invariably set out behind the glass on velvet-lined shelves lighted by chastely shielded bulbs. An act of deliberate criminal foolishness, from the point of view of almost anyone except Mr. Peabody. From the point of view of the Green Cross boys, an act of sublime charity.
It was a very good bust, from the point of view of a detached connoisseur-carried out with all the slick perfection of technique of which the Green Cross boys were justly proud. The coup was no haphazard smash-and- grab affair, but a small-scale masterpiece of which every detail had been planned and rehearsed until the first and only public presentation could be guaranteed to flutter through its allotted segment of history with the smooth precision of a ballet. Mr. Peabody's emporium had been selected for the setting out of a list of dozens of other candidates simply on account of that aforesaid idiosyncrasy of his, and every item to be taken had been priced and contracted for in advance.
Joe Corrigan was booked to drive the car; Clem Enright heaved the brick; and Ted Orping, a specialist in his own line, was ready with the bag. In the space of four seconds, as previously timed by Ted Orping's stop watch, a collection of assorted bijouterie for which any receiver would cheerfully have given two thousand pounds in hard cash vanished from Mr. Peabody's shattered window with the celerity of rabbits fading away from a field at the approach of a conjuror with an empty top hat. A gross remuneration, per head of the parties concerned, of five hundred pounds for the job-if you care to look at it that way. Fast money; for on the big night the performance went through well within scheduled limits.
It was precisely two o'clock in the morning when Clem Enright's brick went through Mr. Peabody's plate glass, and the smash of it startled a constable who was patrolling leisurely down his beat a matter of twenty yards away. Ted Orping's hands flew in and out of the window with lightning accuracy while the policeman was fumbling with his whistle and lumbering the first few yards towards them. Before the Law had covered half the distance the job was finished, and the two Green Cross experts were piling into the back of the car as it jolted away and gathered speed towards Oxford Circus. The stolen wagon whizzed over the deserted crossroads as the first shrill blasts of alarm wailed into the night far behind.
'Good work,' said Ted Orping, speaking as much for his own share in the triumph as for anybody else's.
He settled back in his corner and pulled at the brim of his hat-a broad-shouldered, prematurely old young man of about twenty-eight, with a square jaw and two deep creases running down from his nose and past the corners of his thin mouth. He was one of the first examples of a type of crook that was still new and strange to England, a type that founded itself on the American hoodlum, educated in movie theatres and polished on the raw underworld fiction imported by F. W. Woolworth-a type that was breaking into the placid and gentlemanly paths of Old World crime as surely and ruthlessly as Fate. In a few years more Ted's type was no longer to seem strange and foreign; but in those days he was an innovation, respected and feared by his satellites. He had learned to imitate the trans atlantic callousness and pugnacity so well that he was no longer conscious of playing a part. He had the bullying swagger, the taste for ostentatious clothes, the desire for power; and he said 'Oh, yeah?' with exactly the right shade of contempt and belligerence.
'Easy pickings,' said Clem Enright.
He tried to ape Ted Orping's manner, but he lacked the physical personality. He was a cockney sneak thief born and bred, with the pale peaked face and shifty eyes of his inheritance. Alone and sober, his one idea was to avoid attracting attention; but in the shelter of Ted Orping's massive bravado he found his courage expanding.
He also lolled back in the seat and produced a battered yellow packet of cigarettes.
'Fag?'
Ted Orping looked down his nose.
'Y'ain't still smokin' those things?'
He twitched the packet out of the cockney's fingers and flipped it over the side. A rolled-gold cigarette case came out of his pocket and pushed into Clem Enright's ribs under a black-rimmed thumbnail.
'Take 'alf a dozen.'
Clem helped himself, and struck a match. They lounged back again, exhaling the fumes of cheap Turkish tobacco with elaborate relish. Either of them would secretly have preferred the yellow gaspers to which they were accustomed, but Ted Orping insisted on their improved status.
Suddenly he leaned forward and punched the driver on the shoulder.
'Hey, Joe! Time you were turning east. The Flying Squad ain't after us tonight.'
The driver nodded. They were speeding up the west side of Regent's Park, and the driving mirror showed no lights behind.
'And easy on the gas,' Ted snapped. 'You don't want to be copped for dangerous driving.'
The car spun round a bend with a sharpness that sent Ted Orping lurching back into his corner, and held its speed. They drove east, and turned south again.
Ted Orping scowled. He wanted all his colleagues to acknowledge him as the boss, the Big Fellow, whose word was law-to be obeyed promptly and implicitly. Joe Corrigan didn't seem to cotton to the idea. And he had broad shoulders too-and grey Irish eyes that didn't flinch readily. Independent. Maybe too independent, Ted Orping thought. It was Joe Corrigan who had insisted that they should go into a pub and have a bracer before they did the job, and who had got his way against Ted Orping's opposition. Maybe Joe was getting too big for his boots. . . . Ted ran a hand over the hard bulge at his hip, thoughtfully. Four or five years ago the independence of Joe Corrigan would never have stimulated Ted to thoughts of murder, but he had been taught that when a guy got too big for his boots he was just taken for a ride.
The car swung left, violently, and then to the right again. They were droning down a street of sombre houses on the east side of the park. One or two upper windows were lighted, but there were no pedestrians about-only another long-nosed silver-grey speed wagon drawn up by the curb with its side lights dimmed facing towards them.
All at once their brakes went on with a screaming force that jerked the two men behind forward in their seats. They skidded to a stop by the pavement, with their bonnet a dozen feet away from the nose of the silver car.
Ted Orping cursed and hitched himself further forward. His broad hand crimped on the driver's shoulder.
'What the hell --'
He fell back as the driver turned, with his jaw dropping.
