Chapter XXX

No man wasted less time or effort than Gunner Haynes. His method represented the very economy of labour. He was satisfied that Connor had carried away his victim, but was wrong when he associated Danty Morell with the abduction.

He called upon Connor but was told vaguely that the man had gone into the country. He did not attempt to seek an interview with Danty Morell, but after a day spent in a vain search of Connor’s wharf, made his way to Half Moon Street, watched the house until he saw first Danty and then Pi Coles leave. To get into Danty’s flat was a very simple matter--a key blank, a piece of lampblack, a quarter of an hour spent in Green Park filing the soft metal, procured him an entrance.

Once inside the flat he proceeded at his leisure. He was not at all anxious at the thought of Danty’s return. His hatred of Morell was in one sense illogical. They had been friends and partners, though he had lost sight of the man and the partnership had broken off. He had no direct proof of the duplicity he suspected. Gunner Haynes had loved that feather-headed little wife of his, and when she had disappeared, never to become more to him than a record in a workhouse register, a tremendous part of his life had been cut away from him. He might suspect Danty as the cause of his agony: he had no clear evidence that the story the man had told was untrue.

Danty had said the girl had disappeared, and that he was as ignorant of her whereabouts as her husband. Yet, for all this, the suspicion in Gunner Haynes’s mind amounted to a certainty. He was a just man, and so long as that proof was missing, Danty Morell would come to no harm.

He made a quick but thorough examination of the two rooms. There were letters which had to be scanned, pocketbooks to investigate, drawers to be opened and searched, but in none of these did Haynes find the slightest clue to Luke Maddison’s present place of imprisonment. He did find the note which Connor had scribbled, giving the address where Luke was staying, but no more. There remained only the safe, which was not so much a safe as a steel cupboard fastened with a spring lock--the type that is found in most business offices. To open this was a matter of five minutes’ patient work.

There were four shelves and each was crowded with letters, bills, and curious souvenirs which Danty had collected--the cupboard was in such disorder as only a man without method could create. On the third shelf he found a wooden box, the lock of which he forced. There were papers here--bundles of letters tied up with shoe-laces, bits of old string--there was nothing romantic in Danty’s disposition.

The first bundle did not interest him. At the sight of the writing on the second his face went gray. He brought the box into the dining-room and sat down, read three of the letters, glanced at the others, and very slowly and deliberately tied them up again and put them back in the box. As he did so he caught sight of a scrap of paper exactly the size of that on which Rex had written his last message. He took it out--yes, it was scrawled in the same handwriting. But the message was unintelligible. It ran:

Danty Morell. The man is a common swindler. I was warned against him by----

And then in a flash he realized. He had an extraordinary memory, and could repeat almost word for word the supposedly complete message Rex had left. With these words added it would have read:

Margaret darling, I have lost. For months I have been gambling. To-day I took a desperate step on the advice of Danty Morell. The man is a common swindler. I was warned against him by Luke Maddison. He has led me to ruin--money is his god. I beg of you not to trust him. He has led me from one act of folly to another.…

That was it! Danty had found that the first and last of those scraps made a complete message; he had put the second in his pocket (it still bore marks of being screwed up).

It took him quite a long time to realize all this. His mind was numbed from reading the letters; he was almost stupid in his horror and hate. Mechanically he put the tell-tale slip of paper into his pocketbook, closed the lid.… His wife’s letters must be burned. He opened the box again, took them out, threw them into the fireplace and put a match to them. He stood watching and stirring them until they were black ashes, then he put the box back where he had found it and closed the steel cupboard.

For the moment Luke Maddison and his safety were subsidiary considerations. The only thing that mattered was Danty. The agony and appeal in those letters! Gunner Haynes caught a glimpse of his face in a mirror over the mantelpiece and for a moment was shocked. He had become suddenly old.

Danty did not return--he was glad. He turned out all the lights, closed the door behind him, and went out into the street. He had hardly crossed to the other sidewalk before a cab drew up to the pavement and a man alighted. It was Danty.

The gunman watched but made no effort to intercept him. That would come later; there would be a great accounting.

He strolled into Piccadilly, moving like a man in a dream, and heard his name spoken twice before he turned with a start to look into the pretty face of Mary Bolford.

“I wondered if it was you,” she said, “and if you were contemplating some nefarious act. Of course you’re not!”

The Gunner drew a long breath.

“To tell you the truth, I was,” he said gently. “I haven’t had the good fortune to meet you in this last week, Miss Bolford.”

She shook her head.

“I’ve been very busy. I’ve accepted a job on an Australian newspaper, and I’m leaving London next week.” Her tone was jaunty, but he could detect a strain in the voice that was very flattering to him.

“Well, I’ve given you enough to write about,” he said. “Enough material, I mean.”

She sighed.

“Yes.” A little pause. “I shall miss you. I suppose if I told Mr. Bird that he would be annoyed.”

“He’d be furious,” said the Gunner, a slow smile displacing the pained look she had seen in his eyes.

“You won’t come to Australia, of course, ever? I shall be there for seven years.”

“By what boat do you travel?” he asked, and when she told him: “There’s another mail leaving a week or so after. Do you sail from London?”

She nodded.

“They wanted me to pick up the boat at Naples--we call there; but I rather want the sea journey. I’ve got what is called a lung--not a bad one: that is why I have taken work in Australia.”

They had coffee together, and in that flying time he thought neither of Luke Maddison nor of Danty Morell nor of the letters which were ash in the grate. When he left her at eleven o’clock, he said:

“If I can get my business through I may join your ship at Naples.”

She looked at him very gravely.

“Do you really mean that?” she said. “And is Australia to be the scene of your next----” She hesitated for a word, but he anticipated her.

“I am going to be the rarest of phenomena--the reformed crook,” he said.

She sipped her coffee in silence.

“Would anything help you to that end?” she asked, and Haynes nodded.

He did not put into words the thought that was in his mind and hers, but she understood. It was then that he gave her his first confidence, and she listened open eyed, stricken dumb with amazement, to the true story of Luke Maddison.

“I’ve been searching for him all day,” he said, “and I haven’t even got a thread of a clue.”

“He isn’t dead?”

Haynes shook his head.

“That is most unlikely,” he said. “The trouble is that the police cannot be told--I suppose the press shouldn’t be either,” he smiled, “but things are--different now, aren’t they?”

“Have you got the little piece of paper you found in Morell’s flat?” (He had omitted nothing from his narrative.)

He passed it across the table to her. She read and nodded.

“What was the rest of it?”

He recited the full message almost word for word.

“I have seen Rex--in fact I know a great deal about him,” she said. “Mr. Bird was very confidential and told me about the forgery. I could have given him a lot of information, because I was standing in the doorway of the bank the day the forged check was cashed. It was the day Mr. Maddison gave me a hundred pounds--I’ve still got it.”

They were talking of the Sparrow as they came out of the restaurant, and at the corner of Bury Street they met him. He looked disapprovingly at Gunner Haynes and frowned at the girl.

“Getting a first-hand crime story? What’s doing, Gunner? Are you giving evidence before the select commission?” he asked with a sneer.

Gunner Haynes chuckled. There had been one of those periodical police scandals; somebody had been arrested who ought not to have been arrested, and there was the inevitable inquiry on foot into police methods.

“We’ve got to go so carefully nowadays that I wouldn’t arrest a man if I found him cutting his wife’s throat, without making a few inquiries,” said the Sparrow. “I’ll tell you how bad it is: they’ve just turned a tramp out of a police station, charged with begging, but only one witness--a policeman. So they hoofed him out. When we’ve got to consider the feelings of tramps you might as well turn Scotland Yard into a home for lost dogs. I mention the tramp because I was down at the police station just after they pushed him out. I suppose it’s happening all over London. You’re going to Australia, they tell me, Miss Bolford?”

His keen eyes searched the Gunner’s face.

“You’re not going too, are you, Gunner? You’ll miss those little tea-table talks, won’t you?”

Mary Bolford turned red. She had never dreamed that those unrehearsed and informal meetings with Gunner Haynes had attracted the attention of this stout man.

“Both of you ought to be warned,” said Sparrow soberly, “and I’m warning you! There never was a crook who could be anything but a crook. There never was a girl who married a man to reform him who didn’t finish by bolting with somebody better.”

“You’re in your most prophetic mood to-night, Mr. Bird,” said the Gunner coolly. “Now tell us what’s going to win the Derby?”

The Sparrow grunted and went on with a little chuck of his head--a gesture of farewell. Haynes and the girl walked along Piccadilly till they came within sight of the Circus, and here they parted. As they lingered, her hand in his, he said:

“You’ve saved a man’s life to-night, Mary,” and wisely she did not question him.