She did not ring for the elevator. At the farther end of the passage was a flight of narrow stairs which communicated with the caretaker’s room, on the top floor, and which were used only by him. Down these she went. At the bottom was a door leading into the courtyard of a building. This, too, she unlocked and soon after had joined the throng of homeward bound clerks that thronged the pavement at this hour.
XXIV
£10,000 Reward
The Associated Merchants Bank are authorised to offer a reward of ten thousand pounds for information which will lead to the arrest and conviction of the leader of what is known as the Crimson Circle Gang. In conjunction with this reward the Secretary of State promises a free pardon to any member of the gang, other than one actually guilty of wilful murder, providing that the said member will furnish the information and evidence requisite to the conviction of the man or woman known as the Crimson Circle.
On every hoarding, in every post office window, on every police station board, the announcement flared in bloodred print.
Derrick Yale, on his way to his office, saw the announcement and read it and passed on, wondering what effect this would have upon the minor members of the gang he had been engaged to hunt.
Thalia Drummond read it from the top of a bus, when that vehicle had pulled up close to a hoarding, to take on a passenger, and she smiled to herself. But the most remarkable effect of the poster was upon Harvey Froyant. It brought a colour to his face and a light to his eye which made him almost youthful. He, too, was on his way to the office when he read the announcement, but hurried back to his house and took from a drawer in his study a long list. They were the numbers of the banknotes which the Crimson Circle had taken, and he had compiled them laboriously, almost lovingly.
With his own hands he now made another copy, a work that occupied him until late in the morning. When he had finished he wrote a letter, and enclosing the new list of notes, he addressed it, posting the letter himself, to a firm of lawyers which he knew specialised in the tracing of lost and stolen property.
Heggitts’ had rendered him good service before, and the next morning brought a representative of the firm, Mr. James Heggitt, the senior partner, a wizened little man with a chronic sniff.
The name of Heggitt was not one which was universally respected, nor did lawyers, when they met, speak of it with affection or regard. And yet it was one of the most prosperous firms of lawyers in the city. The majority of its clients were on or over the borderline which separates the lawful from the unlawful, but to the law-abiding also it was very useful, and was frequently consulted by more eminent firms whose clients wished to recover valuable goods which had been taken by the light-fingered gentry. In some mysterious way Heggitts’ could always place their finger upon a “gentleman” who had “heard” of the property which was lost, and, in the majority of cases, the missing article was restored.
“I got your note, Mr. Froyant,” said the little lawyer, “and I can tell you now that none of these notes are likely to go through the usual channels.” He paused and licked his lips, looking past Mr. Froyant. “The biggest ‘fence’ of all has gone, so I’m not doing him any injustice when I mention the fact.”
“Who was that?”
“Brabazon,” was the startling reply, and the other stared at him in astonishment.
“You don’t mean Brabazon of Brabazon’s Bank?”
“Yes, I do,” said Heggitt, nodding. “I should say he did a bigger business in stolen money than any other man in London. You see, it could pass through his bank without anybody being the wiser, and as he did a lot of business abroad and was constantly changing and re-changing money for export, he got away with it. We knew who was fencing it. At least, when I say we knew,” he corrected himself, “we had a shrewd suspicion. As officers of the court, we should, of course, have notified the authorities had we been certain. I thought it better to call to explain to you that it is going to be a very difficult job to trace this money. Most stolen notes are passed on racecourses, but quite a considerable number find their way abroad, where it is a much simpler matter to change them, and where they are ever so much more difficult to trace. You say it was the Crimson Circle who did it?”
“Do you know them?” asked Froyant quickly.
The lawyer shook his head.
“I have never had any dealings with them at all,” he said, “but, of course, I knew about them, and enough to know that they are clever people. It is likely that this man Brabazon has been doing their work, consciously or unconsciously. In that case they might find a difficulty in disposing of the stuff, for a banknote ‘fence’ is one of the hardest to find. What am I to do when I track one of these notes and have discovered the person who passed it?”
“I want you to notify me at once,” said Froyant, “and nobody else. You understand that this is a matter on which my life may hang, and if by any chance the Crimson Circle get to know that I am trying to recover the money it will be a very serious thing for me.”
The
