glad that he had so wanted. There was something almost deceitful about Gently, he thought…
Biggers took his time in going down the line, as though wishing to display his helpful care and attention. He paused before several law-abiding youths before making his final selection. He also paused before Bonce, whose wild-eyed guilt proclaimed itself to high heaven, but the pause was a brief one and might even have been involuntary… Having done his conscientious best, he carried his findings to Gently.
‘That’s him… fifth from the far end… kid in the brown suit.’
Gently nodded briefly. ‘And this one… the carroty-headed boy?’
‘No, sir. Don’t know him. Never seen him before!’
‘Positive?’
‘Ho yes, sir… I never forgets a face.’
The same mailed hand which Copping had so judiciously observed fell lightly on Bigger’s arm and the astonished publican found himself whirled a matter of three yards in a direction not of his choosing.
‘Now see here, Biggers, you’ve come forward voluntarily and given us some useful information, but there’s not much doubt that you’re sailing a bit too close to the wind. From now on there’ll be an eye on you, so watch your step. Don’t change any more money, American or otherwise, and if any of your customers looks a day under fifty — ask for his birth certificate. Is that clear?’
‘Y-yes, sir!’
‘Quite clear?’
Biggers gulped assent.
‘Then get away out of here… we’ve finished with you — for the moment!’
A blue-bottle buzzed in a sunny pane of the office window, a casual, preoccupied buzzing which focussed and concentrated in itself a vision of all fine Sundays from time immemorial. Copping lifted the bottom of the window and let it out. It fizzed skywards in a fine frenzy of indignant release, wavered, scented a canteen dustbin and toppled down again from the height of its Homeric disdain. Copping left the window half-open.
‘One at a time?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Shove the Baines boy into a room by himself where he can do a little quiet thinking.’
Copping nodded and went out. Gently seated himself in awful state behind the bleak steel desk with its virgin blotter, jotting-pad and desk-set. He slid open a drawer. It contained a well-thumbed copy of Moriarty’s Police Law and some paper-clips. The drawer on the other side contained nothing but ink-stains and punch confetti.
‘I wonder who the super turfed out to make room for us?’ he mused to Dutt.
Copping returned, prodding Jeff before him. The Teddy boy looked a good deal less exotic in his quieter lounge-suit, but there was still plenty of swagger about him. He stared round him with a sullen defiance, his thin- lipped mouth set tight and trapped.
‘Sit down,’ said Gently, indicating a chair placed in front but a little to the side of the desk. Jeff sat as though he were conferring a favour. Copping took the chair on the other side and Dutt hovered respectfully in the background.
‘Your full name and address?’
‘You know that already-’
‘Answer the inspector!’ snapped Copping.
Jeff glared at him and clenched his hands. ‘Jeffery Wylie, Manor House, High Town.’
‘Your full name, please.’
‘Jeffery… Algernon.’
Gently wrote it down on his jotter.
‘Now, Wylie… you had better understand that you are here on a very serious matter, perhaps more serious than you at first supposed. You have been identified as possessing and uttering counterfeit United States currency — wait a minute!’ he exclaimed, as Jeff tried to interrupt, ‘You’ll have plenty of opportunity to have your say — you’ve been identified as handling this money and we happen to know the source from which it emanated. Now what I have to say to you is this: you may be able to explain satisfactorily how you came to be in possession of that note, in which case there will be no charge made against you. But you are not obliged to give an explanation and you are not advised to if you think it may implicate you in a graver charge. At the same time, if you take the latter course I shall automatically charge you and you will be held in custody on that charge while further investigations are made. Is the situation quite plain to you?’
Jeff shuffled his feet. ‘I can see you’re out to get me, one way or the other…’
‘We’re not out to “get” anyone, Wylie, if they happen to be innocent. I’m simply warning you of where you stand. And I’d like to add to that some advice if you help us you’ll be helping yourself. But it’s up to you entirely. Nobody here is going to use third-degree methods.’
The Teddy boy sniffed derisively and stuck his hands into his pockets. ‘I know how you get people to say what you want… I’ve heard what goes on.’
‘Then you’d better forget what you’ve heard and consider your own position.’
‘A fat lot of good that’ll do me…’
‘It’ll do you more good than trying to be clever with policemen.’
‘You say yourself I don’t have to tell you anything.’
There was a silence during which Copping, to judge from his expression, was meditating a modified use of the third-degree methods which Gently had disowned.
‘It’s only his word against mine…’ began Jeff at last.
Gently cocked an eyebrow. ‘Whose word?’
‘His — the pub-keeper’s.’
‘And who told you he was a publican?’
Jeff flushed. ‘Isn’t that what he looked like?’
‘He may have looked like a publican or he may have looked like a barman. What made you think he was one and not the other?’
‘I just said the first thing that came into my head, that’s what I did!’
Gently nodded a mandarin nod but said nothing.
‘He could have been wrong,’ continued Jeff, encouraged, ‘he might’ve just picked on me because he couldn’t remember and thought you’d jump on him if he didn’t find someone. He can’t prove it was me.’
‘I dare say other people were present…’
‘There were only two of them and-’ Jeff stopped abruptly, glowering.
‘And they were busy playing dominoes or something?’ suggested Gently helpfully.
Jeff dug deeper into his pockets. ‘I won’t say any more — you’re trying to trap me, that’s what it is! You’re trying to get me to say things I don’t mean…!’
‘Suppose,’ said Gently, beginning to draw pencil-strokes on his pad, ‘suppose we go back to the beginning and try a different tack?’
‘There isn’t any tack to try — it wasn’t me and nobody can prove it was.’
‘Then you didn’t change a dollar bill…’
‘I never had a hundred-dollar bill in my life.’ Gently’s pencil paused. ‘What size bill?’
Jeff bit his lip and was silent.
‘He doesn’t even know how to lie…’ observed Copping disgustedly.
Gently finished off his stroke-pattern with aggravating deliberation. Then he felt in his pocket for the spare photograph and regarded it indifferently for a few moments. Finally he leaned across the desk and shoved it at Jeff.
‘Here… take a look at this.’
Jeff unpocketed a hand to take it, but Gently was being so clumsy that he knocked it out of the Teddy boy’s hand and on to the floor. Sullenly Jeff reached down and scrabbled under his chair for it.
‘Was he the man who gave you the note?’
‘I told you I never had one.’
‘Have you ever seen this man before?’
‘I saw his picture on the screen at the Marina, only it didn’t have a beard.’
‘But you’ve never seen the man?’
