hurt. He wished, viciously, that some of the smart infants who were being pushed up under him could have as much to cope with as he had had in his time.
But Sunny Jim Fasson was quite a different problem from the blue-eyed bantering outlaw who had occupied so much of Mr. Teal's time in other days; and he felt a renewal of confidence when he saw Sunny Jim's startled face through the slit of the opening door and wedged his foot expertly in the aperture.
'Don't make a fuss, and nobody's going to hurt you, Sunny,' he said.
Sunny Jim, like Johnny Anworth, was also a philosopher, in his way. He retreated into the tiny bed-sitting-room without dropping the ash from his cigar.
'What's it about this time, Mr. Teal?' he inquired, with the sang-froid of old experience.
He did not even bother to put on his cultivated American accent; which saved him considerable trouble, for he had been born in the Old Kent Road and had learnt all that he knew of America from the movies.
'It needn't be about some diamond bracelets that were stolen from Peabody's-unless you want it to be,' said Teal, with equal cold-bloodedness.
Sunny Jim raised his eyebrows. The gesture was mechanical.
'I don't know what you mean, Mr. Teal.'
'Would you know what I meant,' replied the detective, with impregnable drowsiness, 'if I told you that Peabody has identified your photograph and is quite sure he can identify you; and half the Magnificent Hotel staff are ready to back him up?'
Sunny Jim had no answer to that.
'Mind you,' said Teal, carefully unwrapping a fresh slice of chewing gum, 'I said that we needn't go into that unless you want to. If you had a little talk with me now, for instance- why, we could settle it all here in this room, and you needn't even come with us to the station. It'd be all over and forgotten -just between ourselves.'
When Sunny Jim Fasson was not wearing the well-trained smile from which he had earned his nickname, his face fell into a system of hard-bitten lines which drew an illuminating picture of shrewd and sharp intelligence. Those lines be came visible now. So far as Sunny Jim was concerned, Teal's speech needed no amplification; and Sunny Jim was a man who believed in the comfort and security of Mr. James Fasson first, last, and in the middle. If Teal had arrived half an hour later he would have been on his way to Ostend, but as things were he recognised his best alternative health resort.
'I'm not too particular what I talk about with an old friend, Mr. Teal,' he said at length.
'Do you sell your stuff to the High Fence, Sunny?'
Fasson held his cigar under his nose and sniffed the aroma.
'I believe I did hear of him once,' he admitted cautiously.
The appearance of bored sleepiness in Chief Inspector Teal's eyes was always deceptive. In the last few seconds they had made a detailed inventory of the contents of the room, and had observed a torn strip of brown paper beside the waste-basket and a three-inch end of string on the carpet under the table.
'You've already got rid of Peabody's diamond bracelets, haven't you?' he said persuasively; and his somnolent eyes went back to Sunny Jim's face and did not shift from it. 'All I want to know from you is what address you put on the parcel.'
Sunny Jim put his cigar back in his mouth till the end glowed red.
'I did send off a parcel not long ago,' he confessed reminiscently. 'It was addressed to'
He never said who it was addressed to.
Mr. Teal heard the shot behind him, and saw Sunny Jim's hand jerk to his chest and his body jar with the shock of the bullet. The slam of the door followed, as Teal turned round to it in a blank stupor of incredulity. Pryke, who was nearest, had it open again when his superior reached it; and Teal barged after him in a kind of incandescent daze, out on to the landing. The sheer fantastic unexpectedness of what had happened had knocked his brain momentarily out of the rhythm of conscious functioning, but he clattered down the stairs on Pryke's heels, and actually overtook him at the door which let them out on to the street.
And having got there, he stopped, with his brain starting work again, overwhelmed by the utter futility of what he was doing.
There was nothing sensational to be seen outside. The road presented the ordinary aspect of a minor thoroughfare in the Shepherd Market area at that time of day. There was an empty car parked on the other side of the road, a man walking by with a brief-bag, two women laden down with parcels puttering in the opposite direction, an errand-boy delivering goods from a tricycle. The commonplace affairs of the district were proceeding uninterrupted, the peace of the neighbourhood was unbroken by so much as a glimpse of any sinister figure with a smoking gun scooting off on the conventional getaway. Teal's dizzy gaze turned back to his subordinate. 'Did you see him?' he rasped.
'Only his back,' said Pryke helplessly. 'But I haven't the faintest idea which way he went.' Teal strode across to the errand-boy.
'Did you see a man come rushing out of that building just now?' he barked: and the lad looked at him blankly. 'Wot sort of man, mister?'
'I don't know,' said Teal, with a feeling that he was introducing himself as the most majestic lunatic in creation. 'He'd have been running hell for leather-you must have noticed him'
The boy shook his head.
'I ain't seen nobody running abaht, not till you come aht yerself, mister. Wot's the matter-'as 'e pinched something?'
Mr. Teal did not enlighten him. Breathing heavily, he rejoined Junior Inspector Pryke.
'We'd better get back upstairs and see what's happened,' he said shortly.
