Daredevil
"Uh-huh," said Storm thoughtfully. "And they're only a few."
"With more coming into the fold every day," supplemented Mr. Teal.
He was a big slow-moving man, red-faced and sleepy-eyed, beginning to
pay the price of his youthful robustness as muscle turned to fat and
easy living irresistibly increased his circumference. He was
invariably tired and invariably bored--it was an affectation of his
of which he was intensely proud.
Storm stared out of the window.
"When I got into this job," he said, "I had ideas. I thought Special
Branch dealt with active crooks--not the boys who'd turned good.
This is more subtle than I'd like it to be."
Inspector Teal said nothing.
Rousing himself slightly with what seemed a terrific effort, he
reached into a pocket and extracted a small packet therefrom. From
this packet he removed a smaller packet, and from the smaller packet
he detached the pink wrapper.
"If it wasn't so absurd," said Storm, "I'd tell you the only
explanation I can see that fits."
Mr. Teal conveyed a wafer of chewing gum to his mouth and champed
meditatively.
"Mr. Arden," he murmured drowsily, "if I hadn't heard things that
make me want to offer that same theory, I'd say it was absurd. But I
stood Prester John a drink this afternoon, and I picked his pocket.
I ought to have been a criminal really--people wouldn't suspect me,
because I look so innocent. Anyway, I found something interesting.
Look at this."
From his waistcoat pocket he took something that glittered and laid
it on Storm's desk.
It was a little silver triangle. In the centre a similar triangle
was picked out in black enamel, and in the centre of this a silver
alpha had been picked out in the enamel.
Storm looked at it closely, turned it over and inspected the back,
and laid it down.
"What's this got to do with anything--if anything?" he demanded, and
Mr. Teal shook his head. "That's what I want to know."
The bell under Storm's desk rang discordantly, and he picked up the
receiver.
"Hullo... Speaking."
He listened for a moment, and then spoke insistently.
"Struth! No, I don't know anything about it--yet. Look here, Mr.
Blaythwayt, will you wrap that letter up exactly as it came, envelope
and all, and send it round at once by special messenger? ... Yes, New
Scotland Yard.... Right-thanks!"
"I know that man Blaythwayt," said Mr. Teal, as Storm replaced the
receiver. "He's manager--"
"Shut up!" snarled Storm. "I'm thinking."
He swung over to the window and stood looking down for some moments.
Then, abruptly, he came back to his desk and pressed a bell.
To the man who answered the summons he gave the trinket that Teal had
brought him.
"Go down to Records," he commanded, "and ask 'em for anything they've
got in which anything like this figured."
It was only ten minutes before the man returned, bearing with him a
small bundle of papers. Storm lighted a cigarette and went through
them carefully, and at the end he looked steadily across at Inspector
Teal.
"Listen," he said. "Just over three months ago a man was found dead
by the railway between Priory and Kearsney--that's on the
Dover-London line. There were no marks of violence, and since he had
a ticket from Dover to Victoria it was supposed that he'd simply
fallen out of the train. He was identified as Henri Francois
Joubert, a Frenchman domiciled in England, who'd made his fortune on
the Stock Exchange--jobbing, you know--about thirty years ago.
There'd be no records of the case if it hadn't been for one curious
thing. In one of his pockets was this!"
He tapped a photograph with his forefinger, and Mr. Teal peered at it
with his habitual indifference.
It was a picture of a visiting card. In the centre had been sketched
a design similar to that on the silver triangle of Prester John, and
underneath was roughly scrawled, "_February, 1899_."
"Mr. Blaythwayt," said Storm, "has just received through the post a
similar card, and all that's written under the triangle is
_Harchester_. What do you know about Harchester, Teal?"
"One of the biggest and best public schools," said Mr. Teal. "Joe
Blaythwayt was educated there."
Storm leaned back in his chair and exhaled a thin streamer of smoke.
Then he looked at Inspector Teal and smiled. Storm's smile was the
most attractive thing about him. It flickered about his lips for a
moment as though he didn't want to give it a chance, and then it
broke out--irrepressibly boyish. It bubbled over with mischief.
Head back and a little to one side, eyes dancing, Storm smiled.
"Absurd be catlicked!" Storm said. "Teal, this is going to be Big!"
CHAPTER II
TITTLE-TATTLE OF MR. TEAL
Inspector Teal was that unusual type of man who literally takes both
pride and pleasure in his employment. Mr. Teal loved talking shop,
and would do so for hours on end if he found a listener on whom his
enthusiasm was not wasted.
He was never off duty. His leisure hours would always find him
sauntering round the preserves of other divisions, listening to
gossip in public houses and at coffee stalls, entering queer and
unregistered "clubs," and paying friendly calls on eccentric
gentlemen not unknown to the Records Office. Criminals, to him, were
a race of children--interesting, amusing, and completely human, but
occasionally in need of sharp correction. And when necessity
demanded that they be chastised, he haled them to their punishment
without resentment.
It was his boast that he knew every bad man in London, and he was
probably right.
The morning following his discovery of the Alpha Triangle (already,
with that queer instinct for the dramatic which few would have
suspected beneath his prosaic exterior, he spelt it with capital
letters) Inspector Teal flowed--there is no other word for his
peculiar method of locomotion--in the direction of Kensington, for on
the left-hand side of Church Street, behind a door over which hung
three golden orbs, lived Mr. Eddie--more commonly known as
"Snooper"--Brome.
He was a big, florid, shock-headed man with an alarming taste in
fancy waistcoats. Also the reputation of being a receiver of stolen
goods.
Mr. Teal considered himself lucky to find him in residence, for
Snooper was a man of erratic habits and rarely attended to his
business in person.
"Good morning, Snooper," said Mr. Teal affably. "How's trade?"
"Not too bad," said Snooper--trade, with him, was always either "not
too bad" or "not too good"--"Have a cigar?"
The sample he offered was undoubtedly a weed of great price, and Mr.
Teal sniffed at it suspiciously.
"Who gave you this?" he asked, and Snooper shook his head.
"I cannot," he said unhappily, "get rid of the idea that you suspect
me of being a receiver."
"You might have made a worse guess," said Mr. Teal. "Quite easily.
How are the crooks? Or is 'clients' the correct term? Comrades Lew
and Gat are heading for trouble, you know."
"Don't know 'em," said Eddie.
"Interesting people, very," said Mr. Teal. "Especially the educated
Gat. He has the most cherubic blue eyes. You'd love him." He
stirred in his chair sluggishly. "By the way, Snooper, there's a
friend of mine I'd like to bring along to meet you one day, if you'll
let me know when you're at home. He's interested in criminals."
Mr. Brome shrugged.
"I'm afraid my acquaintance with the criminal fraternity won't help
him. Still," he admitted, "like all pawn--er--financial agents, I
have had stolen property offered to me. Naturally, I immediately
notified the police."
"On two occasions," supplemented Mr. Teal. "And the total value of
the stuff was exactly two pounds five shillings and ten pence."
"I can't help that. I wish it had been more," said Eddie piously.
"I believe you," said Mr. Teal.
He glanced round the room, his heavy-lidded eyes taking in afresh
every familiar detail of unostentatious comfort--even luxury. There
was no suggestion of wealth, but more than a hint of solid
well-being. Looking merely at Snooper's waistcoats, one would never
have suspected their inhabitant of possessing so artistically
furnished a room.
"You do rather well out of pawn--er--financial agenting," remarked
Teal absently, and went off at an abrupt angle. "Are you the
philanthropist who's financing Birdie Sands?"
"Birdie's hands?" inquired the puzzled Mr. Brome.
"Birdie Sands," Mr. Teal enunciated clearly and distinctly. "Strange
as it may seem, I was once educated."
"I have met a _Mister_ Sands. Who's this 'Birdie' Sands?"
"A gentleman," said Mr. Teal, "who used to be on the whizz."
"On _what_?" demanded the startled Snooper.
"A pickpocket," explained Mr. Teal patiently. "Do you know him?"
If Mr. Brome did not squawk derisively, his elevated archidiaconal
eyebrows rendered such a lamentable exhibition unnecessary.
"A low criminal?" he protested. "Now, I ask you, Mr. Teal, is it
likely?"
"Taking things all round, I should say it is. Birdie Sands," went on
the detective, apparently for his own benefit, "is, or was, the best
whizzer operating in London. He was inside up--to about six weeks
ago--that's about twice the time you've been financial agenting,
isn't it, by the way? Since then we've had nothing on him, and he
seems to have all the money in the world."
"He may be going straight," suggested Eddie.
"Go straight?" jeered Teal drowsily. "It's a physical impossibility.
That man's a human corkscrew with all the twists case-hardened. He's
a born crook--his mother was a crook and all his fathers were crooks,
and Birdie was brought up as a crook, Borstal trained. Why, if you
shot him out of a gun he'd tie knots in the barrel."
"What happened to the gun you were shot out of when you got that
face?" inquired Mr. Brome vulgarly, but Inspector Teal failed to bite.
He heaved himself laboriously from his chair.
"I'm interested," he said, "because when a born-an'-bred crook earns
a lot of honest money, it just ain't natural. I've got a nose for
dirty work, and that same nose is worrying me now. When shall I
bring my friend along?"
"Shall we say Sunday?" invited Mr. Brome. "At eight? Suit you?
Splendid. Good-bye."
But he stopped Teal at the door.
"I hope you won't put any ideas into his head," he said anxiously.
Mr. Teal regarded him thoughtfully.
"What I'm afraid of," he replied, "is that he'll put ideas into
yours."
With that his projected programme was exhausted, but he was destined
to have an interesting morning.
On his way back to the Yard he dropped in at Walton Street police
station, near the Brompton Road, for a chat with the
divisional-inspector. While he was there a lank, saturnine man
entered jauntily.
"James Mattock--convict on licence. I've come to report."
Inspector Teal surged across (as I have said, one has to use
extraordinary words to convey his ponderous mode of progression).
"Hullo, Mattock," he said. "When did you come out?"
"A fortnight ago."
Mattock's manner did not encourage further conversation, but it took
a lot to put off Mr. Teal.
"What are you doing now?"
The man's thin lips twisted.
"Working. Do you want to get me the sack by telling them my past
record?" he sneered. "Because if so, you're too late. I thought I'd
get in with it before you busies got a chance."
"I suppose you picked up that word in Wandsworth," said Teal.
"Getting the slang already--a pity. Who are 'them'?"
"Raegenssen's. I'm head clerk and in practice semi-manager. They
haven't got much of a staff."
"That's a pity, too," murmured Mr. Teal. "Temptation never did
anybody any good; and you weren't built for a crook, Mattock."
"I'm glad of that," said Mattock, surveying Mr. Teal's girth
pointedly.