There was a memorable night when, urged thereto by the highest police official in London, he had picked the pocket of a Secretary of State, taken his watch, his pocket-book and his private papers, and not even the expert watchers saw him perform the fell deed.

    Dick Martin came to the Yard from Canada, where his father had been governor of a prison. He was neither a good guardian of criminals or youth. Dick had the run of the prison, and could take a stick pin from a man's cravat before he had mastered the mysteries of algebra. Peter du Bois, a lifer, taught him to open almost any kind of door with a bent hairpin; Lew Andrevski, a frequent visitor to Port Stuart, made a specially small pack of cards out of the covers of the chapel prayer books; in order that the lad should be taught to conceal three cards in each tiny palm. If he had not been innately honest, the tuition might easily have ruined him.

    "Dicky's all right—he can't know too much of that crook stuff," said the indolent Captain Martin, when his horrified relatives expostulated at the corruption of the motherless boy. "The boys like him—he's going into the police and the education's worth a million!"

    Straight of body, clear-eyed, immensely sane, Dick Martin came happily through a unique period of test to the office. The war brought him to England, a stripling with a record of good work behind him. Scotland Yard claimed him, and he had the distinction of being the only member of the Criminal Investigation Department who had been appointed without going through a probationary period of patrol work.

    As he went down the stone stairs, he was overtaken by the third commissioner.

    "Hello, Martin! You're leaving us tomorrow? Bad luck! It is a thousand pities you have money. We're losing a good man. What are you going to do?"

    Dick smiled ruefully.

    "I don't know—I'm beginning to think I've made a mistake in leaving at all."

    The 'old man' nodded.

    "Do anything except lecture," he said, "and, for the Lord's sake, don't start a private agency! In America detective agencies do wonderful things—in England their work is restricted to thinking up evidence for divorces. A man asked me only today if I could recommend——"

    He stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs and viewed Dick with a new interest.

    "By, Jove! I wonder——! Do you know Havelock, the lawyer?"

    Dick shook his head.

    "He's a pretty good man. His office is somewhere in Lincoln's Inn Fields. You'll find its exact position in the telephone directory. I met him at lunch and he asked me——"

    He paused, examining the younger man with a speculative eye.

    "You're the very man—it is curious I did not think of you. He asked me if I could find him a reliable private detective, and I told him that such things did not exist outside the pages of fiction."

    "It doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned," smiled Dick. "The last thing in the world I want to do is start a detective agency."

    "And you're right, my boy," said the commissioner. "I could never respect you if you did. As a matter of fact, you're the very man for the job," he went on, a little inconsistently. "Will you go along and see Havelock, and tell him I sent you? I'd like you to help him if you could. Although he isn't a friend of mine, I know him and he's a very pleasant fellow."

    "What is the job?" asked the young man, by no means enthralled at the prospect.

    "I don't know," was the reply. "It may be one that you couldn't undertake. But I'd like you to see him—I half promised him that I would recommend somebody. I have an idea that it is in connection with a client of his who is giving him a little trouble. You would greatly oblige me, Martin, if you saw this gentleman."

    The last thing in the world Dick Martin had in mind was the transference of his detective activities from Scotland Yard to the sphere of private agencies; but he had been something of a protege of the third commissioner, and there was no reason in the world why he should not see the lawyer. He said as much.

    "Good," said the commissioner. "I'll phone him this afternoon and tell him you'll come along and see him. You may be able to help him."

    "I hope so, sir," said Dick mendaciously.

 

 

CHAPTER 2

 

 

    HE PURSUED his leisurely way to the Bellingham Library, one of the institutions of London that is known only to a select few. No novel or volume of sparkling reminiscence has a place upon the shelves of this institution, founded a hundred years ago to provide scientists and litterateurs with an opportunity of consulting volumes which were unprocurable save at the British Museum. On the four floors which constituted the building, fat volumes of German philosophy, learned and, to the layman, unintelligible books on scientific phenomena, obscure treatises on almost every kind of uninteresting subject, stood shoulder to shoulder upon their sedate shelves.

    John Bellingham, who in the eighteenth century had founded this exchange of learning, had provided in the trust deeds that 'two intelligent females, preferably in indigent circumstances', should form part of the staff, and it was to one of these that Dick was conducted.

    In a small, high-ceilinged room, redolent of old leather, a girl sat at a table, engaged in filing index cards.

    "I am from Scotland Yard," Dick introduced himself. "I understand that some of your books have been stolen?"

    He was looking at the packed shelves as he spoke, for he was not interested in females, intelligent or stupid, indigent or wealthy.