Poole dashed off to the nearest telephone, and was quickly through to the Chief Inspector Barrod. Within half an hour every station in London, and many in the suburbs, was being watched for the Wrailes. Within an hour all County Constabularies within two hundred miles of London had been warned of the possible car or train passengers, whilst every port in the kingdom had a similar description. A message to the divisional police in the Fulham district ensured that the Wrailes’ lodgings would be at once put under watch.
Poole’s part in this had taken less than ten minutes—the time of his telephone conversation with Barrod; immediately it was finished, he rang up the divisional station, found out that Munt had put his message through correctly and that all possible steps were being taken to search for the runaways, and finally asked for the locations of the nearest garages to Ald House. Only three were within the five minutes’ walk that Poole, with his knowledge of Mrs. Wraile’s time-table, put as the outside limit. Within another ten minutes Poole had found the car in a garage almost at the back of Ald House—within less than a minute’s walk. The Wrailes had not been near it since it had been left there in the morning.
Poole again rang up Scotland Yard and arranged for a plain-clothes man to be posted at the garage, in case the Wrailes even now came for their car. He also arranged for all cab ranks and shelters in the neighbourhood of Ald House to be interrogated—there was a strong possibility of the Wrailes having picked up a taxi as they had not taken their car.
Returning to Ald House, Poole found that the two plain-clothes men from Scotland Yard had at last turned up; they had come by Underground from Westminster and had been held up for twenty minutes by a breakdown on the line. Soon after their arrival, a police ambulance had also turned up and removed Fallows and the body of Leopold Hessel. P. C. Munt, who had been explaining the situation to the plain-clothes men, reported that the other gentleman had said that he was returning to Queen Anne’s Gate and would be there for the rest of the evening if Inspector Poole wanted him. The detective felt that Ryland’s explanation of his peculiar behaviour could now wait; there was no longer any possibility that he was a confederate of the murderers. Besides, there was a lot of work still to be done before he could feel that the net spread for the Wrailes was complete; in all probability Chief Inspector Barrod would do all that could be done, but Poole was not going to leave anything to chance now.
During the hours that followed, the Victory Finance offices were searched, the Wrailes’ rooms in Fulham not only searched but turned inside out; the owners had not been back since morning and there was no sign of a hurried flight. Poole collected all the papers he could lay his hands on for future inspection, but for immediate use he concentrated on an exhaustive search for photographs of the fugitives—he wanted to get their likenesses broadcast through the country with the least possible delay. A cabinet photograph on Mrs. Wraile’s writing-table gave an excellent representation of Sir Hunter Lorne’s late Brigade Major in uniform, but it was not till a volume of snapshots had been unearthed and searched that a picture of his wife was forthcoming.
The rush of work had kept Poole’s mind from the problem of Hessel’s identity with Lessingham. Although it had come as a complete surprise, the detective had felt too suspicious of the banker’s connection with the case—and particularly with the five minutes following the “accident”—to be entirely astonished. Now, as he worked on the creation of the net to catch the living criminals he felt that he could well thrust the problem of the dead one into the background until his immediate task was completed. By the time he got back to his Battersea lodgings, well after midnight, he had forgotten all about it and dropped asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.
The succeeding days were trying ones for Inspector Poole. Once the machinery of Scotland Yard and of the County Constabularies was in full working order, there was little he could do himself in the way of pursuit. For days the search went on, at first with confidence, then with patient hope, finally with dogged persistence—but little more.
At a conference with the Assistant-Commissioner on the morning after the affair at Ald House it had been decided to take the public fully into the confidence of the police—primarily in order that the full power of the press might be brought to bear in the search. Placards bearing the likeness of James and Miriam Wraile were posted at every police station and post office; all but the most dignified newspapers printed similar reproductions, together with minute descriptions, and every detail of the escape and many possible and impossible theories and suggestions. The B.B.C. gave nightly encouragement to the searchers, both professional and amateur.
An inquest was held on the body of Leopold Hessel, at which his identity with the financier, Travers Lessingham, was revealed, together with his association with Captain Wraile in the Rotunda Syndicate transactions. Nothing, however, was said at the first hearing about the Fratten murder, though naturally the public jumped to their own conclusions. The circumstances of Hessel’s death could not, of course, be fully established without the presence of the Wrailes, and the inquest was adjourned for a fortnight.
Poole busied himself in connecting up the carefully concealed threads which had united this latest Jekyll and Hyde. Travers Lessingham had apparently been in existence since the year following the war, though he had begun his operations in the City in a very minor key—feeling his way, as Poole phrased it. In addition to his arrangement with the Hotel Antwerp and Mme. Pintole of the Rue des Canetons, Hessel had kept a small studio in the neighbourhood of Gray’s Inn; this he had used for changing from one identity to the other, and as the tone of the lower grades of studio life is anything but inquisitive, there was small risk of anyone giving him away.