XVIII
There was no charge made against Stebbins that night, and inquiries from the newspapers which were anxious to know more of the cause of the affray were met with a stubborn silence. Labar, in fact, had gone home after searching Stebbins carefully with his own hands. The rest he felt could wait till he had some reasonable time for sleep. A night’s detention would do Stebbins no harm, and might put him in a frame of mind to answer some questions that Labar had decided to defer till his own mind was fresh.
With eight hours sleep, a bath, and a little medical attention to his hurt, the inspector felt almost as spruce as he looked, when he arrived at Grape Street in the morning. He cleared up a few odds and ends and had Stebbins brought to his room. In the cold light of day that man answered imperfectly to any conception of a desperate gunman. He was a loose, tall man with a thin sallow face and weak chin. He had neither shaved nor brushed his hair, and his shifty eyes were sunk in deep circles. He eyed Labar nervously, as the detective motioned away his escort, and placed a seat where the light from the window would fall on the detained man’s face.
“Sit down,” said the detective pleasantly. “Have a cigarette. You look pretty jagged this morning.”
In silence Stebbins took the cigarette and seated himself with hunched shoulders on the chair that was indicated. Labar leaned forward and gave him a light.
“Had time to have a good think about things, haven’t you? What made you fly off the handle last night? Bit jumpy, weren’t you?”
“I can’t remember anything about last night,” said Stebbins. “Must have been drunk.”
“Well, I wouldn’t altogether say that.” Labar’s tone was that of friendly disagreement. He stirred a little paper package that lay on the edge of his desk with a long forefinger. “I guess you’d had a shot too much, but it wasn’t drink, eh?”
“Right oh,” agreed the other languidly. “I was doped.”
“Want me to have that written down?” asked Labar. “You know I may have to use any statement you may make as evidence?”
“You’ve got me. I may as well shoot the whole works.” He stretched out a shaking hand and Labar gently removed the package of heroin beyond reach. “Give me just a nip of that and I’ll tell you where I got it.”
“No. You must ask the doctor presently. Now tell me why you didn’t skip as you were advised to?”
“Advised to?” Stebbins shook his head blankly.
Labar held a dirty piece of paper in front of him and read. “The point is full of the greatest possible interest to me. I shall be glad to see you at some time and discuss it in detail. You will of course let me know when you are coming. These things can be settled so much more easily by word of mouth.”
There was a gleam of intelligence in Stebbins’ eyes that swiftly faded to be replaced by a sullen mask of bewilderment. “That’s Greek to me,” he declared.
“I thought you were going to come clean,” observed Labar mildly. “Let me remind you of one or two things. I don’t know what you’ve been doing this past eight or nine years, but if you’ve been going straight you’ll get the credit, if you don’t try to fool me. Now last night I sent your fingerprints to the Yard and had you looked up. You came out from a three years sentence nine years ago. Before that you had done terms in the States and one or two sentences of hard labour here. All of these are on record. Now this letter.” He tapped the paper beneath his hand. “I don’t know whether you’ve forgotten the properties of gum arabic, or whether you were too fuddled yesterday to make use of your knowledge.”
He breathed on the paper and crossing to the grate scraped up some dust with his fingers and sprinkled it over the letter. Irregular block letters appeared between the lines and he thrust the slip beneath the face of the man.
“See that. ‘Panjandrum says get out at once. Splits know of your business. Get under cover right away.’ Now who sent you that? Who is Panjandrum?”
Stebbins puffed hard at his cigarette and his eyebrows drew together in an attempt at concentration. “Guess that was sent to me,” he said slowly. “Perhaps someone slipped it to me. I dunno. I must have forgot it. If I’d read it I would have been where you wouldn’t have found me.”
“Who is Panjandrum?” repeated Labar.
“Panjandrum. Why! that’ll be the boss. I don’t know who he is. I’ve never seen him.”
The inspector thought that quite likely. It was impossible that Larry had had any dealings direct with this drug-sodden crook. “Who put you up to this Streetly House business?” he demanded. “Tell me how you got into that.”
“That,” Stebbins reflected. “Oh, it was Billy Bungey who gave me the tip that I could get a job there. He got me some references and all. Say, there’s a nice little bird at that place. She’s a peach. You ought—”
“Did she have anything to do with this business?”
A languid gesture of denial met the question. “Oh, no. Not in that way. ’Course I learned a few things from her.”
“Never mind about her for the moment then. Tell me how Billy came to ask you to bear a hand. What did you have to do, and how much did you get out of it?”
In stumbling and random phrases Stebbins told what the inspector believed to be a truthful story of his association with the robbery. It was difficult always to keep him to the point, and Malone who was laboriously writing down his statement in longhand clicked his tongue impatiently at times, as he waited with poised pen, until a few incisive questions from Labar had unravelled the tangle.
Stebbins was a type of a shiftless cunning species of crook which is well known to the Criminal Investigation Department. He was a drifter, weak and unscrupulous, lacking the imagination or skill of more successful rogues. Without leadership it was inevitable that any of his clumsy crimes, from smashing a jeweller’s window to petty thefts in the suburbs, should bring him straight into the hands of the police. In this manner had the terms of imprisonment which had been ferreted out from the records been brought to him. He had dodged hopelessly to the United States where he had also been harried, until the lapse of years had brought him back to this country, where as a minor thief he was nearly forgotten, to act when occasion offered as jackal to bolder and more enterprising spirits.
Billy Bungey, it appeared, had stumbled across him by accident at some race meeting, and learned that Stebbins—which of course was not his real name—was making a more or less precarious existence by washing windows at the Palatial Restaurant. There had been one or two small pilferings and Stebbins confided that he expected at any moment to lose his job.
With the spacious condescension of a race-gang leader to an inferior being Billy had hinted that he might find Stebbins profitable work. A meeting had been arranged to take place later at a public-house a few hundred yards from Blackfriars Bridge, and there it had been suggested to him that he might get an appointment as odd-job man at Streetly House. Billy even had his references all in order. Stebbins was to apply to the butler and to say that he was the man that Mr. Hughes had spoken about.
“You go and get this job, first,” said Billy Bungey. “Then we’ll talk about what we want you to do.”
Stebbins told Labar that, up to that time, he had never even heard of the Gertstein collection—which was quite likely, since he moved in circles that would never dream of such a coup. However, he was accepted at Streetly House, and then Billy unfolded the plan to him in some part. He was to study the lay of the house particularly, to find out what steps were taken to protect the jewels, and in fact to learn every detail that could possibly assist in a raid. This he was to communicate to a Mr. Blake at the poste restante at Bruges.
“You’ll get a tenner a week,” explained Billy, “and five hundred pounds if the job is pulled off clean.”
No hint was then given as to the time or method of the robbery. All instructions would reach Stebbins either by letter addressed to him at an accommodation address, or through Billy Bungey. It was pointed out to him that he must on no account seek out the latter unless sent for.
After a few days, a man whom Stebbins did not know, was introduced to him and he was given some instructions on the art of taking wax impressions of keys. He was to use his ingenuity to get an impression of every key that he could lay his hands upon, particularly of one of a small back door that was rarely used. He succeeded in this, and keys which were made from the impressions were sent to him to try. In one or two cases they had to be returned to be tinkered with afresh. At last all was ready and Stebbins was warned to throw up his job on the plea of illness. But the attraction of one of the maids had caused him to delay doing so. He was astonished to read of the burglary on the day that followed his retirement. The day after that he had been handed a parcel containing five hundred one pound treasury notes. These had reached him by a district messenger and there was no indication from whom they came. Nor, as he frankly said, was there any reason for him to make inquiries.
“And,” demanded Labar, “you never saw anyone except Billy Bungey, and this fellow who talked to you about the keys?”
The prisoner made a jerky gesture of assent. “That’s all I know.”
The inspector took the statement from Malone and slowly read it aloud, now and again pressing home a fresh question to elucidate a point. Stebbins listened stolidly, and answered with ready frankness. Labar’s face was inscrutable as he finished.
“This is a voluntary statement you understand,” he said. “You are willing to sign it?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Stebbins. “It’s all true.”
He affixed his signature and was taken below for the formality of the charge. He listened apathetically to the set official words in which he was accused. Then he was hurried away to Marlborough Street Police Court while Labar spent a few minutes on the telephone with Winter at Scotland Yard.
The Chief Constable was affable. “Yes, I heard that you had had a busy day. Not seriously hurt, I hope. That’s all right. I’ll be away down and see you in court. I suppose this man has got to be charged today. You know what that means? You’ll have a horde of newspaper men on your tail. There’s the usual gang here now playing solo whist, I believe, and waiting for something to turn up. Cheerio. See you some time in the next half hour.”
Labar had hoped, but scarcely expected, more than he had got from Stebbins. There was certainly nothing in what Stebbins had said that could implicate Larry Hughes directly. Larry as usual had been remote, aloof from his lesser helpers. It was characteristic of his methods that he should have used this drug-sodden crook as a blind tool. He must have foreseen the possibility of Stebbins being traced, although he had taken every precaution against it. True, Stebbins knew that Billy Bungey was in the business, but Billy had not been known as an associate of the master criminal. If it had not been for the episode at “Maid’s Retreat,” Labar would never have considered the two together. There was no likelihood that inquiries which would have to be undertaken about the “Mr. Blake” of the Bruges poste restante would lead anywhere. No, the trail that might have led from Stebbins to Larry Hughes had been cleverly smothered. But for the coincidence of the intervention of Penelope Noelson and Mrs. Gertstein, the C.I.D. men might well have come to the conclusion that there was no hope of linking Hughes with the crime.
However, from that angle of the case the hunt was up with a vengeance. Labar bit his lips as he reflected that it was necessary to act swiftly if he was to lay Larry Hughes by the heels. The other would be moving. If there was any precaution that he had failed to take beforehand to neutralise evidence against him, he would of a surety be looking into it now. The trouble was that there was nothing which could lead to immediate action.
It is conceivable that this would have been a matter of less concern to the inspector had it not been for Penelope Noelson. Spite of himself, spite of his attempts at strict concentration on the immediate aspects of the case, he was alarmed for her. It should have been no concern of his to view her other than as an item in the sum of the case. His business lay in bringing home a crime to those responsible. The possible peril of one or another of the people involved in the matter should not be allowed to affect the main issue. Human nature, however, being much the same at Scotland Yard as at other places, his judgment was swayed to some extent.
He betook himself to Marlborough Street where he had to give formal evidence of the arrest of Stebbins and asked for a remand. The thing was over in five minutes and he returned to the police station with Winter to have what the latter described as a heart to heart talk over the situation.