CHAPTER

CHIEF-DETECTIVE INSPECTOR GARFIELD sorted his correspondence and, sitting on a high stool, ran through the reports and statements which began the dossier of the Saxon case with some impatience. At a footstep behind him, he failed to turn his head.

      "Out of it," he ordered peremptorily. "Come back in five minutes. Can't you see I'm busy?"

      "That's too bad," said a quiet voice. Garfield wheeled round sharply, nearly overbalaneing his tall stool.

      "I beg your pardon, Sir Richard. I didn't know it was you."

      Sir Richard Essex, Assistant-Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, laughed. A quiet, unostentatious man whose tastes ran rather in the direction of literature than of crime, he had brought the Criminal Investigation Department to a high state of efficiency by methods that were felt rather than seen. He picked up a square of mirror from Garfield's desk and adjusted his tie. It was like him to walk in casually rather than send for his subordinate as other administrative officials might have done.

      "I hate to disturb you, Garfield," he said mildly. "I wanted to hear how things were going. "

      "You've seen the reports, Sir Richard."

      "I've seen the reports. That isn't exactly the same thing." He placed the mirror gently back in place. "You've heard of this affair at Chelsea?"

      "I haven't been in five minutes. Has anything gone wrong?"

      Essex shrugged his shoulders. "You put a couple of men on to shadow your friend Velvet when you finished with him last night."

      "Yes. A mere matter of precaution."

      "I've heard some of your colleagues call you lucky Garfield. Other people have described you as a genius. You have Velvet followed, 'as a mere matter of precaution,' and he leads you clean to the heart of the mystery, saving hours, and perhaps days, of tedious heartbreaking investigation. Do you know he went straight off to Eston after he left you?"

      Garfield drummed on his desk. "I might have guessed," he said thoughtfully. "Velvet's fifty different types of a dirty gutter-rat and he'd not hesitate at a double-cross. He wants to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. But I suppose we got Eston?"

      "Oh, no. They met at a night club and our men weren't very sure of Eston—though I have no doubt from their description that he was the other. Our chaps smuggled themselves in and witnessed a long conversation between the two, though they could not hear what was said. Even if they had been sure of Eston they had no instructions. You had told them to hang on to Velvet."

      "If they'd used their brains," grumbled Garfield, striding nervously across the room, "they'd have taken a chance. You can work till you're sore on this kind of job and never get anywhere unless you're willing to take a chance. There's not a chief in the service who hasn't risked his career on a chance, time and again, as you know, sir. You can't catch criminals with red tape. We may be a year before Eston gives us another opportunity. I'll tell those lads—"

      "'A little advice from you won't do 'em any harm, " agreed the Assistant-Commissioner dryly. "Well, Eston and Velvet were joined by a third man, and presently the two latter left together. They spent the night at a small hotel off the Strand and left early this morning by Underground to Sloane Square. Our chaps hung on to them and followed them to a quiet street in Chelsea where most of the flats are used as artists' studios. Velvet went inside one of the buildings, while his friend kept watch outside. Ten minutes later he came out, walked to Sloane Square and telephoned to someone." Garfield wrinkled his brows thoughtfully. "Now I wonder what he had picked up there?" he said.

      "Lord knows. I'm giving you the story. He came back and hung about. A little later, from the same block of buildings, there came a newspaper chap—a man you know, I think—named Silverdale. Our men know him well."

      "Jimmie Silverdale—the Daily Wire man?"

      "That's he. He went away, returned in a little, driving a green motor-car with the number obscured and two women—girls—got in with a quantity of luggage. He drove off instantly and Velvet and his pal, who were lurking in the opposite direction—were after it. Then one of our chaps recognized one of the girls in the car and made a dive."

      Garfield thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets and came to a halt, facing his chief. "The woman!" he exclaimed. "The girl whose photograph was found in Saxon's flat?"

      "That's the lady. Our people hiked after her like hounds, by their account, but Silverdale drove like a madman. They got clean away."

      "A pretty mess they seem to have made of it," observed Garfield contemptuously. "But if Silverdale was in it," he went on, "we'll be knowing more about it soon. He's evidently struck some line that we didn't know of and gone straight for the girl. He'll play the game, will Silverdale. He won't hold anything out on us."

      "Why should he spirit them away, though?" The chief inspector's eyes twinkled. "A newspaperman on a big story doesn't like to be caught napping. He's taken this lady beyond reach of any other journalist—in case of accidents. Somehow he's introduced himself to her and by some persuasion—it may be money or it may be some other influence—he's got her out of reach of his fellow hawks of Fleet Street. What happened to Velvet?"

      "No one knows. He cleared out in the confusion. Our men went round to the studio and made a few inquiries. There were two girls living there—one named Nora Dring. But the one we want is an artist who was a Red Cross nurse during the war—a girl named Hilary Sloane."

      "It looks like being a pretty full day," said Garfield. "Will you come down to this place where Miss Hilary Sloane hung out, sir?"

      "I was going to suggest it. When will you be ready to start?"

      "In half an hour. I have a lot of odds and ends to clear up." Garfield turned again to his dossier.

      There he read in a detailed report from Summerfield—the senior of the two men who had been told off to shadow Velvet—all that the assistant-commissioner had told him. It took him less than five minutes to summon that individual and his colleague and to scorch them in a brief, but exhaustive, review of their capacity and common-sense. He dismissed them with their tails—so to speak—between their legs and sent them with Wade, his most trusted aide, down to Chelsea to watch the studio and await his coming.

      He was, as he had said, easy in his mind about Silverdale and he mentally congratulated himself on his good sense in making an ally of that enterprising journalist. No suspicion that Jimmie might have any more intimate association with the central figure in the case than that as a journalist occurred to him. Silverdale would not break his compact to work hand in hand with the police.

      Garfield like all good detectives had something in common with the good journalist. He had no pretensions to omniscience but he did know where to gather his information. The microscope was not his province, but he always knew how to lay his hand on an expert from a fountain-pen manufacturer to a gunsmith. The trail on any crime is largely a matter of expert witnesses. They alone can swear to facts-and facts are the only thing that convict in AngloSaxon courts of justice.

      There was, for instance, the stiletto-like hatpin with which Saxon had been killed. It had been examined by doctors, by finger-print experts, and by Garfield himself-all without result. But it still figured in the investigation. The chief inspector had not consciously reasoned it because the process was so obvious and commonplace to him. Yet if he had, he would have thought in this strain: "Here is a thing which may or may not have been sold in tens of thousands. There is a slim chance that this individual pin may be identified. We will find out where this was manufactured and where in London it has been on retail sale. It is even possible that, through this avenue, we may come upon its ultimate owner."

      So a dozen avenues had suggested themselves, some of them branching to blind failure, some with side-alleys, all tending in general by circuitous routes to reach the end of the mystery. Saxon's career, Hilary Sloane, Eston, Saxon's housekeeper, the men at the aëroplane works—all these furnished an infinity of detail work for the searchers. It was one thing to be clear that certain persons were connected with the crime, it was another to find themand it was still another to gain evidence that would convict. Moral certainties help in detective work, but they do not always convince a jury.

      Behind all these trails was Garfield, ready to slip his hounds fully in any direction in which a strong scent should crop up. He had desired grace from Sir Richard Essex before visiting Hilary Sloane's studio in Glebe Crescent, that be might go over his organization and pick up What had developed during the night. It was little enough, as an outsider might have viewed it, for the amount of energy involved, but the chief inspector was satisfied.

      He lit a cigar, slipped on a big coat and with Wade moved along the corridor to intimate to the Assistant-Commissioner his readiness to get along.

      "We'll want a search warrant for this place," he explained to Sir Richard. "Might as well be in order you know, sir. Will you sign one?"

      "I didn't think of that," confessed the other, who, like all the high administrators of the Metropolitan Police, was an ex officio magistrate —not that he ever sat in court, but to meet such emergencies as these. "I'll see to it."

      With the warrant in his pocket, Garfield took his seat in the little brown police car and they slipped away down by the old Abbey towards Chelsea.