“What about Sime?”
“Sime is another of the same kidney. He does the night club end and brings likely mugs on to the gaming rooms. A plausible ruffian, Sime. A man without scruple and bad to be up against. He has no ostensible business, either.”
“And Blessington?”
“Blessington is, in my opinion, the worst of the three. He has ten times the brains of the other two put together and is an out and out scoundrel. He’s well enough off in a small way and is supposed to have made his money by systematic blackmail. He’s supplying the cash for this little do of yours, whatever it may be. He is believed at Wembley to be something in the city, but I don’t think he has any job. Lives on the interest of his money, I should think.”
Cheyne noted the replies, marveling how the detective had come to learn so much. Then he asked his seventh question.
“Where is the paper?”
“That, sir, I can only answer partially. It is, or was up till quite lately, in Blessington’s possession. Whether he carries it about with him or keeps it in his house or in his bank I don’t know. He may even have lent it to one of the others, but he is the chief of the enterprise and it appears to belong to him.”
“That’s all right,” Cheyne admitted. “Now what were you going to tell me apart from these questions—the information you wrote about?”
“Simply, sir, that the man who drugged you in the Edgecombe Hotel in Plymouth was named Stewart Blessington, that he lived at Wembley, and that he drugged you in order to ascertain if you carried on your person a certain paper of which he was in search.”
“You can’t tell me how he did it?”