Sunny Jim beamed.
'Ring 'em up and tell 'em to send some of their best diamond bracelets around,' he said. 'I'll have the man take 'em right up to her room, and she can pick what she likes. Say, I bet that'll put everything right.'
Whether it put everything right or not is a question that the various parties concerned might have answered differently. The hotel was glad enough to oblige such a lavish guest; and Mr. Peabody, the jeweler, was so impressed with their brief account of Mr. James Fasson that he hurried round in person with six diamond bracelets in his bag. After a short discussion, Mrs. Fasson chose the most expensive, a mere trifle valued at a thousand pounds; and Mr. Fasson rang for a page-boy to take his cheque for that amount round to the bank to be cashed.
'You must have a drink while you're waitin' for your money,' said Sunny Jim, turning to a bottle and a siphon which stood on a side table.
Mr. Peabody had a very small drink; and remembered nothing more for another hour, at the end of which time Mr. and Mrs. Fasson had left the Magnificent for ever, taking all his six diamond bracelets with them. Nor did Mr. Peabody's afternoon look any brighter when the bank on which Mr. Fasson's cheque had been drawn rang up the hotel to mention that they had never carried an account for anybody of that name.
This episode was the subject of a hurriedly assembled conference in the Assistant Commissioner's room at New Scotland Yard.
The other two men present were Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal and Junior Inspector Pryke. Mr. Teal, who was responsible for the conference, explained his point of view very briefly.
'Anworth and Fasson used to be fairly well acquainted, and if Anworth was using the High Fence there's a good chance that Fasson will be using him too. I know exactly where I can lay my hands on Sunny Jim, and I want permission to try and get a squeal out of him unofficially.'
'What is your objection to having him arrested and questioned in the ordinary way?' asked the Commissioner.
'He'd have to be taken to Market Street, wouldn't he?' meditated Teal aloud. His baby blue eyes hid themselves under studiously sleepy lids. 'Well,' he said dryly, 'because I don't want him murdered.'
Junior Inspector Desmond Pryke flushed. He was one of the first graduates of Lord Trenchard's famous Police College, and he usually gave the impression of being very well satisfied with his degree. He was dark, slim, and well-manicured; and the inventor of that classic experiment for turning gentlemen into detectives could certainly have pointed to him as a product who looked nothing like the traditional idea of a policeman. Mr. Teal had been heard to thank God that there was no possibility of confusing them, but there were obvious reasons why Mr. Teal was irrevocably prejudiced in favour of the old order.
'It's in your manor, Pryke,' said the Assistant Commissioner. 'What do you think?'
'I don't see what there is to be gained by it,' said the other. 'If Fasson hasn't been too frightened by the murder of Anworth to talk anyhow'
'What does Fasson know about the murder of Anworth?' demanded Teal quickly, for the official statements to the Press had contained certain deliberate gaps.
Pryke looked at him.
'I don't suppose he definitely knows any more than any other outsider, but it's common gossip in the underworld that Anworth was murdered because he was going to turn informer.'
'You look as if you spent a lot of your time picking up gossip from the underworld,' retorted Teal sarcastically. He caught the Assistant Commissioner's chilly eye on him, and went on more politely: 'In any case, sir, that's only another reason why I don't want to take him to a police station. I want to try and prevent him thinking that any squeal could be traced back to him.'
There was some further discussion, through which Teal sat stolidly chewing a worn-out lump of spearmint, with his round pink face set in its habitual mask of weary patience, and eventually gained his point.
'Perhaps you had better take Inspector Pryke with you,' suggested the Commissioner, when he gave his permission.
'I should like to, sir,' said Mr. Teal, with great geniality, 'but I don't know whether this can wait long enough for him to go home and change.'
Pryke adjusted the set of his coat delicately as he rose. It was undoubtedly part of a resplendent suit, being of a light fawn colour with a mauve over-check; a very different proposition from Teal's shiny blue serge.
'I didn't know that Police Regulations required you to look like an out-of-work rag and bone man,' he said; and Chief Inspector Teal's complexion was tinged with purple all the way to Hyde Park Corner.
He resented having Inspector Pryke thrust upon him, partly because he resented Inspector Pryke, and partly because the High Fence had been his own individual assignment ever since Johnny Anworth put his knife and fork into that fatal plate of roast beef six weeks ago. For a lieutenant, when necessity called for one, Mr. Teal preferred the morose and angular Sergeant Barrow, who had never been known to speak unless he was spoken to, and who then spoke only to utter some cow-like comment to which nobody with anything better to do need have listened. Chief Inspector Teal had none of the theoretical scientific training in criminology with which the new graduates of the Police College were pumped to offensive overflowing, but he had a background of thirty years' hard-won experience which took the intrusion of manicured theorists uneasily; and at the entrance of the small apartment building in which Sunny Jim Fasson had been located he said so.
'I want you to keep quiet and let me do the talking,' was his instruction. 'I know how I'm going to tackle Fasson, and I know how to get what I want out of him.'
Pryke fingered his M.C.C. tie.
'Like you've always known how to get what you want out of the Saint?' he drawled.
Mr. Teal's lips were tightly compressed as he stumped up the narrow stairway. His seemingly interminable failure to get anything that he really wanted out of that cool smiling devil who passed so incongruously under the name of the Saint was a thorn in his side which Inspector Pryke had twisted dextrously before. Whenever Chief Inspector Teal attempted to impress the rising generation of detectives with his superior craftsmanship, that gibe could always be brought up against him, openly or surreptitiously; and Mr. Teal was getting so tired of it that it
