£10,000 Reward
“The Associated Merchants Bank are authorised to offer a reward of ten
thousand pounds for information which will lead to the arrest and
conviction of the leader of what is known as the Crimson Circle Gang.
In conjunction with this reward the Secretary of State promises a free
pardon to any member of the gang, other than one actually guilty of
wilful murder, providing that the said member will furnish the
information and evidence requisite to the conviction of the man or
woman known as the Crimson Circle.”
On every hoarding, in every post office window, on every police
station board, the announcement flared in blood-red print.
Derrick Yale, on his way to his office, saw the announcement and read
it and passed on, wondering what effect this would have upon the minor
members of the gang he had been engaged to hunt.
Thalia Drummond read it from the top of a bus, when that vehicle had
pulled up close to a hoarding, to take on a passenger, and she smiled
to herself. But the most remarkable effect of the poster was upon
Harvey Froyant. It brought a colour to his face and a light to his eye
which made him almost youthful. He, too, was on his way to the office
when he read the announcement, but hurried back to his house and took
from a drawer in his study a long list. They were the numbers of the
bank-notes which the Crimson Circle had taken, and he had compiled
them laboriously, almost lovingly.
With his own hands he now made another copy, a work that occupied him
until late in the morning. When he had finished he wrote a letter, and
enclosing the new list of notes, he addressed it, posting the letter
himself, to a firm of lawyers which he knew specialised in the tracing
of lost and stolen property.
Heggitts’ had rendered him good service before, and the next morning
brought a representative of the firm, Mr. James Heggitt, the senior
partner, a wizened little man with a chronic sniff.
The name of Heggitt was not one which was universally respected, nor
did lawyers, when they met, speak of it with affection or regard. And
yet it was one of the most prosperous firms of lawyers in the city.
The majority of its clients were on or over the border-line which
separates the lawful from the unlawful, but to the law-abiding also it
was very useful, and was frequently consulted by more eminent firms
whose clients wished to recover valuable goods which had been taken by
the light-fingered gentry. In some mysterious way Heggitts’ could
always place their finger upon a “gentleman” who had “heard” of the
property which was lost, and, in the majority of cases, the missing
article was restored.
“I got your note, Mr. Froyant,” said the little lawyer, “and I can
tell you now that none of these notes are likely to go through the
usual channels.” He paused and licked his lips, looking past Mr.
Froyant. “The biggest ‘fence’ of all has gone, so I’m not doing him
any injustice when I mention the fact.”
“Who was that?”
“Brabazon,” was the startling reply, and the other stared at him in
astonishment.
“You don’t mean Brabazon of Brabazon’s Bank?”
“Yes, I do,” said Heggitt, nodding. “I should say he did a bigger
business in stolen money than any other man in London. You see, it
could pass through his bank without anybody being the wiser, and as he
did a lot of business abroad and was constantly changing and
re-changing money for export, he got away with it. We knew who was
fencing it. At least, when I say we knew,” he corrected himself, “we
had a shrewd suspicion. As officers of the court, we should, of
course, have notified the authorities had we been certain. I thought
it better to call to explain to you that it is going to be a very
difficult job to trace this money. Most stolen notes are passed on
race-courses, but quite a considerable number find their way abroad,
where it is a much simpler matter to change them, and where they are
ever so much more difficult to trace. You say it was the Crimson
Circle who did it?”
“Do you know them?” asked Froyant quickly.
The lawyer shook his head.
“I have never had any dealings with them at all,” he said, “but, of
course, I knew about them, and enough to know that they are clever
people. It is likely that this man Brabazon has been doing their work,
consciously or unconsciously. In that case they might find a
difficulty in disposing of the stuff, for a bank-note ‘fence’ is one
of the hardest to find. What am I to do when I track one of these
notes and have discovered the person who passed it?”
“I want you to notify me at once,” said Froyant, “and nobody else. You
understand that this is a matter on which my life may hang, and if by
any chance the Crimson Circle get to know that I am trying to recover
the money it will be a very serious thing for me.”
The lawyer agreed.
The Crimson Circle apparently interested him, for he lingered, and
skilfully plied his employer with questions without Mr. Froyant
realising that he was being pumped.
“They are something new in criminals,” he said. “In Italy, where the
Black Hand thrives, the demand for money, followed by a threat of
death, is quite a common occurrence, but I should not have thought it
possible in this country. The most amazing thing of all is that the
Crimson Circle holds together. I should imagine,” he said
thoughtfully, “that there is only one man in it, and that he employs a
very considerable number of people unknown to one another and each
having his particular job to perform. Otherwise he would have been
betrayed a long time ago. It is only the fact that the people serving
him do not know him that makes it possible for him to carry on.”
He took up his hat.
“By the way, did you know Felix Marl? A client of ours is under charge
of burgling his house. Mr. Barnet. You may not have heard of him.”
Mr. Froyant had not heard of “Flush” Barnet, but he knew Marl, and
Marl interested him almost as much as the Crimson Circle interested
the lawyer.
“I knew Marl. Why do you ask?”
The lawyer smiled.
“A strange character,” he said. “A remarkable character in many ways.
He was a member of the gang engaged in frauds on French banks. I
suppose you didn’t know that? His lawyer came to see me to-day.
Apparently a Mrs. Marl has turned up to claim his property, and she
has told the whole story. He and a man named Lightman made a fortune
in France until they were caught. Marl would have been sent to the
guillotine, only he turned State’s evidence. Lightman, I believe, went
to the knife.”
“What a charming man Mr. Marl must have been!” said Mr. Froyant
ironically.
The little lawyer smiled.
“What charming people we all are when our lives are laid bare!” he
said, and Mr. Froyant resented the implied censure, for it was his
boast that his life was a book. He might have added in truth a
bank-book.
So Brabazon was a dealer in stolen notes and Marl a convicted
murderer! Mr. Froyant wondered how Marl managed to escape from his
term of imprisonment, which must have been a severe one, and he
inwardly rejoiced that his business relationships with the deceased
had not ended even more disastrously than they had.
He dressed and went to his club to dine, and his car was running into
Pall Mall when a hoarding poster showed under the light of a lamp and
reminded him of the unpleasant fact that he was a fifty-thousand
pounds poorer man that night than he had been in the morning.
“Ten thousand reward!” he muttered. “Bah! Who is going to turn King’s
evidence? I don’t suppose even Brabazon would dare.”
But he did not know Brabazon.