The crimson circle
He walked in and inspected the room. It was lighted by one window. In
a corner was a cupboard, the door of which he opened. It was empty
save for a hanging coat.
“If you don’t mind,” Inspector Parr was almost humble, “I want you to
stay in the outer office. Thank you, I’ll close the door on you. I get
rattled if I am overlooked.”
Laughingly Yale walked from the office, and Mr. Parr closed the door
on him. He opened the second door, and looked out into the corridor.
Presently they heard him close that also.
“You can come in,” he said, “I’ve seen all I want.”
The room was simply but comfortably furnished. There was a wide
fireplace, in which, however, no fire burnt, although the day was
chilly.
“I don’t expect him to get up the chimney,” said Yale, humorously, as
he noticed the detective’s inspection, “I never have a fire in this
office; I’m one of those hot-blooded mortals who are never really
cold.”
Jack, a fascinated observer of the search, picked up the deadly little
pistol that lay on the detective’s table, and examined it cautiously.
“Be careful, that trigger is a little sensitive,” said Yale.
He took from his pockets the envelope containing the notes, and laid
them by the side of the weapon. Then he looked at his watch.
“Now I think that to be on the safe side we should go to the other
office, and lock the door,” he said.
He accompanied his words by locking the door into the corridor.
“It is rather thrilling,” whispered Jack. He felt that a whisper was
the fitting tone for that exciting moment.
“I hope it won’t be too thrilling,” said Yale.
They went to the outer office, and turned the key on him, and sat
down--Jack unconsciously on Thalia Drummond’s chair, a fact which he
realised with a start.
Was she of the Crimson Circle, he wondered? Parr had hinted as much.
Jack set his teeth; he could not, and would not believe even the
evidence of his own eyes, and his own common sense. So far from her
influence waning, it was gathering strength. She was a being apart,
and if she was guilty----
He looked up, and saw Parr’s eyes fixed upon him.
“I don’t pretend to be psychometrical,” said the detective slowly,
“but I’ve an idea you’re thinking about Thalia Drummond.”
“I was,” admitted the young man. “Mr. Parr, do you think she is really
as bad as she appears to be?”
“Do you mean, do I think that she stole Froyant’s Buddha, because if
that’s what you mean, it is not a question of thinking, I am certain.”
Jack was silent. He could never hope to convince this stolid man of
the girl’s innocence and anyway it was madness, he recognised, to
think of her as innocent when she had confessed her fault.
“You had better keep quiet in there.” It was Yale’s voice, and Parr
grunted a reply.
Thereafter they sat in dead silence. They heard him moving about the
room, then he too was quiet, for the hour was approaching. Inspector
Parr pulled his watch from his pocket, and laid it on the table; the
hands pointed to half-past three. It was now that the messenger was
due and he sat, his head strained forward, listening, but there was no
sound of attack.
Presently there was a noise in Yale’s room, a queer bumping noise as
though Yale had sat down heavily.
Parr jumped to his feet.
“What was that?”
“It is all right,” said Yale’s voice, “I stumbled over something. Be
quiet.”
They sat for another five minutes, and then Parr called:
“Are you all right, Yale?”
There was no answer.
“Yale!” he called more loudly. “Do you hear me?”
There was no reply and springing to the door he snapped the lock, and
rushed into the room, Jack at his heels.
What they saw might have paralysed even a more experienced officer
than Inspector Parr.
Stretched upon the ground, his wrists fastened with handcuffs, his
ankles strapped, and a towel over his face lay the prostrate figure of
Derrick Yale. The window was open, and there was a strong scent of
ether and chloroform. The package of money which had lain upon the
table had disappeared. Three seconds later, an aged postman left the
hall of the building, carrying his letter-bag on his shoulder, and the
police who were watching the house, let him pass without question.
Chapter XXIII.
The Woman in the Cupboard
Parr bent down, and snatched the saturated towel from the
detective’s face, and he opened his eyes, and stared around.
“What is it?” he asked thickly, but the inspector was busy unscrewing
the handcuffs. Presently he threw them clanking to the floor, and
lifted the man to his feet, as Jack, with trembling fingers, unbuckled
the straps about Yale’s legs.
They led him to his chair, and he fell heavily into its depths,
passing his hand across his forehead.
“What happened?” he asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Parr. “Which way did they go?”
The other shook his head.
“I don’t know, I can’t remember,” he said. “Is the door locked?”
Jack ran to the door. The key was turned from the inside. He could not
have gone that way, but the window was open. That was the first thing
Parr had seen when he entered the room.
He ran to the window, and looked out. There was a sheer fall of eighty
feet, and no sign of a ladder or of any means by which Yale’s
assailant could have escaped.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Yale, when he had partially
recovered. “I was sitting in this chair when suddenly a cloth was
pulled across my face, and two powerful hands gripped me with a
strength which I shouldn’t have thought possible in any human being.
Before I could struggle or cry out I must have lost consciousness.”
“Did you hear my call?” asked Parr.
The other man shook his head.
“But, Mr. Yale, we heard a noise and Mr. Parr asked if you were all
right. You replied that you had only stumbled.”
“It was not me,” said Yale. “I remember nothing from the moment the
cloth was put on my face until the moment you found me here.”
Inspector Parr was at the window. He pulled down the sash, and he
pushed it up again, and then he looked on the window-sill, and when he
turned there was a large smile on his face.
“That is the cleverest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Something of Jack’s old antipathy to the stout detective returned.
“I don’t think it is particularly clever. They’ve half-killed Yale,
and they’ve got away,” he said.
“I said it was clever, and it was clever,” said Mr. Parr stolidly,
“and now I think I’ll go down, and interview the officers I left on
duty in the hall.”
But the watching officers had nothing to say. Nobody had entered or
left the building except the postman.
“Except the postman, eh?” said Parr thoughtfully. “Why, of course, the
postman! All right, sergeant, you can dismiss your men.”
He went up in the elevator and rejoined Yale.
“The money’s gone all right,” he said. “I don’t know what we can do
except report the matter to head-quarters.”
Yale was now nearly his normal self, and sat at his desk with his head
resting on his hands.
“Well, I’m the culprit this time,” he said, “and they can’t blame you,
Parr. I’m still trying to puzzle out how they got into that window,
and how they reached me without making a sound.”
“Was your back to the window?”
Yale nodded.
“I never dreamt of the window. I sat so that I could see both doors.”
“Your back was also to the fireplace?”
“They couldn’t have come that way,” said the other, shaking his head.
“No, this is the supreme mystery of my career; more astounding than
the identity of the Crimson Circle,” he got up slowly, “I must report
this to old man Froyant, and you had better come along and lend me
your moral support,” he said. “He will be furious.”
They left the office together, Yale locking both doors and slipping
the key into his pocket.
To say that Mr. Froyant was furious is to employ a very mild
expression to describe his hectic frenzy.
“You told me, you practically promised me,” he stormed, “that the
money would come back to me, and now you have come with a
cock-and-bull story of being drugged. It is monstrous! Where were you,
Parr?”
“I was on the premises,” said Mr. Parr, “and the story Mr. Yale has
told is correct.”
Suddenly Froyant’s rage died down, so suddenly that the calmness of
his voice was almost startling after its previous rancour.
“All right,” he said, “nothing can be done. The Crimson Circle have
had their money, and that is the end of it. I’m much obliged to you,
Yale. Please send your bill to me.”
And with these brusque instructions, he sent them to rejoin Jack, who
was waiting in the street outside.
“Well, that beats the band,” said Parr. “I thought at one time he was
going to have a fit, and then did you notice how his manner changed?”
Yale nodded slowly.
At the moment of Froyant’s change of manner a great idea was formed in
his mind, a tremendous and startling doubt that was almost paralysing.
“And now,” said Parr good-humouredly, “as I have given you moral
support, perhaps you will extend the same service to me. At police
head-quarters I am not so much _persona grata_ as you. Come along and
see the Commissioner and tell him what happened.”
* * * * *
Derrick Yale’s office was silent and deserted. Ten minutes had passed
since the drone of the elevator announced the departure of the three
men. The silence was broken by a click, and slowly the doors in the
big cupboard in the corner of Derrick Yale’s office were pushed open
and Thalia Drummond came out. She closed the doors behind her and
stood for a while contemplating the room, deep in thought. From her
pocket she took a key, opened the door and, passing into the corridor,
locked the door behind her.
She did not ring for the elevator. At the farther end of the passage
was a flight of narrow stairs which communicated with the caretaker’s
room, on the top floor, and which were used only by him. Down these
she went. At the bottom was a door leading into the courtyard of a
building. This, too, she unlocked and soon after had joined the throng
of homeward bound clerks that thronged the pavement at this hour.
Chapter XXIV.
£10,000 Reward
“The Associated Merchants Bank are authorised to offer a reward of ten
thousand pounds for information which will lead to the arrest and
conviction of the leader of what is known as the Crimson Circle Gang.
In conjunction with this reward the Secretary of State promises a free
pardon to any member of the gang, other than one actually guilty of
wilful murder, providing that the said member will furnish the
information and evidence requisite to the conviction of the man or
woman known as the Crimson Circle.”
On every hoarding, in every post office window, on every police
station board, the announcement flared in blood-red print.
Derrick Yale, on his way to his office, saw the announcement and read
it and passed on, wondering what effect this would have upon the minor
members of the gang he had been engaged to hunt.
Thalia Drummond read it from the top of a bus, when that vehicle had
pulled up close to a hoarding, to take on a passenger, and she smiled
to herself. But the most remarkable effect of the poster was upon
Harvey Froyant. It brought a colour to his face and a light to his eye
which made him almost youthful. He, too, was on his way to the office
when he read the announcement, but hurried back to his house and took
from a drawer in his study a long list. They were the numbers of the
bank-notes which the Crimson Circle had taken, and he had compiled
them laboriously, almost lovingly.
With his own hands he now made another copy, a work that occupied him
until late in the morning. When he had finished he wrote a letter, and
enclosing the new list of notes, he addressed it, posting the letter