The crimson circle
that I didn’t want any further evidence than my own eyes.”
Yale was frowning thoughtfully.
“I wonder,” he said, half to himself.
“What do you wonder?”
“I wonder if this girl could give us a little more information about
the Crimson Circle than we have at present. I’m half inclined to
engage her.”
Parr muttered something under his breath.
“I know you think I’m mad, but really I have method in my madness.
There is nothing to steal in my office; she would be under my eye all
the time, and if she were in communication with the Circle, I should
certainly know all about it. Besides, she interests me.”
“Why did you shake hands with her?” asked Parr curiously, and the
other laughed.
“That is why she interests me. I wanted to get an impression, and the
impression I had was of some dark, sinister force in the background of
her life. That girl is not working independently. She has behind
her----”
“The Crimson Circle?” suggested Parr, and there was the suggestion of
a sneer in his tone.
“Very likely,” said the other seriously. “Anyway, I’m going to see
her.”
He called at Thalia’s flat that afternoon, and her servant showed him
into the pretty little drawing-room. A minute after Thalia came in,
and there was a smile in her fine eyes as she recognised her visitor.
“Well, Mr. Yale, have you come to give me a few words of warning?”
“Not exactly,” laughed Yale. “I’ve come to offer you a job.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“Do you want an assistant,” she asked ironically, “acting on the
principle that to catch a thief you must employ a thief? Or have you
views about my reformation? Several people want to reform me,” she
said.
She sat down on the piano stool, her hands behind her, and he knew
that she was mocking him.
“Why do you steal, Miss Drummond?”
“Because it is my nature to,” she said without hesitation. “Why should
kleptomania be confined to the ruling classes?”
“Do you get any satisfaction out of it?” he demanded. “I’m not asking
out of idle curiosity, but as a student of human man and woman.”
She waved her hand round the apartment.
“I have the satisfaction of a very comfortable home,” she said. “I
have a good servant, and I am not likely to starve. All these things
are particularly satisfying to me. Now tell me about the job, Mr.
Yale. Do you want me to be a policewoman?”
“Not exactly,” he smiled, “but I want a secretary, somebody upon whom
I can rely. My work is increasing at a tremendous rate; my
correspondence is much more than I can cope with. I will add, that
there is little opportunity in my office for the exercise of your pet
vice,” he added good-humouredly, “and anyway, I’ll take that risk.”
She considered a moment, looking at him steadily.
“If you’re willing to take the risk, so am I,” she said at last.
“Where is your office?”
He gave her the address.
“I shall be with you at ten o’clock in the morning. Lock up your
cheque-book and clear away your loose change,” she said.
“A remarkable girl,” he thought as he was going back to the city.
He spoke no more than the truth when he had told Parr that she puzzled
him, and yet he had met with every type of criminal, and probably knew
more of criminal psychology than did Parr with all his experience.
His mind strayed to Parr, that unhappy individual whom he knew was in
disgrace. How much longer would police head-quarters tolerate him
after this third failure to deal with the Crimson Circle, he wondered.
Mr. Parr was thinking on the same lines that night. A brief official
memo, had awaited him on his arrival at head-quarters, and he read it
with a grimace of pain. And there was worse to follow, he guessed, and
he had good reason for that fear.
The next morning he was summoned to the house of Mr. Froyant, and
found Derrick Yale already there.
For all their good relationship, the chase of the Crimson Circle had
developed into a duel between these strangely different personalities.
It was an open secret in newspaper land that Parr’s impending ruin was
due less to the unchecked villainies of the Crimson Circle, than to
the superhuman brilliancy of this unofficial rival. To do him justice,
Yale did his best to discredit this view, but it was held.
Froyant, for all his meanness and his knowledge of Yale’s heavy fees,
had commissioned him immediately after he had received the warning.
His faith in the police had evaporated, and he made no attempt to
disguise his scepticism.
“Mr. Froyant has decided to pay,” were the words which greeted the
inspector.
“Eh, of course I shall pay!” exploded Mr. Froyant.
He had aged ten years in the past few days, thought Parr; his face was
whiter, and thinner, and he seemed to have shrunk within himself.
“If police head-quarters allow this dastardly association to threaten
respectable citizens, and cannot even protect their lives, what else
is there to be done, but to pay? My friend Pindle has had a similar
threat, and he has paid. I cannot stand the strain of this any
longer.”
He paced up and down the library floor like a man demented.
“Mr. Froyant will pay,” said Derrick Yale slowly. “But this time I
think the Crimson Circle have been just a little too venturesome.”
“What do you mean?” asked Parr.
“Have you the letter, sir?” demanded Yale, and Froyant pulled open a
drawer savagely and slammed down the familiar card upon his
blotting-pad.
“When did this arrive?” asked Parr as he took it up, noting the
Crimson Circle.
“By this morning’s post.”
Parr read the words inscribed in the centre:
“_We shall call for the money at the office of Mr. Derrick Yale at
3.30 on Friday afternoon. The notes must not run in series. If it is
not there for us, you will die the same night._”
Three times the inspector read the short message, and then he sighed.
“Well, that simplifies matters,” he said. “Of course, they will not
call----”
“I think they will,” said Yale quietly; “but I shall be prepared for
them, and I should like you to be on hand, Mr. Parr.”
“If there is one thing more certain than another,” said the inspector
phlegmatically, “it is that I shall be on hand. But I don’t think they
will come.”
“There I can’t agree with you,” said Yale. “Whoever the central figure
of the Crimson Circle is, he or she does not lack courage. And, by the
way,” he lowered his voice, “you will meet an old acquaintance at my
office.”
Parr shot a quick, suspicious glance at the detective, and saw that he
was mildly amused.
“Drummond?” he asked.
Yale nodded.
“You are engaging her?”
“She rather interests me, and I fancy that she is going to be a real
help in the solution of this mystery.”
Froyant came in at that moment, and the conversation was tactfully
changed.
Chapter XX.
The Key of River House
It was arranged that Froyant should draw the necessary money from
his bank on the Thursday morning to pay the demand, and that Yale
should call for it and meet Parr at the former’s office in ample time
to make the necessary preparations for the visitor’s reception.
Mr. Parr’s way to head-quarters took him past the big house where Jack
Beardmore was living in solitude.
The events of the past few weeks had wrought an extraordinary change
in the youth. From a boy he had suddenly become a man, with all a
man’s balance and understanding. He had inherited an enormous fortune,
but with its coming the incentive of life had, for the most part,
fallen away. He could never escape the memory of Thalia Drummond; her
face was before him, sleeping or waking, and though he called himself
a fool, and could, as he did, argue the matter to a logical
conclusion, the sum of all his reasoning faded before the image he
carried in his heart.
Between Inspector Parr and he there had grown a curious friendship.
There was a time when he was near to hating the stout little man, but
his good sense had told him that however large a part sentiment had
played in his own life, and in the direction of his own actions, it
could have no place in a police officer’s moral equipment.
The inspector stopped before the door of the house, and was for
passing on, but, obeying an impulse, he walked slowly up the steps and
rang the bell. The footman who admitted him was one of the dozen
servants who accentuated the emptiness of the mansion.
Jack was in the dining-room, pretending to be interested in a late
breakfast.
“Come in, Mr. Parr,” he said, rising. “I suppose you breakfasted hours
ago. Is there anything new?”
“Nothing,” said Parr, “except that Mr. Froyant has decided to pay.”
“He would,” said Jack contemptuously, and then, for the first time in
a long while, he laughed. “I shouldn’t like to be the Red or Crimson
Circle, or whatever it calls itself.”
“Why not?” asked Mr. Parr, with a little light of amusement in his
eyes, but he could guess the answer.
“My poor father used to say that Froyant fretted over every cent that
was taken from him and never rested until he got it back. When
Harvey’s panic is over he will go after the Crimson Circle, and will
never leave it until every bank-note he has handed to them is repaid.”
“Very likely,” agreed the inspector, “but they aren’t holding the
money yet.”
He told Jack the contents of the letter which Froyant had received
that morning, and his young host was visibly astonished.
“They’re taking a big risk, aren’t they? It would be a clever man who
got the better of Derrick Yale.”
“So I think,” said the inspector, crossing his legs comfortably. “I
must take my hat off to Yale. There are things about him that I admire
tremendously.”
“His psychometrical powers, for example,” smiled Jack, but the
inspector shook his head.
“I don’t know enough about those to admire them. They seem uncanny to
me, yet in a certain way I can understand them. No, I am thinking of
other of his qualities.”
He was suddenly silent, and Jack sensed his depression.
“You’re having a pretty bad time at head-quarters, aren’t you?” he
asked. “I don’t suppose they are particularly pleased with the
immunity of the Crimson Circle?”
Parr nodded.
“I’m not exactly in a bed of roses just now,” he admitted. “But that
doesn’t worry me a bit.” He looked steadily at Jack. “By the way, your
young friend is in a new job.”
Jack started.
“My young friend?” he stammered. “You mean Miss----”
“Miss Drummond, I mean. Derrick Yale has engaged her,” he chuckled
softly at Jack’s astonishment.
“Engaged Miss Thalia Drummond? You’re joking, surely?” said Jack.
“I thought he was joking when he suggested it. He’s a queer bird, is
Yale.”
“He ought to be at head-quarters, a lot of people think,” said Jack,
and realised that he had made a _faux pas_ before the words were out.
But if Mr. Parr was hurt he did not show it.
“They don’t take them in from outside,” he said with a smile, and the
inspector very rarely smiled. “Otherwise, Mr. Beardmore, we should
have taken you! No, our friend is clever. I suppose you don’t expect a
head-quarters’ man to admit that what we call a ‘fancy’ detective can
be anything but an interfering fool? But Yale is clever.”
They had strolled together to the window, and were looking out into
the sedate street in which Jack Beardmore’s residence was situated.
“Isn’t that Miss Drummond?” he asked suddenly.
Parr had already seen her. She was walking slowly along the other side
of the road, looking at the numbers of the houses. Presently she
crossed.
“She’s coming here,” gasped Jack. “I wonder what----” He did not wait
to finish what he had to say, but rushed out of the room and opened
the hall door to her whilst her finger was lingering on the bell push.
“It is good to see you, Thalia,” he said, gripping her warmly by the
hand. “Won’t you come in? An old acquaintance of yours is in the
dining-room.”