"A woman," commented Foyle. "You'd better burn up the wires, Menzies."
"That's seen to. This is the other letter: ' The bulls have tumbled to me. Have just dropped one in the ceDar along with J. H. and am clearing in case his pals turn up. Am coming straight you know where and am sending this by messenger in case you are out. Come along and see me.'
"There's no signature to that. It doesn't need one. I'm wondering how Hallett got these things and the pistol."
"And I'm wondering," said Foyle, "how you got them from Hallett. Have you arrested him?"
Menzies met his chief's gaze steadily. "No, sir," he said.
A ready smile broke over Foyle's face. It was not always advisable that he, as head of the department, should know exactly the methods by which a result had been obtained. Men with the experience and sagacity of Weir Menzies could be trusted not to endanger the reputation of the C. I. D. He ignored the chief inspector's lack of candour.
"Well, I suppose he'll keep. If the evidence doesn't crop up elsewhere we'll have to see what can be squeezed out of him in the witness box. Don't you wish this was France, Menzies?"
"I never held with French methods, sir. I call a man down and take my chance sometimes, but the third degree isn't what it's cracked up to be. I believe in judicious firmness and mildness."
"I expect that's how you treated Hallett. Never mind that, though. Ling wouldn't have parted with those things willingly. Your young friend must have been fairly successful in handling him. How do you figure it all out generally?"
"Well," Menzies rubbed his chin meditatively. "There's money somewhere, though that's to be expected. They're not folk who'd set out for a coup without a stocking to draw on. They've been spending money pretty freely for boltholes. There was Gwennie Lyne's house at Brixton. Then there's this Bloomsbury place into which Ling carried us last night. I've just been reading the report of some enquiries Royal made. Ling took the whole place furnished a month ago under the name of Ryder. He's never actually stayed there."
He glanced under his heavy eyebrows at the superintendent, who jingled some keys in his pocket, and returned a look of interrogation.
"It's solid, unpretentious, and central," prompted Menzies.
The superintendent gave his keys a final irritable shake. "When it's a jar," he murmured.
'' Just the place for a newly married couple to settle down till all the legal formalities in connection with Greye-Stratton's property were settled," went on Menzies.
"Oh! I thought it was a riddle. That's just like Ling. He'd have things cut and dried. Well, why didn't he or they?"
"That's what I want to ask the lady. Hallett's got a glimmering of the reason, too. Personally I can think of a hundred answers to the question. The only thing is to know which is right."
"Ling," observed the superintendent with apparent irrelevance, "hasn't the record of a man who'll handle tar without gloves. He's always up to now found his tools to do the actual work. Gwennie Lyne's the same breed. That leaves two people to pick from Errol and Dago Sam. If it came to the choice I'd go nap on Errol."
Menzies smiled sardonically. He had a great deal of admiration for and loyalty to his chief, but he was human enough to be pleased when he could register a score.
"Then you'd be wrong, sir," he said.
"You think that because Ling had Greye-Stratton's pistol he--"
"Not altogether. There's another little point, though I only came across it yesterday. Did you notice the fireguard in Greye-Stratton's place I mean in the room where he was found dead?"
"A heavy brass thing, wasn't it?"
"Yes. I was having another look over the place yesterday when I found a thread had been caught in one of the sharp edges. I didn't speak about it because I wasn't sure it had anything to do with the case. It so happened that, in his hurry to get away last night, Ling tore a bit of his coat. I took 'em both along to Fynne- Racton to have a look at under the microscope. He now says definitely that they're exactly similar."
"That's useful, laddie," observed the superintendent. "A nice little bit of evidence to justify his arrest for murder but you'll have to go further than that for conviction. There's going to be a big fight when this comes on for trial. The pistol doesn't count. You haven't even got Hallett's word that it came from Ling and if you had you can see the line of the defence. It's word against word and you can see what counsel would do with Hallett." He made a gesture as though addressing an imaginary jury. "And this man, gentlemen this American, Hallett. He has sworn that the pistol produced was taken from the prisoner Ling. Ling has denied on oath that he ever saw the weapon before. You'll not need reminding, gentlemen, of the peculiar and extraordinary circumstances under which this man Hallett became associated with the case. He is found in a locked room with the murdered man and he tells a confiding police officer mark you I am not saying a word against the police an honest enough detective whose intelligence perhaps runs in narrow channels..."
Menzies eyed his chief ruefully. "Thank you, sir," he said drily.
Foyle's eyes twinkled genially. "Well. You know that's what they'll say. It's the obvious line of defence. As for the cloth "he snapped his fingers "a common cloth sworn to by a dozen experts as being worn by ninety-nine out of a hundred men. There's heaps of evidence of motive and no doubt you'll be able to get it in, but there's gaps in your other evidence, Menzies, and don't you go forgetting it."
Menzies tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot and grinned. Foyle was indulging in no mere captious criticism. It was not unusual for the weak links in an important investigation to be thus examined when it was on the point of closing up, for the C. I. D. likes to be prepared. The work of the department does not finish with the catching of a criminal. Every shred of relevant evidence has to be drawn up in lucid detail from which the Treasury solicitors prepare a brief for counsel. It does not do to take anything for granted. Menzies could picture, too, the cross-examination of an unwilling Jimmie and the conclusions that might be drawn from it.
"There's the girl, of course," he muttered thoughtfully. "She'd be even better than Hallett in a way. If we didn't have to put her in the dock she might be persuaded to tell what she knows."
"Aren't you forgetting she's Mrs. Ling?" said Foyle. "You can't compel a woman to give evidence against her husband."
"Against her husband no," said Menzies.
Chapter XXIII
There was no outward evidence that Levoine Street was under any extraordinary police surveillance. Now and again a blue-coated constable picked his way at the regulation two-and-a-half miles an hour down its sordid length. In the taproom of a dingy public-house a couple of shabby loafers were playing dominoes with a not infrequent casual glance through the open door into the rain-sodden road. There was no public-house at the farther end of the street, but two waterside labourers had secured a "kip "in one of the few lodginghouses in the street and through the dirty windows their gaze also commanded the street.
These were, so to speak, Menzies' advanced posts. Not one of them had ever been stationed in that division of the East End. A divisional detective, of necessity, gets well known to the criminal fraternity of his neighbourhood and as facial disguise is more common in novels than in the ordinary routine of a detective's work, it is easier and safer to employ strangers in a locality where the presence of a local police officer might arouse undesirable speculation or comment.
Not that the divisional detectives were idle. Half-adozen or more were wandering with apparent aimlessness about the vicinity, though never by any chance' showing