“Lie number one,” replied Wallis cheerfully. “This is a promising beginning to an exchange of confidences. Now, Mr. Standerton, we are going to be very frank with one another, at least I am going to be very frank with you. I hope you will reciprocate, because I think I deserve something. You know so much about me, and I know so little about you, that it would be fair if we evened matters up.”
“I take you,” said Gilbert, “and if I can see any advantage in doing so you may be sure I shall act on your suggestion.”
“A few months ago,” said Mr. Wallis, puffing slowly at his cigar, and regarding the ceiling with an attentive eye, “I and one of my friends were engaged in a scientific work.”
Gilbert nodded.
“In the midst of that work we were interrupted by a gentleman, who for a reason best known to himself modestly hid his features behind a mask.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I deplore the melodrama, but I applaud the discretion. Since then,” he went on, “the efforts of my friends in their scientific pursuit of wealth have been hampered and hindered by that same gentleman. Sometimes we have seen him, and sometimes we have only discovered his presence after we have retired from the scene of our labour. Now, Mr. Standerton, this young man may have excellent reasons for all he is doing, but he is considerably jeopardising our safety.”
“Who is the young man?” asked Gilbert Standerton.
“The young man,” said Mr. Wallis, without taking his eyes from the ceiling, “is yourself.”
“How do you know?” asked Gilbert quietly.
“I know,” said the other with a smile, “and there is an end to it. I can prove it curiously enough without having actually spotted your face.” He pulled an inkpad from the end of the desk. “Will you make a little fingermark upon that sheet of paper?” he asked, and offered a sheet of paper.
Gilbert shook his head with a smile.
“I see no reason why I should,” he said coolly.
“Exactly. If you did we should find a very interesting fingermark to compare with it. In the office here,” Mr. Wallis went on, “we have a large safe which has been on our hands for some months.”
Gilbert nodded.
“Owned by a client who has the keys,” he said.
“Exactly,” said Wallis. “You remember my lie about it. There are three sets of keys to that safe and a combination word. I said three”—he corrected himself carefully—“there are really four. By an act of gross carelessness on my part, I left the keys of the safe in my pocket in this very office three weeks ago.
“I must confess,” he said with a smile, “that I did not suspect you of having so complete a knowledge of my doings or of my many secrets. I remembered my folly at eleven o’clock that night, and came back for what I had left behind. I found them exactly where I had left them, but somebody else had found them, too, and that somebody else had taken a wax impression of them. Moreover,” he leant forward towards Gilbert, lowering his voice, “that somebody else has since formed the habit of coming to this place nightly for reasons of his own. Do you know what those reasons are, Mr. Standerton?”
“To choose a safe?” suggested Gilbert ironically.
“He comes to rob us of the fruits of our labour,” said Wallis.
He smiled as he said the words because he had a sense of humour.
“Some individual who has a conscience or a sense of rectitude which prevents him from becoming an official burglar is engaged in the fascinating pursuit of robbing the robber. In other words, some twenty thousand pounds in solid cash has been taken from my safe.”
“Borrowed, I do not doubt,” said Gilbert Standerton, and leant back in his chair, his hands stuffed into his pockets, and a hard look upon his face.
“What do you mean—borrowed?” asked Wallis in surprise.
“Borrowed by somebody who is desperately in need of money; somebody who understands the Stock Exchange much better than many of the men who make a special study of it; somebody with such knowledge as would enable him to gamble heavily with a minimum chance of loss, and yet, despite this, fearing to injure some unfortunate broker by the accident of failure.”
He leant towards Wallis, his elbow upon the desk, his face half averted from the other. He had heard the outer door close with a bang, and knew they were alone now, and that Wallis had designed it so.
“I wanted money badly,” he said. “I could have stolen it easily. I intended stealing it. I watched you for a month. I have watched criminals for years. I know as many tricks of the trade as you. Remember that I was in the Foreign Office, in that department which had to do mainly with foreign crooks, and that I was virtually a police officer, though I had none of the authority.”
“I know all about that,” said Wallis.
He was curious, he desired information for his own immediate use, he desired it, too, that his sum of knowledge concerning humanity should be enlarged.
“I am a thief—in effect. The reason does not concern you.”
“Had the ‘Melody in F’ anything to do with it?” asked the other dryly.
Gilbert Standerton sprang to his feet.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Just what I say,” said the other, watching him keenly. “I understand that you had an eccentric desire to hear that melody played. Why? I must confess I am curious.”
“Reserve your curiosity for something which concerns you,” said the other roughly. “Where did you learn?” he added the question, and Wallis laughed.
“We have sources of information—” he began magniloquently.
“Oh, yes,” Gilbert nodded, “of course, your friend Smith lodges with the Wings. I had forgotten that.”
“My friend Smith—you refer to my chauffeur, I suppose?”
“I refer to your confederate, the fourth member of your gang, the man who never appears in any of your exploits, and who in various
