The Lazy Detective

“And remember, Labar, you don’t bluff me.” The Chief Constable, who had been through the game himself, tapped the string of figures that lay upon his desk with an aggressive forefinger. “You’re lazy⁠—damned lazy. If things don’t clear up in your division in the next month or so you can count on something happening. That’s all. Think it over.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the other, with the smooth suavity of a man who had received a compliment, and swung on velvet toes from the room.

After all, what was the use of arguing? Divisional Detective Inspector Labar was under no illusions about himself. He was lazy. All Scotland Yard knew it. Particularly did Winter, Chief Constable of the Criminal Investigation Department know it, for in some sort Labar was a protégé of his. Yet that shrewd old veteran reckoned that even the quality of indolence had its uses. It could make a brilliant man concentrate fiercely on his work, in order to save time for his own purposes. The amount of time taken by a detective on an individual job is largely a matter on which his superiors must accept his word. Some men slog laboriously, while others get their results quickly. In minor positions there is always someone around to see that the work is done.

All this, however, does not apply in the same degree to a detective inspector. Such a one gives, more often than he receives, orders. As an executive Labar felt himself a failure. Well, well, a man must have a little time for golf.

He had reached Cockspur Street when the thing happened. Even if his mind had been less preoccupied, it is likely that he would have failed to notice the big touring car that edged itself through the traffic towards him. Not until it had swept close to the kerb, and he saw the girl leaning from the near side, did he realise that it held any significance for him. A wisp of fair hair had fallen over her forehead, and she brushed it back with a slim gloved hand. Harry Labar, although his colleagues held him doomed to bachelordom, had an eye for a pretty girl and he noticed her with subconscious approval as the car drew near.

Almost mechanically it dawned on him that her hand was stretched to him from the now slowly moving car.

“For you,” said the girl, and a letter waved on a level with his eyes. As he reached to take it, the car leapt away like a living thing, with a rapidity that told of perfect acceleration and steel nerves at the wheel.

“Hey!”

The detective was aroused from his reverie on the instant. He sprang forward with a command to stop, that, even as he uttered it, he knew to be futile. The car was well away. It was vain to hope to stop it, and the speed at which it was moving showed it improbable that any taxi could overtake it, even had there been one near.

“Let’s be sensible,” he urged. “Now tell me, have you ever heard of a man called Larry Hughes?”

That was a shot in the dark. He had little doubt what the answer would be.

Penelope Noelson’s lips came together in a thin, obstinate line. “No,” she snapped.

The detective gave no sign that he had heard her. He moved aimlessly to the small table he had been using and bent over a paper. She stood up with a little petulant shrug of her shoulders, and was halfway to the door before he spoke again.

“Oh, by the way, there is another small matter. Why did you give me a hundred pound note this morning?”

Her eyes widened, and as she wheeled to face him her hands groped for the support of a chair.

“I gave you a hundred pound note? Why, I never saw you before in my life.”

He leaned grimly towards her. “You’re very nearly a convincing little liar. I recognised you the instant you came in the room. I’m calling your bluff, my girl. Now then. Suppose you come clean.”

For a second she stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then she slumped to the floor in a dead faint.

They had not moved a couple of yards when she acted. Before he could be aware of her purpose her hand had dropped swiftly to his pocket and had closed over the butt of a small automatic pistol. Her surmise had been right.

He sprang silently towards her but recoiled as he heard the click of the safety catch and the blue barrel was thrust into his face.

“Now then. Open that gate,” she demanded.

“I haven’t got the key,” he declared, his eyes searching her face for the slightest sign of hesitation, of distraction. Give him one fraction of a second start, he told himself, and he would have that gun away from her.

But Penelope was keyed for anything. “If you don’t open that gate in ten seconds,” she said, with some surprise at the steadiness of her own voice, “I shall shoot.”

Sullenly he began to search his pockets. “One,” she counted, “two⁠—three⁠—four⁠—five⁠—six⁠—seven⁠—”

A key rattled on the ground in front of her. She made no move to touch it. His intention was evident to her. “Pick that up,” she ordered, “and open the gate. Quick. Eight⁠—nine.”

His face still a mask he reluctantly obeyed. Tense she waited for the faintest suspicious movement. The key slipped into the lock.

A hand stole from behind her and struck her wrist a sharp blow. The pistol dropped from her grip. The soft voice of Larry Hughes was in her ears as she saw him stoop to recover the weapon.

“Don’t you think we’ve had enough of this nonsense, Penelope?” he asked.

The mist grew thicker as he trudged on. A damp seafog was sweeping up from the channel and he shivered beneath his old tweeds. But for the track he must have inevitably become lost for it soon became impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. Once he paused to do a queer thing. He walked deliberately in the muddy slime of a dyke till his boots were covered with mud. He twisted his slouch hat into a ball and trod on it. With his penknife he started little holes in his jacket and trousers, and tore at them with his fingers till the already shabby suit had become even more dilapidated. A handful of dirt applied to edges of the rents added to their verisimilitude. One of the best dressed men at Scotland Yard had become a perfect specimen of a down-at-heels tramp.

He reasoned that should any unexpected encounter take place in the fog with any of Larry’s people he might thus elude recognition. It might be a superfluous precaution, but it was as well to be prepared.

So he moved on, slowly, because it was necessary to watch the trail closely. He reckoned that he had been following the tyre tracks for an hour and a half when a shadowy outline ahead told him that he was within a few yards of some building.