‘Yes,’ repeated Dale, ‘“The Green Finger”.’
‘The—the same as the night watchman,’ added Harvey. ‘But—what is this Green Finger? What does it mean?’
‘That, my dear Superintendent,’ replied the Commissioner with dry humour, ‘is one of the many things we are here to find out.’
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that “Snipey” Jackson was tied up with that Leicester job,’ said Dale. ‘Henderson found two of his fingerprints on one of the show-cases.’
‘Yes,’ replied Sir Graham. ‘I reckon that was the reason why you and Lawrence had the pleasure of fishing him out of the Thames. The people we are up against know how to deal with incompetence; that’s one thing I’ll say for them!’
‘Sir Graham,’ asked Dale slowly, ‘do you believe the same as Harvey and Inspector Merritt, that we are up against a definite criminal organization?’
Sir Graham got up and walked to the fireplace. There he stood with his back to the glowing flames while Dale and Harvey swung round in their chairs until they faced him again. For some time he said nothing. Then at last, he seemed to have made up his mind.
‘Yes, I do, Dale!’ he said quietly.
‘I suppose you’ve seen the newspapers, Sir Graham?’ It was Harvey who asked the question.
A faint flush spread over the Commissioner’s cheeks. The subject seemed to irritate him. ‘Yes!’ he snapped impatiently. ‘Yes, I’ve seen them. “Send for Paul Temple”! “Why doesn’t Scotland Yard send for Paul Temple?” They even had placards out about the fellow. The Press have been very irritating over this affair. Very irritating!’
‘Paul Temple,’ said Dale thoughtfully. ‘Isn’t he the novelist chap who helped us over the Tenworthy murder?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he caught old Tenworthy!’ Dale went on. ‘I’ll say that for him.’ Suddenly he turned towards the superintendent. ‘He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Harvey?’
‘I know him,’ said Harvey.
‘Temple is just an ordinary amateur criminologist,’ said Sir Graham Forbes, with a vast amount of scorn in his voice. ‘He had a great deal of luck over the Tenworthy affair and a great deal of excellent publicity for his novels.’
Superintendent Harvey was inclined to doubt this. ‘I don’t think Paul Temple exactly courted publicity, Sir Graham,’ he said quietly.
‘Don’t be a fool, Harvey, of course he did! All these amateurs thrive on publicity!’
‘Well, you must admit, Sir Graham,’ laughed Dale, ‘we were a little relieved to see the last of the illusive Mr. Tenworthy!’
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Sir Graham. ‘And just at the moment, I should be considerably relieved to hear the last of Mr. Paul Temple. Ever since this confounded business started, people have been bombarding us with letters— “Send for Paul Temple!”’ His tones, impatient and bitter to start with, had gradually worked up into a fury. But he was prevented from going any further. As he finished his sentence, the door opened and Sergeant Leopold, his personal attendant, appeared. The Commissioner looked round, angry at being disturbed.
‘What is it, sergeant?’ he asked.
‘The map, sir,’ Sergeant Leopold replied. ‘Remember you asked me to—’
‘Oh, yes,’ the Commissioner interrupted him.
‘Put it on the desk, sergeant.’
Sergeant Leopold cleared a space on the fully loaded desk, and left the room. Instead of continuing his heated discussion the Commissioner opened the map and spread it flat over the top of his desk.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, as the two officers stood up and bent over it. ‘This is a map covering the exact area in which, so far, the criminals have confined their activities.’ He pointed to the circles, and other marks, which had been neatly inscribed in the Map Room at Scotland Yard. ‘You will see the towns which have already been affected. Gloucester, Leicester, Derby, and Birmingham.’ He pointed to each of the four places in turn. ‘The map, as you see, starts at Nottingham and comes as far south as Gloucester…covering, in fact, the entire Midlands.’
The Commissioner stood back from the table. He flourished his hand with all the emphasis he might have used in addressing a large and important gathering.
‘Gentlemen, somewhere in that area are the headquarters of the greatest criminal organization in Europe. That organization must be smashed!’
The press of the country had seized on the idea of a mysterious gang holding the Midlands in its grasp, and were making the most of it. Both Spanish and Chinese War news had begun to grow wearisome. Moreover, news editors found it both difficult and tedious to try to follow the latest moves. Only an occasional heavy bombardment, the capture of a big city, or the sinking of a British ship could now be sure of reaching the front pages.
The mere killing of hundreds of men a day had long ceased to be news. There had not even been a really good murder story for months, and editors were falling back on such hardy annuals as Gretna Green and the ‘cat’ for their very large and strident headlines.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, the ‘Midland Mysteries’ arrived. The circulations of the evening papers immediately reached heights no national or international crisis could produce. Special investigators made their special investigations and produced lengthy summaries of what they had not been able to find out. Articles appeared by well-known psychologists, judges, the Chairman of the Howard League for Penal Reform, and Mr. George Bernard Shaw.
Every newspaper produced different theories and suggested different methods of apprehending the criminals. One ran a competition for readers’ solutions. It was won by Mr. Ronald Garth, a Battersea bricklayer, who was convinced, in no very certain grammar or spelling, that the crimes were a put-up job and part of a new attempt to foster interest in A.R.P. He received a cheque for 10s. 6d.
On one point, however, all the newspapers were agreed. The urgent necessity of sending for Mr. Paul Temple. ‘Send for Paul Temple’ became almost a national slogan.
His name appeared on almost every poster in the city. His photograph was blazoned from the fronts of buses.
Scotland Yard remained quiet and merely writhed in exquisite agony. They did not enjoy the ‘Send for Paul Temple’ campaign. Nor did they enjoy reading the letters which reached them by the hundred every day instructing them, in the public’s interest, to—Send for Paul Temple!
All this publicity, however, was not without its value, for booksellers very quickly reported high sales for Paul Temple’s detective stories, and one of the more lurid of Sunday newspapers, hoping to scoop the rest, commissioned an article by Mr. Temple on the growing rat menace in Britain and paid him the record sum of £1,000 for it. Unhappily for them, on the day it appeared, another equally lurid Sunday newspaper published an article by Mr. Temple on the growing spy menace in Britain, which he had written five years before and for which he received £4 14s. 6d. after his agent, overjoyed at selling the ancient manuscript, had deducted his usual 25 per cent commission.
It had taken Paul Temple six years to rise from the dark obscurity of an unknown author to the limelight of a popular novelist. On coming down from Oxford he applied for a newspaper job and eventually became a reporter on one of the great London dailies. After twelve months of writing