The master criminal

by G. Sidney Paternoster

They had indeed thought that the task would not have proved a difficult one. Their inspection of the room from which the picture had been stolen had led to the discovery of a number of clues to work upon. They decided that an entry must have been effected through a window which opened upon the portico over the front door. At that window were a number of scarlet berried shrubs, and some of the berries were found crushed on the carpet inside. On the balcony they discovered a palette knife, with smears of cobalt and chrome upon it, which obviously had been used to force back the catch of the window. For days afterwards, detectives might have been observed knocking at the doors of London studios and offering themselves as models to aspiring Academicians, in the hope of ascertaining the whereabouts of the missing picture. But they found no trace of the Greuze.

On the knife-handle too, were unmistakable finger-prints, and on the empty frame were others. All were photographed, and hope was strong that the identity of the thief would be disclosed thereby, through comparison with the records of convicts at Scotland Yard. But when the first comparison seemed to point to the fact that every print was that of a different person, and closer investigation proved that the dirty smudges were not finger-prints at all, the problem became indubitably more complex. As for the knife which had been used to cut the canvas from the frame, that was an ordinary table-knife, of which counterparts might have been discovered in every mean house in the metropolis, and it supplied no basis for any theory as to the owner. The one fact which chiefly puzzled Scotland Yard, however, was the fact that no suspicious characters had been observed anywhere in the neighbourhood, while the position of the house was such that it was particularly open to observation.

Standing at the corner of two streets, in a neighbourhood where all the houses would be described in a house agent's catalogue as "highly desirable family town residences," it was under observation from at least three quarters. The streets at three or four o'clock were at that time practically empty of all pedestrians save the police. Yet not a member of the police on duty in the vicinity had seen a suspicious looking character.

This was the more astonishing, because two extra constables were on duty that night in the near neighbourhood. They had been detailed for duty at the town mansion of one of the most popular of society hostesses, Lady Greyston, who was giving the first of her dances for the season. Lady Greyston's house was only six removed from Mr. Flurscheim's, and until three o'clock one of the constables had been stationed at the corner of the street, practically at Mr. Flurscheim's front door, in order to direct the carriages arriving to pick up departing guests. The stream of carriages had thinned shortly after three, and then the constable had joined a colleague at the door, but at no time during the night had anything out of the way attracted his attention. The police were quite at a loss for an object of suspicion.

But while Scotland Yard was hopelessly at a loss for a clue, the newspapers had been busy printing stories of the crime, which did great credit to the fertility of the imagination of the reporters who were detailed to work up the case. Those who read these stories might have had warrant almost for believing that each writer must have been the principal, so intimately and minutely was the crime reconstructed.

But throughout the public excitement and conjecture which the burglary created, Lynton Hora and Guy remained entirely undisturbed, or, at the most, merely stirred to mild amusement as each new theory was evolved—each was so very wide of the mark. Yet audacious as many of these theories were, none of them paralleled the audacity of the real attempt.

How the burglary had been carried out was explained by Guy when, refreshed by six hours' sleep and a cold bath, he joined Myra and Hora at the breakfast table.

"I followed your plans almost exactly," he said to the elder man, "and I found the interior of the house precisely as you described it."

"H—m," chuckled Hora, glancing at a print hung upon the wall opposite him, "that Morland would have been a cheap investment, even if it had been a fake. As it is——"

"As it is," laughed Guy, "your capital has returned to you more than a thousandfold. Still I can't help marvelling at your wonderful eye for detail. You could not have been in Flurscheim's house more than an hour, and yet I found every wire, every lock, every catch, exactly where you told me I should find them. Some of the doors and windows you could never have seen? How could you know?"