He had opened the door of the cab and was stepping in, when somebody passed him on the sidewalk; somebody who was walking briskly with his collar turned up, but Inspector Parr knew him.
“Flush,” he called sharply, and the man turned round on his heel.
He was a little dark, thin-faced, lithe man, at the sight of the Inspector his jaw dropped.
“Why—why, Mr. Parr,” he said, with ill-affected geniality, “whoever thought of seeing you in this part of the world?”
“I want a little talk with you, Flush. Will you walk along with me?”
It was an ominous invitation, which Mr. “Flush” had heard before.
“You haven’t got anything against me, Mr. Parr?” he said loudly.
“Nothing,” admitted Parr. “Besides, you’re going straight now. I seem to remember you telling me that the day you came out of prison.”
“That’s right,” said “Flush” Barnet, heaving a sigh of relief. “Going straight, working for my living, and engaged to be married.”
“You don’t tell me?” said the stout Mr. Parr with well-simulated astonishment. “And is it Bella or Milly?”
“It is Milly,” said “Flush,” inwardly cursing the excellent memory of the police inspector. “She’s going straight, too. She’s got a job at one of the shops.”
“At Brabazon’s Bank, to be exact,” said the inspector, and then turned as though some thought had arrested him. “I wonder,” he muttered, “I wonder if that is it?”
“She’s a perfect young lady, is Milly,” Mr. “Flush” hastened to explain. “Honest as the day, wouldn’t swipe a clock, not if her life depended on it. I don’t want you to think she is bad, Mr. Parr, because she’s not. We’re both living what I might term an honest life.”
Parr’s placid face wrinkled in a smile.
“That’s grand news you’re telling me, ‘Flush.’ Where is Milly to be found in these days?”
“She’s living in diggings on the other side of the river,” said “Flush” reluctantly. “You’re not going to rake up old scandals, are you, Mr. Parr?”
“Heaven forbid,” said Inspector Parr piously. “No, I’d like to have a talk with her. Perhaps—” he hesitated, “anyway, it can wait. It was rather providential meeting you, ‘Flush.’ ”
But “Flush” did not share that view, even though he expressed a faint acquiescence.
“So that’s it,” said Inspector Parr to himself, but he did not express the nature of his suspicions, even when he met Derrick Yale at his club half-an-hour later. And it was a further curious fact, that though they touched every aspect of the Crimson Circle mystery in the long conversation which followed, never once did Mr. Parr mention Thalia Drummond’s interview, which, if he had not seen, he had at least guessed.
The two men left early the next morning for the little country town where one Ambrose Sibly, described as an able-seaman, was held on a charge of murder. At his own earnest request, Jack Beardmore was allowed to accompany them, though he was not present at the interview between the two detectives and the sullen man who had slain his father.
A brawny, unshaven fellow, half Scottish, half Swede, Sibly proved to be. He could neither read nor write, and had been in the hands of the police before. This much Parr had discovered from a reference of his fingerprints.
At first he was not inclined to commit himself, and it was rather Derrick Yale’s skilful cross-examination, than Inspector Parr’s efforts, which produced the confession.
“Yes, I did it all right,” he said at last.
They were seated in the cell with an official shorthand-writer taking a note of his statement.
“You’ve got me proper, but you wouldn’t have got me if I hadn’t been drunk. And whilst I’m confessing, I might as well own up that I killed Harry Hobbs. He was a shipmate of mine on the Oritianga in 1912—they can only hang me once. Killed him and chucked his body overboard, I did, over the question of a woman that we met at Newport News, which is in America. I’ll tell you how this happened, gentlemen. I lost my ship about a month ago, and was stranded at the Sailors’ Home at Wapping. I got chucked out of there for being drunk, and on top of that I was locked up and got seven days’ imprisonment. If the old fool had only given me a month I shouldn’t have been here. One night after I came out of prison I was walking through the East End, down on my luck and starving for a drink, and feeling properly miserable. To make it worse, I had the toothache—”
Parr met Derrick Yale’s eyes, and Derrick smiled faintly.
“I was loafing along the edge of the pavement looking for cigarette ends, and thinking of nothing except where I could get a bit of food and a night’s lodging. It was beginning to rain, too, and it looked as though I was going to have another night on the streets, when I heard a voice say, almost in my ear, ‘Jump in.’ I looked round. A motorcar was standing by the side of the roadway. I couldn’t believe my ears. Presently the man in the car said ‘Jump in. It’s you I mean!’ and he mentioned my name. We drove along for a while without his saying anything, and I noticed that he kept clear of all the streets where the big lights were.
“After a bit he stopped the car, and began to tell me who I was. I can assure you I was surprised. He knew the whole of my history. He even knew about Harry Hobbs—I was tried for that killing and acquitted—and then he asked me if I’d like to earn a hundred pounds. I told him I would, and he said there was an old gentleman in the country who had done him a lot of harm, and he wanted him ‘outed.’ I
