‘That was clever. And you have traced it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And has that furnished you with any clue?’
‘It has placed me in possession of a most remarkable fact. The hundred-pound note which was in Flash George’s possession on Kempton Park racecourse was one of a number which were paid over the counter of the Union Bank of London for a five-thousand-pound cheque over ten years ago. And that cheque was drawn by the murdered woman’s husband.’
‘Mr Hannaford!’
‘No; her first husband – Mr Charles Drayson.’
* * * * * *
When Dorcas Dene told me that the £100 note Flash George had handed to the bookmaker at Kempton Park was one which had some years previously been paid to Mr Charles Drayson, the first husband of the murdered woman, Mrs Hannaford, I had to sit still and think for a moment.
It was curious certainly, but after all much more remarkable coincidences than that occur daily. I could not see what practical value there was in Dorcas’s extraordinary discovery, because Mr Charles Drayson was dead, and it was hardly likely that his wife would have kept a £100 note of his for several years. And if she had, she had not been murdered for that, because there were no signs of the house having been broken into. The more I thought the business over the more confused I became in my attempt to establish a clue from it, and so after a minute’s silence I frankly confessed to Dorcas that I didn’t see where her discovery led to.
‘I don’t say that it leads very far by itself,’ said Dorcas. ‘But you must look at all the circumstances. During the night of January 5 a lady is murdered in her own drawing-room. Round about the time that the attack is supposed to have been made upon her a well-known bad character is seen close to the house. That person, who just previously has been ascertained to have been so hard up that he had been borrowing of his associates, reappears on the turf a few weeks later expensively dressed and in possession of money. He bets with a £100 note, and that £100 note I have traced to the previous possession of the murdered woman’s first husband, who lost his life in the disastrous fire in Paris, while on a short visit to that capital.’
‘Yes, it certainly is curious, but –’
‘Wait a minute – I haven’t finished yet. Of the banknotes – several of them for £100 – which were paid some years ago to Mr Charles Drayson, not one had come back to the bank before the murder.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Since the murder several of them have come in. Now, is it not a remarkable circumstance that during all those years £5,000 worth of banknotes should have remained out!’
‘It is remarkable, but after all banknotes circulate – they may pass through hundreds of hands before returning to the bank.’
‘Some may, undoubtedly, but it is highly improbable that all would under ordinary circumstances – especially notes for £100. These are sums which are not passed from pocket to pocket. As a rule they go to the bank of one of the early receivers of them, and from that bank into the Bank of England.’
‘You mean that it is an extraordinary fact that for many years not one of the notes paid to Mr Charles Drayson by the Union Bank came back to the Bank of England.’
‘Yes, that is an extraordinary fact, but there is a fact which is more extraordinary still, and that is that soon after the murder of Mrs Hannaford that state of things alters. It looks as though the murderer had placed the notes in circulation again.’
‘It does, certainly. Have you traced back any of the other notes that have come in?’
‘Yes; but they have been cleverly worked. They have nearly all been circulated in the betting ring; those that have not have come in from money-changers in Paris and Rotterdam. My own belief is that before long the whole of those notes will come back to the bank.’
‘Then, my dear Dorcas, it seems to me that your course is plain, and you ought to go to the police and ask them to get the bank to circulate a list of the notes.’
Dorcas shook her head. ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to carry this case through on my own account. The police are convinced that the murderer is Mr Hannaford, who is at present in Broadmoor, and the bank has absolutely no reason to interfere. No question has been raised of the notes having been stolen. They were paid to the man who died over ten years ago, not to the woman who was murdered last January.’
‘But you have traced one note to Flash George, who is a bad lot, and he was near the house on the night of the tragedy. You suspect Flash George and –’
‘I do not suspect Flash George of the actual murder,’ she said, ‘and I don’t see how he is to be arrested for being in possession of a banknote which forms no part of the police case, and which he might easily say he had received in the betting ring.’
‘Then what are you going to do?’
‘Follow up the clue I have. I have been shadowing Flash George all the time I have been away. I know where he lives – I know who are his companions.’
‘And do you think the murderer is among them?’
‘No. They are all a little astonished at his sudden good fortune. I have heard them “chip” him, as they call it, on the subject. I have carried my investigations up to a certain point and there they stop short. I am going a step further tomorrow evening, and it is in that step that I want assistance.’
‘And you have come to me?’ I said eagerly.
‘Yes.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Tomorrow morning I am going to make a thorough exam-ination of
