was half-past six, and a fine and cheery May morning, when Brixey, having seen his two elderly companions safely off in a cab, bound first for Linthwaite's chambers in the Temple and thence to seek Mrs. Byfield and her party at their hotel, turned into a public telephone box at London Bridge Station and rang up New Scotland Yard.
The time had come, he had decided in the train, for calling in expert police assistance. He now knew enough to warrant him in taking action when he got to Trinity Square, if the people were there whom he firmly believed would be there. The folk at New Scotland Yard knew him, Brixey, well enough—he had been mixed up with them more than once.
As good luck would have it, the man who answered his telephone call was particularly well known to him, and was instantly eager to know what was afoot at that early hour of the morning.
"Tell you that when you meet me," said Brixey. "Come yourself, with the next best man you can get, and meet me as quickly as possible outside Mark Lane Station—going there straight, just now. Bye-bye. A nice job for you—and for me."
The voice at the other end of the wire said that its owner would be at the appointed rendezvous in half an hour, and Brixey rang off, left the station, and strolled lazily across London Bridge, looking about him with keen enjoyment of the rousing life of road and river, and feeling that if one has been out of London even for a few days there is a vast amount of enjoyment to be had in getting back to it.
He sauntered along, past the Monument, took a short cut into Great Tower Street, and was lounging outside Mark Lane Station when, at five minutes past seven, two men drove up in a taxicab, dismounted, and approached him. Quiet, soberly attired, eminently respectable persons these, who might have been taken for solid City men come very early to business, and Brixey looked them over with approving eyes.
"Good!" he said. "I think I've a nice little job for you. The actual doing of it is more in your particular line than mine."
"What's the game?" demanded the man whom Brixey had rung up. "Your last affair was murder! Same again?"
"Not this time, so far," replied Brixey. "Not but that there may be danger in it. Come into this corner."
He took the two detectives aside and rapidly put them in possession of the pertinent facts. Letwige had absconded with certain valuable negotiable securities, and there was little doubt that he had made off in the company of Lee and his daughter.
In Debbie Lee's purse Brixey had seen a certain address. Therefore, he concluded, there was at any rate a sporting chance of finding the missing birds at that address.
"And now why do you think they'd make for this place, Mr. Brixey?" asked one of the men. "You've some idea in your mind?"
Brixey pointed towards the dock district.
"It's an easy job to slip away from here to the Continent," he said. "Plenty of boats running to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, and so on. This would be a convenient spot for the woman and her father to be snug in for a few hours while Letwige deals with the securities, or some of 'em, in the City."
"Then the thing to do" said the first man, "is to take a look at this private hotel. But these people know you by sight."
"Nothing venture, nothing have!" replied Brixey. "The probability is that they won’t be stirring yet. Letwige, I understand, is an old Londoner, and he'll know that there’s no business to be done before ten o'clock. Come round the corner and let's take an observation of the exterior of this spot."
From the corner of Byward Street the three men looked out on Trinity Square, and one of the detectives at once pointed to a house at the north side, where a faded, gilt-lettered sign proclaimed the presence of Wolmark’s Private Hotel, evidently a sort of second-rate establishment, judging from its dingy blinds and general appearance. A man was polishing the brass bell-pull at its front door; a girl was washing the steps.
"There’s the cage!" said the first detective. "Now, then, how about finding if the birds are in it?"
"There'll be a register" remarked the other man.
"Aye, but it’s a hundred to one if they’ve given their real names," declared the first. "That’s not at all likely. How would it be now"
"Stop a bit!" said Brixey. "Here’s a new development, I think."
He had suddenly caught sight, across the road, lounging by the railings of the square, of a figure which somehow seemed strangely familiar—that of a man in a semi-nautical suit of blue serge cut in yachtsman fashion, topped by a peaked yachting cap.