“You are satisfied,” Mr. Brown asked, “with the aid which you are getting from Scotland Yard?”
“Absolutely,” Crawshay declared. “Brightman, too — the man who came down with me from Liverpool — has done excellent work.”
“And notwithstanding all this,” was the somewhat grave criticism, “you have not the slightest idea where these documents are to be found?”
“Not the slightest,” Crawshay confessed. “All that I do feel convinced of is that they have not left the country.”
The great man leaned back a little wearily in his chair. There were some decoded cables, lying under a paper weight by his side, imploring him in the strongest possible terms to make use of every means within his power to solve this mystery, — a personal appeal from a man whose good will might sway the balance of the future. He was used to wonderful service in every department he controlled. His present sense of impotence was galling.
“Tell me, Mr. Crawshay,” he asked, “how long was the gap of time between your losing sight of Jocelyn Thew and when you picked him up in London?”
“Very short indeed,” was the emphatic reply. “Jocelyn Thew must have left the City of Boston at about eight o’clock on Monday morning. He met Gant at five o’clock that evening at Crewe station. Gant had come direct from Frisby, the little village near Chester where he had left the body of Phillips. It is obvious, therefore, that Gant had the papers with him when he joined Jocelyn Thew. They travelled to London together but parted at Euston, Gant going to a cheap hotel in the vicinity of Regent Street, whilst Thew drove to the Savoy. Gant called at the Savoy Hotel at nine o’clock that evening, and the two men dined together in the grill room and took a box at a music hall — the Alhambra. Up to this time neither of them had received a visitor or dispatched a message — Thew, in fact, had spent more than an hour in the barber’s shop. They returned from the Alhambra together, went up to Thew’s rooms, had a drink and separated half an hour later. This, of course, is in a sense posthumous information, but Scotland Yard have it tabulated down to the slightest detail, and we are unable to find a single suspicious circumstance in connection with the movements of either man. At four o’clock the following morning, when both men were asleep in their rooms, the cordon was drawn around them. Since then they haven’t had a chance.”
“The fact that the papers are not in the possession of either of them,” Mr. Brown said reflectively, “proves that they made some move of which you have no record.”
“Precisely,” Crawshay agreed, “but it must have been a move of so slight a character that chance may reveal it to us at any moment.”
“Describe Jocelyn Thew to me,” Mr. Brown begged.
“He has every appearance,” Crawshay declared, “of being a man of breeding. He is scarcely middle-aged — tall and of athletic build. He dresses well, speaks well, and I should take him anywhere for an English public school and college man.”
“Did New York give you his record?”
“In a cloudy sort of way. He seems to have had a most interesting career, ranching out West, fighting in Mexico, fighting in several of the Central American states, and fighting, I shrewdly suspect, against England in South Africa. He seems to have been a sort of stormy petrel, and to have turned up in any place where there was trouble. In New York the police always suspected him of being connected with some great criminal movements, but they were never able to lay even a finger upon him. He lived at one of the best hotels in the city, disappeared sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for a year, but always returned quite quietly, with apparently any amount of money to spend, and that queer look which comes to a man who has been up against big things.”
“He is an Englishman, I suppose?”
“He must be. His accent and manners and appearance are all unmistakable.”
“How long was he suspected of being in the pay of our enemies before this thing transpired?”
“Only a very short time. There was a little gang in New York — Rentoul, the man who had the wireless in Fifth Avenue, was in it — and they used to meet at a place in Fourteenth Street, belonging to an old man named Sharey. That’s where Miss Sharey comes into the business. There were some queer things done there, but they don’t concern this business, and New York has the records of them.”
“Jocelyn Thew,” Mr. Brown repeated slowly to himself. “Where did you say he was staying?”
“At the Savoy Court.”
Mr. Brown looked fixedly at the cables, fluttering a little in the breeze which blew in through the half-open window.
“All this isn’t very encouraging, Mr. Crawshay,” he sighed.
“Up to the present no,” the former admitted. “Yet I can promise you one thing, sir. Those papers shall not leave the country.”
“I am glad to hear you speak with so much confidence,” Mr. Brown observed drily. “Mr. Jocelyn Thew seems at any rate to have managed to secrete them without difficulty.”
“That may be so,” Crawshay acknowledged, “and yet I am convinced of one thing. They are disposed of in some perfectly obvious way, and within the next forty-eight hours he will make some effort to repossess himself of them. If he does, he will fail.”
Mr. Brown glanced at his watch.
“I am very much obliged to you for coming to see me,” he said. “You are doing your best, I know, and I beg you, Mr. Crawshay, never for a moment to let your efforts relax. The mechanical side of the watch that is being kept upon these people I know we can rely upon, but you must remember that you are the brains of this enterprise. Your little band of watchers will be quiet enough to see the things that happen and the things that exist. It is you who must watch for the things which don’t happen.”
Crawshay smiled slightly as he rose to take his leave.
“I do not as a rule suffer from over-confidence, sir,” he said, “but I think I can promise you that by Wednesday night not only will the papers be in our hands, but Mr. Jocelyn Thew will be so disposed of that he will be no longer an object of anxiety to us.”
“Get on with the good work, then,” was Mr. Brown’s laconic farewell.
Late on the following afternoon, Jocelyn Thew and Gant paced the long platform at Euston, by the side of which the special for the American boat was already drawn up. Curiously enough, in their immediate vicinity Mr. Brightman was also seeing a friend off, and on the outskirts of the little throng Mr. Henshaw was taking an intelligent interest in the scene.
“Perhaps, after all,” Jocelyn Thew declared, “you are right to go. You have been very useful, and you have, without a doubt, earned your thousand pounds.”
“It was easy money,” the other admitted, “but even now I am nervous. I shall be glad to be back once more in my own country.”
“You are certainly right to go,” the other repeated. “If you had been different, if you had been one of those men after my own heart,” Jocelyn Thew went on, resting his hand for a moment upon Gant’s shoulder, “one of those who, apart from thought of gain or hope of profit, love adventure for its own sake, I should have begged you to stay with me. I would have sent you on bogus errands to mysterious places. I would have twisted the brains of those who have fastened upon us in a hundred different fashions. But alas, my friend, you are not like that!”
“I am not,” Gant admitted, gruffly but heartily. “I have done a job for you, and you have paid me very well. I am glad to have done it, because I love Germany and I do not love England. Apart from that my work is finished. I like to go home. I am happiest with my wife and family.”