our man, but to hang something on him is decidedly another matter.”
“You have?” Brice sat eagerly at the desk. “Who is it?”
“His name’s Jefferson Cole, fiancé of Judith Mackinley. I may be completely wrong, mind you, but my instincts, and one or two things he let slip, lead me to think I’m on the right track.”
“What have you found out about him?”
“First, he is enormously ambitious, to the exclusion of everything else. Second, Mackinley doesn’t like him because of his attentions to Judith, and I’m not surprised, having seen him.” Hargraves looked at his notes before continuing.
“When I first paid a visit to Cole this afternoon I remarked that Mackinley was naturally reticent about letting the news of the robbery leak to the public. Without hesitating, Cole replied: ‘I should think so! A thing like that could break Mackinley’!”
“Which proves what exactly?” Brice asked, frowning.
“It doesn’t exactly prove anything, but it shows that Cole had got the answer figured out beforehand. He must have had to grasp the implications for Mackinley so quickly. Naturally, I’m not going to pin anything on so flimsy a statement: it simply goes into the whole pattern. And the pattern as I see it is this: Jefferson Cole wants Judith Mackinley, not so much because she’ll become his wife, but because she is the daughter of one of the wealthiest bankers in the country. Basic motive is not love, but money. Follow?”
“So far,” Brice acknowledged.
“Cole already owns a prosperous garage called the Apex, in Morton Street. Mackinley has said that that doesn’t represent enough power and influence for the future husband of his daughter, so what does Cole do? He involves himself in tremendous garage extensions, which will stretch over a period of years, and in the end he’ll possess one of the biggest automobile cum-helicopter garages in the country. But the marriage might fail completely, and Cole isn’t the sort of man to involve himself in costly extensions without being sure he can pay for them. I guess at a second string to his bow—unlimited gold.”
“Or private means,” Brice said, feet on the ground as usual.
“That is possible, of course, but if he has private means why hasn’t he advertised the fact to Judith—and incidentally Mackinley—to prove that he has all the money and influence necessary to a girl of Judith’s standing?”
“Yes, that’s a good point,” Brice admitted.
Hargraves paused and drank his tea. Brice looked at him expectantly. “You mean to check on him further?”
Hargraves nodded emphatically.
“Definitely. We’ll check on his history, his bank, and all about him, and I’ll wager we find a few surprises....”
Hargraves sat back in his chair.
“It’s the general air of the man, his irresistible certainty of success, which intrigues me. The air, if you will, of a man who has a secret unknown to any other person on earth.”
Brice raised an eyebrow. “The secret of shifting gold without trace?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have accepted it as a certainty that he is our man?”
“I have. Chiefly because nobody else fits the picture, and because of my personal reaction toward him. Up to now I’ve never guessed wrong about a man or woman in my whole career.”
Brice rose to his feet and took a turn round the office, lost in thought. Hargraves looked at his notes and reflected. After a moment the sergeant spoke again.
“Do you think there’d be anything to gain by having him in here for close questioning?”
“On what charge?” Hargraves asked bluntly. “I can’t go round picking people up for questioning just because I’m suspicious of them. I’ve got to have proof of what I’m doing or I’ll very soon be in hot water. And until we’ve got something concrete—however small—we can’t do a thing. Right now, the best thing we can do is find out all about Cole—his history, his education, and—if possible—his bank account.”
Brice nodded. “I’ll swing it somehow, even if I have to get the A.C. himself to make a request.”
“As for me,” Hargraves mused, “I’m going to work out by every possible means how he could possibly have stolen all that gold without so much as a van to help him, or a single sound to give him away. I can’t think of any natural means, so I’ll have to try something—unnatural.”
“Unnatural?” Brice frowned.
“I was thinking of Sawley Garson. As you know, he’s helped us sometimes when we’ve got into deep water. Remember how he helped us in the Dawson murder case recently? We’d have got nowhere without him. As an ex-government scientist he’s pretty well up in odd things and scientific problems.”
“Mmm—perhaps he’ll know something,” Brice admitted. “My personal opinion of him is that he’s something of a nut. He spends his time disparaging the efforts of the Yard and saying how much better he could do the job.”
“His claim isn’t altogether without justification. Don’t forget his personal record, apart from being a government boffin. He’s been acclaimed the Mind of Europe five times in succession in a worldwide quiz on general knowledge. That kind of a man can afford to be eccentric. Anyhow, it’s worth a try. I’ll do my best to see him this evening.”
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