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But the commissionaire shook his head and looked blank. He did not remember Bobby, he was sure neither Bobby nor anyone else had shown him any sketch, he had not in fact any idea what Bobby was talking about, and Bobby remembered then that in his hurry to get Mitchell the required tickets he had gone straight to the box office and after obtaining them and making his inquiries there about the sketch had hurried away, quite forgetting that he had not questioned the commissionaire. A stupid oversight, Bobby thought with some vexation, though one not likely to be of any importance, and as he began to hunt for his copy of the sketch he still had with him in his pocket-book, he asked a few casual questions from which it appeared that, by good luck, the commissionaire knew Mitchell by sight. He had a nephew in the police who had pointed the famous Superintendent out to him, and he had seen him again when he had had occasion to go to Scotland Yard on some unimportant errand or another. He remembered Mitchell's visit the other night quite well, having noticed him at once, and was certain he had been accompanied, not by a lady, but by a gentleman, in whom, from the description given, Bobby was sure he recognized the Assistant Commissioner himself.

And what on earth had made Mitchell and the Assistant Commissioner want to spend an evening together watching a Shakespearian play, was more than Bobby could imagine.

He gave it up finally as no business of his, and, producing his sketch, showed it. The commissionaire said:

‘Why, that's Mr Harrison; he's brother-in-law of Mr Lamb at the box office. Not been doing anything, has he?'

‘Why, no,' laughed Bobby, ‘at least, not that we know of. But we think he could give us some information in a case we are interested in. Do you mean he works here?'

‘Oh, no,' answered the other, ‘but he's come a cropper in the City and now he's got nothing left – says he was done down by some of them there, skinned and nothing left, so he is glad enough of any little job Mr Lamb can find him, us being so busy with the rush there's been,' and the commissionaire puffed out his chest with pride, for proud though author and actor and manager may be of a West End success, their pride is but a poor thing to that of the average commissionaire, who almost visibly grows in stature on those rare occasions when he is able to watch a real rush for the box office window.

‘Do you know his address?' asked Bobby.

The commissionaire didn't, but supposed they would know it at the box office, and thither therefore Bobby proceeded.

‘When I showed you this sketch the other day,' Bobby demanded severely of Mr Lamb, ‘why didn't you tell me it was your brother-in-law, Mr Harrison?'

‘Harrison?' repeated Mr Lamb, quite surprised. ‘You don't mean that's meant for Joe Harrison? Well, you do surprise me. I hadn't an idea. If you had showed me a photograph now, but how could anyone tell what that was meant for?'

He gave a glance of contempt and disdain at the sketch as he spoke and the offended artist picked it up.

‘It's a very good drawing,' he said firmly, ‘and it's my belief you knew who it was all the time.'

Mr Lamb shook his head.

‘I am looking at it right way up, aren't I?' he asked innocently.

Bobby put the sketch away.

‘I'll trouble you for Harrison's address,' he said coldly, and though Mr Lamb still hesitated a little, in the end he produced it.

Bobby's first act was to get on the phone and report to his superiors that he had discovered at last the name and address of the man they had been looking for so long, and to suggest that it would be wise to follow up the information immediately.

Neither Mitchell nor Gibbons was at the Yard as it happened, but the officer in charge agreed it was very important that no time should be lost, since nothing was more likely than that his brother-in-law might already be warning Harrison, by phone or wire, that his identity was known.

‘Get over there as fast as you know how,' Bobby was instructed, ‘and bring him along to the Yard. If he wants to make a statement, let him, but don't press him till Mr Mitchell's seen him.'

Taxis are not much in the line of men drawing a constable's pay, but on this occasion Bobby decided to hire one and risk getting the fare allowed. It seemed to him there was not a minute to lose; it was essential, he thought, to find Harrison and get him to talk before any warning could reach him; and during the long drive to the remote suburb to which he had been directed, Bobby's mind was all one tumult of conflicting thoughts, theories, fancies. For one thing he felt certain that Mitchell either knew or suspected something, something that had induced him to take the Assistant Commissioner to spend an evening at the theatre, yet how an evening at the theatre could help in the solution of the mystery was more than Bobby could even begin to imagine. He was convinced, too, that Mitchell took seriously, and was a good deal worried – ‘rattled' was the word Bobby employed – by the twin suggestions that on the one hand Marsden planned to murder Peter Carsley, and that on the other hand Peter himself proposed to complete plans for obtaining full possession of Sir Christopher Clarke's money by next disposing of his young wife. But then again what could a visit to the theatre have to do with either of these contingencies?

At last, while he was still racking his brains to find some probable explanation, his taxi turned into the street for which they were bound. The driver slowed down, looking for the number he wanted, and there went by them very swiftly a small, two-seater car in which as it sped by Bobby saw at the wheel Mark Lester. For just that second their eyes met, and there was that in Mark's expression Bobby never forgot, so full was it of horror and despair, as of one for whom no longer any hope existed. Yet there was something, too, of triumph in the gesture Mark made with one quick, lifted hand, as if to tell Bobby he had come too late. Then he was passed, and gone, and the taxi stopped, and at the open door the driver said:

‘Here you are, sir.'

‘Did you see that small car go by?' Bobby said to him.

‘Going at a fairish rate,' agreed the driver, ‘some of these young chaps; nothing under forty m.p.h. is any good to 'em, and I don't know as that chap wasn't doing more – fair stepping on it, so he was.'

Bobby had some vague idea of pursuit in his mind, but he abandoned it, pursuit would evidently have been useless even if he had known what to say or do had it succeeded. But he had nothing to go on, save that one strange, fleeting look which had seemed like that of one who despaired, and the momentary gesture which had appeared like that of one who triumphed.

One thing he noticed, though, was that the house he was about to visit had no telephone, and certainly no telegram could have beaten Bobby's taxi. Did that indicate that Mr Lamb, of the Regency box office, had phoned to Mark, and Mark had come on here at once to convey to Harrison the warning that otherwise he could not have received in time?

But that meant collusion between Mark Lester and Harrison, collusion that must be of recent growth, for Bobby thought it certain that Mark and Harrison had met for the first time that evening in the ‘The Green Man'.

‘Can they have fixed something up together then, right under my nose, while I was looking?' Bobby asked himself bewilderedly. ‘It doesn't seem possible, but then nothing seems possible in this case. Unless it is that Mark Lester is really the guilty man, and that Harrison knows it, and that Lester's afraid he'll tell. That might account for the way Lester looked just now.'

Bobby thought it best to tell his taxi-man to wait, and as it was evidently of little use to continue this riot of doubt and speculation in which he found his mind involved, he went to the house and knocked. He had to wait for a reply; and when at last a woman came Bobby felt more certain than ever from her manner that he was expected, and that Mark had been before him with a warning.

Mr Harrison lived here, the woman admitted. She was Mrs Harrison, she said, and her husband was ill in bed and could see no one.

‘The gentleman who called just now saw him, I think,' Bobby retorted.

‘That was a friend,' Mrs Harrison explained, but uneasily. ‘He only came to see how my husband was getting on.'

‘Then what made him look the way he did when he left?' Bobby demanded; and then realizing that it was only futile to stand there questioning the woman, he explained who he was, produced his warrant card, and told her it was necessary he should see her husband at once.

She still persisted that he must wait, at least till the doctor had been. They hadn't sent for the doctor before but they had now. It was a ‘nervous breakdown', she explained, when Bobby asked what was the matter; and as that is an expression which may mean just anything or nothing, Bobby was not very much impressed. Apparently this breakdown of Mr Harrison's nerves had happened on the very night of the visit to ‘The Green Man', and at last when Bobby still insisted and showed he meant to have his way, Mrs Harrison agreed to go and consult her husband.

Bobby warned his taxi-driver to see no one attempted to escape by the windows – for by now he was wrought up to be prepared for anything, and himself kept a careful watch from the foot of the stairs. He did not mean Harrison to slip away a second time, as he had done that night at ‘The Green Man'. These precautions, however, proved unnecessary, for presently Mrs Harrison came out and took him back into the bedroom, where he found her husband sitting up in bed and looking very sulky and determined, so that Bobby knew at once it was going to be difficult to get a word out of him.

He was a small, pale, worried-looking man, with thin, grey hair and whiskers, two light-blue watery eyes, a long, thin nose, and a tight-lipped, obstinate mouth above a small pointed chin. The whole impression was that of a man who would not easily give up his aims, but who would seldom attain them, because, though certain of his aim, he would never be so of his means. He greeted Bobby ill-temperedly enough.

‘What do you want?' he demanded. ‘I'm not well, I don't want to be worried, what do you want to come worrying me for? Why can't you leave me alone?'

‘I'm sorry to hear you're unwell,' Bobby answered.

‘Have you been unwell ever since you met Mr Lester at “The Green Man”?'

‘What do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about,' retorted Harrison with a mixture of discomfort and defiance in his voice.

‘I think you do,' Bobby answered. ‘What did Mr Lester come to see you for just now?'

‘That's my business,' Harrison retorted sullenly.

‘It's our business, too,' Bobby told him; ‘and I'm afraid if you won't talk you will find yourself in a rather serious position. Are you able to come to Scotland Yard with me?'

‘No, I'm not,' snapped Harrison very emphatically.

‘I believe the doctor's coming to see you, isn't he?' Bobby asked. ‘We'll have to wait and see what he says about that and if you really aren't fit to come to Scotland Yard, then I suppose Scotland Yard will have to come to you. There's good reason to believe you know something about the murder of Sir Christopher Clarke–'

The effect of these last words was startling and unexpected. The little man sat bolt upright, his scattered locks of grey hair tumbling over his forehead, the sudden light that flashed into his pale and watery eyes transfiguring him entirely with a certain wildness of appearance. Thrusting out a long, skinny arm straight at Bobby, he cried:

‘Yes, I do know something, I know who did it, and. by God, I'll never tell.'

‘Do you mean you wish to protect a murderer, Mr Harrison?' Bobby asked gravely.

‘It wasn't murder,' Harrison answered sullenly, ‘it was killing, but no murder. The swine got no more than he deserved, no more than I would have given him if I had had the chance.'

‘Was it Mark Lester?' Bobby asked.

Exhausted, Harrison fell back on his pillow.

‘Never you mind,' he said. ‘What I know I'll never tell. Do your own job.'

‘Do you know, too,' Bobby asked grimly, ‘what is meant by being an accessory after the fact?'

‘You don't frighten me,' Harrison retorted. ‘The swine got no more than he deserved and I wish it had been me did it, but it wasn't, as I can prove all right. Only when I say I know, I only mean I know because I can put two and two together, because I've got eyes in my head and some sense as well. I don't know anything I could swear to. I mean I don't know facts I'm keeping back. Only what I know, I know, and I know I'm right, too.'

‘You mean it was Mark Lester but you did not actually see him do it?' Bobby suggested, but Harrison only shook his head and looked more feebly obstinate than ever.

‘You'll get nothing out of me,' he said, ‘and it wouldn't do you any good if you did. There's nothing I could say you could tell a jury. Why do you come worrying me? Why don't you try old Belfort? He was hanging about there, for I saw him. Go and ask him.'

‘Mr Belfort?' Bobby repeated, at a loss for a moment, and then remembering. ‘Oh, yes, of course,' he said; and it seemed to him this piece of information might be as important as any of whatever it was Harrison was withholding, for this was the first hint they had had that Mr Belfort had been on the scene of the murder before it occurred. ‘Oh, we'll attend to him all right,' he said, ‘but what we want to know now is what you told Mr Lester that made him leave here looking as he did.'

‘I only told him I would do what he wanted,' Harrison replied slowly.

‘What was that?'

‘Hold my tongue and mind my own business,' Harrison retorted. He added slowly: ‘But there's one thing I will tell you – you had better look after Mr Lester, you may be sorry if you don't.'

‘What do you mean by that?' demanded Bobby crossly, for here was yet another vague and doubtful warning. ‘Do you think he's going to murder Carsley? Or that Marsden's going to murder him? Or all of them murder each other? Or what?'