undiscovered opium joint in Shadwell. There is all the difference in the world between a deliberate search with a definite object and a preventive vigilance much spread out. Menzies had special reason to believe that an opium den existed somewhere in the district and it became a question merely of locating it.
That problem was not so formidable as it looked. It all turned on a question of advertisement.
Even illicit trades must advertise. A gambling-house, a whisky still or an opium joint do it in different ways from the proprietors of a breakfast food, but in essence it is the same. They must have their public a definite circle of patrons to keep trade humming. Sooner or later some hint inevitably reaches the ear of authority and the cleverest keepers of such places time their flittings accordingly.
Although Menzies did not analyse the mental process that had made him so confidently assert that he would find the opium den in an hour it is probable that he relied on these facts rather than on any hope of melodramatic deductions. It is a pity to spoil a popular illusion, but it is true that the greatest detective suecesses in real life are achieved simply by asking questions in the right way of the right person.
His starting point was the landlord of "The Three Kings "public-house.
That gentleman, an elderly, hatchet-faced individual with a temper much soured by dyspepsia, was in his shirt sleeves, leaning on the counter of the public bar. Formally the place was closed in accordance with the licensing regulations and he was simply waiting until it pleased Menzies and his companions to turn out. Had they been other than police officials they would have been shunted into the cold street at the stroke of halfpast twelve.
"Hope