Although perhaps the most spectacular, in reality the most simple of
the problems that arise at Scotland Yard is the pursuit of a known man
for a known crime. A criminal may escape if there is nothing to link
him with an offence, but once a link is established it is long odds
that, hide where he may, pursuit will catch up with him at last. The
whole world is aroused to the hue and cry. He may disguise himself, he
may flee to the ends of the earth, but even if persistent methodical
search fails to reveal him, some chance will almost to a certainty lead
to his betrayal.
Harry Labar's perspective, from his closeness to affairs, was not quite
so clear in this matter as Winter's. That veteran did not conceal his
satisfaction at the manner in which the investigation was developing.
"You've got Larry Hughes out into the open at last, my boy," he said.
"All you have to do now is to worry him. Keep him on the run. Things
are coming your way. Don't let any slack fit come along and spoil it
all."
"Yes, sir." Labar received the compliment with meekness. It was
something anyway to get a compliment out of the Chief Constable. "But
we haven't got anything yet that will associate him with the robbery.
Stebbins may help us to get at Billy Bungey. There is Mrs. Gertstein.
There is Gold Dust Teddy. So far we're to the good. But we haven't got
the solid evidence yet that will lead to a conviction of the main guy.
He's slippery as an eel and you know it, sir."
Winter chuckled. "Don't come that on me, Labar. Trying to establish an
alibi in case things go wrong, are you? Going to get all the little
fish and let the big one slip through the net? Same old story about
Larry. Well, it doesn't go down with me. You've got to get Larry. See
if you can't get him for the Gertstein job, hook him up for the 'Maid's
Retreat' trouble. Only get him."
"I'm going to get him, sir," returned the inspector, with an inflection
in his voice that caused Winter to glance at him shrewdly through his
spectacles. "I've just a little personal feeling in this matter, and
I'm going through with it."
Winter was looking idly at the ceiling. "Nice girl that Miss Noelson,
they tell me," he said absently. "Doesn't always do to mix sentiment up
with our business, though, Labar."
A slight tinge of colour crept under the tinge of Labar's tan. He
wondered how the other had got to learn of something that he felt was
a secret rigorously locked in his own breast. Perhaps the Chief was
only guessing. "I don't know much about the young lady," he returned.
"She's a nice girl, as you say. But you can rely that nothing will
interfere with my duty."
The thin relic of a smile still loitered about the Chief Constable's
lips as he nodded. "Don't mind an old hand giving you a hint, do you?
There's another thing. When does Myson get back from his holidays?"
Myson was a detective inspector who had not yet reached divisional
rank, who was the senior of the C.I.D. men in Labar's division. Labar
consulted a pad.
"Ought to be back in a week's time," he said. "He offered to come back
when this thing broke, but I didn't think it was worth while bothering
him."
"He's got a pretty sound idea of how things are in your division I take
it?"
"I think so."
"Right. Wire him to come back at once. He'll have to take charge of all
matters here. After this you'll play a lone hand on this job. You'll
want your mind free of everything else if you're going to play the game
out with Larry."
The divisional inspector looked a little doubtfully at his chief. "I
hope you don't think that----"
"That you can't run the division, and handle this case too. I do think
so. I don't want you to fall between two stools. You want your mind
free for this business now it's got so far. You're still the divisional
inspector here, but Myson will act until you want to take the reins. Go
and find where Larry's hide-out is and it won't matter whether you are
away a week or a month."
"That certainly ought to make it simpler," said Labar, and with a curt
and not unfriendly nod the Chief Constable was gone.
Labar drew up the copy for a double crown poster headed with the
sinister big black letters affected by the police for bills of this
kind--"WANTED."
Then with such skill in portraiture as he possessed, added to the
scientific formula for these matters, he drew a word picture of Billy
Bungey, and sent the resulting composition along to the Criminal
Record Office with the request that any amendments might be made and
a photograph added if possible, before it was sent to the printing
department which is one of the subsidiary departments of the Yard.
He dictated a wire to Myson, and began clearing his desk with a mind
from which a weight had been lifted. For there was no denying, as
Winter had said, that the Larry Hughes business was one that ought to
demand his full attention. In the normal way it would have gone to a
chief inspector, who would have had no other duties to distract his
mind while the case lasted.
That done Labar sat down to study a large scale map of the
south-eastern corner of England. He had sound reasons for supposing
that Hughes was somewhere in that angle formed by Kent and Sussex.
The Rolls Royce car in which Penelope Noelson had been abducted, had
been traced for many miles along the Hastings road. Larry's dash to
London and to "Maid's Retreat" convinced the detective that the hiding
place wherever it might be was within a hundred miles from London. He
explored the map with his forefinger. There were dozens of places along
remote roads where concealment might be effective. But Labar washed out
a great many of these as improbable. He had already circularised the
police forces of the area in which he felt that the fugitives might be
located. Larry had been using his car, and a Rolls Royce in a country
lane would be even more conspicuous to a village constable, than the
same car on one of the main roads. Labar had a list of every Rolls
Royce that had been seen about the area he was searching since Larry's
flight. Those of which the numbers had been taken had for the most part
been identified, and wiped out. There remained several which might or
might not have been Larry's.
There had been five such cars seen on the Folkestone--Rye road. One
constable reported that a shepherd on the Romney Marshes had told him
of a big car--which the police officer believed might have been a
Rolls Royce--seen twice on a derelict stretch of road leading into the
marshland.
Labar bent his mind to this point. It seemed the most promising of all
to start from, although it might, as so often happens in these cases
where a man is acting more or less on guess work, prove nothing but a
mare's nest. But if a man wanted to keep out of the way what better
place of refuge could he find than these same desolate Romney Marshes.
With Myson in charge at Grape Street, other ends of the investigation
in London could for the while be left to themselves. Labar decided that
with two men he could rake the district as effectively and more quietly
than if he had a dozen. If his guess was right, it would not do to
disturb Larry.
That evening, with a suit-case and a bag of golf clubs, he descended
on the mediæval town of Rye. A golfer or an artist would find himself
entirely without question at the ancient Cinque Port Town. For his
own purposes Harry Labar was a naturalist as well as a golfer, and
he proposed to examine the flora and fauna of the marshes with some
precision ere he returned to town.
He did not go to one of the old hostelries where visitors might have
become curious and friendly. He took humble lodgings at the house of
a retired Metropolitan police constable who might be relied upon to
keep his mouth shut in any circumstances. Also it is regrettable to
record that Labar's first night in town was spent in the cheaper kind
of four ale bars in the society of local shop assistants, shepherds,
and watermen. They found the gentleman from London, whose name it was
disclosed was James May, an hospitable and genial person with a thirst
for information about the districts that lie north-east of Rye which was
not easily assuaged.
It was six o'clock the next morning when an unshaven man clad in a
rough old suit of Harris tweeds, who might have been a tramp or a
naturalist set out through the old town gate in the general direction
of Folkestone. A burly man in a decrepit Ford car passed him just
outside the Ypres Tower. It was Malone also setting out on the search
for a needle in a haystack. No sign of recognition passed between
the two men. Labar trudged on and in the course of the next hour was
overtaken by an early charabanc on its way to Folkestone. He stopped it
and bought a lift for half a dozen miles or so.
He had no fixed plan. If anything came of this excursion luck would
have to be with him. Away on his right he could see mile after mile of
flat country cut into patterns by a complicated series of dykes, and
save for a rare farmhouse or cottage almost void of any indication of
human inhabitants.
At a point which he had marked on a small pocket map he descended. He
was some few miles from Lydd, but across the wide stretches of marsh
and cornland there was only one low and inconspicuous building which
a weather-beaten sign announced as an inn, "Licensed to sell by
retail wines, spirits, beer and tobacco." How it might find sufficient
customers to support it in that forsaken region Labar did not stop to
inquire. He had already had breakfast, but that was two hours agone
and an able-bodied detective can always support two breakfasts in the
course of his duty. Anyway it was too early in the day for any other
pretext to serve.
An old, old man pottering about the garden was very dubious. The inn
did not lay itself out much for early meals. However if mister could
put up with tea and eggs he would consult his wife as to what might be
done.
Tea and eggs it appeared were the very things for which the wayfarer
had an inordinate craving. He was afforded a seat in the one bare
public room that the inn boasted, while an old lady with crinkled
cheeks began to fussily spread a somewhat stained cloth, and to issue
instructions to the old man who was boiling the eggs in the adjoining
room.
"A lonely neighbourhood this," observed the inspector idly.
"There be worse," said the woman. "Mind ye, John, to keep an eye on
the clock. Them eggs should be on not a mite longer than two and a
half minutes. Yes, there be more lonely places than this. Out there
on the marsh"--she jerked a thumb backwards over her shoulder--"there
be places where you won't see a human soul week in and week out. Here
we get plenty of company, what with the lookers and the traffic on
the road. We've lived here nigh on forty years and we ain't got no
complaint. Leastways its bad for the rheumatics sometimes, and my old
man there he has a touch of ague."
She bustled out with the remark that she couldn't trust that durned old
fool to look at the clock, and continued the conversation through the
open door.
"Reckon you'll be making for Folkestone. 'Tis a tidy walk."
"No. I'm staying at Rye. I've come out to have a walk over the marshes."
She loomed out a bulky figure framed in the doorway. "Then you baint
lookin' for work? You be a visitor? A gentleman?"
"I'm what they call a naturalist. I want to have a look at the plants
and birds and things round about. I thought of walking across towards
Dungeness."
She cocked her hands on her hips. "I know what a naturalist is," she
said nodding wisely. "You pick slimy things out of the dicks and keep
'em in little bottles. We've had gentlemen out here before like that.
Lor-a-mussy, John, them eggs will be as hard as bricks."
In a panic she flung back into the kitchen, and presently she set his
meal before him.
"You baint thinkin' of trying to walk straight across, be you?" she
asked. "You'll be in a turble tangle if you do. Like as not, you'll
lose yourself. Looks clear enough, but, when you get out in it, you'll
find dicks and sluices and whatnot, all ravelling you up like. Then as
you get out near the Ness you'll find the walking not too good."
Labar swallowed a mouthful of hard-boiled egg. "I can find a road, I
suppose."
She shook her head. "They baint what you might call proper roads. Rough
tracks most of 'em."
"Not good enough for a motor car, eh?"
She considered doubtfully. "I've knowd cars use some of 'em. But they
do tell me as they shake the innards all up."
He led her to a discussion on the topography of the marshes in which
the old man came and joined. By the time his breakfast was finished he
had extracted much information that might be indirectly useful in his
quest, but nothing bearing directly upon it. The only point that they
were unanimous upon was that it was a foolhardy thing for a stranger to
explore the marshes without a guide. It was odds that if he persisted
he would have to spend a night in the "hand-cold" and mist-sodden
atmosphere.
Laughingly he waved aside their warnings and since one road was like
another for his purpose set off across the nearest marsh track in the
general direction of Dungeness. An hour's walking on the lonely wastes
convinced him that the old folk knew what they were talking about. His
map and pocket compass helped him only vaguely, for as he branched into
deeper recesses there were twists and tangles, tracks that came to an
abrupt nothingness, and unexpected watercourses that barred his way.
Once or twice he located himself by the aid of occasional "lookers,"
as the shepherds of the district are locally known. After all, it did
not much matter whether he went in one direction or another. He wished
there were more shepherds. If there had been a big motor car traversing
these rough tracts one or the other of them would surely have seen it.
Many hours went by, however, and all his inquiries met with negative
result. He was by now completely lost. An hour had gone since he had
seen a living soul and he sat down to eat a sandwich, with which he had
had the forethought to provide himself, and to consider the position.
He was tired and the sun was hot. He stretched himself for a short nap
after his frugal repast. When he awoke he glanced at his watch and
swore to himself as he realised that he had slept for over two hours.
He stood up and stretched himself, and then suddenly dropped at full
length in the coarse grass and stared intently across the marsh about
which a slight haze was already beginning to rise.
Something less than a mile away a car was slowly making its way. The
distance was too great for him to discern anything more than that it
was a big saloon, but he had not the slightest doubt that it was the
very car that he was seeking. It was utterly improbable that any other
would be risking its springs in this desolate region.
He lay very still till the motor disappeared from sight. Then he took
a compass bearing to the point at which he had seen it. He stuck his
stick in the ground and tied a handkerchief to it, to afford him a very
necessary point from which to work, for by now he knew that it might
cost him three miles of roundabout walking to make his way to the spot
even though it was under a mile away in a straight line. Then he set
off.
Again and again he had to retrace his steps, to find some way of
crossing the many dykes, and he was duly thankful that he had had the
intelligence to make an improvised flag which afforded him a definite
clue to his starting point in the dreary sameness of the marsh.
Something over an hour of tedious walking it took him to cover the
distance. At last a hazardous journey over a slimy plank brought him to
a narrow and almost imperceptible roadway. And there imprinted on the
turf were the slight but unmistakeable tyre marks of a big motor car.
Labar whistled cheerfully as he bent to examine them.