“I don't know. I don't know how they can even be sure that the ones they have are my emeralds. They all look alike to me. However, they seem very certain. But what I came in for now, my dear Aubrey, is to ask if you can come to Scotland Yard with me. I don't seem much good alone and Anthony went away for the week-end last night. And I do know you would be more useful in identifying the jewels than he would.”
“I wonder whether I could,” debated Aubrey. “Perhaps if we took a taxi and I came straight back——. Stolen by the Yellow Gang, you say, Uncle James?”
“Well, the police seem to think so,” Mr. Collyer assented. “But I doubt it myself. What should the Yellow Gang be doing at quiet little Wexbridge?”
Aubrey smiled in a melancholy fashion that was strangely unlike his old bright look.
“The Yellow Gang infests the whole country. They brought off a big coup at a country house in the north of Scotland a week or two ago. That they should be able to do so and escape unpunished shows the absolute inefficiency of the police system. The Yellow Dog, as they call him, sets the whole authority of the country at defiance. Personally I find myself up against him at every turn.”
“How?” the rector questioned.
“Why, all this.” Todmarsh made a comprehensive gesture with his arm that seemed to include not only the Community House but the men playing squash racquets and cricket outside. “All this is a direct challenge to the Yellow Dog. We get hold not only of those who have already gone astray, but of the potential young criminals who are his raw material, and do our best to turn them into decent members of society.”
Mr. Collyer looked at him.
“But do you mean that any of your community men were ever members of the Yellow Gang?”
“Many of them—Hopkins himself and at least two more of my best workers.”