The Man They Couldn't Arrest

Throughout breakfast Lyall was very quiet and uncommunicative. To cover his very unusual mealtime restraint he pretended a deep absorption in his morning papers.

As soon as he had left the house, Mercia and her mother exchange meaning glances.

"Dad seems very reserved this morning mum," said Mercia.

"Probably worried about business affairs, my dear," said Mrs. Lyall. "You will come to know men in times as well as I do. And I think I know Willard very well. When a man is having a harassing time in the city, he resorts to silence."

Mercia shrugged.

"I don't think it's mere worry," she said quietly. "I've seen dad when he has had worry before. I've seen him when he has been like a bear with a sore head. But I've never seen him like he was this morning when I came into the breakfast room. I know dad, and it seemed to me that he had received some awful shock."

Mrs. Lyall looked very perturbed.

"A shock? But my dear really?" she said.

And Mercia nodded emphatically. "So much so that I spoke to him it," she declared. "I pulled his leg and tried to get him to contest to go down to Brighton after all with Mr. Dain."

"Yes and then?"

"You saw the result yourself. He just dried right up. Didn't say another word. And that's not like dad, you know. I don't quite know how to put it but it seemed to me that as soon as I mentioned Mr. Dain's name, dad seemed to close up like an oyster."

"Yes , I certainly noticed that myself," said her mother gravely. "Which is why I suspected business worries. I've noticed that preoccupied look before when things have been going bad with him in the city."

Mercia interjected another suggestion, one with so intimate a touch that she coloured a little.

"You----you don't think he objects to my friendship with Mr. Dain, do you must?" She asked the question a little shyly with just a note of embarrassed diffidence in her voice.

"Good gracious, no dear. Please dismiss that thought from your mind. I know your father's view on that matter perfectly and strictly between ourselves-----they are more than congratulatory to you. No my dear it isn't that at all."

Twenty minutes after leaving his home in Highgate, Willard Lyall was knocking at an unpretentious-looking door in a Notting Hill side street. It was the private entrance to a small working jeweller's shop.

At his third knock the door was opened a fee inches and an unsavoury-looking face squinted out, a face chiefly notable for the amazing amount of dirt that appeared to have taken up a permanent abode upon it and a ghastly-looking cast in the eyes.

"Good morning, Tansy," said Lyall.

"Good Gawd, guv-----you! come in quick!". whispered the apparition.

He escorted Lyall through to a little workshop at the back of the premises. The windows were heavily painted over and the atmosphere was thick with the heat of burning carbon. Along a low bench were a row of electric braziers and a big caldron stood at the far end. Near it was a neat little heap of small gold bars cooling. They were fresh from the great melting pot.

The little shop in front was only a blind. The premises were nothing more or less than a gold refinery. It was in that workshop that the proceeds of innumerable clever coups had been reduced from beautifully carved and ornamented jewellery to plain bar-gold.

That great, bricked-in melting pot with the forced draught furnace beneath it, had seen the dissolution of the famous Rockingham plate, that beautiful collection of hammered gold which for years had been the nucleus and central attraction of the great Rockingham collection.

All the art and beauty of the equally renowned Wellsbeck silver had melted into a mere hundred-weight of seething whiteness in its superheated maw.

Only that very morning the pot had seen perfect workmanship fade and collapse out of a hundred odd pieces of gold plate, proceeds of a cleverly executed raid on a well-known Bond Street jeweller's.

And all that was left of it now was that pyramid of small gold bars stacked in a neat heap beside the caldron, hot and shimmering dully.

Tansy locked a heavy door behind him when Lyall had entered and then turned anxiously to his chief.

"Anything wrong, Guv?" he quarried. "Don't often get a visit from you in plain daylight."

"Well, that's what I came to see you about," said Lyall grimly. He sat down on the edge of the bench and lit a cigarette. "Anything happened since I saw you last?" he jerked suddenly.

Tansy scratched his head.

"No, no ; not that I can think of," he saud slowly. "K. rang me up this morning. He had just heard from the others that you had given the word for Tuesday morning. And he rang me up to say so."

"And nothing else has occurred at all?"

"Not a thing, so far as I know."

"Well look here Tansy, something very fishy has been happening lately. And I don't like it." Lyall puffed at his cigarette, blowing long the blue cloud at the smoke-grimed ceiling.

"What-----what do you mean, guv'nor?" asked the jeweller nervously. "The Yard smelling a rat? somebody been round making inquiries?"

"No, not quite that..... but.... listen----if there was a white rat in our crowd, a renegade, a traitor, a police spy whom would you most suspect?"

"Gawd!" Tansy blanched under the furnace-dirt on his face. "Do you mean that, Guv? You think we've got a SQUEALER somewhere?"

"I do."

Lyall looked at him cold and steady.

Tansy eyed him back, and the nervousness gave way to a hard, glittering light in his eyes.

"That means there's a job of murder to be done, I suppose?" he said thickly.

"Precisely that," replied Lyall and his hand went into his inside pocket.

The other eyed his leader silently and figured his grimy chin.

"Murder eh?" he said slowly. "Well it isn't the first time we've had to call in the undertakers."

"Quite," said Lyall coldly. "But in this case there is a difference. Hitherto we have known with a good deal of certitude who was------er---to become the corpse. In the present instance we seem to be not so fortunate."

"I don't quite get you," said Tansy. He out his hands in his pockets and thrust his head forward.

"Probably not," agreed Lyall, "but I am in possession of certain facts which points definitely to the existence of a turn-coat in our midst, and yet give not the faintest clue to his identity."

He took from his pocket the warning card he had received that morning and handed it to Tansy.

The fence picked up a strong pebble magnifying glass from his bench and adjusted it to his horribly defective eye.

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?" asked Lyall.

The jeweller studied the card down with the painstaking slowness of his type. He turned it over and critically read the address.

"Hell!" he growled, and held the card off by the fingertips as though he was afraid it might do him an injury.

"What do you make of it?" Lyall rolled his cigarette in his mouth and the words purred out from between his lips.

"make of it?" Tansy's tone was one of puzzled incredulity.. "Well if it ain't a fake----it's-----it's---"

"It isn't a fake. it's a genuine warning. And the ghastly part of it is that I haven't the faintest idea who its from.

Doesn't that convey anything to you?"

It would appear that it certainly did. Tansy's face had gone as white as the grime on it would allow.