“Whoever thought of it,� Sir Richard said, “must have been sure there was some connection between the two pairs of glasses.�
Fay caught the deduction which had caused the chief’s remark. He felt like a felon before a Crown’s counsel. He bit his upper lip and toyed with his cap which lay on the table. The bright cluster of bulbs over his head brought out the clean-cut details of Sir Richard’s features.
He realized that the man whom he faced was the keenest ferret in all of Europe. The chief was balked, but only temporarily. There was no beating him. An inkling of the methods which had cost the underworld so many of its choicest lights came to Fay. He recalled that Foley the Goat had been caught by the mere matter of losing a coat-button. Then there was the Marble Arch affair, where Scotland Yard had brought home the crime to its instigators by the slender clue of five black hairs perfumed with a certain Italian hair-tonic which only one shop in Soho poured upon the heads of its customers.
Trifles had beaten the best-laid plans of those who
lived beyond the law. And now the hounds were snarling over another trifle—as Sir Richard said—lighter than air. The chief had caught the thin wedge between the two pairs of smoked-glasses. He had guessed what Fay already knew. He glanced up at the cracksman and smiled broadly.
“So your friend, Harry-in-the-hole, wore the same kind of glasses? That simplifies matters. It may solve the cipher for us!�
“That’s what I thought,� said Fay positively.
Sir Richard stared at the ceiling and the bright electric cluster. “Let’s see,â€� he mused. “Ace-in-the-hole Harry—what an awful monacker, Fay—was arrested at the Crystal Palace for trimming a pigeon out of his shirt—almost. Then he appeared again at Bow Street charged with running a buffet flat in the West End—Brick Street, I think. They fleeced everybody there at banker and broker and baccarat, or was it chemin de fer?â€�
“Don’t ask me,� said Fay.
“He paid ten pounds fine, I think, and disappeared. Now, you say, he was on the boats with smoked-glasses. Then those glasses had some close relation to the cards. I think we’re getting there—â€�