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Chapter 13

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« on: March 14, 2023, 06:21:57 am »

DETECTIVE Pank came very nervously forward. The Chief Commissioner in a temper was enough to frighten any one, and his appearance at that moment seemed to indicate that he was in a very bad temper indeed.

“Well, what do you want, Pank?” he asked gruffly. “This is entirely against rules, you know, for you to come in like this.”

“I know it, sir,” was the hesitating reply. “I’m sorry. I wished to have a word with either you or Colonel Matterson if you will favour me, whilst the others were engaged.”

“What is it that you want?” the General demanded. “Got something up your sleeve, eh? Out with it, if you have, and I will forgive you for anything.”

“It’s not exactly that, sir,” Pank confessed. “I have come to ask you if you will be good enough to dismiss me from the force.”

“Dismiss you!” the General repeated in surprise.

Colonel Matterson looked up from the letter he had begun to write. He knew more about Detective Pank than his Chief.

“What’s the trouble, Pank?” he enquired.

“Leave off twiddling with your hat, man, and sit down and get your breath. We are not going to eat you,” the General said, looking very much as though he were. “If you have any ideas about this case, we are only too anxious to hear what you have to say, although I don’t see why you didn’t speak up whilst the others were here.”

Detective Pank placed his hat upon the carpet and sat down in the nearest chair. The Subcommissioner had rightly diagnosed his fit of nervousness. He recovered his self-possession immediately he began to talk.

“It’s like this, sir,” he commenced, addressing the Chief Commissioner, “I’d like to be dismissed from the force temporarily, so as to be free to tackle this job from outside.”

“Explain yourself to Colonel Matterson,” the General enjoined. “I don’t interfere personally in these matters. Address yourself to him and I feel sure you will find him reasonable.”

“Well, sir, it’s like this,” Pank explained, turning towards the Subcommissioner. “Whenever there’s a delicate investigation to be made rather out of the ordinary run, I have always found that it handicaps us when people know that we are from the Yard. Superintendent Smithers and Inspector Simpson are first-class men, without a doubt, but they were both in Norwich not long ago on another case and nearly every one knows them by sight. Apart from that, they went everywhere as Scotland Yard men, and wherever they went, people knew that Scotland Yard men were coming, and sometimes I’m not sure that that is an advantage.”

“I see your point,” Colonel Matterson agreed.

“I know every inch of Norwich city,” Pank went on, “and I know the country all around Keynsham Hall. There is not a country house or a large farmhouse within a possible radius, taking Sir Humphrey’s time as being correct, where there could have been a room such as he described, opening out on to a courtyard large enough to have contained an execution shed.”

“Why didn’t you tell the others so then?”

“I did tell them before we started out. Of course, they were my superior officers and they took very little notice of what I said. I went with them on the first of their rounds and then I developed a feverish cold and went to bed until yesterday.”

“Did you have a cold?” the Subcommissioner asked, his eyes very set and intent under his beetling eyebrows.

“No, sir. I wanted to keep out of the way and to make a few investigations on my own account.”

“Was that quite in accordance with etiquette and your position?” was the somewhat stiff enquiry. “You were there to help the other two to the best of your ability.”

“Quite true, sir,” Pank assented eagerly, “and I have worried very much about the whole business. The only thing was that I said to myself---the case is the thing. Nothing counts except solving this mystery, and it doesn’t matter how we do it or who does it.”

“The fellow’s right there,” General Moore grunted from his seat.

“I said to myself,” Pank went on, with increased confidence, “Smithers and Simpson are known to every one in this hotel---we were staying at the Royal, sir---to every one at the hotel and to most of the people who go into the bar, as Scotland Yard detectives. Wherever they went, they were marked men. Norwich is a good-sized city, sir, but in a way, it is just an overgrown country town. It’s the greatest place for gossip I ever knew. I knew quite well from one or two things that had occurred to me---they may be perfectly ridiculous and I sha’n’t, unless you insist upon it, tell you now what they are---but I knew that I could do no good if I went about with two well-known Scotland Yard detectives, or if I was seen with them in the city or thereabouts. That is the reason, sir, I went to bed with a feverish cold and I came away alone on the train before theirs.”

“I always said,” Matterson remarked, turning towards his Chief, “that there was just a little too much of the Bucket type about Simpson.”

The Chief Commissioner nodded.

“Get on with it, Pank,” he invited.

“Now, as things are,” the latter went on, “there’s scarcely a soul in the city who saw me with Smithers and Simpson, and as for the country people, I’m not minding so much about them just now. There are many of my friends down there, of course, who knew that I came up to London to be a policeman, but they none of them knew that I was going into the detective service. What I would like to do, sir, if you would be so good as to kick me out of the force, is to go back to Norwich as a commercial traveller, or anyhow, with a civilian job. I would like to go back this evening, and I don’t mind telling you that I should try to get a room where that chauffeur was. I should carry out my investigations a little differently and I should work upon an idea of my own. If it doesn’t turn out all right---well, you are rid of a poor detective, and if you don’t want to take me on again, I will find another job. If it turns out as I hope---that I am able to help---then perhaps you will reinstate me as soon as the matter is cleared up.”

“Reinstate you,” Colonel Matterson repeated, with a queer little smile. “If you have the luck to solve this affair for us and tell us where Sir Humphrey Rossiter was taken to that night and by whom, it won’t be a question of reinstatement; we will promote you! That’s right, isn’t it, Chief?”

“I should say so,” the latter agreed heartily.

“Now can you give me some of your ideas,” Colonel Matterson asked. “I may tell you, Pank, what I think is not any secret to any one here---we are being hard pushed about this business. Sir Humphrey is badly needed at the Home Office and the Government are taking it out of us. If we could solve the mystery of his first disappearance, it would be something, especially as I feel sure that if we did that it would lead on to the elucidation of this second affair.”

“As to that I cannot say, sir,” was the deferential reply. “Of course, my ideas may be all wrong, anyway.”

“Now, come on,” the Subcommissioner begged him. “Let’s see what you are driving at.”

“I am hoping, sir,” Pank said wistfully, “that you will allow me to keep a great deal of what is in my mind just where it is. It won’t do any good to give false hopes. If I am wrong, I am wrong, and that’s the end of it, but it is a sensitive matter, and a mere whisper might upset everything. I will tell you this much, if you will allow me, sir. I have worked it out, time, roads and everything---it all fits in---and I believe that Sir Humphrey Rossiter was brought to Norwich.”

“To Norwich?” the Chief Commissioner repeated incredulously.

“Why to Norwich?” Matterson asked curiously.

“Because of a word I heard let fall at a small pub in a back street, sir,” Pank confided. “You wouldn’t know Norwich as I know it, sir. I was brought up as a lad there. Pubs in Norwich are not like what they are anywhere else. You go out at night and you walk along one of those crooked, hilly streets and you come to a curtained window and a wire blind, and a door like an ordinary street door, except that there’s a name over it. You open the door, and they’re pretty well all the same, a kind of taproom, then a counter, and behind it a parlour---sort of private bar. There’s hundreds of these little public houses about the place. Scarcely any rent to speak of, and the landlord and his wife live on the premises. I was in one the first night, when I’m afraid I let the others think I was nursing my cold, and a chap came in---he had forgotten me, but I knew him very well by sight---and began talking. Well, he just said one thing---that’s all---and it put an idea into my head. I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it. Next morning, after the others had gone out, I got a push bike and I prowled round the place up to the Hellesdon Golf Links and round by the aviation works, and had a look at all the new ground they have got planned out for building. Yes, I had a good morning’s investigation, and when I came back---well, that idea of mine was still there.”

“Why on earth didn’t you talk to Smithers and Simpson about it?” Matterson asked.

“For this reason, sir,” Pank explained. “It is not, as it might seem, because I wanted to make a scoop of my own---I promise you that. I have asked you to give me the sack and I shall never ask you to take me back again if I’m wrong. I am backing my chance, as it were, so it’s a fair deal. But this much I do know---if I was seen in the streets with Smithers and Simpson, or if I started making enquiries with them in the direction I am thinking of, that would be the end. We should get to know nothing and there would not be any way of getting to know anything.”

“Sounds very mysterious, you must admit,” the Subcommissioner pointed out.

“I admit it, sir,” Pank agreed. “There’s another thing. The man who keeps the house where that chauffeur lodged is my uncle. Relationships count for something in Norwich. It is about one of the most sociable places in the world, when you are known, and the most stand-off place in the world when you are a stranger. If I go and take a room with my uncle, he will be telling me without hesitation anything he knows about that chauffeur, whereas, knowing him as well as I do, I would swear that he would keep his mouth closer shut than an oyster to any one of the police, even if it were myself, asking him questions about an ex-lodger.”

“Common sense,” Matterson agreed.

“You must acknowledge, Pank,” the Chief Commissioner pointed out, “that yours is a very unusual request. Smithers and Simpson are your superior officers. You went down with them to deal with the case. I don’t know whether we should feel justified in letting you take it on alone.”

“I’m not asking you to do so, sir,” Pank pointed out. “Smithers and Simpson have spent their time there and made their report. All right. I want you to kick me out and leave me to work on my own, as though I were one of the private detectives of fiction. If I find I’m right, what do you suppose I am going to do about it? I shall be back here or on the line to you like a shot. I will expect to be reinstated later on, but the others can follow up anything I have discovered, if you wish. My point is simply that I must make the preliminary investigations alone and not as a member of the police force, or I shouldn’t have a chance. It is worth while letting me try, sir.”

Matterson rose from his chair and whispered in his Chief’s ear. Then he rang a bell.

“Bring me Pank’s dossier,” he directed the man who answered the summons.

The detective sighed.

“Not a very brilliant one, I’m afraid, sir,” he remarked. “This is my first real opportunity.”

There were a few moments of nervous silence. The orderly returned with a doubled up sheet of paper. The Subcommissioner and his Chief studied it together and exchanged a few words. Then the former returned to his place.

“Very well, Pank,” he decided. “You are sacked. You shammed a cold and did nothing to help your superior officers in this investigation. Quite sufficient reason for getting rid of you. Go to the Cashier’s Department, draw what is due to you and sign off.”

No man ever accepted dismissal so cheerfully. Pank’s eyes were bright as he rose to his feet.

“To whom shall I make my reports, sir?” he enquired.

Colonel Matterson handed him half a dozen envelopes addressed and franked.

“To me,” he instructed. “The envelopes I am giving you are marked so that they are only opened by myself, and all I can say is---I hope you send us good news.”

Detective Pank smiled hopefully.

“I think I can promise you one thing, sir,” he said, “and that is that I shall be able, before long, to send you a piece of information that no one in the world would ever have found out, if I had not happened to step into that little pub and stand an apparent stranger a couple of pints of beer. I shall be back there to-morrow night and I hope to goodness he is.”

“What about money?” the Subcommissioner enquired. “Unofficially, of course, we will supply you with all you want.”

“I have plenty, thank you, sir,” Pank replied. “I am a saving man and I have no family. I am going to buy a second-hand sample case somewhere before the shops close to-night, and I am going down by the newspaper train to-morrow morning with a new job---peddling leather heels.”

“I hope,” the Chief Commissioner said---for him graciously---“that your new occupation will bring you back to us.”

“I hope so indeed, sir,” was the fervent reply, “and good-night, gentlemen.”

---

“Well, what do you think of that?” the Subcommissioner asked his Chief.

“What do you?” was the guarded reply.

“I am inclined to believe in the little man. I’ll tell you why. I think he is right in his main argument. Now, take the ordinary criminal case. There is no harm in Smithers and Simpson showing themselves in the foreground. They know the criminal and the criminal knows them. It is a matter of wits. What they need is the proof. That is what they want to wriggle out of his friends, or find out in any possible manner. Identity is not of so much concern, because the criminal knows the detective and the detective knows the criminal. On the other hand, you take a country district or a small town where the criminal may have no end of pals and is not known personally to the detectives. He has an advantage over them from the start. We are a law-abiding county, but there is always a feeling of sympathy with the underdog. You watch a hare being chased and you hope it will get away. Therefore our men, who are known to be our men, might very easily find themselves up against a very difficult proposition in a county like Norfolk. People would not need to know who the criminal or criminals were---they were probably Norfolk men---and that would be enough. They would prefer helping them to helping strangers, even though the strangers had the law behind them.”

“That’s sound,” the Chief Commissioner agreed. “There is, at any rate, a good deal to be said for the point of view.”

“I think a fellow like Pank, with his wits about him, in a place where he has a good many friends, is more likely to bring this thing off than the smartest men in the force,” Colonel Matterson pronounced. “I sympathise personally with every word he said. If he had been seen about with Smithers and Simpson, his old pals would never have talked freely to him. That man at the pub, for instance, whoever he might have been and whatever he had to say, would have kept his mouth shut all right, if he had had the least idea that he was talking to a ’tec. I’m with Pank, Chief. I should not be at all surprised if he brought this thing off.”

“If he does----” the Chief Commissioner began fervently.

“I like his idea of peddling heels,” Colonel Matterson remarked, thoughtfully tapping his pencil against his teeth.
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