‘Tomorrow,’ said Linley. ‘May I come?’
‘Yes,’ said Inspector Ulton. ‘This ticket will let you in, but you won’t be allowed to stand in the front row.’
Mr Linley saw me looking at him. ‘Could I have a ticket for my friend?’ he asked. ‘You’d like to come and see what happens, Smethers, wouldn’t you?’
Like to see what happened? Of course I would. And Inspector Ulton looked at me. ‘Oh, yes, he can have a ticket,’ said the inspector then. And he gave the ticket to Linley.
‘It’s really very kind of you,’ I said.
‘Not at all,’ said the inspector.
After Inspector Ulton left Linley said nothing for a long time. He stood gazing hard, with the kind of gaze that doesn’t seem to see anything; nothing here, I mean. And I said nothing to interrupt him. And then he said, ‘Come and sit down, Smethers.’
And we sat in front of the fire. It was winter, by the way, and getting on towards tea-time. Linley began filling his pipe.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘There’s an awful lot of organization nowadays,’ said Linley, ‘on both sides. With all the organization they’ve got at Scotland Yard, a criminal has either to give it up or to be cleverer than the detectives. The fellow who’s done this of course must have been caught by them at one time, probably by Cambell himself: he was practically their chief man, not nominally, but practically. He’s a spiteful fellow, whoever it is that they are looking for. Probably he was brooding for years in a convict-prison, and turning over and over in his rotten mind his grudges against those three men. And it may be interesting to find out on what occasion those three were working together. That may help to find the man who hates them so much. That finger-print shows you that if he is not an absolute fool he must be a pretty subtle devil. So we may look for a pretty crafty scheme, to find out how Island was killed in the doorway of Piero’s.’
‘I don’t see how he could have done it,’ I said.
‘Do you remember what Ulton found when he was looking for wires?’ he answered. ‘And what then?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘You’re too old,’ said Linley, ‘and so is Inspector Ulton.’
‘I’m not old,’ I said. ‘Nor is he.’
‘You were both born before wireless got into its stride,’ said Linley.
‘Wireless?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ said Linley. ‘A school-boy would have told you that. He would have been born into a world familiar with wireless. You weren’t. That explosion was worked for the exact second by something: Ulton looks for wires, and can’t find them, and then he is beaten. Simply wireless. A little set buried in the wall.’
‘That’s all very well,’ I said. ‘A little receiving-set is common enough, and no doubt it could work an explosion; but you don’t have a transmitting plant in every house; that’s a very big thing.’
‘That’s what we’ve got to find,’ said Linley.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘how many houses are there from which Piero’s door can be watched?’
‘A lot,’ said Linley, ‘from the other side of the square, and several more in the street on the righthand side of it if you stand with your back to Piero’s.’
Piero’s stood in a little square with a good many trees in it: starlings lived there by night, and sparrows by day. And all kinds of people sat on its benches, each with his or her history, that far outshone this story, if only you could get at it; and amongst them were several of Ulton’s men, in various kit.
‘But we can probably limit it a good deal,’ Linley went on, ‘by cutting out the houses from which Island could not be seen approaching, as the man would have to be all ready to do his dirty work with precision.’
‘Well, let me go and telephone that to Scotland Yard,’ I said. ‘They’ll soon find out if there’s a transmitting-set in one of those houses. A big thing like that can’t be concealed so easily.’
‘Very well, Smethers,’ he said. ‘But wrap it up so that everyone doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Just say to Inspector Ulton that wireless may have done it, and to have a good look in houses that would have a view of Island’s approach as well as the end of his journey.’
And so I did, in pretty much those words, and Scotland Yard seemed quite pleased.
We had tea then and Linley forgot about it all in the deliberate way that he has; letting it simmer in his mind; but with the lid on, as it were. And we talked of all kinds of other things. But a lot later that night, somewhere about ten or eleven, the telephone bell rang, and Linley went out and answered it and came back and said to me: ‘No transmitting-sets in any of the houses. What do you make of that, Smethers?’
‘Looks as if you were on the wrong track,’ I said.
‘Not while there’s a telephone,’ answered Linley.
And I never made head nor tail of that.
‘I hope it will be all right tomorrow,’ he said. ‘A fellow like that is bound to do something pretty crafty. We are sure to see something.’
‘What shall we see?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Linley. ‘But the fellow reminds me of a weasel. He’s bound to follow Holbuck. Will Ulton be able to catch him?’
‘He ought to,’ I said, ‘with a couple of hundred policemen, or however many he’s going to bring.’
‘It isn’t numbers that do it,’ said Linley, ‘when you have cunning like that.’ And then he added suddenly, ‘Let’s come and have a look at the ground.’
‘At this hour?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Linley, ‘I don’t want to sleep, and we may as well do our thinking there as anywhere else.’
It was kind of him to put it like that, as though I were going to do much thinking. Well, of course I came with him, and we got a bus, and we came to a part of London where they have tramlines. And soon we left the bus and got into one of the trams, all among people going home late.
‘I suppose Sergeant Holbuck is a pretty tough fellow,’ I said, ‘if he plays football against the Old Sallovians.’
‘I don’t know him,’ said Linley, and went on reading his paper. And I noticed that a man on the opposite side, some way further up the tram, turned a little away from me and gazed up at the roof.
We got out soon after that. It was cold, and late, and rather windy. The street we were walking in was nearly empty, except for a man reading an evening paper under a lamp-post. We saw no one else till we came to the next lamp-post, and saw another man reading a newspaper by the light of that. Nothing but cats slipping softly away from their homes, and every now and then a man reading a newspaper. None of these men ever looked at us, but just looked up from their papers and gazed away from us in the direction in which we were going. As we passed each of them the newspaper would give a little flutter, owing to the man turning it over to read on the other side. When I commented on these men to Linley, he said that it was the only time of day that they got for reading, and that they got light from the street-lamps to read by without having to pay for it.
And