Chapter TEN: He recovered his voice at last

"Well, I'll be...!"

Who could have taken it? He was staggered, so staggered that he could not be angry. Pulling back the door, he examined the key, and, with the aid of a pair of powerful pliers, presently extracted it. It was a rough and ready affair, badly filed, but evidently it had fitted, and had done all that its owner had required, for the lock had turned back.

It was when the unknown had tried to relock the door and take away the key that he had failed.

Dick walked to where the gun had been and glared down at the bench. Then he began to laugh.

"The brute!"

"It's a very serious loss to you, isn't it?" asked Moran.

Dick shook his head.

"Not really. All the plans and specifications are in the hands of a model-maker, and fortunately I applied for letters of patent for the main features three days ago."

He stared at Moran.

"The question is, who did it?"

And then his jaw dropped.

"If he doesn't know how to handle that thing, and isn't jolly careful, he'll either kill himself or some innocent passer-by!" he said. "I wonder if he knows how to unload it?"

He pulled out a chair and sat down, and with a gesture invited his visitor to sit.

"I suppose we ought to tell the police. Now, if old man Surefoot is at the Yard ..."

He consulted an address book and gave a number. After a long parley with a suspicious man at the Scotland Yard exchange, he found himself connected with Smith. In a few words he explained what had happened.

"I'll come up. Is there anything else missing?"

"No--the beer is intact," said Dick.

When he had hung up the receiver he went into his little larder and dragged in a wooden case.

"Surefoot will be glad; he loathes science. Don't make a face like that, my dear chap--Surefoot's clever. I used to think that beer had a deadening effect on people, but Surefoot is an amazing proof of the contrary. You don't like him?"

"I'm not passionately attached to him," said Moran. He looked at his watch. "If you don't mind, I'll leave you alone with your grief. It's hard luck--is it insured?"

"Spoken like a banker!" said Dick. "No, it isn't, Leo, I never realised I was a genius till now--it's like the things that you read about in thrillers! You see what has happened? Our friend came here in the fog, but to make absolutely sure he shouldn't be seen he took out the light in the lift, so that nobody should spot him on his way down. The door is lattice work, and if the light had been on he could have been seen from any of the floors, supposing somebody was there to see him. I presume he had a car outside; he put the gun into the machine and got away. Probably we passed him."

"Who would know you had the gun?"

Dick thought for a while.

"Mary knew; Jerry Dornford knew----By Jove!"

Leo Moran smiled and shook his head.

"Jerry wouldn't have the energy, anyway; and he wouldn't know where to market----"

He stopped suddenly.

"I saw him the other day at Snell's Club, with that poisonous little devil Jules--the fellow who is supposed to have been concerned in pinching the French mobilisation plans."

Dick hesitated, reached for the telephone directory, found the number he wanted, and put in a call. The line was engaged. Five minutes later the exchange called back to him, and he heard Jerry's voice.

"Hullo, Dornford! Got my gun?" asked Dick.

"Your what?" asked Jerry's steady voice.

"Somebody said they saw you walking out of my house with something under your arm this evening."

"I haven't seen your infernal house, and I'm not likely to see it after your beastly rudeness this afternoon!"

Click!

Jerry Dornford had hung up on him.

"I wonder," said Dick, and frowned as he slowly hung up the receiver. "I can't believe he did it, though there's nothing bad I wouldn't believe about him."

"Do you think it was your German friend?" asked Leo.

"Rubbish! Why should he offer me the money? He would have given me a draft right away this afternoon if I had wanted it. No, we'll leave it to old man Surefoot."

"Then you'll leave it to him alone," said Leo, and buttoned up his overcoat.

He went to the door and turned back.

"You'll not go back on your promise, about clearing my letters? It all depends on what happens tomorrow how soon I go, and the first intimation you'll get will be when you receive my key."

"Where are you going?" asked Dick.

Leo shook his head.

"That's the one thing I can't tell you," he said.

Sitting alone, surveying the empty bench, Dick Allenby began to realise the seriousness of his loss. If he was bewildered by the theft, the last thing in the world he expected, he was by no means shattered.

He tried to get Mary on the 'phone, but thought better of it. It would be selfish to spoil her night's amusement. Better start again. He was working at his drawing-board on a new plan, and had already conceived an improvement on the older model, when Surefoot Smith arrived.

He listened while Dick described the circumstances of his return; examined the key casually, and seemed more interested in the marks that the machine had made, visible against its dusty surroundings, than in anything else.

"No, it's not remarkable," he said when Dick so described the theft. "Dozens of inventions are stolen in the course of a year ... yes, I mean burgled. I know a company promoter who floated a business to sell cameras, who had his house burgled and the plans of the invention stolen a week before the company was put on the market. I've known other promoters to have police guards in their houses day and night."

He walked round the room and presently related the sum of his discoveries.

"The man who took this was taller than you." He pointed to a bench near the door, the contents of which were in some disorder. "He rested the gun there while he tried to operate the lock, and that bench is higher than this. He wore gloves; he must have handled this cylinder and there's no finger-prints on it. Who has been here lately?"

Dick told him.

"Mr. Gerald Dornford, eh? I shouldn't think he'd have the nerve. We had some trouble with him once; he was running a little game in the West End. I might look him up, but it would be asking for trouble. I hardly think it's worth while putting him under observation," said Surefoot. "Are you going to call up the Press and tell them all about it? They'll make a story of it--'Sensational Invention Stolen.'"

"I didn't think of doing anything so silly."

"Then you're wise," said Surefoot.

He looked helplessly around; Dick pointed to the beer case under the bench.

"In a way, and without any offence to you, Mr. Allenby, I'm glad to see it go. All these new inventions are coming so thick and fast that you can't keep track of them."

"Which reminds me," said Dick, "that this thing was loaded."

Surefoot was not gravely concerned.

"If somebody gets shot," he said calmly, "we shall find out who did it."

He was less interested in the robbery than in the killing of Tickler.

"It's a puzzle to me. I can't understand it. I wouldn't mind if it hadn't been in that cab. It's the Americanisation of English crime that is worrying me. These Americans have got our motor-car trade, they've got our tool trade; if they come here and corner our murder market there's going to be trouble."

He stopped suddenly, stooped and picked something from the floor. It was a pearl waistcoat button.

"This sort of thing only happens in stories," he said as he turned it over. "The fellow was in evening dress, and rubbed this off when he was carrying the gun. As a clue it's about as much use as the evidence of the old lady in every murder case who saw a tall, dark man in a big, grey car."

He looked at the button carefully.

"You can buy these at almost any store in London. You don't even have to buy 'em--they give 'em away."

He made a careful scrutiny of the floor but found nothing new.

"Still, I'll put it in my pocket," he said.

"It may have been Leo Moran's," said Dick, remembering. "He wore a white waistcoat. He and I came back together."

Surefoot's nose wrinkled.

"This! It would have been diamonds and sapphires! Ain't he a bank manager? No, this is the button of some poor depositor. I shouldn't be surprised if it was somebody with an overdraft! What do you think of Mr. Moran?"

He was looking at Dick keenly.

"He's a nice fellow; I like him," said Dick.

"There are moments when I don't, but, generally speaking, I do. Who's Corot?" He pronounced it as though it were spelt Corrot.

"Corot?" said Dick. "You mean the painter?"

Smith nodded.

"Oh, he's a very famous landscape artist."

"Expensive?" asked Surefoot.

"Very," said Dick. "His pictures sell for thousands."

Surefoot rubbed his nose irritably.

"That's what I thought. In fact, he said as much. Seen his flat? It looks as though it had been furnished for the Queen of Sheba, the well-known Egyptian. Persian carpet, diamond lamp shades...."

Dick laughed.

"You're talking about Moran's flat? Yes, it's rather beautiful. But he's got money of his own."

"It was his own when he had it, anyway," said Smith darkly, and left on this cryptic note.

He had left Scotland Yard with some reluctance, for there was visiting London at that period one John Kelly, Deputy Chief Commissioner of the Chicago Police and one of America's foremost detectives. "Great John" had been holding an audience of senior officers spellbound with stories of Chicago's gangland. Earlier in the evening Surefoot had discussed the Regent Street murder.

"It sounds like a 'ride,'" said Kelly, shaking his head, "but I guess that kind of crime will never be popular in this country. In the first place, you've no big men in your underworld, and if you had, your police force and Government are pull-proof. It reads to me like an 'imitation murder.' I suppose you've got bad men here--I only know one English gangster. They called him London Len. He was a bad egg--bumped off half a dozen men before a rival gang got after him and got him on the run. He was English-born--so far as I've been able to trace he wasn't in the country five years."

London Len was an "inside man"--he got himself into positions of trust, and at the first opportunity cleared the contents of the office safe.

"Quick on the draw and ruthless," said John; "but he certainly wouldn't give a man a hundred pounds and leave it behind when he shot him!"

Now that he was abroad on this foggy night, Surefoot decided to interview a certain forgetful constable, and before he left the Yard he arranged to meet the man at Marylebone Road station. He found the police officer in mufti, waiting in the charge room, rather proud, if anything, that he had recalled the one fact that he should not have forgotten.

Surefoot Smith listened to the story of the little man who had been found sitting on the doorstep of an apartment in Baynes Mews, and of the inebriated songster.

"It's funny I should have forgotten that----" began the policeman. "But as I was shaving this morning I thought----"

"It's not funny. If it was, I should be laughing. Am I laughing?"

"No, sir," admitted the police officer.

"It's not funny, it's tragic. If you'd been a rabbit wearing uniform, you would have remembered to tell your superior officer about that incident. A poor, harmless, lop-eared rabbit would have gone straight to his sergeant and said 'So-and-so and so-and-so.' And if a rabbit can do that, why couldn't you?"

The question was unanswerable, partly because the bewildered young constable was not sure whether "rabbit" had any special esoteric meaning.

"And you're taking credit," Surefoot went on inexorably, "for thinking--I repeat, thinking--as you were shaving this morning, that you ought to have told somebody about meeting that man in the mews. Do you use a safety razor, my man?"

"Yes, sir," said the officer.

"Then you couldn't cut your throat, which is a pity," said Surefoot. "Now lead me to this place, and don't speak unless I speak to you. I am not suspending you from duty, because I am not associated with the uniformed branch. There was a time when I was associated," he said carefully, "but in those days police constables had brains."