ON the day after Isabel’s departure, diligent Mr. Troy set forth for the Head Office in Whitehall to consult the police on the question of the missing money. He had previously sent information of the robbery to the Bank of England, and had also advertised the loss in the daily newspapers.
The air was so pleasant, and the sun was so bright, that he determined on proceeding to his destination on foot. He was hardly out of sight of his own offices when he was overtaken by a friend, who was also walking in the direction of Whitehall. This gentleman was a person of considerable worldly wisdom and experience; he had been officially associated with cases of striking and notorious crime, in which Government had lent its assistance to discover and punish the criminals. The opinion of a person in this position might be of the greatest value to Mr. Troy, whose practice as a solicitor had thus far never brought him into collision with thieves and mysteries. He accordingly decided, in Isabel’s interests, on confiding to his friend the nature of his errand to the police. Concealing the name, but concealing nothing else, he described what had happened on the previous day at Lady Lydiard’s house, and then put the question plainly to his companion.
“What would you do in my place?”
“In your place,” his friend answered quietly, “I should not waste time and money in consulting the police.”
“Not consult the police!” exclaimed Mr. Troy in amazement. “Surely, I have not made myself understood? I am going to the Head Office; and I have got a letter of introduction to the chief inspector in the detective department. I am afraid I omitted to mention that?”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” proceeded the other, as coolly as ever. “You have asked for my advice, and I give you my advice. Tear up your letter of introduction, and don’t stir a step further in the direction of Whitehall.”
Mr. Troy began to understand. “You don’t believe in the detective police?” he said.
“Who can believe in them, who reads his newspaper and remembers what he reads?” his friend rejoined. “Fortunately for the detective department, the public in general forgets what it reads. Go to your club, and look at the criminal history of our own time, recorded in the newspapers. Every crime is more or less a mystery. You will see that the mysteries which the police discover are, almost without exception, mysteries made penetrable by the commonest capacity, through the extraordinary stupidity exhibited in the means taken to hide the crime. On the other hand, let the guilty man or woman be a resolute and intelligent person, capable of setting his (or her) wits fairly against the wits of the police — in other words, let the mystery really be a mystery — and cite me a case if you can (a really difficult and perplexing case) in which the criminal has not escaped. Mind! I don’t charge the police with neglecting their work. No doubt they do their best, and take the greatest pains in following the routine to which they have been trained. It is their misfortune, not their fault, that there is no man of superior intelligence among them — I mean no man who is capable, in great emergencies, of placing himself above conventional methods, and following a new way of his own. There have been such men in the police — men naturally endowed with that faculty of mental analysis which can decompose a mystery, resolve it into its component parts, and find the clue at the bottom, no matter how remote from ordinary observation it may be. But those men have died, or have retired. One of them would have been invaluable to you in the case you have just mentioned to me. As things are, unless you are wrong in believing in the young lady’s innocence, the person who has stolen that bank-note will be no easy person to find. In my opinion, there is only one man now in London who is likely to be of the slightest assistance to you — and he is not in the police.”
“Who is he?” asked Mr. Troy.
“An old rogue, who was once in your branch of the legal profession,” the friend answered. “You may, perhaps, remember the name: they call h............