Ministers. Returning in the small hours of the morning from London to her Surrey residence near Farnham, she had crashed into a car going Londonwards, near Guildford. The Important Personage had escaped without injury, though his car had been badly damaged. But the incident had been given elaborate publicity by a certain section of the press, owing to the fact that the lady had been driving well over on the wrong side of the road at a furious pace, and, it was alleged, in a condition of intoxication. She had refused to disclose the name of a gentleman—not her husband—who had been her passenger at the time of the accident and on whose lap, according to the Important Person’s chauffeur, she had been sitting; a detail which had added additional piquancy to the fact that she had been returning from a very notorious night-club. The loss, a few weeks later, of an immensely valuable diamond necklace, which had been stolen from her town residence in Grosvenor Square, had revived the interest of the British public in this sprightly young person. The necklace had been insured for £120,000; but Lady Isaacson had issued a statement to the press disclaiming all intention to hold the insurance company concerned to its liability. She desired, she said, to discover if the police, who spent so much time in attending to other people’s business, could attend to their own with any satisfaction to the public.
Inspector Clutsam had shut up his face again. It was quite clear that he did not intend to answer the last question. Upon consideration of the face Gore picked up an unsigned letter from a little heap upon his desk, tore it across and dropped it into the waste-paper basket.
‘These little things—’ he said. ‘Now, you know you and Ruddell have been bullying Lady Isaacson to get out of her the name of that man who was with her.’
Clutsam made a noise of contempt as he rose.
‘Why did you decide to take Ruddell’s advice?’ he demanded.
‘We didn’t.’
‘Then why did you decide to drop the necklace affair?’
Gore reached for the Morning Post which lay on the top of his desk, and indicated a small paragraph tucked away at the foot of an unimportant page. ‘Another little thing, Inspector. Let’s see what you make of it.’
‘A curious occurrence,’ Clutsam read, ‘is reported from Bath. William Brandy, an elderly tramp, was admitted to the Infirmary on Tuesday suffering from injuries to his head and eye. According to his statement, he was struck by a heavy object while asleep during the previous night on his way from Salisbury to Westbury and rendered unconscious. On awakening in the morning he found close to him a wash-leather bag containing a necklace of what he supposed to be diamonds, fastened by a gold clasp set with three emeralds. Upon examination, however, by a Bath firm of jewellers, the supposed precious stones proved imitations. No explanation is forthcoming of the circumstances which occurred shortly after midnight in a remote spot at a considerable distance from any road or habitation. It is feared that the unfortunate man will lose the sight of the injured eye.’
‘Curious little story, isn’t it?’ Gore commented. ‘You remember that Lady Isaacson’s necklace had a clasp with three emeralds. Not that I suggest for a moment that hers is a fake … But that’s why we thought of dropping the case—’
‘It seems a damn silly reason to me’, blew Clutsam. He dropped the newspaper disdainfully. ‘Hell—I’m fed up. I’ve heard enough fairy tales in the last twenty-five years. I tell you what it is, Colonel. I’m sick of this job. Here I am running round like a potty rabbit for the last forty-eight hours, without a square meal or half-an-hour’s sleep, with everyone yelling at me, “Have you got Ruddell? Why the what’s-it haven’t you? You get him or you get out. There’s a man waiting for your job.” And these beggars in the papers blackguarding you. People looking at you as if you were a mad dog. Hell, I’m tired of it. Here, can I use your ’phone for a moment? My kid’s bad—diphtheria. I haven’t been able to get home since Monday morning.’
The burly, dogged figure bent over the instrument and rang up a Balham number. ‘That you, Alice? How’s the boy? Worse. Yes—get another doctor at once. No, I can’t go—I can’t, old thing … Sorry, girlie … Get the second opinion at once—the best man … I’ll ring up this evening … Stick it, kid …’
Clutsam straightened himself. ‘The kid’s got to go, the Missus says,’ he said, simply. ‘Bit of good news for a chap, isn’t it? Well, good morning, Colonel.’
A little thing—but it moved Gore. On the whole, his relations with the police, professionally, were rather trying. But no one knew better than he how hard was the task to which Clutsam and his colleagues, in uniform and out of it, were bound day and night—the ceaseless vigilance that alone made life for the citizen even tolerably secure. At the moment the man in the street and the man on the bench had their knives into the police. No doubt, in private life, Clutsam and his Alice had to suffer the averted eyes and sotto-voces of their neighbours.
Experience had taught Gore, too, what sort of a job it was to look for a lost man in London—long days, perhaps long weeks of false scents and monotonous failure—the search for a needle in a haystack of stupidity, falsehood and hostility. Also he was interested by William Blandy’s misadventure.
He took Clutsam by the shoulders and pushed him down into a chair. ‘Don’t be in a hurry,’ he said. ‘That telephone message we didn’t send has given me an idea. The cigarettes are there. It’s only an idea—but there is the fact that the lift was not working on Monday afternoon, and that Ruddell went down by the stairs. Sit tight for a bit, will you?’
The bit lengthened to nearly half an hour before he returned; but he returned with news which brought the impatient Clutsam to his feet in a hurry.
‘I think I’ve found where Ruddell went when he left here,’ he said. ‘Care to see?’
The building in Norfolk Street, which housed Messrs Gore and Tolley on its fourth floor, contained the offices of some score of assorted businesses. On the third floor, by the staircase down which Gore led Clutsam, were, at one end of a long corridor, the offices of a literary agent, at the other end those of a turf accountant named Welder, and, facing them, those of the ‘Victory’ Aeroplane Company. In the doorway of Mr Welder’s offices the caretaker of the building awaited them, jangling his bunch of keys. They went in and surveyed the three meagrely-furnished rooms. Gore pointed to a window which he had opened.
‘I rather think they got him in here somehow. And I rather think they got him out of here by that window, when they were ready—probably at night, when it was quiet.’ He leaned out to point down into a narrow yard below. ‘Some of the tenants here park their cars down there. There’s a gate into the street. It would be quite simple to cart him away …’
Clutsam stared about him incredulously. ‘Bunkum,’ he snapped. ‘There isn’t a chair out of place. Ruddell would have wrecked this place before six men got him. There isn’t anything to show—’
Gore pointed to a cigarette which lay under the table of the inner office. ‘Just one little thing, Clutsam. Look at it. Been in trouble, hasn’t it?’
Clutsam stooped and picked up the cigarette, which was badly bent and burst at its middle. But he derived no other information from it.
‘You smoked one of that brand just now, Clutsam,’ Gore smiled. ‘If you’ll forgive swank, it’s rather an expensive brand. Also you notice that it has barely been smoked. Now, I gave Ruddell a cigarette just as he was leaving me on Monday afternoon. Of course, they tidied up. But they left this little thing. Careless of them! Why wasn’t the lift working on Monday afternoon, Parker?’
The
