Chatworth pushed the papers away, made notes with a slim gold pencil, and looked up. The cherub in him appeared. He smiled, showing small teeth, and moved a silver cigarette-box across the black glass of his desk.
“Have a cigarette, Sloan. What’s it all about?”
“I’m scared, sir.” That was the kind of introduction Roger would have advocated as being sure to grip the A.C.’s attention. Chatworth raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Oh? What about?”
“I’ve had a warning which I think I ought to take seriously—that there is likely to be an attack on my life in the next day or two.”
“Whose corns have you been treading on?”
“It’s a long story, sir, and——”
Chatworth’s eyes sparkled, and were frosty.
“Anything,to do with West?”
Roger would have expected that. Sloan hadn’t. He gulped, smoke got mixed up with his larynx and he coughed and spluttered. Chatworth tapped the gold pencil on the glass top.
“Well, is it?”
“In a way, yes. I——”
“Been devoting a lot of time to West, haven’t you?”
“Not official time, sir, it wasn’t my job, but——”
“Spare time? A good detective shouldn’t have any spare time. He should either be working or relaxing in order to equip himself for the next real job that comes along. You don’t think West is dead, do you?”
“No.”
“You don’t think he’s turned bad, do you? Or this nonsense about a split mind.”
Nonsense! Sloan’s eyes glowed. “No, sir, it’s utter rot. There are times when I feel like—did you read the Sunday Cry yesterday?”
Chatworth said: “I prefer evidence. You know the evidence that piled up against West. Never mind—you’ve been ferreting on your own, you think you’ve unearthed something and as a result, you’ve been threatened. That it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
Sloan said: “I’m not sure how much you want to know, sir.” He meant “ought to know”, and thought that Chatworth understood that. “There have been a lot of loose ends. I’ve worked on the theory that West uncovered something about a big organization of which we know little or nothing, and they had to get him out of the way. I don’t pretend to know how they’ve done it, but I’ve a feeling that he’s still alive and still working.”
“Working, eh?”
“Yes. If he is alive, he’s working. It’s all vague and——”
“At least you realize that.” But there was no bite in Chatworth’s voice.
“I haven’t any evidence that West is alive, but you remember that after the Copse Cottage job, we had a squeal from someone we brought in that a man named Kennedy could explain a lot about it. We never traced the Kennedy. But I went through the records and turned up another whisper about a certain Kennedy. He was supposed to have been behind the big forgery job up north, when a man named Kyle was sentenced to seven years. I thought it would be a good idea to watch Kyle when he came out, and put a man on it—Mr. Abbott authorized that, sir.”
“Go on.”
“Kyle went to see a man named Rayner, at offices in Lyme Street, Strand. This Rayner says he made a pile in Africa and came back and bought a general commission agency. He bought it from a man named Wiseman—sorry if I have to be confusing here, sir—and Wiseman had a sleeping partner, named Kennedy. That’s a commonplace name, but it was interesting that Kyle should go to someone who had taken over a business from the Kennedy already referred to in his trial. The Kennedy is only a name —I’ve never set eyes on him, haven’t been able to pin anything on to him. I talked to Kyle myself after the visit to Lyme Street, but he said he’d gone to ask for a job, and didn’t get one. I talked to Kyle about himself, and discovered that while he was inside, his wife was killed in a street accident.”
Chatworth nodded.
“Although he seemed bitter about it, I couldn’t make him talk freely. But I did discover that one thing frightened him—the possibility that his daughter, who lives in France, should discover the truth about him. The daughter’s name was Lucille. We always thought that a French girl was killed at Copse Cottage, if you remember.”
“There are other French names,” Chatworth said.
“I know, sir, but—well, remember the whisper that a Kennedy was involved both in the Copse Cottage job and West’s kidnapping. We’ve been looking for a French girl, and among the missing people reported at our request by the Paris Surete there was a Lucille Dinard. Just following that line, sir, I slipped over to Paris when I had a week- end off not long ago. I discovered that this Lucille was really English, but I couldn’t find out the English name she had before she went to live with this uncle and aunt in Paris. My French isn’t very good, and the Surete man who was with me wasn’t very interested. I just let it seep into my mind, sir, and watched Kyle. A month after he’d visited Rayner—the Kennedy contact—he fell under a train at Edgware Road. Someone told the police that he’d been pushed, but wouldn’t swear to it at the inquest. The coroner had a lot to say about vivid imaginations, and the verdict was accidental death. Like that on Kyle’s wife, some months ago. I checked, and Kyle had Rayner’s
