CHAPTER VIII
Crewe had well-furnished offices in Holborn but lived in a luxurious flatin Jermyn Street. Although he went to and fro between them daily, hispersonality was almost a dual one, though not consciously so; his passionfor crime investigation was distinct--in outward seeming, at allevents--from his polished West End life of wealthy ease. Grave,self-contained, and inscrutable, he slipped from one to the other with aneffortless regularity, and the fashionable folk with whom he mixed in hisleisured bachelor existence in the West End, apart from knowing him asthe famous Crewe, had even less knowledge of the real man behind hissuave exterior than the clients who visited his inquiry rooms in Holbornto confide in him their stories of suffering, shame, or crimes committedagainst them. His commissionaire and body-servant, Stork, had once, in arare--almost unique--convivial moment, declared to the caretaker of thebuilding that he knew no more about his master after ten years than hedid the first day he entered his service. He was deep beyond all belief,was Stork's opinion, delivered with reluctant admiration.
Although Crewe did not allow the externals of his two existences tobecome involved, his chief interest in life was in his work. He hadoriginally taken up detective work more as a relief from the boredom ofhis lot as a wealthy young man, leading an aimless, useless life withothers of his class, than by deliberate choice of his vocation. Hisinitial successes surprised him; then the work absorbed him and becamehis life's career. He had achieved some memorable successes and he hadmade a few failures, but the failures belonged to the earlier portion ofhis career, before he had learnt to trust thoroughly in his own greatgifts of intuition and insight, and that uncanny imagination whichsometimes carried him successfully through when all else failed.
Serious devotees of chess knew the name of Crewe in another capacity--asthe name of a man who might have aspired to great deeds if he had buttaken the game as his life's career. He had flashed across the chesshorizon some years previously as a player of surpassing brilliance bydefeating Turgieff, when the great Russian master had visited London andhad played twelve simultaneous boards at the London Chess Club. Crewe wasthe only player of the twelve to win his game, and he did so by amasterly concealed ending in which he handled his pawns with consummateskill, proffering the sacrifice of a bishop with such art that Turgiefffell into the trap, and was mated in five subsequent moves. Crewe provedthis was not merely a lucky win by defeating the young South Americanchampion, Caranda, shortly afterwards, when the latter visited Englandand played a series of exhibition games in London on his way to Moscow,where he was engaged in the championship tourney. Once again it wasmasterly pawn play which brought Crewe a fine victory, and aged chessenthusiasts who followed every move of the game with tremblingexcitement, declared afterwards that Crewe's conception of thisparticular game had not been equalled since Morphy died.
They predicted a dazzling chess career for Crewe, but he disappointedtheir aged hearts by retiring suddenly from match chess, and they mournedhim as one unworthy of his great chess gifts and the high hopes they hadplaced in him. But, as a matter of fact, Crewe's intellect was toovigorous and active to be satisfied with the triumphs of chess, and hisdisappearance from the chess world was contemporary with his entranceinto detective work, which appealed to his imagination and found scopefor his restless mental activity. But if detective work so absorbed himthat he gave up match chess entirely, he still retained an interest inthe science of chess, reserving problem play for his spare moments, and,when not immersed in the solution of a problem of human mystery, he wouldturn to the chessboard and seek solace and relaxation in the mysteries ofan intricate "four-mover."
He had once said that there was a certain affinity between solving chessproblems and the detection of crime mystery: once the key-move was found,the rest was comparatively easy. But he added with a sigh that a reallyperfect crime mystery was as rare as a perfect chess problem: humaningenuity was not sufficiently skilful, as a rule, to commit a crime orconstruct a chess problem with completely artistic concealment of thekey-move, and for that reason most problems and crimes were far too easyof detection to absorb one's intellectual interests and attention.
It was the morning after Crewe's visit to Riversbrook, and the detectivesat in his private office glancing through a note-book which contained asummary of the Hampstead mystery. Crewe was a painstaking detective aswell as a brilliant one, and it was his custom to prepare severalcritical summaries of any important case on which he was engaged, writingand rewriting the facts and his comments, until he was satisfied that hehad a perfect outline to work upon, with the details and clues of thecrime in consecutive order and relation to one another. Experience hadtaught him that the time and labour this task involved were well-spent.If an unexpected development of the case altered the facts of theoriginal summary Crewe prepared another one in the same painstaking way.The summaries, when done with, were methodically filed and indexed andstored in a strong room at the office for future reference, where he alsokept full records of all the cases upon which he had been engaged,together with the weapons and articles that had figured in them: hugevolumes of newspaper reports and clippings; photographs of criminals withtheir careers appended; and a host of other odds and ends of hisdetective investigations--the whole forming an interesting museum ofcrime and mystery which would have furnished a store of rich materialfor a fresh Newgate Calendar. It was an axiom of Crewe's that a detectivenever knew when some old scrap of information or some trifling article ofsome dead and forgotten crime might not afford a valuable clue. Expertcriminals frequently repeated themselves, like people in lesser walks oflife, and Crewe's "library and museum," as he called it, had sometimesfurnished him with a simple hint for the solution of a mystery which haddefied more subtle methods of analysis.
Crewe, after carefully reading his summary of the murder of Sir HoraceFewbanks, and making a few alterations in the text, drew from his pocketthe glove which Inspector Chippenfield had handed him as a clue, took itto the window, and carefully examined it through a large magnifyingglass. He was thus engrossed when the door was noiselessly opened, andStork, the bodyguard, entered. Stork belied his name. He was short andfat, with a red mottled face; a model of discretion and imperturbability,who had served Crewe for ten years, and bade fair to serve him anotherten, if he lived that long. In his heart of hearts he often wondered whya gentleman like Crewe should so far forget what was due to his birth andposition as to have offices in Holborn--Holborn, of all parts of London!But the awe he felt for Crewe prevented his seeking information on thepoint from the only person who could give it to him, so he served him andpuzzled over him in silence, his inward perturbation of spirits beingmade manifest occasionally by a puzzled glance at his master when thelatter was not looking. It was nothing to Stork that his master was afamous detective; the problem to him was _why_ he was a detective when hehad no call to be one, having more money than any man--and let alone asingle man--could spend in a lifetime.
Stork coughed slightly to attract Crewe's attention.
"If you please, sir," he said, "the boy has come."
While Crewe was busy with his magnifying glass Stork returned with theboy who had accompanied Crewe on his visit to Riversbrook on theprevious day.
The boy, a thin white-faced, sharp-eyed London street urchin, seemedcuriously out of place in the handsomely furnished office, with his legstucked up under the carved rail of a fine old oak chair, and his bigdark eyes fixed intently on Crewe's face. The tie between him and thedetective was an unusual one. It dated back some twelve months, whenCrewe, in the investigation of a peculiarly baffling crime, found itadvisable to disguise himself and live temporarily in a crowded criminalquarter of Islington. The rooms he took were above a secondhand clothingshop kept by a drunken female named Leaver; a supposed widow who livedat the back of the shop with her two children, Lizzie, a bold-eyed girlof 17, who worked at a Clerkenwell clothing factory, and Joe, a typicalCockney boy of fourteen, who sold papers in the streets during the dayand was fast qualifying for
a thief at night when Crewe went to theplace to live.
Crewe soon discovered, through overhearing a loud quarrel between hislandlady and her daughter, that Mrs. Leaver's husband was alive, thoughdead to his wife for all practical purposes, inasmuch as he was serving alife's imprisonment for manslaughter. A fortnight after he had taken uphis temporary quarters above the shop the woman was removed to thehospital suffering from the effects of a hard drinking bout, and diedthere. The girl disappeared, and the boy would have been turned out onthe streets but for Crewe, who had taken a liking to him. Joe wasself-reliant, alert, and precocious, like most London street boys, but inaddition to these qualities he had a vein of imagination unusual in a ladof his upbringing and environment. He devoured the exciting feuilletonstories in the evening papers he vended, and spent his spare pennies atthe cinema theatres in the vicinity of his poor home. His appreciation ofthe crude mysteries of the filmed detective drama amused the famousexpert in the finer art of actual crime detection, until he discoveredthat the boy possessed natural gifts of intuition and observation,combined with penetration. Crewe grew interested in developing the boy'stalent for detective work. When the lad's mother died Crewe decided totake him into his Holborn offices as messenger-boy. Crewe soon discoveredthat Joe had a useful gift for "shadowing" work, and his street trainingas a newspaper runner enabled him not only to follow a person through thethickest of London traffic, but to escape observation where a man mighthave been noticed and suspected.
"Well, Joe," said Crewe, as the boy entered on the heels of Stork, "Ihave a job for you this morning. I want you to find the glovecorresponding to this one."
Crewe, having finished his examination of the glove, handed it to theboy, whose first act was to slip it on his left hand and move his fingersabout to assure himself that they were in good working order in spite ofbeing hidden. It was the first occasion on which Joe had worn a glove.
"It was found in the room in which Sir Horace Fewbanks was murdered,"continued Crewe. "The other one was not there. The question I want tosolve is, did it belong to Sir Horace, or to some one who visited him onthe night he was murdered? The police think it belonged to Sir Horacebecause it is the same size as the gloves he wore, and because SirHorace's hosier stocks the same kind--as does nearly every fashionablehosier in London. They think he lost the right-hand glove on his way upfrom Scotland. It will occur to you, Joe, though you don't wear gloves,that it is more common for men to lose the right-hand glove than theleft-hand, because the right hand is used a great deal more than theleft, and even men who would not be seen in the street without glovesfind there are many things they cannot do with a gloved hand. Forinstance, to dive one's hand into one's trouser pocket where most menkeep their loose change the glove has to be removed."
"Then the gentleman would take off his right glove when he paid for histaxi-cab from St. Pancras," said Joe, who was familiar through theaccounts in the newspapers with the main details of the Fewbanks mystery.
"Right, Joe," said his master approvingly. "And in that case he droppedthe glove between the taxi-cab outside his front gates and his room, andit would have been found. I have made inquiries and I am satisfied it wasnot found."
"He might have lost it when he was getting into the train at Scotland,"suggested the lad. "He had to change trains at Glasgow--he might havelost it there."
"That is a rule-of-thumb deduction," said Crewe, with a kindly smile. "Itis good enough for the police, for they have apparently adopted it, butit is not good enough for me. What you don't understand, Joe, is that anodd glove is of no value in the eyes of a man who wears gloves. Hedoesn't take it home as a memento of his carelessness in losing theother. He throws it away. Therefore if this is Sir Horace's glove he tookit home because he was unaware that he had lost the other. He would puton his gloves before leaving the train at St. Pancras. And he would pulloff the right-hand one--he was not left-handed--when the taxi-cab wasnearing his home so as to be able to pay the fare. Therefore, if it isSir Horace's glove the fellow to it was dropped in the taxi-cab, ordropped between the taxi-cab and the house. If the glove had been lost atthe other end of the journey in Scotland Sir Horace would have flung thisone out of the carriage window when he became aware of the loss. As Ihave told you no glove was found between the gate at Riversbrook and theroom in which Sir Horace was murdered. I got from the police the numberof the taxi-cab in which Sir Horace was driven from St. Pancras, and thedriver tells me that no glove was left in his cab. So what have we to donext, Joe?"
"To find the missing glove? It's a tough job, ain't it, sir?"
"Yes and no," replied Crewe. "It is possible to make some reasonablesafe deductions in regard to it. These would indicate what had happenedto it, and knowing where to look, or, rather, in what circumstances wemight expect to find it, we might throw a little light on it. In thefirst place, it might be assumed that if the glove did not belong to SirHorace it belonged to some one who visited him on the night he returnedunexpectedly from Scotland. That indicates that his visitor knew SirHorace was returning; a most important point, for if he knew Sir Horacewas returning he knew why he was returning--which no one else knows up tothe present as far as I have been able to gather--and in all probabilitywas responsible for his return, say, sent him a letter or a telegramwhich brought him to London. So we come to the possibility of an angryscene in the room in which Sir Horace's dead body was subsequently found.We have the possibility of the visitor leaving the house in a high stateof excitement, hastily snatching up the hat and gloves he had taken offwhen he arrived, and in his excitement dropping unnoticed the right-handglove on the floor."
"And leaving his gold-mounted stick behind him," said Joe, who wasfollowing his master's line of reasoning with keen interest.
"Right, Joe," said Crewe. "That was placed in the stand in the hall, andwhen the visitor left hurriedly was entirely forgotten. But at what stagedid the visitor become conscious of the loss of his glove? Not until hisexcitement cooled down a little. How long he took to cool down dependsupon the cause of his excitement and his temperament, things which, atpresent, we can only guess at. He would probably walk a long distancebefore he cooled down. Then he would resume his normal habits and amongother things would put on his gloves--if he had them. He would find thathe had lost one and that he had left his stick behind. He would know thatthe stick had been left behind in the hall, but he would not know theglove had been dropped in the house. The probabilities are that he wouldthink he had dropped it while walking. But if he felt that he had droppedit in the house, and he had the best of all reasons for not wishinganyone to know that he had visited Sir Horace that night, he woulddestroy the remaining glove and our chance of tracing it would be gone.The fact that he had left his stick behind was a minor matter that hecould easily account for if he had been a friend of Sir Horace who hadbeen in the habit of visiting Riversbrook. If anything cropped upsubsequently about the stick he could say that he had left it therebefore Sir Horace closed up his house and went to Scotland.
"But the problem of the glove is a different matter, Joe. There are threephases to it: first, if the visitor thought he had dropped it in thehouse and wanted to keep his visit there a profound secret fromsubsequent inquiry he would take home the remaining glove and destroyit--probably by burning it. Secondly, if he thought he had dropped itafter leaving the house he would not feel that safety necessitated thedestruction of the remaining one, but he would probably throw it awaywhere it would not be likely to be found. In the third place, if he hadno particular reason for wishing to hide the fact that he had visitedRiversbrook he would throw it away anywhere when he became conscious thathe had lost the other. He would throw it away merely because an odd gloveis of no use to a man who wears gloves. The man who doesn't wear gloveswould pick up an odd glove from the ground and think he had made a find.He would take it home to his wife and she would probably keep it forfinger-stalls for the children."
Crewe put down his notes and got up from his chair. "Your job is this,Joe. Go to Ri
versbrook and make a careful search on both sides of theroad for the missing glove. I do not think he threw it away--if he didthrow it away--until he had walked some distance, but you mustn't act onthat assumption. Look over the fences of the houses and into the hedges.Walk along in the direction of Hampstead Underground. Search the guttersand all the trees and hedges along the road. Take one side of the streetto the Underground station and if you do not find the glove go back toRiversbrook along the other side. Make a thorough job of it, as it ismost important that the glove should be found--if it is to be found."
After Joe had departed Crewe put on his hat and left his office for theStrand. His first call was at the shop of Bruden and Marshall, hosiers,in order to find out if any information was to be obtained there aboutthe ownership of the glove. He was aware that the police had been thereon the same mission, but his experience had often shown that valuableinformation was to be gathered after the police had been over the ground.
On introducing himself to the manager of the shop that gentlemandisplayed as much humble civility as he would have done towards a valuedcustomer. He could not say anything about the ownership of the glovewhich Crewe had brought, and he could not even say if it had come fromtheir shop. It was an excellent glove, the line being known in the tradeas "first-choice reindeer." They stocked that particular kind of articleat 10/6 the pair. They had the pleasure of having had the late Sir HoraceFewbanks on their books. He was quite an old account, if he might use theexpression. He was one of their best customers, being a gentleman who wasparticular about his appearance and who would have nothing but the bestin any line that he fancied. On the subject of Sir Horace's taste in hosethe manager had much to say, and, in spite of Crewe's efforts to confinethe conversation to gloves, the manager repeatedly dragged in socks. Hedid it so frequently that he became conscious his visitor was showingsigns of annoyance, so he apologised, adding, with an inspiration, "Afterall, hose is really gloves for the feet."
Crewe ascertained that a large number of legal gentlemen werecustomers of Bruden and Marshall. He innocently suggested that thereason was because the shop was the nearest one of its kind to the LawCourts, but this explanation offended the shopman's pride. It wasbecause they stocked high-class goods and gave good value in every way,combined with attention and civility and a desire to please, that theydid such an excellent business with legal gentlemen. In refutation ofthe idea that proximity to the Courts was the direct reason of theirhaving so many legal gentlemen among their customers the managerdeclared that they received orders from all parts of the world--India,Canada, Australia, and South Africa, to say nothing of Americangentlemen who liked their hosiery to have the London hall-mark. Theirorders from the Colonies came from gentlemen who found that thesethings in the Colonies were not what they had been used to, and so theysent their orders to Bruden and Marshall.
Crewe's interest was in the legal customers and he asked for the names ofsome. The manager ran through a list of names of judges, barristers andsolicitors, but the name Crewe wanted to hear was not among them. He wascompelled to include the name among half a dozen others he mentioned tothe manager. He ascertained that Mr. Charles Holymead was a customer ofthe firm, but it was apparent from the manager's spiritless attitudetowards Mr. Holymead that the famous K.C. was not a man who ran up a bigbill with his hosier, or was very particular about what he wore. Theworld regarded some of the men of this type famous or distinguished, butin the hosier's mind they were all classed as commonplace. But themanager would not go so far as to say that Mr. Holymead would not buysuch a glove as that which Crewe had brought in. He might and he mightnot, but, as a general rule, he did not pay more than 8/6 for his gloves.
Crewe took a taxi to Princes Gate in order to have a look at the housein which Holymead lived. It occurred to him that if Holymead was notparticular about what he spent on his clothes he was extravagant aboutthe amount he spent in house rent. Of course, a leading barristerearning a huge income could afford to live in a palatial residence inPrinces Gate, but it was not the locality or residence that aneconomically-minded man would have chosen for his home. But Crewe hadlittle doubt that the beautiful wife Holymead possessed was responsiblefor the choice of house and locality.
After looking at the house Crewe walked back to the cab-stand at HydePark Corner. He had arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary tosettle beyond doubt whether the K.C. had visited Riversbrook the night SirHorace had returned from Scotland. If the K.C. had done so, he wasanxious to keep the visit secret, for not only had he not informed thepolice of his visit but he had kept it from Miss Fewbanks. Crewe hadascertained from Miss Fewbanks that Mr. Holymead when he had called atRiversbrook on a visit of condolence had not mentioned to her anythingabout having left his stick in the hall stand on a previous visit. Onleaving Miss Fewbanks Mr. Holymead had gone up to the hall stand andtaken both his hat and stick as if he had left them both there a fewminutes before.
Crewe reasoned that if Holymead had gone out to see Sir Horace Fewbanksat Riversbrook and had desired to keep his visit a secret he would nothave taken a cab at Hyde Park Corner to Hampstead, but would havetravelled by underground railway or omnibus. In all probability the Tubehad been used because of its speed being more in harmony with thefeelings of a man impatient to get done with a subject so important thatSir Horace had been recalled from Scotland to deal with it. He wouldleave the Tube at Hampstead and take a taxi-cab. He would not be likelyto go straight to Riversbrook in the taxi-cab, if he were anxious thathis movements should not be traced subsequently. He would dismiss thetaxi-cab at one of the hotels bordering on Hampstead Heath, for theywere the resort of hundreds of visitors on summer nights, and his actionswould thus easily escape notice. From the hotel he would walk across toRiversbrook. But the return journey would be made in a somewhat differentway. If Holymead left Riversbrook in a state of excitement he would walka long way without being conscious of the exertion. He would want to bealone with his own thoughts. Gradually he would cool down, and becomingconscious of his surroundings would make his way home. Again he would usethe Tube, for it would be more difficult for his movements to be tracedif he mixed with a crowd of travellers than if he took a cab to his home.It was impossible to say what station he got in at, for that would dependon how far he walked before he cooled down, but he would be sure to getout at Hyde Park Corner because that was the station nearest to hishouse. Allowing for a temperamental reaction during a train journey ofabout twenty minutes, he would feel depressed and weary and wouldprobably take a taxi-cab outside Hyde Park station to his home. That wasa thing he would often be in the habit of doing when returning late atnight from the theatre or elsewhere, and therefore could be easilyexplained by him if the police happened to make inquiries as to hismovements.
As Crewe anticipated, he had no difficulty in finding the driver of thetaxi-cab in which Holymead had driven home on the night of Wednesdaylast. The K.C. frequently used cabs, and he was well-known to all thedrivers on the rank. Crewe got into the cab he had used and ordered theman to drive him to his office, and there invited him upstairs. Headopted this course because he knew that the driver, who gave his name asTaylor, would be more likely to talk freely in an office where he couldnot be overheard than he would do on the cab-rank with his fellow-driverscrowding him, or in an hotel parlour where other people were present.
"Tell me exactly what happened when you drove Mr. Holymead home onWednesday night," said Crewe. "Did you notice anything strange abouthim, or was his manner much the same as on other occasions that he usedyour cab?"
"Well, I don't see whether I should tell you whether he was or whether hewasn't," replied the taxi-cab driver, who was as surly as most of hisclass. "What's it to do with you, anyway? He's a regular customer of mineon the rank, and he's not one of your tuppenny tipsters, either. He's agentleman. And if he got to know that I had been telling tales about himit would not do me any good."
"It would not," replied Crewe, with cordial acquiescence. "Therefore,Taylor, I give you my word
of honour not to mention anything you tell me.Furthermore, I'll see that you don't lose by it now or at any other time.I cannot say more than that, but that's a great deal more than the policewould say. Now, would you sooner tell me or tell the police? Here's asovereign to start with, and if you have an interesting story to tellyou'll have another one before you leave."
The appeal of money and the conviction that the police would use lessconsiderate methods if Crewe passed him over to them abolished Taylor'sscruples about discussing a fare, and it was in a much less surly tonethat he responded:
"I didn't notice anything strange about him when he called me off therank, but I did afterwards. First of all, I didn't drive him home. Thatis, I did drive him home, but he didn't go inside. When I drew up outsidehis house in Princes Gate, I looked around expecting to see him get out.As he didn't move I got down and opened the door. 'Aren't you getting outhere, sir?' I said, in a soft voice. 'No,' he said. 'Drive on.' 'This isyour house, sir,' I ventured to say. 'I'm not going in,' he replied,'drive on.' I was surprised. I thought he was the worse for drink, andI'd never seen him that way before. But some gentlemen are so obstinatein liquor that you can't get them to do anything except the opposite ofwhat you ask them. I thought I'd try and coax him. 'Better go inside,sir,' I said. 'You'll be better off in bed.' 'Do you think I am drunk?'he said sharply. You could have knocked me down with a feather. He was assober as a judge, all in a moment. 'No, sir, I didn't,' I said. 'Iwouldn't take the liberty,' I said. 'Then get back on your seat and driveme to the Hyde Park Hotel--no, I think I'll go to Verney's. But don't gothere direct. Drive me round the Park first. I feel I want a breath ofcool air.'"
"Go on," said Crewe, in a tone which indicated approval of Taylor'smethod of telling his story.
"Well, I turned the cab round and drove through the Park. But I waspuzzled about him and looked back at him once or twice pretending that Iwas looking to see if a cab or car was coming up behind. And as we passedover the Serpentine Bridge I saw him throw something out of the window."
"A glove?" suggested Crewe quickly.
The driver looked at him in profound admiration.
"Well, if you don't beat all the detectives I've ever heard of."
"He tried to throw it in the water," continued Crewe, as if explainingthe matter to himself rather than to his visitor. "Did you get it?"
"Hold on a bit," said Taylor, who had his own ideas of how to give valuefor the extra sovereign he hoped to obtain. "I couldn't see what it washe had thrown away, and, of course, I couldn't pull up to find out. Idrove on, but I kept my eye on him, though I had my back to him. As wewere driving back along the Broad Walk I had another look at him, andbless me if he wasn't crying--crying like a child. He had his hands up tohis face and his head was shaking as if he was sobbing. I said to myself,'He's barmy--he's gone off his rocker.' I thought to myself I ought todrive him to the police station, but I reckoned it was none of mybusiness, after all, so I'll take him to Verney's and be done with it.So I drove to Verney's. He got out, and paid me, but I couldn't see thathe had been crying, and he looked much as usual, so far as I could see. Ithought to myself that perhaps, after all, he'd only had a queer turn;however, I said to myself I'd drive back to the bridge and see what he'dthrown out of the window. It _was_ a glove, sure enough. It had fallenjust below the railing. I looked about for the other one, but I couldn'tfind it, so I suppose it must have fallen into the water."
"No, it didn't," said Crewe. "I have it here." He opened a drawer in hisdesk and produced a glove. "It was a right-hand glove you found. Justlook at this one and see if it corresponds to the one you picked up."
Taylor looked at the glove.
"They're as like as two peas," he said.
"What did you do with the one you found?" inquired Crewe. "I hope youdidn't throw it away?"
"I'm not a fool," retorted Taylor. "I've had odd gloves left in my cabbefore. I kept this one thinking that sooner or later somebody mightleave another like it, and then I'd have a pair for nothing."
"Well, I'll buy it from you," said Crewe. "Have you anything moreto tell me?"
"I went back to the rank and one of the chaps was curious that I'd beenso long away, for he knew that Mr. Holymead's place isn't more than tenminutes' drive from the station. But he got nothing out of me. I know howto keep my mouth shut. You're the first man I've told what happened, andI hope you won't give me away."
"I've already promised you that," said Crewe, flipping another sovereignfrom his sovereign case and handing it to Taylor, "and I'll give you fiveshillings for the glove."
Taylor looked at him darkly.
"Five shillings isn't much for a glove like that," he said insolently."What about my loss of time going home for it? I suppose you'll pay thetaxi-fare for the run down from Hyde Park?"
"No, I won't," said Crewe cheerfully.
"Then I don't see why I should bring it for a paltry five shillings,"said Taylor. "If you want the glove you'll have to pay for it."
"But I don't want the glove," said Crewe, who disliked being made thevictim of extortion. "What made you think so? I'll sell you this one forfive shillings. We may as well do a deal of some kind; it is no use eachof us having one glove. What do you say, Taylor? Will you buy mine forfive shillings, or shall I buy yours?"
Taylor smiled sourly.
"You're a deep one," he said. "Here's the other glove." He dipped hishand into the deep pocket of his driving coat and produced a glove. "Isuppose you knew I'd have it on me. Five shillings, and it's yours."
"The pair are worth about five shillings to me," said Crewe as he paidover the money. "Do you remember what time it was when Mr. Holymeadengaged you at Hyde Park?"
"Eleven o'clock."
"You are quite sure as to the time?"
"I heard one of the big clocks striking as he was getting into my cab."
Taylor took his departure, and Crewe, after wrapping up the left-handglove which he had to return to Inspector Chippenfield, put the other onein his safe.
"We are getting on," he said in a pleased tone. "This means a trip toScotland, but I'll wait until the inquest is over."