In a few seconds a Mr. Stanley was produced and French asked him to repeat his description of his customer.
“I remember the man quite clearly, sir,” Stanley answered. “He had very dark hair and a thick, dark moustache and dark glasses. He wore a soft, gray Homburg hat and a fawn-coloured coat.”
“It is a pleasure to deal with you, Mr. Stanley,” French smiled. “You are certainly very observant. Now tell me, how do you come to remember the man so clearly?”
“I don’t think there was any special reason, sir. Unless it was that I happened to look out of the window and saw him get out of a taxi, and that sort of fixed my attention on him. The taxi waited while he was in the shop and he got into it again and drove off when he had bought the ring.”
This was very satisfactory. If the customer was really the man French wanted, here was a clue and a valuable one. To find the taxi which had stopped at the shop at a given time on should not be difficult. He continued his questions.
“At what hour was that?”
“About ,” the salesman said after some thought. “I couldn’t say for sure, but it was about an hour before I went for dinner and that was at .”
“He didn’t seem at all agitated, I suppose?”
“No, sir. Not more than most of them.” Stanley smiled knowingly, and French felt that only for the sobering presence of the manager a wink would have conveyed the man’s thought. “Most of them are a bit, shall we say, nervous. But this man was just the same as the rest. He gave a size and said he wanted a medium weight, and that was all that passed.”
French nodded, and reverting to the description, tried for some further details with which to augment it. Though he had complimented Stanley on it, he realised that as it stood it was of little use. But the young man was unable to improve on his former effort and French was about to thank the two men and leave the shop when Stanley chanced to drop a phrase which sent the detective into a white heat of excitement and made him marvel at Chief Inspector Mitchell’s perspicacity and his own obtuseness.
“And there was nothing in the slightest degree out of the ordinary in the whole transaction, no matter how trivial?” he had asked as a sort of general finale to his catechism, more as a matter of form than because he hoped to gain any information, and it was in reply that the assistant, after saying: “No, sir, I don’t think so,” had pronounced the priceless words: “Unless you would call changing a large note out of the ordinary. The man hadn’t enough loose change to make up the thirty-five shillings and he asked me to change a twenty-pound note.”
“What!” roared French with a delighted oath, springing to his feet in his excitement. So that was it! He saw it all now! Like a flash this whole mysterious business of the wedding rings became clear as day. And the Chief had guessed! Moreover the Chief had given him a broad hint and he, like the ass that he was, had missed its meaning! He sat down and wiped his forehead.
Who was this mysterious individual, this dark-haired man with moustache and glasses, but Roper! Roper it was who had been going about buying wedding rings, and Roper it was who naturally found that he must get rid of such incriminating purchases at the earliest possible moment. The whole thing was clear! For every ring a £20 note, a tainted £20 note, a £20 note from Mr. Averill’s wrecked safe up at Starvel. And for every £20 note got rid of over £18 of good, clean, untraceable money brought in. It was a scheme, a great scheme, worthy of the man who had devised the crime as a whole.
As these thoughts passed through his mind French saw that the fact that the elusive purchaser had a moustache and glasses while Roper wore neither by no means invalidated his conclusion, but rather strengthened it. To a person of Roper’s mental calibre a moustache would appear one of the best of disguises, while a man with a squint had practically no option but to wear tinted glasses if he wished to preserve his incognito. From disgust at his job French had suddenly swung round to enthusiasm. He had not now the faintest doubt that some forty-eight hours earlier, Roper, alive and in the flesh, had been in that very shop, having dealings with the salesman, Stanley. And then came the delightful thought that with so fresh a trail and with such a multiplicity of clues, the man’s capture was a question of a very short time only. The steps to be taken were obvious, and the first was to find the taximan who had driven him round. This must be put in hand without delay.
He crushed down his impatience and turned once more to his companions, who had been regarding him with not a little surprise.
“That is important information you have just given me, Mr. Stanley,” he declared. “Now can you tell me if this is the man?” He handed over one of Roper’s photographs.
And then his enthusiasm received a check. The salesman looked doubtfully at the card and shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I couldn’t just be sure. It’s like him and it’s not like him, if you understand what I mean. The man who came here had a moustache.”
“A false one,” French suggested.
The other brightened up.
“My word, but it might have been,” he exclaimed. “I noticed it looked queer, now I come to think of it. It was very thick and long; thicker and longer than you generally see. And what you might call fuzzy round the top. Not like a real moustache. Yes, sir, I believe
