When she had finished Frank Abbott said, “Let’s get all this as clear as we can. Miss Jones is a friend of Mr. Pegler, the caretaker at the Masters gallery. I think you saw him, Mr. Bellingdon.” Lucius Bellingdon said, “Yes.”

“Well, I saw him too. He is the only link we’ve got with the man who, according to Miss Paine, was one of the people who planned the theft of your necklace and the murder of your secretary. Up to now Pegler has been a complete wash-out. He saw this man, and he talked to him and told him all about Miss Paine, and how good she was at lip-reading. And it’s not much of a guess to suppose that he put the wind up him to a considerable extent, with the result that Miss Paine met with an accident-and I can’t help thinking that Mr. Pegler is lucky not to have met with one too. But after all that, the only description that Pegler could give was one which would have fitted almost anyone. And now Miss Jones says he recognized the man in the street-and after dark at that!”

Miss Silver sat with her hands folded on her knitting-bag.

“This man was standing under a street-lamp with Mr. Bray. They were waiting to cross the road. Miss Jones says that the light was good, and that Mr. Pegler never forgets a face. I believe it to be quite possible to have a good visual memory without possessing any faculty of description.”

Lucius Bellingdon said,

“What day was this?”

“Yesterday evening about eight o’clock.”

“Then you’d better get hold of Arnold Bray and ask him who he was with last night, Inspector.”

“Yes, we’ll do that.”

Lucius gave a short, hard laugh.

“You may get something out of him if you scare him enough. What no one is going to get me to believe is that Arnold had any hand in stealing the necklace or shooting Arthur Hughes!”

Chapter 24

ARNOLD BRAY was duly interviewed. He had a room in a poor lodging-house and everything shabby about him. If he was engaged in criminal enterprises, he certainly had not succeeded in making them pay. He had a soft voice, a nervous manner, and a strong family resemblance to his sister. Frank Abbott, who had accompanied Inspector Crisp on this domiciliary visit, found himself sharing Lucius Bellingdon’s inability to accept him as the murderer of Arthur Hughes.

“Mr. Bray, you were in Putney last night, in the High Street.”

Crisp’s bark produced a noticeable access of nervousness.

“Any reason why I shouldn’t have been?”

“We would like to know what you were doing there.”

“I had a bit of business to attend to.”

“Mind saying what it was?”

“Yes, I do. It was private.” His eyes flickered away from Crisp’s hard stare.

“You were seen in the High Street with a man whom we should like to interview.”

“Who saw me?”

“That’s neither here nor there, Mr. Bray. You were seen, and the man you were with was seen. What name do you know him by?”

He certainly was very nervous indeed.

“Look here, what’s all this about? I was in Putney on private business of my own. If you want to know, I was looking about for a second-hand bicycle. Someone told me a friend of his had got one he wanted to sell, and I thought I would have a look at it. He must have given me the wrong address or something, because when I got there I couldn’t find the place and nobody seemed to know anything about it-you know how it is. If I was talking to anyone, it would be when I was trying to find out about this chap’s address.”

If he was making it up as he went along, it wasn’t a bad effort. He obviously thought so himself, because his manner became more confident. Frank Abbott said in an easygoing way,

“What was his name, this chap you were looking for?”

Arnold Bray said,

“Robertson-Jack Robertson.”

“And the address?”

“Well, that’s where the whole thing slipped up. The man who told me about it said this chap with the bike was lodging with some people in the Emden Road. He didn’t remember the name, and wasn’t too sure of the number but he thought it was 79 or 97- anyway something with a seven and a nine in it. So that’s what I was doing-asking whether anyone knew this Jack Robertson.”

Crisp went on staring at him.

“Very much of a wild goose chase, wasn’t it? What was the name of the chap who told you about Robertson and this bike he was supposed to be selling?”

Arnold Bray looked almost smug.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Inspector. It was just a chap I got talking to in the local.”

Crisp went on asking questions, but they got him nowhere. The moment when Arnold Bray could have been scared into a breakdown was over. Taken by surprise, and undoubtedly shaken, he had managed to produce a story which it was difficult to disprove. They mightn’t believe it, but it was the sort of thing that could easily have happened. It was, in fact, the sort of thing that did happen, and nothing in the interview had brought them, or was likely to bring them, a single step nearer to the man whom Paulina Paine had watched in the Masters gallery.

As they walked away, Frank Abbott said,

“He was rattled all right.”

Crisp barked.

“He’s the kind who always would be rattled if a police officer spoke to him.”

“Yet you say he has never been in trouble?”

Crisp frowned.

“He’s been on the edge of it to my certain knowledge. Hangs about there, I’d say. Some day he’ll go over the edge-then we’ll get him.”

After a minute or two Frank Abbott said,

“What about putting a tail on him? If he’s in with this man we want he’s likely enough to communicate with him-ring up, or go and see him. I’ve an idea we did rattle him more than a little. If he’s in this show at all, it’s as a subordinate, and if he’s the sort I take him for and we’ve scared him, then he’s liable to run to his boss about it. I think it’s worth trying.”

Frank Abbott was right about Arnold Bray being scared. When the two police officers had gone he sat down and put his head in his hands. He had got off this time, but they might come sneaking back-the police had a nasty way of doing that. He must try and remember exactly what he had told them. If there was the slightest slip anywhere, they would think that he had made the whole thing up.

He went over it slowly bit by bit. Someone in the local who had mentioned a bike that was going cheap in Putney. Nothing they could check up on there. And the chap who had the bike to sell… Yes, Robertson. He had hit on the name because of seeing it on a tradesman’s van in Putney. It was the kind of name anyone might have, with a respectable Scotch sound about it. But he had tacked a Christian name on to it. Now what had he got to do that for? Just for a moment he wasn’t sure what the name was. It might have been Jack, or Joe, or Bill, or Jim, or anything.

He sat there and sweated, until all at once it came to him that it was Jack, because what was in his mind was the old tag about “as sure as my name is Jack Robinson”, and at the last minute he had given it a twist and made it Robertson. So that was all right. But he’d have to pass the word that they’d been seen on Friday night. No more Putney for either of them if there was anyone there who could spot them like that and pass the word to the police. And if they weren’t going to meet again in a hurry, then there would have to be some arrangement about the money.

After a bit he went down to the call-box in the station yard. He had to stand and watch whilst a red-faced woman talked at length. A call-box was supposed to be soundproof, but things were not always what they were supposed to be. If the door didn’t quite fit, you might just as well be out in the street.

As he waited for the red-faced woman to finish her conversation he was pleased to observe that he could not hear a word she was saying. When she came out and he took her place it was with a certain sense of confidence that he got through the preliminaries, dropped in the required coins, and pressed button “A”.