He paused on the threshold.
“I think it is necessary.” There was a question in his assertion. It was addressed rather to Manfred, who stood with his folded arms and knit brow staring at the floor.
For answer Manfred extended his clenched fist. Leon saw the downturned thumb, and left the room.
Billy Marks was in a quandary. By the most innocent device in the world his prey had managed to slip through his fingers. When Poiccart, stopping at the polished doors of the best hotel in London, whither they had strolled, casually remarked that he would not be a moment and disappeared into the hotel, Billy was nonplussed. This was a contingency for which he was not prepared. He had followed the suspect from Blackfriars; he was almost sure that this was the man he had robbed. He might, had he wished, have called upon the first constable he met to take the man into custody; but the suspicion of the thief, the fear that he might be asked to share the reward with the man who assisted him restrained him. And besides, it might not be the man at all, argued Billy, and yet ——
Poiccart was a chemist, a man who found joy in unhealthy precipitates, who mixed evilsmelling drugs and distilled, filtered, carbonated, oxydized, and did all manner of things in glass tubes, to the vegetable, animal, and mineral products of the earth.
Billy had left Scotland Yard to look for a man with a discoloured hand. Here again, he might, had he been less fearful of treachery, have placed in the hands of the police a very valuable mark of identification.
It seems a very lame excuse to urge on Billy’s behalf that this cupidity alone stayed his hand when he came face to face with the man he was searching for. And yet it was so. Then again there was a sum in simple proportion to be worked out. If one Just Man was worth a thousand pounds, what was the commercial value of four? Billy was a thief with a business head. There were no waste products in his day’s labour. He was not a conservative scoundrel who stuck to one branch of his profession. He would pinch a watch, or snatch a till, or pass snide florins with equal readiness. He was a butterfly of crime, flitting from one illicit flower to another, and nor above figuring as the X of ‘information received’.
So that when Poiccart disappeared within the magnificent portals of the Royal Hotel in Northumberland Avenue, Billy was hipped. He realised in a flash that his captive had gone whither he could not follow without exposing his hand; that the chances were he had gone for ever. He looked up and down the street; there was no policeman in sight. In the vestibule, a porter in shirt sleeves was polishing brasses. It was still very early; the streets were deserted, and Billy, after a few moment’s hesitation, took a course that he would not have dared at a more conventional hour.
He pushed open the swing doors and passed into the vestibule. The porter turned on him as he entered and favoured him with a suspicious frown.
“What do you want?” asked he, eyeing the tattered coat of the visitor in some disfavour.
“Look ‘ere, old feller,” began Billy, in his most conciliatory tone.
Just then the porter’s strong right arm caught him by the coat collar, and Billy found himself stumbling into the street.
“Outside — you,” said the porter firmly.
It needed this rebuff to engender in Marks the necessary self-assurance to carry him through.
Straightening his ruffled clothing, he pulled Falmouth’s card from his pocket and returned to the charge with dignity.
“I am a p’lice officer,” he said, adopting the opening that he knew so well, “and if you interfere with me, look out, young feller!”
The porter took the card and scrutinised it.
“What do you want?” he asked in more civil tones. He would have added ‘sir’, but somehow it stuck in his throat. If the man is a detective, he argued to himself, he is very well disguised.
“I want that gentleman that came in before me,” said Billy.
The porter scratched his head.
“What is the number of his room?” he asked.
“Never mind about the number of his room,” said Billy rapidly. “Is there any back way to this hotel — any way a man can get out of it? I mean, besides through the front entrance?”
“Half a dozen,” replied the porter.
Billy groaned.
“Take me round to one of them, will you?” he asked. And the porter led the way.
One of the tradesmen’s entrances was from a small back street; and here it was that a street scavenger gave the information that Marks had feared. Five minutes before a man answering to the description had walked out, turned towards the Strand and, picking up a cab in the sight of the street cleaner, had driven off.
Baffled, and with the added bitterness that had he played boldly he might have secured at any rate a share of a thousand pounds, Billy walked slowly to the Embankment, cursing the folly that had induced him to throw away the fortune that was in his hands. With hands thrust deep into his pockets, he tramped the weary length of the Embankment, going over again and again the incidents of the night and each time muttering a lurid condemnation of his error. It must have been an hour after he had lost Poiccart that it occurred to him all was not lost. He had the man’s description, he had looked at his face, he knew him feature by feature. That was something, at any rate. Nay, it occurred to him that if the man was arrested through his description he would still be entitled to the reward — or a part of it. He dared not see Falmouth and tell him that he had been in company with the man all night without effecting his arrest. Falmouth would never believe him, and, indeed, it was curious that he should have met him.
This fact struck Billy for the first time. By what strange chance had he met this man? Was it possible — the idea frightened Marks — that the man he had robbed had recognised him, and that he had deliberately sought him out with murderous intent?
A cold perspiration broke upon the narrow forehead of the thief. These men were murderers, cruel, relentless murderers: suppose —— ?
He turned from the contemplation of the unpleasant possibilities to meet a man who was crossing the road towards him. He eyed the stranger doubtingly. The newcomer was a young-looking man, cleanshaven, with sharp features and restless blue eyes. As he came closer, Marks noted that first appearance had been deceptive; the man was not so young as he looked. He might have been forty, thought Marks. He approached, looked hard at Billy, then beckoned him to stop, for Billy was walking away.
“Is your name Marks?” asked the stranger authoritatively.
“Yes, sir,” replied the thief.
“Have you seen Mr Falmouth?”
“Not since last night,” replied Marks in surprise.
“Then you are to come at once to him.”
“Where is he?”
“At Kensington Police Station — there has been an arrest, and he wants you to identify the man.”
Billy’s heart sank.
“Do I get any of the reward?” he demanded, “that is if I recognise ‘im?”
The other nodded and Billy’s hopes rose.
“You must follow me,” said the newcomer, “Mr Falmouth does not wish us to be seen together. Take a first-class ticket to Kensington and get into the next carriage to mine — come.”
He turned and crossed the road toward Charing Cross, and Billy followed at a distance.
He found the stranger pacing the platform and gave no sign of recognition. A train pulled into the station and Marks followed his conductor through a crowd of workmen the train had discharged. He entered an empty first-class carriage, and Marks, obeying instructions,