Kate plus 10
suppose, if she had the full run of your house, she could find £100
worth of realisable property! No, that is not why Kate came to you.
How long has she been here?”
“Nearly a month,” said Lord Flanborough, a little annoyed that the
result of his own private investigations had so utterly failed to
impress a representative of Scotland Yard.
“What work has she been doing?”
“Ordinary secretarial work for Moya. She came with excellent letters
of recommendation.”
“You can forget those,” interrupted Michael testily; “the gentleman
who wrote them lives at No. 9, Crime Street and his name is Millet.”
“She was a wonderful typist,” began his lordship, who was seeking
about in his own mind for some excuse which would explain why he had
been deceived.
“That I also know. She is, as you say, one of the fastest typists in
the world. In fact, no aspect of her education has been neglected. She
speaks five languages and read French fluently when she was nine. What
work has she done for you?”
Lord Flanborough considered for a while.
“She has copied a few letters and reports.”
“What kind of reports?”
“Reports from our South African companies. You see, Michael, I still
retain the direction of most of my old interests.”
“Were they very important--the reports, I mean?”
“Yes and no,” replied Lord Flanborough slowly; “they were merely
records of output, cost of production and projected shipments.”
“On what other work was she employed?”
“Let me think,” said Lord Flanborough.
“I _am_ letting you!” replied Michael tartly. “You used to have a very
private code-book if I remember rightly.”
“That is true,” said Lord Flanborough, “but of course, she did not see
that.”
“Where did you keep it?”
“In my desk,” said Lord Flanborough.
“Is it possible that she could have seen it?”
“It is possible, but wholly impossible that she could have copied it.”
“For how long a time together was she left alone?”
“Five minutes was the longest period she was left in the library
alone,” said his lordship after consideration.
Michael fingered his chin.
“Did you ever come into the library and find her in a semi-fainting
condition?” he asked.
Lord Flanborough looked at him with open-mouthed amazement.
“Did she tell you?”
Michael shook his head.
“No, she has told me nothing. I gather from your question that there
was such an occurrence?”
“It is remarkable that you should ask the question,” said his
lordship. “I _did_ come in one morning to find the poor girl--er, the
wretched girl, in a semi-fainting condition.”
“And you went out and got her a glass of water and sent for your
housekeeper, I suppose,” said Michael, his lip curling.
“Yes, I did,” admitted his lordship.
“Which means, in plain language,” smiled Michael, “that you surprised
her in the act of examining some of your private documents and that
whilst you were getting the water and calling assistance, she was
replacing whatever she was looking at where she had found it. Did she
on any other occasion draw your attention, on your entering the room,
to some peculiar circumstance, such as one of the pictures not hanging
straight or a broken vase?”
Again Lord Flanborough looked astounded.
“Yes, once she pointed to the china cupboard and asked me who cracked
the glass. As a matter of fact, the glass was not cracked at all,” he
explained.
“But you went over and examined it?”
“Naturally,” said his lordship.
“That was exactly the same trick,” said Michael; “whilst you were
making your inspection she was able to replace any documents she had
been examining and close the drawer--if they were in a drawer. Now, I
wonder what her game is?”
“You don’t suggest,” began his lordship in alarm, “that she is
scheming to rob me?”
“I hope not,” said Michael gravely; “from the idea of your being
robbed, the imagination reels.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so sarcastic. I am afraid you have never quite
forgiven Moya--”
“I bless Moya every time I think of her,” said Michael quickly; “she
rendered me the greatest service that one human being can render to
another, when she refused me. I hope to do better than Moya. As Moya’s
father, you utter a pained protest. I know, I know,” said Michael, and
he waved his hand cheerfully from the door.
CHAPTER III.
OTHER EYES WATCHED MICHAEL
Michael Pretherston was back at the Yard in time to catch his chief
before he departed for the day.
Commissioner T.B. Smith, to whose recommendation this young scion of
the aristocracy owed his promotion, was not helpful.
“If we took Kate on any charge it would not prevent the swindle going
forward,” he said; “you may be sure she has mobilized all her
resources and her little army is ready to the last button of the last
gaiter. There is supposed to be a fellow watching her all the time,
but he seems to have missed her rather cleverly. Anyway, I don’t think
there is much to be gained from shadowing her, because she knows she
is under observation and acts accordingly. But I have a word of advice
to you, my young Hibernian friend, and that is to keep a sharp eye on
your own precious life. Kate is afraid of you.”
“She didn’t give me that impression this afternoon,” said Michael
sadly.
“Kate is a bluff; you mustn’t take any notice of what she says. You
accept a friend’s advice and go very carefully to work. I am not so
sure that you didn’t behave indiscreetly this afternoon.”
“That is impossible!” said Michael stoutly, and T.B. Smith laughed.
“The thing to have done was not to have recognized her and to have
kept her under observation, pursuing your enquiries in the usual way.”
“If you can suggest any method by which I could have prevented her
from recognizing me and recognizing the fact that I recognized her I
will admit that I was wrong,” and T.B. Smith agreed.
“You may be right,” he said; “anyway, look after yourself.”
Michael promptly forgot his chief’s advice and spent his evening
making a solitary reconnaissance of Crime Street. Crime Street does
not appear upon any plan of London, but if you will look at any large
survey of the Hampstead district, you will find in a somewhat
irregular tangle of buildings within a stone’s throw of the Heath, a
curious oval which is conspicuous on the plan, not only by its own
symmetry but by the graceful lines of the thoroughfares which radiate
therefrom.
This is Amberscombe Gardens. The centre of the oval is occupied by
four houses, Numbers Two, Four, Six and Eight; the northern side of
the gardens by five houses, Numbers One, Three, Five, Seven and Nine.
Into Amberscombe Gardens from the north run three roads, the first of
which (opening into the oval between Numbers One and Three) being
called The Approach; the second, dividing Numbers Five and Seven,
called Bethburn Avenue; the third between Numbers Seven and Nine,
Coleburn Avenue. On the south side of the oval the arrangement of the
streets is very similar. Originally, the central space had been
occupied by nine houses but these had been pulled down by the
proprietors of the remaining four and a private garden, common to all
four houses, had been laid out by the owners of these properties. So
that on the southern side of the central oval, there were no
buildings, but a wall bisected at regular intervals by plain garden
doors which form such a common feature of London suburban residences.
In reality, the roadway to the north and south of the plot is all
Amberscombe Gardens, but the oval which curves round to the north was,
at the period this story covers, known to the police as “Crime
Street,” and in this description the nine houses on both sides of the
northern curve were involved.
Number One, the most modest of all the buildings, was in the
occupation of Dr. Philip Garon, an American practitioner who made
frequent visits across the Atlantic and invariably returned to deposit
a very handsome surplus in the local branch of the London and Western
Counties Bank. Dr. Garon was successful as a result of the sublime
assurance of all ocean-going passengers, that the notice,
conspicuously displayed in the smoking-room warning passengers not to
play cards with strangers, did not apply to them.
Number Three, a pretty house smothered in clematis in the proper
season of the year, with its white window sashes and its sober red
front, was the town house of Mr. Cunningham, who, apparently, had no
initial and no Christian name. He was known to his intimate friends as
Mush, the derivation of which is a little obscure. Mr. Cunningham
described himself as independent, which meant no more than that he was
independent of the ordinary necessities of making an honest living. In
a sense, he was by far the best known of the Colony, for Mush had
served two terms of penal servitude, one in an English and one in a
French prison. He had the reputation of being able to cut holes in
steel safes with a greater rapidity than any other gentleman in his
profession, and it is said, probably with truth, that he had improved
upon the oxy-hydrogen jet and had introduced a new element which
shortened the work by half.
The tenant of Number Five was a gentleman, benign of countenance and
very good to the poor. He was called the Bishop by friends and foes
alike. His real name was Brown and he had been concerned in more bank
swindles than any of the other colonists, though he had only one
conviction to his discredit and that a comparative flea-bite of nine
months’ hard labour.
The owner of Number Seven was described as “Mr. Colling Jacques, Civil
Engineer,” in the local directories. The official police “Who’s Who”
noted that he was a wonderful pistol shot, and recorded, in
parenthesis, that on the occasion of his arrest in connection with the
smashing of the Bank of Holland, no weapon was found upon him. It was
also added that there was no conviction against him in England, though
he, too, had seen the inside of a French prison.
Number Nine was pointed out to sightseers, with a certain amount of
local pride by the guide, as the home of Millet the forger, who had
received on one occasion a fifteen years’ sentence, but had been
released after serving two years, an act of grace on the part of the
authorities which earned for him a certain unpopularity with his peers
and was held to be not unconnected with the subsequent arrest of a few
of his former associates, the suggestion being that Mr. Millet had
turned King’s evidence.
At Number Two, on the “oval” side of the street, lived H. Mulberry, a
respectable and methodical man, who went to his little office in
Chancery Lane every morning of his life by the 9:15 and returned to
his home at exactly 5:30 P.M. year in and year out. Mulberry was a
begging letter writer on a magnificent scale. He had a wonderful
literary style which seldom failed to extract the necessary emolument
which he sought.
Number Four, a much larger house, indeed the second largest in Crime
Street, was the habitat of “Señor Gregori, a teacher of languages.”
Unfortunately for him, he had in the course of his thrilling career
taught other things than the liquid tongue of Spain. For example, he
had taught the Bank of Chili that their “unforgeable” notes which, it
was boasted, defied photographic reproduction could be turned out by
the tens of thousands and that the six tints in which a gold bond was
printed offered no insuperable difficulty to a clever craftsman with
an artist’s eye and a sense of colour.
In Number Eight lived the two brothers Thomas and Francis Stockmar of
Austrian extraction, who were described as political refugees but were
undoubtedly criminals of a peculiarly dangerous type. The Stockmars
were dour, white-faced men with short bristling hair and were
certainly the least presentable of all the colonists.