His mind was focused upon Larry Hughes. Larry was a gentleman who had never been in a criminal court in his life—a sleek, cultivated man about town, with a taste in literature and art, and enough money to run his own steam yacht and a racing stud. His life was apparently open to the world, his character to all seeming flawless, impeccable. Any headstrong police officer who had ventured to put a public slur on Larry’s character, by hauling him to a dungeon cell, would have very promptly found himself with a suit for heavy damages on his hands.
Yet to Labar, as to many men in the police circles of the world, it was certain knowledge that Larry Hughes was the most adroit and intelligent crime organiser in London, or for the matter of that anywhere. It was certain but utterly unprovable.
There are half a dozen men in London, another half a dozen in New York, three in Paris, a couple in Amsterdam, and a few more knocking about other capitals of the world, who run crime on the principles of big business. Through many intermediaries there filters to them much knowledge which they have the means to turn to profit. These are eclectic in their enterprises, but in general they are receivers. They will organise and finance a burglary, a forgery, or a holdup, but they keep well in the background. The casual thief has never heard of them; even the big professional crook frequently has only a dim conception of their identity. The loot never reaches them in any tangible and identifiable shape. They have their agents, and their tools, and many of them die in an atmosphere of eminent respectability.
Among this class the most audacious, the most ingenious, was Larry Hughes. Labar had little doubt that, if one really got to the bottom of things in his division, half the professional crime would have shown Larry’s finger in the pie. Either Larry must lay off of his own volition—an unlikely event—or some method must be found of putting a spoke in his wheel. Harry Labar did not avoid the feeling that the task was likely to prove a man’s size job.
He had reached Cockspur Street when the thing happened. Even if his mind had been less preoccupied, it is likely that he would have failed to notice the big touring car that edged itself through the traffic towards him. Not until it had swept close to the kerb, and he saw the girl leaning from the near side, did he realise that it held any significance for him. A wisp of fair hair had fallen over her forehead, and she brushed it back with a slim gloved hand. Harry Labar, although his colleagues held him doomed to bachelordom, had an eye for a pretty girl and he noticed her with subconscious approval as the car drew near.
Almost mechanically it dawned on him that her hand was stretched to him from the now slowly moving car.
“For you,” said the girl, and a letter waved on a level with his eyes. As he reached to take it, the car leapt away like a living thing, with a rapidity that told of perfect acceleration and steel nerves at the wheel.
“Hey!”
The detective was aroused from his reverie on the instant. He sprang forward with a command to stop, that, even as he uttered it, he knew to be futile. The car was well away. It was vain to hope to stop it, and the speed at which it was moving showed it improbable that any taxi could overtake it, even had there been one near.
With a habit ingrained by years of training he took a pencil from his pocket and made a note of the number. Then, with a philosophic shrug of his shoulders, he slit the blank envelope that he held, and glanced at its contents. A Bank of England note for a hundred pounds lay in his hand. He inspected the envelope again, and threw an eye around to make sure that nothing had been dropped. There was nothing. Just a hundred pound note in a blank envelope.
“Well I’m damned,” determined Detective Inspector Labar.
The method rather than the event had startled him. Although one hundred pound notes do not descend on detective inspectors every day of the week, there are philanthropists who attempt at times to impose money on police officers. It was a bribe of course. But the touch of melodrama was amateurish and clumsy. The most illiterate crook in London should have known that a hundred pound note was ridiculously easy to trace. The whole thing was raw. It was just possible that the car had a false number, but leaving that aside he would remember the girl. Yes, decidedly he would remember the girl.
He felt reasonably certain that in the normal course of events he would know more about it during the day. Without undue speculation, therefore, he betook himself to Grape Street, where, in the stiffly furnished room that formed the headquarters of the divisional detective force, he summoned one of his satellites and passed the note on.
“Find out what hands that note has been in,” he ordered. “And while you’re about it, m’lad, slip down and discover who owns a car numbered X20008. Take a note of that number. If I’m not here when you’re through, leave a message for me.”
With that off his mind, he shed his coat, and was about to immerse himself in the official routine correspondence that was the bane of his life, when there was a jangle of telephone bells, and a hearty-looking, ruddy-cheeked man engaged in converse that brought a fresher purple sheen to his face. He put down the receiver with an oath.
“Wish you wouldn’t swear, Bill,” said Labar, petulantly. “It jars on me.”
It was at such a time that Detective Sergeant Malone, presuming on many years association, was wont to observe that he was
