be dark. Drive up, go into the bar and have a
drink. You'll find him there and recognize him by his deformity.
Outside he will mention the password and you will drive him where he
directs. That's all!"

And the man who had, on engaging me, so particularly wanted to know if
I could sing, and had never asked me to do so, dismissed me quite
abruptly, as was his habit. His quick alertness, keen shrewdness and
sharp suspicion caused him to speak abruptly--almost churlishly--to
those about him. I, however, now understood him. Yet I wondered what
evil work was in progress.

He had often pitted his wits against the most famous detective
inspector, the great Benton, who had achieved so much notoriety in the
Enfield poisoning case, the Sunbury mystery in which the body of a
young girl shop-assistant had been found headless in the Thames, the
great Maresfield drug drama of Limehouse and Mayfair, and the
disappearance of the Honorable Edna Newcomen from her mother's house
in Grosvenor Gardens. Superintendent Arthur Benton was perhaps the
most wideawake hunter of criminals in the United Kingdom. As chief of
his own particular branch at Scotland Yard he performed wonderful
services, and his record was unique. Yet, hampered as he was by
official red-tape and those regulations which prevented his men from
taking a third-class railway ticket when following a thief, unless
they waited for weeks for the return of the expenditure from official
sources, he was no match for the squire of Overstow, who had a big
bank balance, who moved in society, official, political and otherwise,
and who actually entertained certain high officials at his table.

From a man in the Department of the Public Prosecutor at Whitehall,
Rayne often learnt much of the inner workings of Scotland Yard and of
secret inquiries, for a civil servant at a well-laid sumptuous table
is frequently prone to indiscretion.

Arthur Benton was a well-meaning and very straight-dealing public
servant with a splendid record as a detector of crime, but against
money and such influence he could not cope. Indeed, more than once
Rayne declared to me that he intended evil against Benton.

"Yet I rather like him," he had said when we were discussing him one
day. "After all, he's a real good sportsman!"

So according to Rayne's orders I met the hunchback Tarrant at the
Three Nuns Hotel at Aldgate. I had taken another car from Lloyd's
garage--a Fiat landaulette, stolen, no doubt--and