With a cheerful salute he passed through the door which the inspector unlocked for his benefit, and so through a few odd uniformed police and one or two detectives at whom he leered triumphantly out of the entrance to the station.
Labar thrust an arm through that of a frowning young detective sergeant whose discoloured eye told Teddy’s prowess and led him upstairs.
“You’ve helped a whole lot on this job, Down,” he said. “Don’t you worry about Teddy. We’ll get our hooks on him when we want. I’m using him as bait. What I want you to do is to watch when the big fish bites.”
He expounded at greater length when he was back at his desk. “This joker’s in the game up to the neck, but you can bet Larry’s only trusted him as far as he had to. How much he knows I can’t say. He’s scared to death to say anything, now. But it’s odds, now that we’re on to him, that he’ll try to give the office to Larry either direct, or through someone else. You’ve got to tail him closer than a brother. Take Heath to help you—he doesn’t know Heath. And be particularly careful when he’s stewed. He may drop something that we’d like to know. See if you can get a line through what channels his money comes, though Larry’s likely to have seen that you don’t get back to him that way. If you do get hold of anything burn the wires in getting it to me.”
Down jerked his head in comprehension. “I’ll attend to it, sir. Heath will be on the job when I have to stay under cover.”
“Get to it then. I’m relying on you not to fall down.”
The divisional detective inspector turned to other matters.
IX
A couple of days passed, and although the newspapermen still pestered Labar, and other potential sources of information at Scotland Yard, the space allotted to the hue and cry in the news dwindled. Labar was thankful. There are times when an energetic and persevering journalist may stumble on something that will aid the police, but in a case of this kind reporters were an embarrassment. There were no innocuous morsels that one might feed them on, and such facts as Labar had up his sleeve he was anxious to keep to himself. Larry no doubt would be scanning the morning and evening journals with assiduity.
The investigation marked time. Gertstein had been able to throw no light on the forgery, save that a cheque form was missing from his book, and in one or two interviews Labar found him more prickly than at first. He seemed gloomily to revel in giving up hope that any result would be achieved by the matter of fact methods of the police. The strange disappearance of Miss Noelson he put down entirely to the heavy-handed tactlessness of Labar. The latter had not thought it worth while to tell everything.
“She has been terrified,” declared Gertstein. “You made a big blunder in letting her see that you suspected her. That poor girl has been driven away, and you are responsible because you told her she was the thief.”
“She’ll be back, all right,” said Labar with a calmness that the little man felt bordered on callousness. “We’ll find her.”
There Gertstein with a disbelieving grunt left the matter, although he mentally decided that if Penelope was not traced quickly he would enlist the aid of some other machinery than that of Scotland Yard.
The burglarious Gold Dust Teddy was leading an apparently normal, half-drunken existence, with Down and Heath, both ambitious young officers, camping on his trail. So far he had afforded them no chance of getting nearer to proof against Larry. They had devised means—what they were Labar did not inquire, though he might make a close guess—of studying all the correspondence, both inward and outward, of his household. They had even used tests recommended to them by a Government chemist calculated to reveal the most obdurate sympathetic ink. And Heath patronising Teddy’s favourite pub had stood the latter sundry drinks the while he conveyed that he himself was a screwsman much wanted, who was quite ready to take a hand in any exploit that might perchance lead to profit. Beyond this Down had his small coterie of informants on the qui vive. All this had hitherto gone for nothing.
A very effective turn over of Larry’s Hampstead house, under the powers of the search warrant that Malone had obtained, had been futile. It is to be doubted if the most inexperienced of the officers engaged seriously expected that anything incriminating would be found. Amid all the sumptuous equipment of the residence there was nothing that had not been honestly bought and paid for. It was the house of a very wealthy, very tasteful man. There were no dramatic secret doors or hiding places. The few servants about the place had antecedents that placed them beyond suspicion. They only knew that Mr. Hughes was a generous, if somewhat erratic, master, given to sudden comings and goings, in which he was usually attended by his valet, and his chauffeur. About these two men little could be learnt. Letters were found—tradesmen’s bills and other quite innocent missives—that helped not at all.
Yet in a way Labar was enjoying himself. The throwbacks, the lines of inquiry that led nowhere, were in normal sequence for this type of investigation and but stiffened his resolution to see the matter through. He had regained the interest that he had lost in his work. No one knew better than he the value of persistency. Somehow he would get his fingers on that end of the string that would unravel the entire tangle. It might be obtained by dogged perseverance; it might drop unexpectedly from the blue skies as clues have not infrequently been known to do.
He had a theory that he was wont to expand upon in moments of leisure with his colleagues. “With
