THE NOVELIST

Otago Witness, Issue 3886, 4 September 1928, Page 74

THE NOVELIST

The Mystery Maker

By

SEAMARK

(Copybight.—Fob the Otago Witness.)

CHAPTER IX.—Continued The knowledge that Hawker was on his track was a grim piece of news for Stayne, but just then even Stayne himself did not know how swiftly events had passed and new situations arisen in his 20 minutes of absence from Curzon Square. Hawker had stumbled blindly on a devastating piece of information, and his single track mind was beginning to hammer it down into its rightful groove even while a fast car carried him towards Bayswater. It had all happened quite naturally, without any fuss or excitement. At the end of his ’phone conversation with headquarters when he was asking for an urgency call to go out for the taxi, the inspector at the other end had said: “Just a minute, Hawker. Someone else here wants a word with you; hang on a minute and I’ll plug you through.” Hawker waited, and in a little while Maybury, the chief at the Yard, came on. “ That you, Hawker ? ” he said genially. “ Glad you were handy. There is an interesting little piece of news just come through from Scrubs Prison. At least, it should be interesting to you.” “Oh!' Nothing gone wrong, I hope, chief ? ” “ Well —yes and no. But it’s most confoundedly upsetting. You remember that man you arrested dowm at Wapping yesterday ? ” “Of course I do. You mean Templcr Varris? ” “ That’s the name we’re holding him on. Well, the governor reports that he has been acting most curiously since he returned.” “Uh 1 Trying to pull a bluff to get into the infirmary,” grunted Hawker. ‘‘What’s his line? Malingering heart or just going slowly daft? ” “ Not that—quite. He just didn’t know a thing about the prison routine. Had to be told everything all over again like a new arrival. Odd for a man who has been in for several weeks.” “Roti” snorted Hawker. “ He definitely did not know how to roll up his bedding this morning, and oven after he was shown he made a most ghastly mess of it. Didn’t know how to clean his cell utensils, and-looked utterly amazed when he realised that he had to scrub his cell out, not only that morning, but every morning.” “ Say, Chief, that’s a new one. Lapse pf memory, eh? Couple of days on No. 1 diet would shift that once and for all.” “ Several other little things happened, too, Hawker. Such as leaving his breakfast. Only new T arrivals do that. They find it unpalatable. But next morning they’re hungry as hounds. Varris, however, didn’t even trouble to hide his bread ration. Any fool w’ould have done that. There were other things, so curious that the warder reported them to me. And I passed him on to the doctor. The doctor reported the case as genuine. The man isn’t malingering. He doesn’t want a soft job. He doesn’t want to leave prison and he genuinely doesn’t want to make trouble, either for himself or for us.” “ Somebody’s pulling wool over your eyes, chief.” “ I think not, Hawker. If there’s any wool coming down, it’s over your eyes, old scout. The doctor naturally turned up the man’s medical sheet. The follow ing interesting facts were disclosed: During his absence of 28 hours from Scrubs- Prison he lost 91b in weight, gained an inch and a-half in height, came into possession of an old war wound scar three inches long on his left shoulder blade, and acquired a hammer toe.” “Good Lord!” muttered Hawker. “ I should think so, too. Not only that—he managed to change the colour of his eyes from hazel to a very definite shade of slate grey.” “ It—it couldn’t he done! ” gasped Hawker. The chief’s voice was mild and acquiescent. He knew the extraordinary ways of criminals, and was prepared to allow for their unexpected idiosyncrasies of behaviour at all times. “I quite agree,” he said. “And it hasn’t been done. For some odd reason best known to himself, this man wants to stay in gaol—Scrubs Prison preferred. We re-took his fingerprints. The intriguing fact emerges that No. A 320 in Scrubs Prison is not Templar Varris. The two sets of fingerprints varied at every point. At no single number were they alike,"

“ But—but where do I get off at ? ” asked the detective in a puzzled voice. “ That, my dear Hawker, is but another of the interesting problems facing you in this quite unusual case. You seem to have laid your hands on a man quite as well bred, quite as well educated as Templar Varris in every way, and one who resembles him physically m no. small degree. But, for some reason, this gentleman also wishes to remain out of the public eye. “ Have you any "record of him there, chief ? ” “ The records office have been on him all the morning, and have drawn a depressingly decisive blank. His fingerprints are not known, and there’s nothing out for him in the “ wanted ” section —neither does his description tally with that of any other prisoner who has passed through our hands. He would appear to be someone who very much wishes to hide—and, when you rushed him at Wapping, tumbled on the bright idea of hiding in prison. He’s interesting, Hawker. I’ll keep you posted on events. Varris is still out—ajid it’s time he was roped in.” * * * Hawker’s voice was harassed. “ But I’m all at. sea, sir,” he said. “ I got my information from the best source imaginable. If that man isn’t Templer Varris there’s been some almighty dirty work going on behind my back. Three different men squealed on the man I arrested. And I got my first intimation from the friend of a man high up in Government service. The amount of knowledge disclosed about Varris’ whereabout, movements, and intentions was too great and too sound for any man to pass over. One of them actually knew how Varris got out, and w’ho helped him. If I got my hands on the wrong man, someone has laid a plant on me! ” “ That is for you to investigate. You know the source of your own information. I’m afraid*l cannot help you there, Hawker. You see my difficulty, don’t you?” No, I don’t,” replied Hawker, angrv with himself. ° J “ I cannot hold this man in prison, that s. all,” came back the quiet voice He is not a criminal; there is no sentence out against him, and so far as we can. trace there is nothing known against him. He apparently does not want to go, but I’m afraid he’ll have to. We could bring a case against him of criminal personation—but where would it land us? Right at the top of the newspaper columns—with all the world having a merry giggle at our expense, iso, Hawker, it can’t be done. The crux of the issue is that we’re still waiting for you to get Templer Varris. That’s all. Good morning.” There was a click at the other end, and Hawker found himself straininnhis ears at an ominous silence. He put the receiver down, and moped his forehead. His head was filled with a bewildering complexity of thoughts, and at no single angle of them could he see a ray of daylight. That was the most staggering blow he had been dealt yet How- was it done? And why? And what was the idea behind the men he had paid for their information? The whole thing baffled him. That friend of the man high up in the Government service had never sent him a false scent yet. His information had been as reliable and as authoritative as though it had come from the official dosier itself It was through him that he had got on to this mystery at all. He was the individual who had slipped him the guarded intimation that during the past few months there had been a vast leakage of Government paper—the almost unduphcatable paper on which banknotes and treasury notes are printed. Those papers are of such quality and the secrets of watermarkings so perfectly contrived that it is utterly impossible to copy them.

~ V* I ? ad , been known for some weeks that the banks had been receiving notes back from the Continent of such perfect workmanship that even the banks themselves could not tell the difference. They answered to every test. The sensitised plate told them nothing— except, perhaps that by some extraordinary oversight the bank printing press must have issued some thousands of notes in pairs. Whole series of numbers appeared to have been duplicated on the numbering machine. And the banks shook their heads, for they knew that that mistake was ineclianically impossible. The system of checking and re-cheeking and counterchecking was*so involved and complete that the whole system would be automati-

cally thrown out of joint if the numerators went wrong. The banks were more worried over that case than over any for 50 years. It was not the extent of the financial loss, heavy though it undoubtedly was. It was the fact that the secret processes by which the papers were made and marked were no longer secrets. Both treasury notes and banknotes had been reproduced with such perfection of detail that they were, in fact, one and the same papers. * * * An international police conference was called. The French police came over in force. It was the French banks that were the greatest sufferers in the case. British banknotes are currency all over the world, and, by an oddity in the workings of commerce and exchange, are much better known and in far greater circulation in Europe than in Britain itself. In Britain the treasury note rules. But across the Channel the big clean, white bill with the neat black copy-hand writing is honoured in any little cafe, where in England it would be suspect even to the extent of requiring the vendor’s written name on the back before it would be changed. And the counterfeiters seemed to have plagued the banks of the big French towns with thousands of them. Many drifted in from cities far afield; the Black Sea ports sent back quite a few. But they bore the marks of weeks of travel, and had probably landed out there in the ordinary course of a note’s travels. It seemed that, for the time being, the forgers were centred in and around Paris. The ‘international cordon was drawn. For two months the police of the Continent pretty well drove every known forger to distraction. And they finally arrived at the unsettling conclusion that each and every one of them was innocent. A new' gang, of supreme skill, a coterie of pastmasters, had arisen in their midst, unheralded and unsuspected—until the fruits of their marvellous labours began to appear in the cash tills of Europe, to baffle the police and evoke vague fears in the souls of the banks. Even under the most searching tests there was only one way in which the experts could say that a note had been forged. And that was when two notes came back to headquarters each bearing the same number. And even the bank experts could not detect the forgery from the genuine. The Bourses of the world gave a little shiver w'hen the news leaked out that the British Bank of England paper had at last been copied. And then Hawker hadx been able to w’eigh in and allay all fears with the knowledge that the bank’s secrets were secrets still. The paper had not been reproduced—it had been stolen; the actual paper on which the notes were printed had been spirited away from storage in huge quantites. How’ it had been done w'as not yet known, but a grave scandal was bound to arise in connection with it—for someone in high authority must have connived at its abstraction. Still, it w'as grand and comforting news to be able to bring. And the man who w’as responsible for it was the same man who sent him the information about Varris. Now what on earth was his idea in pulling a deliberate blind over him like that? Hawker gave it up, but as he settled down in the car, whizzing to Bayswater, he began thinking pretty hard. The wrongly arrested man would go out; but he could rely on the chief having him attended to satisfactorily. There wouldn’t be an hour of the day or night w’hen a slinking figure wouldn’t b e flitting along on his tail. But that didn’t help so far as Varris himself was concerned. The thought brought him dowm to another idea. Why had Stayne been so confoundedly anxious to get out without being seen that morning? Why had he disguised himself up so completely and gone tearing off in a taxi? Why else but to see Varris? Ten minutes after the call had gone out the taxi was found. The driver described his fare accurately, and remem- ~ bered the address in Bayswater to which he had taken him. Hawker set his teeth and went out for it bull-headed. Inquiry showed that the address W'as a boardinghouse, and that convinced him more than ever that Varris was there, and that Stayne had gone to see him. Hawker rang the bell with the firm conviction in his own mind that S. G. Daleson was the Mystery Maker, and that whoever he was interviewing was positively Templar Varris. ° He met the faded, patient woman who ran the establishment, and stepped inside a-s soon as the door was opened. “Good morning, madaiqe,” he said brusquely. “ I am a police officer, Detective Inspector Hawker, of Scotland xara. Would you be good enough, to answer a few questions? I require certain information, and I think you can supply it.”

The landlady blenched. Her thin frame, at the mention of Scotland Yard seemed to draw into itself and become rigid. She eyed the detective with acut n disapproval. The police! Her very select boarding establishment invaded bv the police! Throughout all the years of her experience as a caterer for respectable boarders of high-class,character the taint of police inquiries had never once soiled her record. Such a thing was damning; enough to keep custom away for months. At all costs the nature of this man’s business must not become known in the building. “ I will see you immediately, sir, in my private office. Will you piease step this way?” she said with regal dignity. She swept ahead of him to the little

primly furnished office beneath the stairs. Hawker followed, with his muzzle down to as hot a trail as he had ever scented in his life. * * * She turned on him like an offended aristocrat, her hands clasped primly before her. “ And what,” she asked, with studiously primmed lips, “ can I do for you ? ” “I’m making inquiries with regard to a Mr Daleson, a Mr S. G. Daleson. I will be quite frank, madame, and tell you that so far as you are concerned, and so far as this establishment is concerned, I haven’t a single thing against you. It just happens that someone is in the habit of calling here—and I am in the process of making inquiries about him. Daleson is the man I refer to.” The landlady bowed ever so slightly in acknowledgment of the official absolution. “ How long has this man Daleson been coming here?” Hawker asked. “Daleson—Daleson? I don’t think I know the name. At anyrate not well enough to recall off-hand.” The landlady was '•nly faintly helpful. “ He just came in, madame, less than half an hour ago. A stoop-shouldered, rather fat old chap of between 50 and 00. He walks as though he suffered slightly from fallen arches, and he wears thick, heavily pebbled glasses.” “ Oh, that old gentleman! Yes, I know him. But he never stays here, Mr Hawker.” “ But he calls here ? ”

“ The first time I ever saw him in my life was yesterday evening. He called to see one of my guests.” “ And he has been here again to-day ? ” “He is here still, sir. He came, as you say, about half an hour ago. He went straight upstairs, and has been here' ever since. Look—that’s the gentleman I mean, the one going across the hall now to the front door. Is that the gentleman you are inquiring for ? ” Hawker glanced through the glass panels and smiled inscrutably to himself. “ Yes, that’s the gentleman I’m referring to,” he said, and was silent for a few moments. He watched the bulky old gent with the rounded shoulders waddle laboriouslj’ across the hall, calling plaintively for a taxi, puffing and blowing with a slight touch of asthma. “ A taxi, please,” he bleated. “ Will somebody please get me a taxi? I want to go to Curzon Square. Will somebody please get me one? Bless my soul, where’s the page ? ” Deliberately Hawker w’atched him go. And, had his surmises been correct, Hawker probably never did a more brilliant thing. By having the old gentleman trailed back to either Curzon Square or to the house behind it, he could establish the dual identity of the StayneDaleson combination beyond dispute. Also he could go up and tackle Varris, leaving Stayne in the dark about anything that may have happened to him.

All Stayne would know would be that Varris would just vanish completely out of the weft of his scheming. The landlady could be sworn to secrecy. He knew her type; knew it well. For the sake of the honour and select standing of her establishment she would raise horrified hands at the mere mention of the presence of police in the house. Daleson could question her till she was blue in the face. She would stoutly deny any knowledge of Varris’s movements. Her knowledge of him would break off short at the bare statement that he called for his bill, paid it, and walked out of the house. Even his luggage would be left behind. Stayne would be left with a notable problem to face—and the gnawing suspicion in his heart that Varris had gone back on him—had turned him down just when things were planning out well for him. The escaped prisoner would be quietly spirited away to gaol again, face the visiting magistrates, and receive another three or four years on his sentence for his temerity in daring to escape from prison. The other man would be released and a shadower set to follow him wherever he went, an infallible pointing finger to an eventual connecting link with the main thread again. And Stayne would be left in a blank ignorance of the whole matter. Up to now—so far as he knew— Stayne did not suspect his presence 'there, did not even know that the Daleson alibi had blown up. And Hawker was a man who believed in the first of the tenets of crime detection—that of playing on the other man’s ignorance. Stayne, without Varris, would be in a fierce predicament. He wouldn’t know where he stood or what had happened. The silence and the mystery of it all would be bound to lead him into making a false move. And meanwhile Varris was up there, alone and unsuspecting, a fit subject for as neat a recapture as the Yard had ever brought off. Varris would be as far off his guard as a hibernating bear. The paragraph in last night’s papers—repeated again authoritatively in the great - morning dailies—would have lulled every breath of suspicion. Also the fact that Stayne was free to come and go to him as freely as his fancy dictated would also smooth out any waking fears in his mind. The door swung close behind the shambling figure, and Hawker smiled again. Outside his man would be waiting and watching. Daleson could take his taxi as far as he wanted; there would be another taxi rolling along in the fumes of its exhaust. The landlady seemed rather surprised that he made no move to accost the man

he was seeking—surprised but intensely relieved. Ever since Hawker’s entry she had been dreading the possibility of a “ scene,” or even the bare whisper of scandal that would bring her house into disrepute. She turned to the detective with distastefully raised eyebrows. “Don” you require to speak to him?” she queried. “Not just yet, madame. He will be attended to outside. I don’t think vou will be troubled with Mr Daleson again. I rather fancy he has paid his last visit to this establishment. IVhat I do want to know is the name of the man he has been coming to see. It is a man, I suppose ? ” “ Gh, yes. It’s aMr Harris. I think he comes from Manchester.” Mr Harris, eh? Well, that’s close enough to the name of the man I hoped he was coming to see. Now, tell me, madame, when did this Mr Harris first come here ? ” “ Yesterday afternoon, sir.” Splendid. About what time? Hawker’s note book was out. As near as I can remember between 3 and 4. I know I was having a cup, of tea at the time, and that’s when I always have tea served.” Couldn t be better. Did he come alone? ” “ Yes. He came in a taxi and brought the rest of his luggage.” That was a nasty one. Hawkerblinked and thought back rapidlv to the beginning. “The rest of his luggage?” he asked suspiciously. “ When°did the first consignment come? ” “The day before. Two trunks. It came on a handcart from the station.” “ H’m! ” The detective tapped his teeth with the end of his pencil. If those trunks arrived the day before yesterday it meant that Varris had sent them along 24 hours before he got out of. gaol—,and that, as the biggest novice might have realised, was impossible. ‘ You’re sure about that? ” he asked. Y,ou Ca . n verif r it in the .reception book, ’ replied the landlady austerely. When did he book these rooms of his? ” “By telephone, the evening before the luggage arrived.” Worse and worse. The pencil was tapping, again. It was a physical impossibility for \ arris to have made such arrangements. He switched the line of approach. When did Mr Daleson first come along to see this Mr Harris?” he demanded suddenly. (To be continued.)