by E.
“He seems to make a hobby of ladies. First Norma de Grey and now another one,” the inspector commented.
It was the following morning, when reports came in from the seats of the various fires, that Doctor Manson first gained an inkling of where the investigations into the combined cases were leading him. They were full and comprehensive, as had been asked for, and were the result of inquiries made by the local branches of the C.I.D. and the fire services.
Since they play an important part in the mystery, it will be as well to give them in full.
The first of them was signed by the detective-inspector in charge of the C.I.D. at Birmingham.
It ran as follows:
Conflagration, Bric-à-brac shop; request for any unusual circumstances in connection with:
1. The fact that the fire occurred on the one night when the sprinkler extinguishers were out of action is to me an unusual circumstance. Explanation of this, however, was supplied to Chief Detective-Inspector Doctor Manson on his visit here.
2. The purchaser of the business, Mr. James McKay, from the proprietor for 20 years, Mr. Henry Segrand, was a man in very moderate circumstances, whom it was surprising to find in command of the money required to acquire the business. Damages of £10,500 were paid by the insurance company, but Mr. McKay, who is still in the town, is short of money. Mr. Segrand states that the negotiations for the purchase of the business were conducted by a stranger to him, a tall, well-built man of the name of Close. He did not at any time see McKay, and was astonished when he found that he was the owner of the business. He had known McKay for years. Close, he says, talked with a trace of a foreign accent.
McKay had not been in any kind of business before, and is now a bookmaker’s clerk. Have not questioned him without knowledge of the lines and reasons for your inquiries.
Report from the Chief Constable of Liverpool, on Paris Show Rooms, Ltd., fire:
No traces of any unusual circumstances connected with the actual fire. Have not questioned principals who are still resident in the city. Assistant, now employed in woman’s outfitter’s shop, states that business was not in a thriving condition but that new capital was believed to be forthcoming, as a lady and gentleman had, three days before the fire, spent some time in the shop inspecting contents. The shop had been specially dressed just before their visit, and photographs had been taken, prints of which were sent to a London address. Man cannot now recall the address, as he only saw the envelope by chance on the office desk. The visit of the man and woman followed two days later and the fire occurred three days afterwards.
Report from the Detective-Inspector in charge, C.I.D., Welsborough, on fire at London Fashion Modes:
Unusual features associated with this outbreak are that anyone who had made inquiries in the town should have opened the business at all in goods which were already in supply in old-established and popular houses. Secondly that, for a month before the fire the premises should have been closely shuttered at night. Mr. Montague’s explanation of this was given to Chief Detective-Inspector Manson, D.Sc., on his inquiries here. Mr. Montague left the town after the claim had been settled, and his present address is not known.
The constable on beat in the district at the time of the outbreak, states that a car with a number-plate not bearing a local registration passed him half an hour before he discovered the fire. It came from a direction which was not a passageway through the town.
Shop assistant, questioned, says that the only strangers to visit the premises were a foreigner a few days after the opening. He was known to Montague, in company with whom he looked over the shop. That was the only time he visited the place so far as she knows.
Report from the superintendent in charge, C.I.D., Sheffield, on fire at Messrs. Fines and Howard:
Fire was always a suspicious circumstance as firm had a bad reputation, and one insurance company had refused to pay out on a claim for alleged theft. Company was in a bad way following the theft, claimed to be an extensive one. Two shop assistants, a Miss Pelham and a Miss Fountain, now employed in Cannells, state that the business was to be closed up, and they had been given notice to leave, when the proprietors obtained fresh capital. This, they think, was provided by a tall, well-dressed lady and a man taken to be her husband, who spent a day with Mr. Fines in the shop, examining the premises and contents. Miss Fountain states that she heard the man say to Fines: “It’s a first-class proposition.” She assumes from this that the new capital came from the couple. She would, she thinks, be able to identify the couple if she saw them again.
No report had been asked for from Silks, Ltd., and those from the remaining two towns stated that they could not discover anything of a peculiar nature in connection with the fires or the businesses.
Doctor Manson, Superintendent Jones, and Inspector Kenway studied them together at a desk in the superintendent’s room at Scotland Yard. The fat superintendent grunted.
“Rum do . . . damned suspicious . . . never made inquiries . . . found out . . . time of fire,” he said.
“There was no reason to suspect any of these things, Jones,” retorted the scientist. “The fire brigade in each case passed the fires as apparently accidental outbreaks. It was not until the insurance societies began to worry over their claims that we, or anybody else, began to look into the fires. No blame that I can see attaches to anybody.”
“But it’s pretty obvious now, Doctor, that the fires were incendiary,” said Inspector Kenway. “The tall man, the foreign gentleman and the man with a foreign accent all seem to me to suggest the same person.” The inspector thought for a moment or two. “It looks to me like the stories of the master criminal who plans the coups. That the man should turn up at practically all the places shortly before a fire breaks out seems to suggest that he was the author of the frauds.”
“Go further,” retorted Jones. “Was he . . . man . . . goin’ buy one business . . . and come inspect it. Was he . . . man . . . negotiated purchase . . . business. . . . Bric-à-Brac shop? What say . . . that. Doctor?”
“I think that quite possibly you and Kenway are correct, Jones,” the scientist replied. “But that is not the most important point to me in the reports.”
“What is . . . important point, Doctor?” demanded the superintendent.
“Two women,” was the reply.
“Two women?” The superintendent echoed the words. “What have they to do with it?”
Doctor Manson chuckled, grimly. “Quite a lot, I hope,” he replied. “If they haven’t, then I’ve gone badly astray.”
“Who are the women, Doctor?” The question came from Kenway.
“That I do not know for certain, Kenway. But I want photographs of Miss de Grey, and of the woman with whom I am quite sure Mr. da Costa is now living. I also want one of da Costa himself. Listen.”
He talked to the two officers for a minute or two. They listened in silence. Doctor Manson watched them. No thought of what was in his mind seemed to cross their imagination. The superintendent, however, acceded to the request which the scientist had made.
“I’ll put Wendover on the job, Doctor,” he announced. “He’s a good photographer, and he doesn’t look too much like a copper.”
CHAPTER XVIII
TELLS OF A PHOTOGRAPHER
One of the nuisances which have followed in the wake of the cinema is the street photographer who as you walk along the street, puts the camera to his eyes and snaps you, immediately presenting you with a card on which is inscribed a number and the intimation that by proceeding next day to the address given and quoting the number you will be able to purchase prints of the snapshot at so much a dozen—or in single copies.
Their haunt is generally the West End of London, or the seaside promenades. Probably only one in twenty people ever ask for prints, but the cost of film is very low, and, since the photographer is paid usually on commission, the syndicate employing the men do not stand to lose much money. Indeed, one in twenty, at the prices asked for the enlarge
d photographs, should show a wide margin of profit. The sufferer during bad custom is, as usual, the operator.
One such man was having a thin time with his camera in Cumberland Road, Kensington. He had taken a pitch some few yards away from Cumberland Court. The choice would have surprised even the most inexperienced of street photographers, for the class of people who frequented the road, and the residences in the road, particularly those living in the Court, were hardly the class who would journey to the headquarters of the photographic company to obtain a view of themselves. When they desired a reproduction of their faces their venue was mostly one of the more fashionable of the West End Photographic Salons.
The man had snapped some forty or fifty prospective clients without one of them accepting his card of identity up to ten o’clock. The lack of success, or appreciation, did not, however, seem unduly to worry him, for he maintained his operations with a pleasant glance and smile at the customers who passed on.
Most of his snaps were taken as residents emerged from the imposing entrance to the Court. He possibly imagined that the attraction of the background of their luxury home might be an added inducement to purchasing copies of the snaps. At 11.15 a.m. he levelled his camera at a man and a woman leaving the Court, and, as usual, proffered his professional card. His arm was brushed aside by the man, who walked to the pavement edge and hailed a taxi. Putting the lady inside, he gave the Hotel Magnificent as his destination, and followed the lady into the depths of the vehicle.
The blow seemed to be the last straw to the man at the camera for, after a half-hearted attempt to entrap a further couple, he pushed his camera into its case, turned on his heel, and walked down the street, being lost, presently, in the direction of Kensington High Street.
The photographic dark-rooms of Doctor Manson’s Laboratory at Scotland Yard contained all that was modern in the apparatus for producing pictures at the shortest possible notice. It vied with the dark-rooms of the most famous of the picture papers of England. The film, once developed, could be quickly cleared of all the unwanted emulsion, it could be washed free of hypo in a matter of a very few moments. The wet film could be dried at remarkable speed by a judicious mixture of methylated spirits and a flow of gently warmed air from a dryer. And once the enlarged print had been taken in the enlarging camera, it, too, could be bone dry within the space of not more than three minutes, after it had passed between the warm blankets of the automatic drying machine.
Thus, within half an hour of the camera man leaving Cumberland Road, Kensington, Detective-Sergeant Wendover emerged from the dark-rooms at Scotland Yard, and placed a print on the desk in front of Doctor Manson. The print was a 10 x 8 inches’ enlargement, of Mr. da Costa and a lady. The scientist eyed it critically.
“An excellent production, Wendover,” he said, eventually. “Now get me out half a dozen prints of the girl separately, and another half a dozen of the man. You might as well do the same quantity of the pair together. Leave this print of the couple with me, and ask Simmons to come and see me, will you?”
Sergeant Wendover departed on his job. A knock at the door, and an invitation to enter, produced Detective Simmons, the artist of the headquarters of the C.I.D.
“Ah, Simmons,” Doctor Manson greeted him. “Have a look at this print of two people.” He paused a moment to allow the details of the print to sink into the mind of the detective, and then continued:
“Now, listen. A constable at Shepherd’s Bush saw a car and a couple of people walking along a street at eleven o’clock or thereabouts, at night. It was dark. I believe the couple to have been the pair in this picture, and I want to see if the constable can identify them. You will note the difference in height of the pair. I feel it possible that if we could reproduce the effect of the street at that time of night and the couple walking along the street it might wake some echo in the constable’s mind. Can you do something like that, do you think?”
Simmons eyed the photograph in contemplation for a minute or so. He held it at arm’s length, and studied the figures. He held it nearer at different angles, and studied them again. Finally, he replaced the print on the table and regarded the scientist.
“Could I get a picture of the actual street, Doctor?” he asked.
“Quite easily, I should say, Simmons,” was the reply.
“Then I think I could transform the street into the semblance of night, and a bit of montage would put the figures in. I’ll have a go at it. Where is the street?”
Doctor Manson provided the address of the street in which Mr. Oppenheimer had lately done business, and the artist departed in search of his quarry.
At 2.30 p.m., he returned with a print. It showed two figures standing in a darkened street. At the corner of the street stood a car. Doctor Manson looked at it with admiration.
“Excellent, Simmons,” he said. “How the deuce did you do it?”
“Over-printed a print of the street, Doctor, reduced the figures on Wendover’s print to scale, mounted them in the street print, and after retouching it up, re-photographed the print, and printed it from the new negative.”
“Well, it’s a work of art, and I think it might do the trick.” He sent for Inspector Makepeace.
Police-Constable Woodcock stood to attention in front of the inspector, in Shepherd’s Bush police-station. Yes, he said, he remembered the fire at the shop of Mr. Oppenheimer, and the inquiries which had been made into it. He remembered a statement which he had made to his own inspector. Inspector Makepeace felt that in asking those questions he had been guilty of what in the view of the Bar would be called putting a leading question, but he felt justified in giving the constable a clue to what he was to be asked to decide.
Without more ado, he confronted the constable with the photograph composed by Simmons. The constable stared at it, startled.
“Why, that’s the very couple—and taken in the street, too,” he said. “I never saw anybody with a camera.”
“What do you mean by that, Woodcock?” asked the inspector. “You can’t mean to say that you recognize the people, surely?”
“Not to say recognize their faces, which can’t really be seen, sir,” was the reply. “But I recognize them by the appearance. One of ’em tall and the other short. It was that which made me notice them in the first place.”
“I see. Then you will say that the people in the photograph have every appearance of being the two people you saw walking in that street, a few nights before the fire occurred, and that they are the people to whom you referred in the statement that you made to your inspector following an inquiry from Scotland Yard?”
“I will say that they have every appearance of the couple I saw, sir,” was the reply.
“Good enough, Woodcock,” said the inspector, and dashed back to the Yard to acquaint Doctor Manson with the result of the test.
The scientist nodded approvingly. “I thought it might come off,” he said. “It is not, of course, evidence, and we could not produce it in a court of law, but it strengthens an idea I have at the back of my mind, and it might prove a very strong link in a chain of real evidence.”
The inspector looked at the scientist inquiringly, but Doctor Manson made no response. Instead he lifted the receiver of his house telephone, and asked for Inspector Kenway at the moment that that officer opened the door of the Laboratory, and walked in.
“Hallo, I have just asked for you, Kenway,” said Manson, smilingly.
“And I want you, too, Doctor,” was the retort. “Burlington have just telephoned to say that Enora, the Cat, is now fit to be discharged, and they want to know what they are to do about him.”
“Tell them that they must invent some excuse to keep him in the hospital. He must not be released whatever happens. Tell the local inspector to impress upon the hospital that this is the urgent request of Scotland Yard. It will be for only a day or two, and then I hope to have solved the mystery, and we can deal with him accordingly.”
“Right you are, Doctor. And why did
you want me?” asked Kenway.
Doctor Manson produced the prints of da Costa and the woman. “Have these pictures sent to Birmingham, Sheffield, and Liverpool,” he said. “I want them shown to those people who were interviewed, and who told of certain incidents. Include one of our portraits of Miss de Grey with them. What I want particularly to know is whether any of the people can identify either or all the photographs. And send copies, by a sergeant, to Mr. Anstruther, former manager of Silks, Ltd., and see if he can recognize anybody.
“Then, Kenway, you yourself take the picture of the lady known, apparently, as Mrs. da Costa round to all the theatrical agents you can think of, and see if they can give her a name. This is most important—that is the reason I am asking you to attend to it, personally.”
Alone in his Laboratory Doctor Manson took a sheet of foolscap paper from a drawer and began to fill it with lines of his small, neat writing. He wrote steadily for a quarter of an hour, read through his notes, nodding his head now and then at points which he regarded as of special interest, and finally locked the M.S. in his private drawer.
Deciding that he could make no further progress until he received the reports for which he had asked, he took a parting look round his domain and left for his flat—and dinner.
CHAPTER XIX
COMINGS AND GOINGS
Whatever Doctor Manson expected from the inquiries which he had set on foot he did not convey to his officers. Nor could these officers see much point in them. Kenway had been at much pains to find some association between the fires and Mr. da Costa and the death of Miss Norma de Grey on the stage at the Burlington pavilion. He knew perfectly well that there must be some association, for Doctor Manson had insisted that the hospital should keep the Cat inside that institution for a few further days, and the doctor, he ruminated, had not spent any time investigating the death of the star, but had, on the contrary, seemingly been engaged exclusively on the problem of the fires. Therefore, said Kenway, there must be some association, and a very close one, between the two happenings. What it was, however, he knew not and could not conjecture.
