The Golden Face. William Le Queux

which the police of Europe were ever trying to break up. But why should I be sent to meet the mysterious hunchback Tarrant on Clifton Bridge?

      “There seemed to have been a little flaw in our plans, Hargreave,” said the alert, good-looking man as I sat with him in his cosy chambers in Half Moon Street that morning. “The police evidently got wind of the fact that old Morley was meeting you, and Benton tried to impersonate him. I know Benton. He’s always up against me. He might have succeeded had he made the hump on his back a hard one, eh?” he laughed, as though rather amused than otherwise.

      “But he didn’t know the password,” I remarked in triumph.

      “No! It was fortunate for you that I had arranged it with old Morley,” said the man with the master-mind. “One must be ever wary when one treads crooked paths, you know. The slightest slip—and the end comes! But, at any rate, last night’s adventure has sharpened your wits.”

      “And it has cost us the ‘A. C.’!” I remarked.

      “Bah! What’s a motor-car more or less when one is working a big thing!” he exclaimed. “Never let ideas of economy stand in your way, or you’ll never make a fortune. In order to make money you must always spend money.”

      I often recollected that adage of his in later days, when the pace grew even hotter.

      Rayne paused for a few minutes. Then he said:

      “I’ve already heard from old Morley on the telephone half an hour ago. He was on the bridge and watched the fun. Then he discreetly withdrew and went back to his hotel in Clifton. He declares that you acted splendidly.”

      “I’m much gratified by his testimonial,” I said.

      “I’ve arranged that he shall meet you to-night here in London—outside the Three Nuns Hotel at Aldgate. Go to Lloyd’s and get a car. At half-past seven it will be dark. Drive up, go into the bar and have a drink. You’ll find him there and recognize him by his deformity. Outside he will mention the password and you will drive him where he directs. That’s all!”

      And the man who had, on engaging me, so particularly wanted to know if I could sing, and had never asked me to do so, dismissed me quite abruptly, as was his habit. His quick alertness, keen shrewdness and sharp suspicion caused him to speak abruptly—almost churlishly—to those about him. I, however, now understood him. Yet I wondered what evil work was in progress.

      He had often pitted his wits against the most famous detective inspector, the great Benton, who had achieved so much notoriety in the Enfield poisoning case, the Sunbury mystery in which the body of a young girl shop-assistant had been found headless in the Thames, the great Maresfield drug drama of Limehouse and Mayfair, and the disappearance of the Honorable Edna Newcomen from her mother’s house in Grosvenor Gardens. Superintendent Arthur Benton was perhaps the most wideawake hunter of criminals in the United Kingdom. As chief of his own particular branch at Scotland Yard he performed wonderful services, and his record was unique. Yet, hampered as he was by official red-tape and those regulations which prevented his men from taking a third-class railway ticket when following a thief, unless they waited for weeks for the return of the expenditure from official sources, he was no match for the squire of Overstow, who had a big bank balance, who moved in society, official, political and otherwise, and who actually entertained certain high officials at his table.

      From a man in the Department of the Public Prosecutor at Whitehall, Rayne often learnt much of the inner workings of Scotland Yard and of secret inquiries, for a civil servant at a well-laid sumptuous table is frequently prone to indiscretion.

      Arthur Benton was a well-meaning and very straight-dealing public servant with a splendid record as a detector of crime, but against money and such influence he could not cope. Indeed, more than once Rayne declared to me that he intended evil against Benton.

      “Yet I rather like him,” he had said when we were discussing him one day. “After all, he’s a real good sportsman!”

      So according to Rayne’s orders I met the hunchback Tarrant at the Three Nuns Hotel at Aldgate. I had taken another car from Lloyd’s garage—a Fiat landaulette, stolen, no doubt—and in it, at the old man’s directions, I drove out to Maldon, in Essex, where at a small house outside the town I found, to my surprise, Rayne already awaiting us.

      What, I wondered, was in progress?