LITMIR.BIZ

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      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 caretaker could not say. The lift had jammed at a little before three, but had been got right shortly after four. He had never seen Mr Welder, never known anyone to use these offices since they had been taken by Mr Welder a couple of weeks before. From the agents who had let the offices the telephone elicited no information except that Mr Welder had paid six months’ rent in advance. They had never seen him.

      ‘Let’s see,’ suggested Gore, ‘if the people over the way can tell us anything about him.’

      But the clerk in charge of the ‘Victory’ Company’s offices—apparently the staff consisted of a clerk and the manager, Mr Thornton, who was away—had not seen anyone enter or leave Mr Welder’s offices.

      ‘Not on last Monday afternoon—about four?’

      ‘I wasn’t here on Monday, sir. The boss gave me a day off.’

      ‘Ah, yes,’ smiled Gore. ‘That must have been nice. Mr Thornton himself, I suppose, was here that afternoon?’

      ‘I believe so, sir.’

      ‘On Tuesday?’

      ‘No, sir. He went down to the works at Bath on Monday night. He’s down there now, sir.’

      ‘Ah, yes, yes, yes,’ said Gore, affably. ‘Many thanks.’

      On the landing he looked at his watch. ‘Two more little things, Clutsam. And here’s a third. On the occasion of her first visit to us, Lady Isaacson was indiscreet enough to inform me that Mr Thornton had recommended her to consult us … Care for a run down the Bath road? I ought to be able to get you back to London by six.’

      Inspector Clutsam was not a nervous man, but he was, for many reasons, glad when the big Bentley deposited him in Bath two and a half hours later. They failed to see Mr Thornton; he was ‘up’, it seemed, testing a bus. It was not known when he would come down.

      But they saw Mr William Blandy—not at the Infirmary, which he had left that morning, but at a police station behind Milsom Street, where the arrival of the celebrated Inspector Clutsam created a feverish stir. Before they saw William Blandy, who had been brought in on a charge of drunkenness, they saw the necklace—a quite first-rate bit of fake.

      ‘No pains spared,’ Gore commented. ‘Sixty-four diamonds, three emeralds, and twelve small diamonds in a clasp

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