CHAPTER

TWICE IN HIS CAREER had Jimmie Silverdale redoubled three no trumps without the privilege of justifying his confidence. It was the sudden arrival of a Zeppelin bomb that had just put a peremptory end to the rubber on the first occasion. The second time was when Sir Harold Saxon was murdered.

      Jimmie was the "crime merchant" of the Daily Wire. Crime—in the newspaper sense —was one of the main objects of his existence.

      There are distinctions in the newspaper code. For Bill Jones to bludgeon his wife to death in a drunken filt is no crime. It is a venial offense that has no journalistic significance. If the Archbishop of York murdered his cook with his crozier, it would be a crime—more, it would be a "big story."

      It would be doing Jimmie Silverdale an injustice to suppose that life held no other interests for him. He viewed the world with a vivacious cynicism tinged with extraordinary enthusiasms. There was for example the girl but she will find her proper place in this narrative. There was auction bridge and poker. There were books.

      He was not beautiful. Untidy, sleek black hair surmounted a hatchet face, and one lock drooped untidily over a sallow forehead. A home-made cigarette clung to his lower lip during his waking hours and he owned a widemouthed, irresistible grin. Perhaps it was that grin as much as anything that explained his faculty for collecting friends—queer friends, many of them, but a big asset in his profession.

      Through thirty-odd years he had led a variegated life, not without its purple patches. There may have been a strain of Irish blood in his veins, for tight corners were meat and drink to him. They ranged from virtual bankruptcy as the youthful editor-proprietor of a local newspaper to that episode in France where, as an intelligence officer, he had singlehanded exterminated a nest of German spies and gained the D.S.O..

      Nowadays he had dropped back to the old life on the Daily Wire. That journal paid him a thousand pounds a year and held him worth double. Silverdale got results. By what uncanny means he achieved them did not matter. While rival reporters worked tedious and conscientious hours and missed things, Jimmie lounged at the card table of the Paper Club and never "fell down" on a really big story.

      He sprawled now, a lanky figure in untidy blue serge, back in his chair and grinned provokingly at the Scotch sub-editor who had doubled his call.

      "This is where I've got you hornsnaggered, old lad," he observed. "I'll redouble.

      Fate saved the Caledonian. It took the shape of a small boy who burst hurriedly into the room. "You're wanted on the telephone, Mr. Silverdale. Gentleman won't give his name. Says it's most particular and urgent.

      Jimmie Silverdale was used to mysterious telephone calls. A short conversation over the wire sent him tearing away in a taxi, utterly forgetful of his unfinished game of bridge. Ten minutes later, he descended at a small tearoom off Piccadilly Circus and greeted a burly red-faced man who was quietly munching toast.

      "Cheer-oh, Wing. How goes it?"

      "Bearing up, Silver. What are you going to have? Tea?"

      The other gave his order and, as the waitress departed, leaned across the table. "What's the game, old bean? You've pulled me away for something else than tea. I'm liable to be peevish, if this is another stumer. You Scotland Yard folk get queer ideas of what a big story should be."

      "I've got the goods, Silver. This is a big thing. Ever hear of Sir Harold Saxon?"

      "The aëroplane man who pulled a million or so out of the war?"

      "That's the lad. He's croaked—done in—murdered!"

      Silverdale put down his cup abruptly. He seemed to stiffen in his chair. "Get on with it," he said sharply.

      "Big enough for you, eh?" chuckled the other ponderously. "Wait till I've finished. I've only got the bare details of the first report as yet. Nobody knows much of Saxon. He sprang out of nowhere at the beginning of the war—all that is known is that he had spent ten or twelve years in America. He was a capable carpenter and got a job at a small aëroplane factory on the south coast. Somehow he scraped together a few hundred pounds, came to London and bought a disused parish hall. He painted 'Saxon's aëroplane Works' on it himself, engaged a dozen workpeople and pulled off a bluff at the Ministry of Munitions. Those were the days when aëroplanes were wanted badly. Anyway, by credit, by borrowing, by sheer hard work, he made good. In six months he was employing two hundred hands, in a year two thousand. In two years he was a millionaire and a knight. —"

      Silverdale shifted. his position impatiently. "We can dig all this biographical stuff out of the cuttings. Get down to the yarn."

      "Sure. I'm coming to it. The Saxon Works are down Wimbledon way. He was popular with everyone, from works manager to the office boy. But about his private history he never said a word, and he has lived for this last couple of years in a flat at St. Ronan's Place. He had one deaf old woman servant who slept in and a maid came in to help her during the day—not that there was much to do for he had most of his meals out.

      "Yesterday, this old woman received a wire summoning her to the death-bed of her sister at Bristol. She found her sister well and hearty, and returned to town this morning considerably mystified. She reached the flat at midday and found everything apparently as she left it—until she went into the dining-room. There she saw Saxon tied hand and foot with the curtain hangings, which had been roughly torn down, to a heavy chair.

      "His head was sagging on his chest and she thought he had fainted until she tried to arouse him.

      "Becoming still more alarmed, as she failed, she rushed out and called a policeman who, after a hasty inspection, sumnioned a doctor. Then it became clear what had happened. Saxon had been stabbed—stabbed to the heart with a long, thin stiletto-shaped instrument that had been thrust with force up to the hilt. It was, in fact, a woman's hatpin."

      Silverdale jotted two or three notes on the back of an envelope. He was beginning to enjoy himself. Yet there was no callousness in his attitude to the murder. It was just a "big story" —a story that, if he could keep it exclusive to the Wire, would ensure heart-burnings and alarms in the dovecots of newspaperland. Perhaps, also, he felt some of the joy of an artist who has a task in hand.

      "Good stuff," he commented. "Who's on the job for the Yard?"

      "Rack, the divisional man, handled it at first. Our people have sent down Garfield to take charge. What do you make of it, Silver?"

      The journalist shrugged his shoulders. He found this detective sergeant from the Scotland Yard Registry useful. It was just a faint possibility that others might also find him useful. Anyway, on a big story, Silverdale would not have trusted his own brother. He shrugged his shoulders.

      "Too early to say anything. Where shall I find Garfield?"

      "Down at the flat, looking into things. Mind you, Silver, don't let 'em get any hint that you've seen me."

      "I'm not a fool, Wing. And don't forget that I want this to myself for a little."

      Wing chuckled. "I get you, Steve," he quoted.

      And in a quarter of an hour, Jimmie was slapping a harassed news editor on the back. "Send out an S.O.S. to the printers, laddie. I've got a beat—a peach of a story that'll make your hair curl. In a million happy homes tomorrow our readers will be congratulating themselves on taking the paper that gets the news."

      "Cut out the exuberance, Jimmie," growled his superior, trying vainly to rub his injured back, "and tell me what's biting you."