He returned to Thirsby and began a series of inquiries at the nearby railway stations, posting establishments, inns and villages, in the hope of coming on some trace of the quarry. But the trail was too old. For three days he worked early and late, but nowhere did he learn of any mysterious stranger who might prove to be the missing man. He was indeed about to give up in despair, when his labours were brought to an unexpected conclusion. Chief Inspector Mitchell wired an urgent recall to the Yard.
It was by no means the first of such recalls that French had received, though it was not usual to interrupt an officer who was actually engaged in investigating a case. The incident always bred a slight uneasiness. The possibility of having made some serious blunder was ever present. And French was aware that his most unhappy experiences had almost invariably followed periods of exaltation and self-satisfaction. Chief Inspector Mitchell was an exceedingly shrewd man and he had a perfectly uncanny way of delving to the bottom of problems and of seeing clues that other people missed. French earnestly hoped that it was not so in the present instance.
He travelled up by the night train and early reported at the Yard. There he found his fears were groundless. The Chief Inspector, so far from grumbling, was in a very good mood and almost complimented him on what he had done.
“Well, French, you’re up against it again, are you? What were you busy at when you got my wire?”
French explained.
“You can do something better. Read that.”
It was the typewritten note of a telephone conversation. It appeared that at the manager of the Northern Shires Bank in Throgmorton Avenue had rung up to say that two twenty-pound notes bearing numbers on the list supplied in connection with the Starvel Hollow crime had been passed into the bank that afternoon. The cashier had just at that moment made the discovery, but unfortunately he was unable to remember from whom he had received them.
“By Jove, sir!” French exclaimed. “Then Roper is in town!”
“It looks like it if your theory is right,” the Chief Inspector admitted. “I sent Willis across at once and he saw the cashier. But the man couldn’t say where the notes had come from. Willis got him to prepare a list of all the lodgments he had received that day, intending, if you didn’t turn up, to go round the people today with Roper’s description. You had better see him and find out what he has done. I want you to take over from him at once as he is really on that Colchester burglary.”
“Very good, sir. Do you know if the notes were together: if they seemed to have come in from the same party?”
“Willis asked that. They were not near each other in the pile. Of course, the argument is not conclusive, but the suggestion is that they came in separately.”
“If that is so it looks as if Roper was changing them systematically.”
“Possibly. In that case we may expect more notes to come in. That’ll do, French. Go and see Willis and start right in.”
Inspector Willis was seated at the desk in his room, apparently trying to reduce to some sort of order the chaotic heap of papers which covered it.
“Hullo, French! Come in and take a pew,” he greeted his visitor. “I don’t know anyone I’d be better pleased to see. If you hadn’t turned up within another ten minutes I was going out about those blessed notes, but now I shall be able to get down to Colchester on the next train. I’m on that burglary at Brodrick’s, the jewellers. You heard about it?”
“The Chief mentioned it, but I have heard no details. Interesting case?”
“Nothing out of the way. The place was broken into from a lane at the back and the safe cut with a oxyacetylene jet. They got about six thousand pounds’ worth. It happened that Brodrick had just sent a lot of stuff to town, else they’d have cleared twice that.”
“Any line on the men?”
“It was Hot Alf and the Mummer, I believe. It was their style, and Alf was seen in the town two days before. But I’ve not got anything definite yet. There’s a fearful muck of stuff about it: look at all this.” He indicated the litter on the table.
“No fingerprints?”
“Nope. But I’ll get them through the fences. I’ve only to sit tight and they’ll give themselves away. But what about your do? I’ve got it finished, thank the Lord! There it is.” He pointed to a little heap of papers apart from the others. “There’s more in it, the Chief hinted, than stolen notes, but he didn’t say what it was.”
“There’s pretty well everything in it so far as I can see,” French rejoined. “Murder—quadruple murder—theft, arson and body-snatching.”
Willis whistled.
“Body-snatching? Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “You don’t often hear of that nowadays.”
“You don’t,” French admitted, “but this was not ordinary body-snatching. You remember the case: a fire at Starvel in which the three occupants of the house were supposed to be burned? Well, one wasn’t. He burgled the place and escaped with the swag: those notes that you were on to today. But he had to have a body to represent himself, so he murdered a neighbour and burned his in the house.”
“Lord, French! That’s quite a tale. It would make a novel, that would. How did you get on to it?”
French gave a somewhat sketchy résumé of his activities and so led the conversation back to the notes. “The Chief said you would give me the details so that I could get ahead with it today.”
“Right-o. The Chief called me in about and said he’d just had a phone from
