Her face betrayed the complexities of emotions that were in her mind. A quarter of an hour before she would have dismissed from her mind as an absurdity the idea that she was still in love with Larry Hughes. But now her vanity was touched at his airy assumption that she would calmly accept the defection of the man she had once made a conquest. Had she lost all her attraction?
She burst into laughter—ironical bitter laughter. “That grey mouse,” she said. “You want to marry her! It is comic.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it possible,” he said gravely. “I believe you are doing me the honour to be jealous.”
“Of that doll,” she exclaimed. “Me jealous of Penelope Noelson. It struck me as funny, but otherwise it is a matter of complete indifference to me.”
Larry tried to follow the trend of her mind. He could not determine whether she was moved by pique, or whether she was actually a jealous woman. None knew better than he how difficult it was to probe the fluky and irresponsible motives which swayed her with every passing mood. If he was to enlist her for his purposes he must by some means or other overcome this unexpected antagonism.
He laughed easily. “I was joking, of course, Adèle. If you were a free woman—but it is no good thinking about that. To tell you the truth, Adèle, I am forced to this. Your safety as well as mine depends on closing the mouth of this girl. There are two ways. The one is marriage.”
She thrust forward a strained face. “And the other?”
“The other—” He beat his foot on the floor in a nervous tattoo. “I won’t consider the other, Adèle, till I have tried all other means. That will have to be the last thing. If I can induce her to marry me she cannot, even if she would, give evidence against us. As for falling in love with her”—he made a quick gesture of scorn—“that is the last thing on earth that I am likely to do. There has only been one woman with whom I have ever been in love. In any case this will be a marriage only in name.”
As he watched her he congratulated himself that he had struck the right note. Mrs. Gertstein sat with chin cupped in her hand thinking, or rather trying to think. It was a few moments before she spoke.
“Is Penelope willing to marry you?”
Larry smiled wrily. “I doubt it. But I think with a little persuasion you will be able to overcome her scruples. She will see that there is nothing else for it in time.”
“I don’t see why I should go out of my way to help you in this,” she said. “It’s your own business, Larry.”
There was indecision in her voice. The man shook his head as though with amused tolerance at the slow comprehension of a dull child. “My dear woman, it is the business of all of us—of you particularly. She knows much too much. Where will you be, if I am landed in the dock? We have all got to hang together or hang separately. I am not asking you to do me a favour. I am asking you to help save yourself. The prison doors are not far away from you, Adèle. You can take your choice.”
That threat clinched the matter as Larry Hughes expected it would. With all her futility of brain Mrs. Gertstein had a strong instinct for self-preservation. That alone would smother any lesser feelings she might have, even her hurt vanity or her sense of friendship for the girl who had been loyal to her. Her course was straight in front of her, and in taking it she reckoned nothing of the consequences to anyone but herself.
“You are right, Larry,” she said. “I’ll do all that I can to make her see reason.”
“Good girl.” He stood over her and patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll pull things off together yet. You had better go and find her and see what you can do.”
He laughed quietly to himself as she left the room. She was tied to him too closely now to deliberately play him false. And, he reflected, once he had safely steered his way out of danger from Scotland Yard there might be fat pickings to be made from old Gertstein if he played his cards aright.
XXI
Although perhaps the most spectacular, in reality the most simple of the problems that arise at Scotland Yard is the pursuit of a known man for a known crime. A criminal may escape if there is nothing to link him with an offence, but once a link is established it is long odds that, hide where he may, pursuit will catch up with him at last. The whole world is aroused to the hue and cry. He may disguise himself, he may flee to the ends of the earth, but even if persistent methodical search fails to reveal him, some chance will almost to a certainty lead to his betrayal.
Harry Labar’s perspective, from his closeness to affairs, was not quite so clear in this matter as Winter’s. That veteran did not conceal his satisfaction at the manner in which the investigation was developing.
“You’ve got Larry Hughes out into the open at last, my boy,” he said. “All you have to do now is to worry him. Keep him on the run. Things are coming your way. Don’t let any slack fit come along and spoil it all.”
“Yes, sir.” Labar received the compliment with meekness. It was something anyway to get a compliment out of the Chief Constable. “But we haven’t got anything yet that will associate him with the robbery. Stebbins may help us to get at Billy Bungey. There is Mrs. Gertstein. There is Gold Dust Teddy. So far we’re to the good. But we haven’t got the solid evidence yet that will lead to a conviction of the main guy. He’s
