him for some five minutes perhaps. He certainly gave me a piece of
very startling news. Then the Baron took me aside nervously to
praise him up to me, and when I turned round again I discovered
that the fellow had vanished like a ghost. Got up and sneaked out
down some back stairs, I suppose. There was no time to run after
him, as I had to hurry off after the Ambassador down the great
staircase, and see the party started safe for the opera. However,
I acted upon the information that very night. Whether it was
perfectly correct or not, it did look serious enough. Very likely
it saved us from an ugly trouble on the day of the Imperial visit
to the City.
“Some time later, a month or so after my promotion to Chief
Inspector, my attention was attracted to a big burly man, I thought
I had seen somewhere before, coming out in a hurry from a
jeweller’s shop in the Strand. I went after him, as it was on my
way towards Charing Cross, and there seeing one of our detectives
across the road, I beckoned him over, and pointed out the fellow to
him, with instructions to watch his movements for a couple of days,
and then report to me. No later than next afternoon my man turned
up to tell me that the fellow had married his landlady’s daughter
at a registrar’s office that very day at 11.30 a.m., and had gone
off with her to Margate for a week. Our man had seen the luggage
being put on the cab. There were some old Paris labels on one of
the bags. Somehow I couldn’t get the fellow out of my head, and
the very next time I had to go to Paris on service I spoke about
him to that friend of mine in the Paris police. My friend said:
`From what you tell me I think you must mean a rather well-known
hanger-on and emissary of the Revolutionary Red Committee. He says
he is an Englishman by birth. We have an idea that he has been for
a good few years now a secret agent of one of the foreign Embassies
in London.’ This woke up my memory completely. He was the
vanishing fellow I saw sitting on a chair in Baron Stott-
Wartenheim’s bathroom. I told my friend that he was quite right.
The fellow was a secret agent to my certain knowledge. Afterwards
my friend took the trouble to ferret out the complete record of
that man for me. I thought I had better know all there was to
know; but I don’t suppose you want to hear his history now, sir?”
The Assistant Commissioner shook his supported head. “The history
of your relations with that useful personage is the only thing that
matters just now,” he said, closing slowly his weary, deep-set
eyes, and then opening them swiftly with a greatly refreshed
glance.
“There’s nothing official about them,” said the Chief Inspector
bitterly. “I went into his shop one evening, told him who I was,
and reminded him of our first meeting. He didn’t as much as twitch
an eyebrow. He said that he was married and settled now, and that
all he wanted was not to be interfered in his little business. I
took it upon myself to promise him that, as long as he didn’t go in
for anything obviously outrageous, he would be left alone by the
police. That was worth something to him, because a word from us to
the Custom-House people would have been enough to get some of these
packages he gets from Paris and Brussels opened in Dover, with
confiscation to follow for certain, and perhaps a prosecution as
well at the end of it.”
“That’s a very precarious trade,” murmured the Assistant
Commissioner. “Why did he go in for that?”
The Chief Inspector raised scornful eyebrows dispassionately.
“Most likely got a connection – friends on the Continent – amongst
people who deal in such wares. They would be just the sort he
would consort with. He’s a lazy dog, too – like the rest of them,”
“What do you get from him in exchange for your protection?”