“I told you to be at Lingfield, and you weren’t there,” Mr. Jones was saying gently.
He was cleaning his nails with a small penknife Leon saw, and apparently his attention was concentrated on the work of beautification.
“I’m not going to Lingfield, or to anywhere else, for you, Jones,” said the man angrily.
He was a sharp, pale-faced man, and Leon knew from the note in his voice that he was frightened, and was employing this blustering manner to hide his fear.
“Oh, you’re not going to Lingfield or anywhere else, aren’t you?” repeated Spaghetti Jones.
He pushed his hat to the back of his head, and raised his eyes momentarily, and then resumed his manicuring.
“I’ve had enough of you and your crowd,” the man went on. “We’re blooming slaves, that’s what we are! I can make more money running alone, now do you see?”
“I see,” said Jones. “But Tom, I want you to be at Sandown next Thursday. Meet me in the ring—”
“I won’t, I won’t,” roared the other, red of face. “I’ve finished with you, and all your crowd!”
“You’re a naughty boy,” said Spaghetti Jones almost kindly.
He slashed twice at the other’s face with his little penknife, and the man jumped back with a cry.
“You’re a naughty boy,” said Jones, returning to the contemplation of his nails, “and you’ll be at Sandown when I tell you.”
With that he turned and walked away.
The man called Tom pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his bleeding face. There were two long shallow gashes—Mr. Jones knew to an nth of an inch how deeply he could go in safety—but they were ugly and painful.
The wounded man glared after the retreating figure, and showed his discoloured teeth in an ugly grin, but Leon knew that he would report for duty at Sandown as he was ordered.
The sight was immensely interesting to Leon Gonsalez.
He came back to the flat in Jermyn Street full of it.
Manfred was out visiting his dentist, but the moment he came into the doorway Leon babbled forth his discovery.
“Absolutely the most amazing fellow I’ve seen in my life, George!” he cried enthusiastically. “A gorgeous atavism—a survival of the age of cruelty such as one seldom meets. You remember that shepherd we found at Escorial? He was the nearest, I think. This man’s name is Spaghetti Jones,” he went on, “he is the leader of a racecourse gang which blackmails bookmakers. His nickname is derived from the fact that he has Italian blood and lives in the Italian quarter, and I should imagine from the general asymmetry of the face, and the fullness of his chin, that there is a history of insanity, and certainly epilepsy, on the maternal side of his family.”
Manfred did not ask how Leon had made these discoveries. Put Leon on the track of an interesting “subject” and he would never leave it until it was dissected fibre by fibre and laid bare for his examination.
“He has a criminal record—I suppose?”
Gonsalez laughed, delighted.
“That is where you’re wrong, my dear Manfred. He has never been convicted, and probably never will be. I found a poor little bookmaker in the silver ring—the silver ring is the enclosure where smaller bets are made than in Tattersall’s reservation—who has been paying tribute to Caesar for years. He was a little doleful and maudlin, otherwise he would not have told me what he did. I drove him to a public-house in Cobham, far from the madding crowd, and he drank gin (which is the most wholesome drink obtainable in this country, if people only knew it) until he wept, and weeping unbuttoned his soul.”
Manfred smiled and rang the bell for dinner.
“The law will lay him low sooner or later: I have a great faith in English law,” he said. “It misses far fewer times than any other law that is administered in the world.”
“But will it?” said Leon doubtfully. “I’d like to talk with the courteous Mr. Fare about this gentleman.”
“You’ll have an opportunity,” said Manfred, “for we are dining with him tomorrow night at the Metropolitan Restaurant.”
Their credentials as Spanish criminologists had served them well with Mr. Fare and they in turn had assisted him—and Fare was thankful.
It was after the Sunday night dinner, when they were smoking their cigars, and most of the diners at the Metropolitan had strayed out into the dancing-room, that Leon told his experience.
Fare nodded.
“Oh yes. Spaghetti Jones is a hard case,” he said. “We have never been able to get him, although he has been associated with some pretty unpleasant crimes. The man is colossal. He is brilliantly clever, in spite of his vulgarity and lack of education: he is remorseless, and he rules his little kingdom with a rod of iron. We have never been able to get one man to turn informer against him, and certainly he has never yet been caught with the goods.”
He flicked the ash of his cigar into his saucer, and looked a long time thoughtfully at the grey heap.
“In America the Italians have a Black Hand organisation. I suppose you know that? It is a system of blackmail, the operations of which, happily, we have not seen in this country. At least, we hadn’t seen it until quite recently. I have every reason to believe that Spaghetti Jones is the guiding spirit in the one authentic case which has been brought to our notice.”
“Here in London?” said Manfred in surprise. “I hadn’t the slightest idea they tried that sort of thing in England.”
The Commissioner nodded.
“It may, of course, be a fake, but I’ve had some of my best men on the track of the letter-writers for a month, without getting any nearer to them. I was only wondering this morning, as I was dressing, whether I could not interest you gentlemen in a case where I confess we are a little at sea. Do you know the Countess Vinci?”
To Leon’s surprise Manfred nodded.
“I met her in Rome, about three years ago,”
