The Man They Couldn't Arrest

Delbury and Shaughnessy climbed out of their car in the Notting Hill backwater. A hurried inspection of the local directory had soon located the jewellery shop that admitted to the proprietorship of one Tansy.

They glanced up and down the road. There was no traffic, and only a solitary pedestrian or two hurrying to work broke the monotonous emptiness of the street.

"Looks a likely sort of a hole for a jeweller's," said Shaughnessy grimly. "It's meself that's thinking Mr. Tansy has a turnover of tuppence an hour---no less!"

"Looks good to me," assented Delbury. "The Ghost says he's a smelter and you can stake your buttons on it he's right. Jump around the back. Criminal aren't early risers, as a class. He's still in bed yet. Round you go and hang on to him like a limpet if he tries to make a bolt."

Delbury gave his man five minutes grace and then banged thunderously on the knocker. The echoes of it clanged through the house; and a silence fell. Delbury frowned. it did not auger well. He knocked again-- and again-- and again.

Then he swore, gently and continuously. The bird had flown. He knew it.

"Mick," he called up the passage, "go back to headquarters and get search warrant. Hurry. I'm going to break in right now."

Shaughnessy pulled out a notebook and scribbled the address down.

"Quick work, wasn't it?" he asked, c.o.c.king a meaning eye at his chief. "The job didn't happen till after midnight--at the earliest; it was half past seven before the body was found, and here's the bird already the wing. Looks to me as though there's a leak wants stopping up somewhere."

"Seems like it," said Delbury shortly. He was fumbling at a bunch of skeleton keys, thin lengths of strong copper wire with cleverly bent ends. He cast a rapid glance at the lock and then at the shuttered Windows.

"M' yes," he muttered in a preoccupied undertone. "It certainly seems like it Mick. Now there's three possibilities. Tansy was either given the wires from Dain's house or he was aware of the job coming off beforehand, or there's a nasty escape of gas at Greydene. which are you taking?"

"If it's meself you're asking, I'd say the second. Tansy knew all about the murder attempt before Lyall left home. The Ghost says that much in his card. Tansy was to be one of the main plans in his alibi. When he found the game was up he just bolted."

Delbury nodded grimly. "You breeze off and get that warrant and tell the driver to step on the gas. We shall have half the neighborhood round us if we stay here much longer. I'll be in by the time you get back."

The Irishman went back to the car, and in two minutes he was out of sight, sliding up the Bayswater Road and urging the driver yo open her out.

Delbury resumed his attentions to the recalcitrant door. for another five minutes his efforts were abortive. It was quite an ordinary street door, ironmonger's lock, the veriest tyro should have been able to pick it. Yet for some reason it defied him.

Delbury decided that the departing Tansy had left a little keepsake behind him. He smiled to himself, and produced from his pocket a long, thin pair of tweezers. They worked on a spring from the b.u.t.t end. He inserted them and explored inside till he found obstruction. something was tangled round the wards. He got it out at last, a single cotton thread, but there was about fifteen yards of it all poked with beautiful effectiveness into the all-important vitals of the lock.

Delbury was not over perturbed. fifty percent of the detectives stock-in-trade is patience. And the mere presence of that departing safeguard told him that the bolts were not drawn. Tansy had simply stuffed the cotton into the lock and then slammed the door to.

He cleared out the last of the thread, fitted another skeleton key and turned it. The lock opened easily and silently. Delbury went in and found himself in the little front shop. it was obvious that the jeweller display was merely a blind. The stuff was mostly secondhand, and what was not was cheap, tawdry stuff that can be guaranteed never to attract a customer from one weeks end to another. There were even a couple of show-cases of cheap electro-plate ticketed for price at the cost of real silver.

Delbury poked around and found the electric-light switch.

He needed light badly, for the front shutters were still up and a murky gloom pervaded the place inside.

Across in the corner, fronting the window, was another very delightful bit of camouflage. It was a little glass-panelled bay, fitted out as a watch-repairer's bench. All the tools of the trade were set out in small racks round about, and various component parts of watches were tucked away under the bowls of broken wine glasses in quite the approved style. Passer-by glancing in might have passed that way for years after year and never noticed the bluff.

Delbury did. He saw through the little game in about five seconds. The proofs were obvious. All the delicate little instrument in the racks were old and rusted. They were corroded at the joints and had not been used for years. The pieces set out with such scrupulous care under the inverted glasses were odd. They did not fit--- did not even belong to the same make of watch. The watch actually laid out for repairs lacked three quarters of its vitals. To have set it going again would have cost roughly five times it's original worth. Tansy, all too obviously had been playing his little pretence with that watch for months.

He picked the watch up and wrapped it carefully away in his handkerchief. the fingerprint clues would be highly esteemed by a certain gentleman at the Yard, who armed with a powder and an enlarging camera, would have p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e in trotting out Tansy's complete criminal record in something under fifteen minutes.

In a small drawer under the bench were a few bundles of dusty bills. Every one was from a local rival. a real watch repairing jeweller, and concerned the repair of various watches.

The evidence confirmed Delbury's presumptions. The place was nothing more than a legitimately disguised meeting place for cracksman.

There was a communicating door leading to the apartments at the back, but it was heavily lock and bolted. Delbury was twenty minutes gaining access, and by the time he had got the wards of the last lock over, Shaughnessy was back with the search warrant.

Together they went in. There was a dark passage leading to another room right at the back. Shaughnessy informed him that was the room which abutted on the top of the alley at the back, the windows of which were barred up and shuttered.