"Well, even if you do draw Grell with that advertisement, I doubt if you'll get anything from him if he doesn't want to talk. I know the man, and he's hard to beat out of any decision that he makes up his mind to, as hard"—he bowed smilingly to the detective—"as you would be."
"Thank you. If it were a question of Grell against Foyle I might have to go under. But it isn't. Behind me is the C.I.D., behind that the whole force, behind that the Home Secretary, and behind him the State. So you see the odds are on my side."
A jerky buzz at the telephone behind the superintendent's desk interrupted any reply that Fairfield might have made. With a muttered "Good-day" the baronet moved across the carpeted floor out of the room. As he closed the door Foyle put the receiver to his ear.
"Hello! Hello!... Yes, this is Foyle speaking. Oh yes, I know.... No, you'd better not tell me over the telephone. You can't come here. Somebody who knows you might see you.... Is it important?... All right. You'd better come to Lyon's tea-place in the Strand—the one nearest Trafalgar Square. I'll get Mr. Green to go along and have a talk with you. Good-bye."
Rubbing his hands together thoughtfully, the superintendent sent for Green. In a few moments the big figure of the chief inspector loomed in the doorway.
"Dutch Fred thinks he's got hold of something," opened Foyle abruptly. "I've told him to meet you at Lyon's in the Strand. I think he's all right, but don't let him have any money until you've tested his yarn."
"Very good, sir," said Green. "I'll look into it."
As he left Foyle bent over his desk and, with the concentration that was one of his distinguishing traits, busied himself in a series of reports on a coining raid in Kensington, sent up to him by those concerned for
his perusal. He had a theory that the efficiency of the battalion of detectives under him was not lessened by making his men tell him exactly how they were performing their work, both verbally and in writing. "You may have brains, you may have intuition, you may have courage, but you'll never make a good detective without system," he sometimes told young officers when they joined the staff of the C.I.D. There were things, of course, that could not be put in writing, but Foyle never invited his subordinates to act against the law. Such things have to be done at a man's own discretion without official sanction.