W ithin the confines of Scotland Yard a conference was in progress. It was by way of being an informal conference.
Six or seven men were sitting easily around a table and each of those six men was a man of some importance in hisown line. The subject that occupied the attention of these guardians1 of the law was a subject that had grown terrificallyin importance during the last two or three years. It concerned a branch of crime whose success had beenoverwhelmingly disquieting2. Robbery on a big scale was increasing. Bank holdups, snatches of payrolls4, thefts ofconsignments of jewels sent through the mail, train robberies. Hardly a month passed but some daring and stupendouscoup was attempted and brought off successfully.
Sir Ronald Graves, Assistant Commissioner5 of Scotland Yard, was presiding at the head of the table. According tohis usual custom he did more listening than talking. No formal reports were being presented on this occasion. All thatbelonged to the ordinary routine of CID work. This was a high level consultation6, a general pooling of ideas betweenmen looking at affairs from slightly different points of view. Sir Ronald Graves’ eyes went slowly round his littlegroup, then he nodded his head to a man at the end of the table.
“Well, Father,” he said, “let’s hear a few homely7 wisecracks from you.”
The man addressed as “Father” was Chief-Inspector8 Fred Davy. His retirement9 lay not long ahead and he appearedto be even more elderly than he was. Hence his nickname of “Father.” He had a comfortable spreading presence, andsuch a benign10 and kindly11 manner that many criminals had been disagreeably surprised to find him a less genial12 andgullible man that he had seemed to be.
“Yes, Father, let’s hear your views,” said another Chief-Inspector.
“It’s big,” said Chief-Inspector Davy with a deep sigh. “Yes, it’s big. Maybe it’s growing.”
“When you say big, do you mean numerically?”
“Yes, I do.”
Another man, Comstock, with a sharp, foxy face and alert eyes, broke in to say:
“Would you say that was an advantage to them?”
“Yes and no,” said Father. “It could be a disaster. But so far, devil take it, they’ve got it all well under control.”
Superintendent13 Andrews, a fair, slight, dreamy-looking man said, thoughtfully:
“I’ve always thought there’s a lot more to size than people realize. Take a little one-man business. If that’s well runand if it’s the right size, it’s a sure and certain winner. Branch out, make it bigger, increase personnel, and perhapsyou’ll get it suddenly to the wrong size and down the hill it goes. The same way with a great big chain of stores. Anempire in industry. If that’s big enough it will succeed. If it’s not big enough it just won’t manage it. Everything hasgot its right size. When it is its right size and well run it’s the tops.”
“How big do you think this show is?” Sir Ronald barked.
“Bigger than we thought at first,” said Comstock.
A tough-looking man, Inspector McNeill, said:
“It’s growing, I’d say. Father’s right. Growing all the time.”
“That may be a good thing,” said Davy. “It may grow a bit too fast, and then it’ll get out of hand.”
“The question is, Sir Ronald,” said McNeill, “who we pull in and when?”
“There’s a round dozen or so we could pull in,” said Comstock. “The Harris lot are mixed-up in it, we know that.
There’s a nice little pocket down Luton way. There’s a garage at Epsom, there’s a pub near Maidenhead, and there’s afarm on the Great North Road.”
“Any of them worth pulling in?”
“I don’t think so. Small-fry all of them. Links. Just links here and there in the chain. A spot where cars areconverted, and turned over quickly; a respectable pub where messages get passed; a secondhand clothes shop whereappearance can be altered, a theatrical14 costumier in the East End, also very useful. They’re paid, these people. Quitewell paid but they don’t really know anything!”
The dreamy Superintendent Andrews said again:
“We’re up against some good brains. We haven’t got near them yet. We know some of their affiliations15 and that’sall. As I say, the Harris crowd are in it and Marks is in on the financial end. The foreign contacts are in touch withWeber but he’s only an agent. We’ve nothing actually on any of these people. We know that they all have ways ofmaintaining contact with each other, and with the different branches of the concern, but we don’t know exactly howthey do it. We watch them and follow them, and they know we’re watching them. Somewhere there’s a great centralexchange. What we want to get at is the planners.”
Comstock said:
“It’s like a giant network. I agree that there must be an operational headquarters somewhere. A place where eachoperation is planned and detailed16 and dovetailed completely. Somewhere, someone plots it all, and produces aworking blueprint17 of Operation Mailbag or Operation Payroll3. Those are the people we’re out to get.”
“Possibly they are not even in this country,” said Father quietly.
“No, I dare say that’s true. Perhaps they’re in an igloo somewhere, or in a tent in Morocco or in a chalet inSwitzerland.”
“I don’t believe in these masterminds,” said McNeill, shaking his head: “they sound all right in a story. There’s gotto be a head, of course, but I don’t believe in a Master Criminal. I’d say there was a very clever little Board ofDirectors behind this. Centrally planned, with a Chairman. They’ve got on to something good, and they’re improvingtheir technique all the time. All the same—”
“Yes?” said Sir Ronald encouragingly.
“Even in a right tight little team, there are probably expendables. What I call the Russian Sledge18 principle. Fromtime to time, if they think we might be getting hot on the scent19, they throw off one of them, the one they think they canbest afford.”
“Would they dare to do that? Wouldn’t it be rather risky20?”
“I’d say it could be done in such a way that whoever it was wouldn’t even know he had been pushed off the sledge.
He’d just think he’d fallen off. He’d keep quiet because he’d think it was worth his while to keep quiet. So it would be,of course. They’ve got plenty of money to play with, and they can afford to be generous. Family looked after, if he’sgot one, whilst he’s in prison. Possibly an escape engineered.”
“There’s been too much of that,” said Comstock.
“I think, you know,” said Sir Ronald, “that it’s not much good going over and over our speculations21 again. Wealways say much the same thing.”
McNeill laughed.
“What is it you really wanted us for, sir?”
“Well—” Sir Ronald thought a moment, “we’re all agreed on the main things,” he said slowly. “We’re agreed onour main policy, on what we’re trying to do. I think it might be profitable to have a look around for some of the smallthings, the things that don’t matter much, that are just a bit out of the usual run. It’s hard to explain what I mean, butlike that business some years ago in the Culver case. An ink stain. Do you remember? An ink stain round a mousehole. Now why on earth should a man empty a bottle of ink into a mouse hole? It didn’t seem important. It was hard toget at the answer. But when we did hit on the answer, it led somewhere. That’s—roughly—the sort of thing I wasthinking about. Odd things. Don’t mind saying if you come across something that strikes you as a bit out of the usual.
Petty if you like, but irritating, because it doesn’t quite fit in. I see Father’s nodding his head.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Chief-Inspector Davy. “Come on, boys, try to come up with something. Evenif it’s only a man wearing a funny hat.”
There was no immediate22 response. Everyone looked a little uncertain and doubtful.
“Come on,” said Father. “I’ll stick my neck out first. It’s just a funny story, really, but you might as well have it forwhat it’s worth. The London and Metropolitan23 Bank holdup. Carmolly Street Branch. Remember it? A whole list ofcar numbers and car colours and makes. We appealed to people to come forward and they responded—how theyresponded! About a hundred and fifty pieces of misleading information! Got it sorted out in the end to about sevencars that had been seen in the neighbourhood, anyone of which might have been concerned in the robbery.”
“Yes,” said Sir Ronald, “go on.”
“There were one or two we couldn’t get tags on. Looked as though the numbers might have been changed. Nothingout of the way in that. It’s often done. Most of them got tracked down in the end. I’ll just bring up one instance. MorrisOxford, black saloon, number CMG 265, reported by a probation25 officer. He said it was being driven by Mr. JusticeLudgrove.”
He looked round. They were listening to him, but without any manifest interest.
“I know,” he said, “wrong as usual. Mr. Justice Ludgrove is a rather noticeable old boy, ugly as sin for one thing.
Well, it wasn’t Mr. Justice Ludgrove because at that exact time he was actually in Court. He has got a Morris Oxford24,but its number isn’t CMG 256.” He looked round. “All right. All right. So there’s no point in it, you’ll say. But do youknow what the number was? CMG 265. Near enough, eh? Just the sort of mistake one does make when you’re tryingto remember a car number.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sir Ronald, “I don’t quite see—”
“No,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, “there’s nothing to see really, is there? Only—it was very like the actual carnumber, wasn’t it? 265—256 CMG. Really rather a coincidence that there should be a Morris Oxford car of the rightcolour with the number just one digit26 wrong, and with a man in it closely resembling the owner of the car.”
“Do you mean—?”
“Just one little digit difference. Today’s ‘deliberate mistake.’ It almost seems like that.”
“Sorry, Davy. I still don’t get it.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose there’s anything to get. There’s a Morris Oxford car, CMG 265, proceeding27 along the streettwo and a half minutes after the bank snatch. In it, the probation officer recognizes Mr. Justice Ludgrove.”
“Are you suggesting it really was Mr. Justice Ludgrove? Come now, Davy.”
“No, I’m not suggesting that it was Mr. Justice Ludgrove and that he was mixed-up in a bank robbery. He wasstaying at Bertram’s Hotel in Pond Street, and he was at the Law Courts at that exact time. All proved up to the hilt.
I’m saying the car number and make and the identification by a probation officer who knows old Ludgrove quite wellby sight is the kind of coincidence that ought to mean something. Apparently28 it doesn’t. Too bad.”
Comstock stirred uneasily.
“There was another case like that in connection with the jewellery business at Brighton. Some old Admiral orother. I’ve forgotten his name now. Some woman identified him most positively29 as having been on the scene.”
“And he wasn’t?”
“No, he’d been in London that night. Went up for some Naval30 dinner or other, I think.”
“Staying at his club?”
“No, he was staying at a hotel—I believe it was that one you mentioned just now, Father, Bertram’s, isn’t it? Quietplace. A lot of old service geezers go there, I believe.”
“Bertram’s Hotel,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, thoughtfully.
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收听单词发音
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1
guardians
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| 监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者 | |
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disquieting
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| adj.令人不安的，令人不平静的v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的现在分词 ) | |
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payroll
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| n.工资表，在职人员名单，工薪总额 | |
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payrolls
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| n.（公司员工的）工资名单( payroll的名词复数 )；（公司的）工资总支出，工薪总额 | |
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commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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affiliations
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| n.联系( affiliation的名词复数 )；附属机构；亲和性；接纳 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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blueprint
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| n.蓝图，设计图，计划；vt.制成蓝图，计划 | |
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sledge
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| n.雪橇，大锤；v.用雪橇搬运，坐雪橇往 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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risky
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| adj.有风险的，冒险的 | |
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speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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probation
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| n.缓刑(期)，(以观后效的)察看；试用(期) | |
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digit
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| n.零到九的阿拉伯数字，手指，脚趾 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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