He paused and drew the girl closer to him.
‘It occurred to me that Dawlish and Gideon might very well be part of the famous Simister gang – the notorious bank thieves of the States. The descriptions of two of the leaders seemed to tally very well, and like a fool I jumped to the conclusion that they were the Simister gangsters. So that when the documents came into my hands I guessed what they were.’
The girl looked at him.
‘What were they?’ she said.
Abbershaw hesitated.
‘I don’t want to lay down the law this time,’ he said, ‘but I don’t see how I can be wrong. In these big gangs of crooks the science of thieving has been brought to such perfection that their internal management resembles a gigantic business concern more than anything else. Modern criminal gangs are not composed of amateurs – each man has his own particular type of work at which he is an expert. That is why the police experience such difficulty in bringing to justice the man actually responsible for a crime, and not merely capturing the comparatively innocent catspaw who performs the actual thieving.’
He paused, and the girl nodded in the darkness. ‘I see,’ she said.
Abbershaw went on, his voice sunk to a whisper.
‘Very big gangs, like Simister’s, carry this cooperative spirit to an extreme,’ he continued, ‘and in more cases than one a really big robbery is planned and worked out to the last detail by a man who may be hundreds of miles away from the scene of the crime when it is committed. A man with an ingenious criminal brain, therefore, can always sell his wares without being involved in any danger whatsoever. The thing I found was, I feel perfectly sure, a complete crime, worked out to the last detail by the hand of a master. It may have been a bank robbery, but of that I’m not sure. It was written in code, of course, and it was only from the few plans included in the mass of written matter – and my suspicions – that I got a hint of what it was.’
Meggie lifted her head.