‘Has the Assistant Commissioner asked for me?’ inquired Sir Richard Templeton suddenly.
‘I know that the Assistant Commissioner would be glad to see you,’ replied the detective. He smiled grimly. ‘And I know that you, Sir Richard, will wish to be in at the kill, as it were.’
‘In at the kill?’ asked Templeton sharply. But Inspector Tripp did not reply, for the taxi-cab had passed under the big, forbidding arch and had drawn up at the doorway of Scotland Yard.
‘Go right upstairs, Sir Richard,’ nodded Tripp; ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’
As the barrister went up the steps, Tripp carefully lifted out the two suit-cases, then turned to pay the taxi-driver.
It was at this point that a strange thing happened.
The driver put out his hand for the money, then suddenly his fist clenched, and it drove upwards with terrific force, missing the edge of the detective’s jaw by an inch, and landing on the cheek-bone. Tripp went down on the slippery pavement. As he fell, the taxi-cab driver snatched up the two suit-cases and rushed into the narrow street.
A big car had been crawling behind them. It had halted for an instant; and the taxi-driver leaped on the footboard, wrenched open the door, and hurling in the suitcases, tumbled after them. ‘Right away!’ he cried sharply.
But his voice died in his throat with a strangled gasp as two pairs of hands from within the car gripped him. The man who had sat huddled at the driving wheel was round in a flash, and flung himself across the legs of the struggling figure.
But it was Inspector Tripp himself who clicked the handcuffs on the man’s wrists, and it was Tripp’s service Webley which was pressed into the man’s ribs as he was led into the building and taken upstairs.
‘I’ve come back to the inquest, sir,’ Tripp announced, flinging open the door of the Assistant Commissioner’s room.
‘And I guess we might call it a glee-party after all.’
His face was white and haggard; blood trickled from the wound on his cheek-bone; but his grey eyes were smiling. ‘I’ve brought along Sir Richard Templeton, sir. He’s had so much to do with this case I thought he’d like to be in at the end. And this is Mr. Gilmour, who has just been acting chauffeur in place of a gentleman called Adrian Lister. We arrested Lister near Shepherd’s Market an hour ago.’
The Assistant Commissioner came forward. ‘I’m glad to see you, Sir Richard.’ As for you, Mr. Gilmour, your fame has preceded you. If at any time you want a staff-job at the Yard——’
‘Thanks, sir, I prefer a quiet life,’ said Alan with a smile.
The Assistant Commissioner turned to Inspector Tripp a puzzled look. ‘But you said something about a glee-party——’
‘Bring him in,’ said Tripp tersely. And between two plain-clothes men a manacled figure was led in from the passage.
‘Let me introduce you, gentlemen, to Lord John!’
The taxi-cab driver’s hat had been knocked off in the scuffle downstairs; and with a sharp tug, Inspector Tripp pulled the untidy wig from his head, then peeled the dark heavy moustache from the man’s upper lip. Even bereft of the faint yellow stain, and the subtle elongation at the corners of the eyes, his features could be recognized.
It was Alan Gilmour’s voice that broke the silence in the room.
‘Quite right,’ agreed Tripp with a laugh. ‘I didn’t know it myself until an hour ago. Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Lord John, alias Mr. Tom Young of “The Green Lantern”!’
CHAPTER XXXIII
IN WHICH A LUNCHEON INVITATION IS PRESUMABLY ACCEPTED
Long after midnight the conference was still in progress. The entire Lord John case was reviewed in detail; lengthy statements were made by Sir Richard Templeton, by Alan Gilmour, and by Inspector. Tripp himself; and the weary-eyed Record Office stenographer had covered thirty-seven shorthand pages before the Assistant Commissioner was satisfied that he had made an accurate summary of Lord John’s activities since the previous July when he had become proprietor of ‘The Green Lantern’ and had adopted the disguise which served him so successfully.
‘The Commissioner will want a report on this in the morning,’ he said, ‘so I’d better prepare a brief account of the facts we’ve just dealt with.’ He glanced towards the stenographer, and dictated rapidly for several minutes.
‘And now,’ he went on, ‘as to the part played by the other members of the gang. First, Adrian Lister’s position. In the cynically frank statement he made to Inspector Tripp after arrest—notes of which are attached—he admits that he was Lord John’s closest ally, and was the only person who knew his identity.
‘There is little doubt that Lister concealed Lord John in the house at Holmdean on the night of Mrs. Prideaux’s dance, and he acted as the Rajah’s valet at the Marquise Hotel. Much of the success of different robberies in the West End was due to his skill in gathering preliminary information, and he was assisted by Mrs. Prideaux. This woman made a point of forming useful friendships in high places—the way she sought the friendship of Sir Richard, Templeton is a notable example.
‘As for Julius Brown—or, to give him his real name, Henry Marlowe—Lord John did not seem to trust him to the same extent, though Marlowe undoubtedly played a prominent part in his affairs—such as the raid at the Holmdean dance, when he escaped with the valuables in the ambulance. Perhaps one of the most unfortunate aspects of the entire case was the way he tried to extract information from his daughter as soon as he learned that she was in a position of trust under Sir Richard Templeton. This placed Miss Elizabeth Marlowe in a most dubious light, but I had a long interview with her myself this evening, and I am now satisfied that her conduct has been above suspicion. She did everything possible to save her mother the distress which an open disclosure would have involved. It is but natural that she repeatedly warned Marlowe that the police were active, and pleaded with him to leave the country.
‘From Lister’s statement I gather that this man Marlowe had a quarrel with Lord John about money during the last two days; and knowing some of the details of the attempt to be made at the Marquise Hotel, he took the risk of going there to Lord John to demand further payment—a risk which had a fatal result. No doubt he was relying on the fact that Inspectors Tripp and Weston were the only two officers who knew him by sight, but he did not reckon on Mr. Gilmour recognizing him.
‘Carlo Lewin also took a risk which proved fatal. He was perhaps the most despicable character in the group. Again I must refer to Lister’s statement. Carlo Lewin was a clever rogue, and seems to have a shrewd idea that it was Tom Young himself who stole the Scotland Yard documents from Sir Richard Templeton. Afraid that Lewin might also suspect his real identity, Tom Young took steps to divert attention from himself, and declared that he had received a message from Lord John accusing one of the group of having stolen the documents from Sir Richard. The ruse had the desired effect, but Carlo Lewin was still convinced that it was Tom Young who had organized the burglary, and put this to him point blank, demanding a share in the sale of the documents. I have said he was a clever rogue, but he was not clever enough. He must have traced up the link between Henry Marlowe and his daughter, and arrived at the conclusion that Sir Richard Templeton had some connexion with Lord John. Sir Richard’s own statement covers the events that followed. Inspector Tripp, with whom Sir Richard got in touch at once, advised him to draw Carlo Lewin on, as this seemed the only hope of recovering the stolen evidence. But Tom Young’s knife was buried in Lewin’s heart before this could be accomplished. Fortunately, we are now in a position to do without the lost evidence, for Tom Young will almost certainly hang for the murder of his treacherous ally.’