Leon lost no time. Early the next morning he was in Whitechurch Street, and watched the milkman ascend to the garret where Letheritt had his foul habitation. He waited till the milkman had come out and disappeared, but, sharp as he was, he was not quick enough. By the time he had reached the top floor, the milk had been taken in, and the little phial of colorless fluid which might have acted as a preservative to the milk was unused.
The next morning he tried again, and again he failed.
On the fourth night, between the hours of one and two, he managed to gain an entry into the house, and crept noiselessly up the stairs. The door was locked from the inside, but he could reach the end of the key with a pair of narrow pliers he carried.
There was no sound from within when he snapped back the lock and turned the handle softly. But he had no way to deal with the bolts.
The next day he came again, and surveyed the house from the outside. It was possible to reach the window of the room, but he would need a very long ladder, and after a brief consultation with Manfred he decided against this method.
Manfred made a suggestion.
“Why not send him a wire, asking him to meet your Miss Brown at Liverpool Street Station? You know her Christian name?”
Leon sighed wearily.
“I tried that on the second day, my dear chap, and had little Lew Leveson on hand to ‘whizz’ him the moment he came into the street in case he was carrying the letters.”
“By ‘whizz’ you mean to pick his pocket? I can’t keep track of modern thief slang,” said Manfred. “In the days when I was actively interested, we used to call it ‘dip’.”
“You are démodé, George; ‘whizz’ is the word. But of course the beggar didn’t come out. If he owed rent I could get the brokers put in; but he does not owe rent. He is breaking no laws, and is living a fairly blameless life — except, of course, one could catch him for being in possession of opium. But that would not be much use, because the police are rather chary of allowing us to work with them.”
He shook his head.
“I am afraid I shall have to give Miss Brown a very bad report.”
It was not until a few days later that he actually wrote to the agreed address, having first discovered that it was, as he suspected, a small stationer’s shop where letters could be called for.
A week later Superintendent Meadows, who was friendly with the Three, came down to consult Manfred on a matter of a forged Spanish passport, and since Manfred was an authority on passport forgeries and had a fund of stories about Spanish criminals, it was long after midnight when the conference broke up.
Leon, who needed exercise, walked to Regent Street with Meadows, and the conversation turned to Mr. John Letheritt.
“Oh, yes, I know him well. I took him two years ago on a false pretense charge, and got him eighteen months at the London Assizes. A real bad egg, that fellow, and a bit of a ‘squeaker,’ too. He’s the man who put away Joe Lenthall, the cleverest cat burglar we’ve had for a generation. Joe got ten years, and I shouldn’t like to be this fellow when Joe comes out!”
Suddenly Leon asked a question, and when the other had answered, his companion stood stock-still in the middle of the deserted Hanover Square and doubled up with silent laughter.
“I don’t see the joke.”
“But I do,” chuckled Leon. “What a fool I’ve been! And I thought I understood the case!”
“Do you want Letheritt for anything? I know where he lives,” said Meadows.
Leon shook his head.
“No, I don’t want him: but I should very much like to have ten minutes in his room!”
Meadows looked serious.
“He’s blackmailing, eh? I wondered where he was getting his money from.”
But Leon did not enlighten him. He went back to Curzon Street and began searching certain works of reference, and followed this by an inspection of a large-scale map of the Home Counties. He was the last to go to bed, and the first to waken, for he slept in the front of the house and heard the knocking at the door.
It was raining heavily as he pulled up the window and looked out; and in the dim light of dawn he thought he recognized Superintendent Meadows. A second later he was sure of his visitor’s identity.
“Will you come down? I want to see you.”
Gonsalez slipped into his dressing gown, ran downstairs, and opened the door to the superintendent.
“You remember we were talking about Letheritt last night?” said Meadows, as Leon ushered him into the little waiting room.
The superintendent’s voice was distinctly unfriendly, and he was eyeing Leon keenly.
“Yes, I remember.”
“You didn’t by any chance go out again last night?”
“No. Why?”
Again that look of suspicion.
“Letheritt was murdered at half-past one this morning, and his room ransacked.”
Leon stared at him.
“Murdered? Have you got the murderer?” he asked at last.
“No, but we shall get him all right. He was seen coming down the rainpipe by a City policeman. Evidently he had got into Letheritt’s room through the window, and it was this discovery by the constable which led to a search of the house. The City police had to break in the door, and they found Letheritt dead on the bed. He had evidently been hit on the head with a jimmy, and ordinarily that injury would not have killed him, according to the police doctor; but in his state of health it was quite enough to put him out. A policeman went around the house to intercept the burglar, but somehow he must have escaped into one of the little alleys that abound in this part of the city, and he was next seen by a constable in Fleet Street, driving a small car, the number plate of which had been covered with mud.”
“Was the man recognized?”
“He hasn’t been — yet. What he did was to leave three fingerprints on the window, and as he was obviously an old hand at the game, that is as good as a direct identification. The City detective force called us in, but we have not been able to help them except to give them particulars of Letheritt’s past life. Incidentally, I supplied them with a copy of your fingerprints. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Delighted!” Leon said.
After the officer had left, Leon went upstairs to give the news to his two friends.
But the most startling intelligence was to come when they were sitting at breakfast. Meadows arrived. They saw his car draw up at the door, which Poiccart went out to open to him. He strode into the little room, his eyes bulging with excitement.
“Here’s a mystery which even you fellows will never be able to solve,” he said. “Do you know that this is a day of great tragedy for Scotland Yard and for the identification system? It means the destruction of a method that has been laboriously built up—”
“What are you talking about?” asked Manfred quickly.
“The fingerprint system,” said Meadows, and Poiccart, to whom the fingerprint method was something God-like, gaped at him.
“We’ve found a duplicate,” said Meadows. “The prints on the glass were undoubtedly the prints of Joe Lenthall — and Joe Lenthall is in Wilford County Prison serving the first part of twelve years’ penal servitude!”
Something made Manfred turn his head toward his friend. Leon’s eyes were blazing, his thin face wreathed in one joyous smile.
“This is the prettiest case that I have ever dealt with,” he said softly. “Now, sit down, my dear Meadows, and eat! No, no: sit down. I want to hear about Lenthall — is it possible for me to see him?”
Meadows stared at him.
“What use would that be? I tell you this is the biggest blow we have ever had! And what is more, when we showed the City policeman a photograph of Lenthall, he recognized him as the man he had seen coming down the rainpipe! I thought Lenthall had escaped, and phoned the prison. But he’s there all right.”