Sir Robert rubbed his forehead rather wearily with his left hand while he continued to turn over reports with his right. At last, he closed the folder.
‘That seems to be the only conclusion, Inspector,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘If they were just the usual small-time safe-busters, like Peter Scales, or “Mo” Turner or Larry the Canner, the odds are we’d have got one or more of them by now. They’d try to get rid of the stuff through one of the fences we’ve got tabs on, and we’d be on to them. But the head of this crowd has obviously his own special means of disposal.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Locksley. ‘We haven’t traced a single item in all those jobs yet.’
‘He could be holding on to the stuff till it cools down,’ suggested Kennard.
‘I shouldn’t imagine that’s very likely,’ said the deputy commissioner, thoughtfully tracing a design on his blotting pad with his paper-knife. ‘I can’t help agreeing with Locksley that we’re up against something really big, and we’ve got to pull every shot out of the locker. Now, are you absolutely sure there was nothing about the Gloucester job that might give us something to go on?’
He looked from one to the other and there was silence for a few seconds. Then Locksley slowly took a bulging wallet from his inside pocket and extracted a small piece of paste-board about half the size of a postcard.
‘There was this card,’ he said, in a doubtful tone.
Sir Robert took the card and examined it carefully.
‘Where did you find it?’ he asked.
‘In the waste-paper basket just by the safe at the Gloucester jewellers. As you see, it was torn into five pieces, but it wasn’t difficult to put it together.’
Sir Robert picked up a magnifying glass and placed the card under it. On the card was printed in imitation copperplate handwriting:
With the compliments of Johnny Washington.
‘So that joker from America has popped up again,’ murmured Sir Robert. ‘Where’s the catch this time?’
During the past year or so, Scotland Yard had come to know this strange young man from America, with the mobile features, rimless glasses and ingenuous smile rather too well. For the presence of Johnny Washington usually meant trouble for somebody. As often as not, it was for some unscrupulous operator either inside or on the verge of the underworld, but the police were usually none too pleased about it, for the matter invariably entailed a long and complicated prosecution, even when Mr Washington had presented them with indisputable evidence. And what particularly annoyed the police was the fact that Johnny Washington always emerged as debonair and unruffled as ever, and often several thousand dollars to the good. The Yard chiefs had experienced a pronounced sensation of relief when Johnny had informed them that he had bought a small manor house not far from Sevenoaks, and proposed to devote his energies to collecting pewter and playing the country squire.
‘Where’s the catch?’ repeated Sir Robert, turning the card over and peering at it again.
‘In the first place,’ replied Locksley, ‘Johnny says he has never set foot in Gloucester in his life.’
‘Well, you know what a confounded liar the fellow is,’ retorted Hargreaves. ‘Have you checked on him at all?’
‘The jewellers say they have never set eyes on him,’ said Locksley.
‘I don’t suppose they’ve set eyes on any of the gang that did the job,’ grunted the commissioner. ‘Did you find out if he had an alibi?’
‘Yes, he had an alibi all right. He was up in Town for the night to see a girl named Candy Dimmott in a new musical—seems he knew her in New York. He stayed at the St Regis—got in soon after midnight. According to the doctor, the night watchman had been chloroformed about that time—and the constable found him soon after 2 a.m. So Washington simply couldn’t have been in Gloucester then.’
‘You never can tell with that customer,’ said Kennard dubiously.
‘I questioned the night porter at the St Regis—he knows Washington well, and swears he never left the place while he was on duty,’ said Locksley. He turned to his chief again. ‘There’s another thing about that card, sir.’
‘Eh? What’s that?’
‘There are no fingerprints on it. I used rubber gloves when I put it together, and whoever tore it up and put it in that waste-paper basket must have done the same. Now, if Mr Washington left that card deliberately, why should he go to the trouble of using gloves?’
‘He might have been wearing them anyhow,’ pointed out Kennard.
Locksley shrugged.
‘Yet again, if he wanted to leave a card, why tear it up?’ he demanded earnestly.
Sir Robert rested his chin on his hand and gazed thoughtfully at the fire.
‘I begin to see what you’re driving at,’ he murmured. ‘You think this card business is a plant—presumably to distract attention from the real master mind.’
‘That’s about it, sir,’ agreed Locksley. ‘Washington’s name has been in the papers several times—and there was that silly article about Johnny being the modern Robin Hood. It’s given somebody an idea.’
Sir Robert picked up a wire paper fastener and very deliberately clipped the card to the report of the Gloucester robbery.
‘You haven’t seen Washington?’ he asked.
‘No, sir. I spoke to him twice on the telephone. He seemed a bit surprised, then amused. But he helped me all he could about the alibi when he saw how serious it was.’
‘Alibi or not, I think we should keep an eye on that gentleman,’ suggested Kennard.
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ replied Hargreaves. ‘You know him fairly well, don’t you, Locksley?’
‘I certainly saw something of him in the Blandford case.’
‘All right, then you can pop down to his place and have a talk to him as soon as you can get away from here today. And if you get the slightest hint that he is the brains behind this gang, don’t take any chances. Just tell him you are rechecking his alibi.’
‘It isn’t easy to fool Johnny Washington,’ said Locksley, slipping his little black notebook back into his inside pocket.
‘I must say, sir, I’m not convinced that it is a real organization we’re up against,’ insisted Kennard. ‘What makes you so sure about that?’
Sir Robert began to pace up and down between his desk and the fireplace.
‘It’s more a hunch than anything,’ he confessed. ‘For one thing, they’ve tackled such a variety of jobs—the average safe-buster sticks to one line as a rule and goes after the sort of stuff he can get rid of without much trouble. This gelignite gang have already robbed a cinema, a bank, two jewellers and a factory office. It takes a very unusual brain to plan such a variety of jobs in a comparatively short time.’
‘A brain like Johnny Washington’s?’ queried Kennard.
Sir Robert Hargreaves did not reply.
CALDICOTT MANOR is a sturdy four-square white house standing about half a mile outside the village of Caldicott Green, near the junction of the main road to Sevenoaks, which is some four miles away.
From