ACROSS the way from Tilbury House, next door to the massive annex containing the offices of Tiny Tots, Sabbath Jottings, British Girlhood, the Boys’ Adventure Weekly and others of the more recently established of the Mammoth Publishing Company’s periodicals, there stands a ramshackle four-storied building of an almost majestic dinginess, which Lord Tilbury, but for certain regulations having to do with ancient lights, would have swallowed up years ago, as he had swallowed the rest of the street.
The first three floors of this building are occupied by firms of the pathetic type which cannot conceivably be supposed to do any business, and yet hang on with dull persistency for decade after decade. Their windows are dirty and forlorn and most of the lettering outside has been worn away, so that on the second floor it would appear that trade is being carried by the Ja—& Sum—r—Rub—Co., while just above, Messrs. Smith, R-bi-s-n & G——, that mystic firm, are dealing in something curtly described as c——. It is not until we reach the fourth and final floor that we find the modern note struck.
Here the writing is not only clear and golden but, when read, stimulating to the imagination. It runs:
The Tilbury Detective Agency, Ltd.
J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr.
Large and Efficient Staff
and conjures up visions of a suite of rooms filled with hawk-faced men examining bloodstains through microscopes or poring tensely over the papers connected with the singular affair of the theft of the maharajah’s ruby.
On the morning, however, on which Sam Shotter paid his visit to Tilbury House, only one man was sitting in the office of the detective agency. He was a small and weedy individual, clad in a suit brighter even than the one which Sam had purchased from the Brothers Cohen. And when it is stated in addition that he wore a waxed moustache and that his handkerchief, which was of colored silk, filled the air with a noisome perfume, further evidence is scarcely required to convince the reader that he is being introduced to a most undesirable character. Nevertheless, the final damning fact may as well be revealed. It is this—the man was not looking out of a window.
Tilbury Street is very narrow and the fourth-floor windows of this ramshackle building are immediately opposite those of the fourth floor of Tilbury House. Alexander Twist therefore was in a position, if he pleased, to gaze through into the private sanctum of the proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company and obtain the spiritual uplift which could hardly fail to result from the spectacle of that great man at work. Alone of London’s millions of inhabitants, he had it in his power to watch Lord Tilbury pacing up and down, writing at his desk or speaking into the dictating device who knows what terrific thoughts.
Yet he preferred to sit at a table playing solitaire—and, one is prepared to bet, cheating. One need not, one fancies, say more.
So absorbed was Mr. Twist in his foolish game that the fact that someone was knocking on the door did not at first penetrate his senses. It was only when the person outside, growing impatient, rapped the panel with some hard object which might have been the handle of a lady’s parasol that he raised his head with a start. He swept the cards into a drawer, gave his coat a settling tug and rose alertly. The knock sounded like business, and Mr. Twist, who was not only J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr., but the large and efficient staff as well, was not the man to be caught unprepared.
“Come in,” he shouted.