Elk did not carry the matter any further, and spent the rest of the day in making fruitless inquiries. Returning to his room at headquarters that night, he sat for a long time hunched up in his chair, his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, staring down at the blotting-pad. Then he pressed a bell, and his clerk, Balder, came.
“Go to Records, get me all that is known about every safe-breaker known in this country. You needn’t worry about the German and French, but there’s a Swede or two who are mighty clever with the lamp, and of course there are the Americans.”
They came after a long interval—a considerable pile of papers, photographs and finger-prints.
“You can go, Balder—the night man can take them back.” He settled himself down to an enjoyable night’s reading.
He was nearing the end of the pile when he came to the portrait of a young man with a drooping moustache and a bush of curly hair. It was one of those sharp positives that unromantic police officials take, and showed whatever imperfections of skin there were. Beneath the photograph was the name, carefully printed: “Henry John Lyme, R.V.”
“R.V.” was the prison code. Every year from 1874 to 1899 was indicated by a capital letter in the alphabet. Thereafter ran the small letters. The “R” meant that Henry J. Lyme had been sentenced to penal servitude in 1891. The “V” that he had suffered a further term of convict imprisonment in 1895.
Elk read the short and terrible record. Born in Guernsey in 1873, the man had been six times convicted before he was twenty (the minor convictions are not designated by letters in the code). In the space at the foot of the blank in which particulars were given of his crime, were the words:
“Dangerous; carries firearms.” In another hand, and in the red ink which is used to close a criminal career, was written: “Died at sea. Channel Queen. Black Rock. Feb. 1, 1898.”
Elk remembered the wreck of the Guernsey mail packet on the Black Rocks.
He turned back the page to read particulars of the dead man’s crimes, and the comments of those who from time to time had been brought into official contact with him. In these scraps of description was the real biography. “Works alone,” was one comment, and another; “No women clue—women never seen with him.” A third scrawl was difficult to decipher, but when Elk mastered the evil writing, he half rose from the chair in his excitement. It was: