The trip promised to be the more interesting because she had, that day, been tracing the previous convictions of three men who were suspected of being the motor bandits—and very commonplace individuals they were. That had been the most shocking discovery she made when she came to Scotland Yard—the commonplaceness, indeed the insignificance, of what is described as the criminal class. Out-of-work plumbers, labourers, carters, and clerks, with a painter here and there, formed the bulk of them. The women only had an individuality. There was no habitual woman criminal quite untouched by romance; their stories were altogether different, their lives more varied, and, if the truth be told, their enterprise and inventive qualities more fascinating.
She passed through the swing doors into the street. The night was bitterly cold and the sky overhead was clear. The bright moon which she had recklessly inferred was not in evidence, but there were all the other attractive conditions for a midnight ride.
The car was an open tourer, with a plenitude of rugs, and Mr. Coldwell fixing the rear screen to shield her face from the cutting air, the journey promised no discomforts. The car passed swiftly through Kensington and across Hammersmith Bridge, and in an incredibly short space of time was running down Kingston Vale. The driver pulled up at the police station behind a big touring car, which was unattended, and they got down.
In the charge-room they found the inspector talking to a middle-aged man, who was apparently the owner of the car.
“Sorry to bring you down, Mr. Coldwell,” said the inspector, “but this sounds almost like one of the motor crowd’s little jokes.”
The car owner apparently was the proprietor of a small garage. That afternoon he had been approached by a seemingly decent man who asked him if he would come to London with the idea of negotiating for an important journey. The garage keeper, as it happened, had some business in town, and had met the hirer at a little restaurant in the Brompton Road.
“He seemed all right to me,” the garage keeper continued his narrative. “It was only after I got home that I began to smell a rat. He wanted me to pick him up at the end of Barnes Common, near the Wimbledon Road, at a quarter-past ten tonight, and drive him to Southampton. He asked for a closed car, but I told him I hadn’t got one that could do the journey, and I didn’t like the idea anyway. But as he offered me double the fare I should have asked, and paid half of it down, I agreed.”
“Did you ask him why he wanted to go to Southampton at a quarter-past ten?”
“That was the first question I asked,” said the man. “He told me he was dining with some friends, and that that would mean he would lose the boat-train—the Berengaria pulls out at five o’clock tomorrow morning, and all passengers must be on the ship overnight. I’ve had that job before, so it wasn’t unusual; the only queer thing about it was that, instead of asking me to pick him up at a house, he fixed this place on Barnes Common. But he told me he didn’t want his friends to know that he was leaving the next day. At any rate, I fell for him, but as time went on I began to get suspicious and communicated with the police.”
“What sort of looking man was he?” asked Leslie.
“A middle-aged man, miss,” said the chauffeur-owner, a little surprised at a question from this quarter. “It struck me that he’d been booz—drinking a little, but that’s neither here nor there. He was well dressed, and that’s all I can tell you about him except that he was clean-shaven, had rather a big face, and wore a soft felt hat.”
Coldwell turned to the girl.
“Does that describe any of the people we have been looking over?” he asked,
She shook her head.
“No,” she said quietly; “but it rather accurately describes Druze.”
“Druze?” he said incredulously. “You’re not suggesting that Druze is one of the gang?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” she said, biting her lip thoughtfully. “Did you notice his hands, Mr.—?”
“Porter,” said the chauffeur. “Yes, miss, I did notice his hands when he took off his gloves to pay me. They were very white.”
She looked at Coldwell.
“That is an even more accurate description,” she said.
“You didn’t go to the Common, did you?” asked Coldwell.
“No, sir. The inspector went up in my car with a couple of policemen.”
“He must have smelt a rat,” said the local inspector. “There was no sign of anybody at a quarter-past ten, and apparently he was very particular about his being there absolutely on time. He told Mr. Porter: ‘If I’m not there by twenty-five minutes past, don’t wait for me.’ That sounds rather like the gang, Mr. Coldwell,” he added. “It is an old trick of theirs to hire a car and arrange to be picked up in some quiet spot—”
The telephone bell tinkled in another room, and he went to the instrument. He was gone five minutes. When he came back:
“The gang busted a house the other side of Guildford at nine o’clock,” he said. “The car smashed into a ditch and two of them have been caught by the Surrey police.”
Coldwell pursed his lips.
“That disposes of your theory,” he said.
Driving back up Kingston Vale, Coldwell expatiated upon his favourite theme, which might be headed: “No effort is wasted when you’re dealing with lawbreakers.”
“A lot of men would grouse about being brought out in the middle of the night on a fool’s errand, but it
