The Man They Couldn't Arrest

Shaughnessy bent down and whispered to his senior.

"Looks like he came in through that window, chief," he said.

Delbury, who was busily examine the contents of the wallet, shrugged and told his second to go over and have a look at it.

But as Harper walked across he was cut short by an expression from Delbury in which amazement, incredulity and utter bewilderment were all blended. "Great heavens, Mick, look here!"

Delbury had just open a concealed flap in the wallet and taken something out.

Shaughnessy picked the card up.

"That's the thirty-sixth I've seen like that," he said quietly..

"And it's the first one that wasn't addressed to the Yard,"

Delbury flicked the card over. It was addressed to Willard Lyall, Esq., at his house at Highgate. The post-mark was a smudgy bodge of ink and indecipherable.

Shaughnessy took it again and studied it critically. His speciality was the Berthon systems of identification, and his eyes were boring hard into the tiny whorl-lines of the fingerprint in the red wafer.

"This is the same as others, chief," he said with conviction.

"A thumbprint, a right handed thumbprint, and very clear. But it's not much use to us without the rest." He turned to the junior. "Harper, go over the whole of this room and see what you can find in the way of fingerprints. There ought to be plenty among all those instruments and machinery--- specially with all that oil knocking about."

Delbury, with his notebook out, was writing feverishly.

"Explains a whole lot, that card, doesn't it?" he muttered.

"Well, Lyall certainly took the hint. It seems that he knew who the ghost was, anyway."

"Yes. The rest of the silver Arrow bunch will be pleased to hear about this."

"What I want to know," said Shaughnessy, scratching his head, "is why the blazing banshee did the Ghost double cross himself? First send us intimation no. 34, giving full particulars of the park Lane burglary, including, mind you the details about Willard Lyall, 'Who' he says, is unknown to me.' Then right on top of that he goes and sends this warning to Lyall."

"Yes, I'd noticed that," said Delbury sombrely. "It knocks my own theory on the head. For a while I had the wild idea that Dain himself might be the Ghost. But the man who is playing the ghost is a man who has spent the whole of his life in the thick of the criminal game. To have amassed the amount of knowledge he has gained he must have been mixed up with the criminal section from the time he left the cradle. But we've only just touched the fringe of it yet. There's Tansy the jeweller, to be sounded yet. Send for that valet chap."

Manders came in, worried and a little nervous.

"Your name's Manders, isn't it? you're personal valet to Mr. Valmon Dain?" Delbury was off and away the moment the man put his foot inside the door.

"Yes sir. I've been with him for five years."

Delbury pointed to the inanimate figure by the desk.

"Ever seen this man before?" he asked.

"No sir. But there's a photograph of him in Mr. Dain's library. It's side by side with miss Mercia Lyall. In spite of the wound in his face I recognized him almost as soon as I entered the room."

"What time was that?"

"About half past seven, or . maybe a few minutes later."

"You saw Mr. Dain last night before you locked up?"

"Yes sir. He gave orders that he was not to be disturbed."

"Any special reason for that?"

"He was going to work all night. He often does. And if he does he always gives that same order. He is not at home to anybody. Even the servants are not allowed to come down the passage leading to this room. The earliest he allows them down here is seven o'clock."

"Now tell me -----and remember i want you to think very carefully before you give me this answer----- was he expecting a visit from Mr. Lyall last night?"

"No sir," said the valet emphatically.

"You're quite sure of that?"

"Yea sir, quite sure. Mr. Dain was expecting nobody last night. I can tell you that definitely." The valet was emphatic in his assertion. "All the time I've been here with him he has never forgotten an appointment. sometimes, when he has made up his mind in a hurry to work all night and has had people coming here during the evening, he has had me rushing round all the afternoon in his car with letters of regret and apology, explaining that he has to candle the appointment."

"Yes?" Delbury sensed that Manders had another point to offer on that subject.

"Well---- and last night especially he told me he was not to be disturbed, whatever happened. "I am out; you understand, manders?' he says. 'i am out, and I won't be disturbed, no matter who calls. Not even if you get a ring on the phone from Miss Lyall---- or anyone else at Greydene,' he says."

Delbury and Shaughnessy exchange significant glances.

"Has he ever said that sort of things before?" asked Delbury.

"Several times. I've got to know him and his ways a bit, you see Sir, since I've been here. And as soon as he said that I knew he had a big job on last night. One of his big nights. He has one now and again after he's worked up a lot of preliminary plans and things. And then , when he's got everything ready, he goes right bang through with his final experiments and then sleeps like a log right round the clock."

"And has he been working up to one of these big nights as you call them?"

"Well, yes and no. A few days ago he had one when he finished his gun sights for the Admiralty. But that was all over and done with. Then the war office suggested a variation of his ideas might be applied to bomb dropping at night for aeroplanes, and he was working on that. That's all I can tell you."

"Did you hear any queer sounds during the night?"

"Not one sir"

"Nothing like a revolver shot, or a Window being forced or anything like that?"

"Nothing at all. I didn't even hear his car go away. I know it's gone, because he came home in it last night and it isn't there now. But all of us servants sleep right up at the top of the house at the back. We probably wouldn't have heard anything even if we were awake."

Delbury nodded. "Now about that door," he said. "Know anything about that?"

"Only that I wouldn't touch it for a pension after eleven o'clock at night."

"Oh! Why?"

"Mr. Dain warns us all about it. He said we would get kicked into the next parish if we monkeyed about with it after he had shut himself up in here for the night."

"Make a note of that, Mick. And the window?"

"Same thing about the window Sir."

"Thank you. That will do. You've been very helpful, Manders. You've given your information well. Fond of your master, aren't you?"

"He's the best man in London, Sir."

"Alright. I may want you later on"He turned to the junior. "Had any luck with the fingerprints, Harper?" He asked.