LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER VIII

      NO effective detective organisation is dependent on one man. Co-operation is the essence of all successful detective work, exactly as it is in the carrying on of any great business. Scotland Yard will throw a score, a hundred, ten thousand men into an enterprise, if need be, and every one of them, from the supreme brain downwards, will have an understudy ready at any moment to pick up a duty abandoned from any cause. No individual is vital, though some may be valuable. Every fact, every definite conclusion arrived at, is on record. There is no stopping, no turning back to cover ground already traversed. The spade work of detection is as automatic as book-keeping.

      That is why Weir Menzies found time to cover the case against the pickpockets he had captured the preceding evening and to return to headquarters to smoke a quiet pipe and consider things in general. He propped his feet on a desk, leaned back in his chair, and began serenely to go through the reports that had accumulated from every point where information, however remote, might have been gathered on the Greye-Stratton affair.

      He liked to have the salient facts of an investigation clear-cut in his mind. That often saved time in an emergency, as well as being an aid to definite thinking. Presently he began to make his Greek notes with a stubby pencil on the back of an envelope. Some of them would have surprised Hallett had he chanced to see them.

      ‘Statement of P. Greye-Stratton clearly incomplete. Knows much more than she says. Certain that Errol has been for many months constant visitor at her flat in Palace Avenue. (Gould’s report—interview with maid at her flat.) Yet she denies that she has spoken to, or been in communication with, her brother for nearly a year. Lift attendant remembers man calling on her the evening of the murder. Left after short interview, and immediately after she went out, hatless, in a hurry.’

      He commenced a string of question-marks across the paper. ‘I’ll see that liftman myself,’ he murmured, and continued:

      ‘It was the maid’s night out. Lift attendant does not remember having seen man before, but he knows Errol. Description vague. Think possible P. G.-S. alarmed. Must handle cautiously and keep under constant surveillance. If can induce Hallett to cultivate her, may learn something.’

      A sharp tap at the door interrupted him. He snapped an irritable ‘Come in!’ and, pencil in hand, surveyed frowningly a young man with a badly bruised eye.

      ‘Well, Jakes,’ he demanded impatiently, ‘who’s been decorating you? What’s the trouble?’

      ‘I got this from Hallett, sir. He—’

      Menzies’ feet dropped from the table with a crash.

      ‘What the blazes! Some muddle, I’ll be bound. Where’s Gordon?’

      ‘Down below, sir. We—’

      ‘Then you’ve lost the girl?’ He smacked an angry fist down on the table. ‘Oh, curse your explanations! I beg your pardon—you confounded idiot!’ He sprang to the door, and roared down the green-painted corridor: ‘Royal! Royal!’ That individual popped out of a door like a rabbit out of a hole. ‘Come here, Royal. These two cabbages have let Miss Greye-Stratton dodge ’em. Take Smithers and get along to her flat, No. 74, Palace Avenue, and see if you can pick her up. She may have gone straight home, or she may not. I’ve got to come there myself presently, but I’ll hear what this dough-witted jackass has got to say.’

      Ordinarily Menzies was courteous to his underlings, but when anything like stupidity interfered with his plans, he let himself go.

      ‘They remember it, and it’s better than putting ’em on the M.R.,’ he explained once to a colleague, which was his way of saying that he preferred a few hot words to putting the culprits on the morning report for judgment and punishment. ‘Only I sometimes wish that I didn’t swear so much at them.’

      Royal had slipped away to carry out his instructions with the swiftness of the well-trained man. Menzies turned with a snarl to the young detective, who was trembling nervously, and as ill at ease as any young clerk ‘carpeted’ before his departmental chief for the first time.

      ‘Let’s have it,’ he said shortly.

      The young man squared his shoulders.

      ‘They lunched at the Duke’s, in Piccadilly, sir. I went in with them, but could not get near enough to hear what was said. The lady did most of the talking. When they came out they walked towards Regent Street. I was close behind. Gordon was almost twenty paces behind me. They turned into Regent Street, and then sharp back along Jermyn Street. When they reached St James’s Street he said something to her, and came back towards me. I would have passed him, but he caught me by the shoulder, and asked me what I meant by molesting a lady.

      ‘I

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