It was only a few hundred yards to the Police Headquarters in Victoria Square, and in my numbed state of mind the journey seemed very short. But it gave me time to pull myself together, and when I was finally ushered into the presence of the Chief I had myself perfectly under control, and was able to look at him with eyes set in a face of stone.

I knew the Chief well by reputation. He was quite a young man, not more than thirty-five, and one of those who had made good in the Great War. He had been one of the heroes of Bullecourt, and had been twice promoted for gallantry on the field. When the Armistice was signed he was holding the rank of brigadier. He had only held his position in Adelaide for about six months, but had already proved himself a shrewd and capable officer.

He had a few detractors, and all they could say against him was that, if anything, he was a little bit too theatrical and rather too sensitive to public opinion.

Now, as I stood straight before him, with a detective on either side, I thought what a fine soldierly-looking man he was, with his strong face and shrewd grey eyes.

He was sitting down with a table between us, and he eyed me up and down very sternly.

A little behind him, and on his left-hand side, sat my parchment-faced little friend of Hutt Street and the Henley Beach car. He was screwing up his face and watching me like a cat eyeing a mouse.

“No gun?” at length asked the Chief, without taking his eyes off my face. One of my captors shook his head; and there was again a long silence.

Then the Chief rapped out his first question, and, ready and prepared as I was, I had the greatest difficulty in preventing a start.

“John Stratton,” he said quickly, “why did you shoot Tod McSwiney? Why did you kill the Mount Gambier murderer?”

I was too dumbfounded to make any reply. So, in spite of all my fancied security, they knew my name, and, more astonishing still, the man I killed was one of the Mount Gambier murderers. I stood rigid in real surprise and just stared fixedly at my interrogator.

“Well taken, sir,” he sneered, after a few seconds; “but another time don’t clench your hands so tightly. It rather gives the show away.” Then, leaning forward, “I ask you again, sir, why did you murder McSwiney?”

I found my tongue at last, and answered him slowly and as insolently as I could.

“For the same reason that you murdered Queen Ann — because I didn’t do it.”

“Look here, my friend,” he said menacingly, “realise at once that it will pay you best to admit the truth. We know all about you — everything.”

“Oh you do, do you?” I replied, now sneering in return. “Then why is it you want to question me at all?”

He glared angrily at me, but at once lowered his voice.

“Stratton, if you think you can bluff here you make a great mistake. Let me tell you straight, you’ve been a marked man in Adelaide for much longer than you dream of. We have had an eye on you, my lad, for a long while, and your doings are an open book to us.”

I shrugged my shoulders contemptuously, and he went on rapidly.

“We have traced all your movements from the first day you arrived in Adelaide down to these few minutes ago, when you entered this room. Listen!” and he lifted a sheaf of papers from his desk. “On October 12th you arrived here in the city. You put up at Fenney’s lodging-house, and have lived there ever since. On the 14th you got employment at Hanson’s wood works. Three weeks later you were discharged from there for insolence to one of the foremen. Then you worked for a fortnight with Levy, the carrier; then for three days at Bulow’s. After that, up to Friday last, you only did occasional work and odd jobs.” (Impressively) “Last Friday you had only one meal; you were down so low as that. Last Saturday you went with Tod McSwiney to Glenelg. You quarrelled on the beach and you shot him. You then buried him ineffectually on the sands. Returning to the city, you were in funds again.

“On Monday you collected a mail from the General Post Office, and at once started making preparations to quit. You bought a second-hand portmanteau in Hindley Street, two suits of clothes from James in Rundle Street, socks, shirts, ties, and underclothes from Applin & Thomas in King William Street, three pairs of boots at the True Leather Company, and so on all the morning. Stratton,” he continued, and his voice became slow and deliberate. “On Saturday you hadn’t, so to speak, a penny to your name, and on Monday,” shaking his finger slowly in my face, “you spent over ￡43 before 12 o’clock. Now” (triumphantly) “do you still deny you didn’t murder McSwiney?”

I could have laughed in his face in my relief. This long-winded account of my unimportant movements and the dwelling on the minute details of the garments I had purchased showed up unmistakedly the poorness of the evidence they could produce against me. There were gaps and hesitations in his narrative, and of what happened between the Friday and the Monday they were entirely ignorant and could only guess. But they had evidently been following me from the time I went for my letters, and I could see now how they had got hold of my name.

My spirits rose at once, and shrugging my shoulders I said indifferently:—

“Most certainly I do deny it. I have never murdered anyone in my life, and as for the late Mr. Tod McSwiney, I hadn’t even the pleasure of his acquaintanceship.”

The Chief glared at me angrily.

“You went with McSwiney to Glenelg,” he insisted.

“Lie number one,” I replied; “I did not. I never even knew him and as far as I know of, have never spoken to him in my life.”

“You murdered him on the sands,” he reiterated.

“Lie number two,” I said calmly. “Again I did not.” The Chief brought his hand down with a thump on the table.

“You see Inspector Kitson here,” pointing to the little man beside him. “Now do you deny having seen him before? On the tram car at Henley last Saturday, and on Monday morning in Hutt Street. Do you deny that?”

“No, I don’t that,” I said coolly, “I noticed him both times;” and then, remembering old Nat Saunders’ yarn, I added significantly, “and also on Friday when he got off the Melbourne express, carrying a bag and with his rug on his arm, and came straight up here.”

The Chief’s face clouded with annoyance, and I thought also that the little man too looked a bit non-plussed.

“So ho,” sneered the Chief, “then you know the inspector, do you? That’s quite interesting; and pray how do you come to know him?”

“Well,” I rejoined, “I lived for over twenty years in Melbourne, and,” bowing to the little man, “who doesn’t know the great Inspector Kitson there!”

The Chief made a motion to the two men behind me. “Turn out his pockets,” he said curtly. “Search him well, every rag he’s got on him.”

In half a minute my pockets were empty, and all my possessions, including my packet of banknotes, neatly tied up in brown paper, were piled in a little heap on the table.

“Let me see his hip pocket,” ordered Inspector Kitson, breaking silence for the first time. “Turn him round and pull out the lining.”

“Yes, exactly,” he continued, bending down and examining the turned-out pocket. “Plenty of grease marks here, and from the bulge of the lining it’s quite recently carried a little pistol. Certainly a .22. This is our man right enough.” And he resumed his seat as if he were quite satisfied and that nothing further would have to be done.

But the Chief was busy examining my belongings. There was not much however to interest him at first. My clasp knife he just opened and held up to the light. My tobacco pouch, he passed his fingers through carefully, and my postcard to myself (which I had foolishly retained for the memory of the girl), and my cousin’s letter from Pimba caused him to screw his eyebrows together a little.

But he found nothing incriminating in all these, and it was not until he came to the brown paper packet of banknotes that there was any triumph at all in his face.

Directly he took the packet in his hand I saw at once that he thought he had at last nosed something, and when he had slipped off the covering and more than ￡200 in good Commonwealth currency had become exposed to view, a pleased and happy smile broke over his face.

He held out the notes significantly, for Inspector Kitson to see, and the dried-up features of the little man relaxed, and he looked as happy as a little child.

“Whew,” whistled the Chief in genuine astonishment. “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty! More than two hundred here. By Jove! a regular Rothschild our friend, and yet actually living at Finney’s lodging-house and going about in shabby old clothes. Now let us look at the numbers of some of these precious notes.”

The two men with their heads bent close together over the table examined the numbers of my notes, one by one; at first with brisk expectant faces, then with rather puzzled looks, and finally with undisguised disappointment in both their expressions.

But the Chief was not beaten yet, by any means. “Now, Stratton,” he said brusquely, “you’ve got a lot to explain. Where did you get this money from — there’s ￡225 here?”

My spirits had risen higher still at their obvious discomfiture, and with every minute now I was beginning to feel that it was I who held the best cards.

“Oh,” I replied, smilingly, “I won it at the races on Saturday; I backed Rose of Dawn.”

“You won it at the races,” he said incredulously; “and from where, pray, did you get any money to go to the races with? Remember, you hadn’t a shilling on Saturday morning.”

“Quite true, but I had ten pounds given me.”

“Whom by?” he sneered; “some unknown benefactor, I expect, who gave it you for the sake of your beautiful eyes.”

“No!” I replied quietly, “the ten pounds were given me by Sir Henry Vane.”

“Sir Henry Vane,” he snapped, “what did he give you ten pounds for?”

“For picking up his pocket-book in King William Street, outside the G.P.O.”

“When was this?” he asked sharply.

“On Saturday morning, just before one.”

“And you went to Victoria Park and backed Rose of Dawn?”

“Yes, and after that Rattler’s Pride.”

“Well, tell us how much you had on Rose of Dawn; quickly now, and we’ll soon see if your tale holds water. Don’t stop to invent, but just give me the figures.”

“I had ￡2 on Rose of Dawn,” I said calmly, “and that brought me ￡123. Then, in the last race, I had ￡50 on Rattler’s Pride and got back ￡137, making ￡260 in all.”

“Do you really expect us to believe all this?” said the Chief after a short silence, and knitting his brows.

“I don’t care whether you believe it or not,” I replied, “but it’s quite true all the same. Besides, you can easily prove that I had ￡50 on Rattler’s Pride. I took ten five-pound tickets just before the window went down. I was the last one to take any tickets, and the operator remarked that he wished me good luck for my courage.”

“What dividend do you say Rattler’s Pride returned?” remarked the Chief musingly after a short silence.

“It returned ￡3 15s.,” I replied. “I won ￡260 altogether, making, with the General’s ten-pound note, ￡270 that I received on Saturday. According to you — and thank you for keeping my accounts so nicely, I spent ￡43 on Monday. That and the ￡225 on the table nearly makes up the full ￡270. The rest has gone in expenses. Now you know everything.”

“Where did you change the first ten-pound note?” broke in Inspector Kitson quietly.

“At the G.P.O.,” I told him. “I looked too shabby to change it anywhere else. So I bought a postcard and for a joke wrote it to myself.”

“That’s it in my own handwriting there before you.”

The Chief seemed to remember something and handed me a pencil.

“Just write your name please on this piece of paper, and now write the two words ‘Adelaide Hospital.’ No, print the letters this time and do them quickly in your ordinary way.”

Now I blessed my foresight in the care I had taken in the disguising of my envelope to the Adelaide Hospital. It was standing me in good stead now. I printed the letters as quickly as anyone could wish.

The Chief took an envelope out of the drawer and carefully compared the two handwritings, with the Melbourne detective looking over his shoulder.

I could see they were puzzled. They whispered for some time together.

“I shall detain you,” at length said the Chief in no good humour. “Take him away;” and I was led from the room.

I was kept waiting for more than four hours, locked away in a little room by myself, and all the time I could see I was an object of considerable curiosity to the various policemen and others at headquarters.

Various uniformed and ununiformed men kept coming in on one matter or another, during the whole morning, and they all gave me a long and interested stare. I thought naturally they would be interested in the personality of a probable murderer, and was rather amused than otherwise at their persistent scrutiny.

Towards noon a fat, jolly-looking policeman brought me in a nice plate of hot roast beef and a couple of minutes after, to my greater astonishment, a long glass of cool beer.

“I thought that would suit you,” he said, and he winked knowingly at the beer. “It’s the right stuff, that I can tell you. And the beef too’s all right — just the same as the Chief has. Oh, I’m looking after you,” and off he hopped out of the room.

I smelt a rat at once. They were going to try and bribe me now, and the plate of beef and the beer would, of course, be only a beginning. The policeman came back in a few minutes, and seeing I had finished, asked interestedly how I had enjoyed my meal.

“Oh,” I said distantly, “quite all right thank you,” and I relapsed into silence, hoping he would go away.

But he had evidently a mission to perform, and fidgetted about, apparently not knowing exactly how to begin to set about it.

Finally he sidled up close to me, and putting a fat finger mysteriously on his lips, whispered hoarsely.

“Do you happen to know anything good for Gawler on Saturday?”

So much for my foolish suspicions. They were not interested in me because I was a possible destroyer of another man’s life, but simply because I had backed a good winner at the races.

I smilingly told my fat friend that I didn’t know anything in particular for Gawler, but I advised him all the same to follow the local trainers, as they generally managed to weigh in there with something good.

About three o’clock, I was taken into the Chief again and I saw at once that something had happened. The whole atmosphere of the room seemed different.

The Chief himself no longer regarded me with hard stern eyes, but instead, met me with quite a pleasant smile, and even the dour-looking Inspector Kitson seemed to have a more agreeable expression on his face.

The Chief dismissed my attendant with a nod and then bade me politely, to sit down. “Pick up your belongings, Mr. Stratton,” he said, pointing to my little heap of valuables on the table. “Yes, the notes as well, but later on,” he continued smiling, “if I were you I should buy a nice pocket-book. Brown paper is hardly a suitable covering for riches such as yours.”

“Now, Mr. Stratton,” he went on, and his voice took on a brisk and business-like tone, “we are not going to detain you; you are going out of this room in a few minutes, a perfectly free man. No,” he added, as he saw me smile, “please don’t think you hold all the trumps in your hand. There are suspicions about you — very grave suspicions, and I should be quite justified, whatever might afterwards eventuate, in bringing you before the Court tomorrow and asking for a remand until such time as we could make further inquiries. Some parts of the story you gave us this morning are undoubtedly perfectly true, as our inquiries have shown us. But your story is an incomplete one, and there are the damning parallels of Henley Beach and Hutt Street still against you.” Impressively, and bending towards me, “Was it only a coincidence that you were on Henley Beach the very hour the man was shot on Saturday night, and at the rooms where the dead man had lived on Monday morning? Mr. Stratton, I am convinced Tod McSwiney was killed by a soldier and buried by a soldier. The way his clothes had been rifled, the way the body had been tucked in its shallow grave, the gashes in its abdomen — all point to the actions of a man who has seen active service and done these things before. Then again — whoever killed McSwiney was a cool and self-possessed man. He had bided his time and put all his bullets close together. Moreover, he was not a poor man in need of money, for he left the gold wrist watch and the cigarette case behind him, as well as the loose change. Now, Mr. Stratton, you answer to all these descriptions. You are a soldier, you are a self-possessed man, as witness your replies here this morning, and, moreover, you are not in any need of money. Now, will you still say we have no case against you?”

He paused for me to say something, but I only looked at him and remained silent.

“Mind you,” he continued, after a moment. “The man who killed McSwiney committed a grave error of judgment in trying to hide the body. McSwiney’s record was so black, that if anyone had come forward with a decent character, such as yours for instance — and I am bound to say as far as we can trace your character, it is quite above reproach — if anyone such as you, had come forward with any sort of story, however plausible, he would have been believed. Not only that, but he would almost have been publicly thanked for ridding the world of such a monster. But, as I say, we are not going to harp on that any more. So far as we are concerned, we are not going to make any further efforts to bring home the business to you, and, therefore, unless our hands are forced by some outside evidence we really can’t overlook — you have heard the last of it from us.”

“Now, in return for this consideration of ours — and remember, Mr. Stratton, it is a consideration — we want you to help us.”

“Help you?” I asked, still on my guard; “how can I help you?”

“Now listen to me, and please follow what I say very carefully. You, of course, know about the Mount Gambier murders. Three weeks ago last Thursday a farmer and his wife were brutally done to death by two men. Tod McSwiney was one of them, that we know for certain. Tod has lived by crime for years, but a clever, capable brute, we have never been able to bring his crimes home to him.”

“The Melbourne garrotting case last year we knew was his. The wiping out of a whole family near Pinaru was another crime he was responsible for. The Tarcoola strangling case, where the victim was first blinded with red pepper and then despatched with his own scarf, was another masterpiece of the same man. Tod was a devil — a heartless, brutal scoundrel in all his crimes. Well, of late Master Tod has not been working alone. He has drifted across another man, of an even more horrible brutality than his own. A man who, apart from what it brought him, loved crime for its own sake, and who would go out of his way to inflict unnecessary suffering on his victims. We believe it was this man who, after murdering a woman in Kalgoorlie in 1914, threw her three months baby into a copper of boiling water. We suspect him of a series of undiscovered crimes in 1915, 1916, and 1917, but the unhappy part of it is we have never been able to get even a good description of the man or find out who he is. He has passed like a sombre shadow across the Commonwealth, unrecorded and unknown, but leaving always behind him his trail of black and dreadful crime.

“Well, we are certain he was the companion of McSwiney in the Mount Gambier case, and we should have had them both for sure this time, for they had made their one mistake. Not only were they seen by that little frightened girl in the wood stack, and their description afterwards given, but what is so far only known to my friend here and me, they left behind them a spirit flask with two distinct sets of bloody finger marks on the side.

“Well, Tod and this other beauty came to Adelaide last week, and, as was their invariable rule, they separated at once upon arriving at a city.

“But they were traced by my friend here, and Tod was marked down going to Glenelg on Saturday. Unhappily, word reached us too late to catch him stepping off the train at Glenelg, but we arranged for all possible ways of his coming home, and then — then, Mr. Stratton, he disappeared utterly from our ken.”

The Chief paused in his recital and, shrugging his shoulders, leant back despondently in his chair.

I confess I was moved by what he was telling me. With a strong dramatic instinct, he was a born artist in telling a story, and the earnestness and sincerity of the man stood out in every word he had spoken.

I felt instinctively somehow I could trust him, and something of my changed attitude of mind must have been reflected in my face, for when he broke silence again he spoke to me as one friend speaking to another.

“Now, Mr. Stratton, this is where you come in. McSwiney is dead, and in some ways we are sorry. McSwiney alive was the connecting link with the other man, and with him once in custody we might have got at his companion that way. But McSwiney dead, and his companion stalks safely through the city as a law-abiding, harmless man. If we only had someone to suspect, the finger prints would clinch the matter at once, and we might too be able to bring it home to him in other ways.

“The man is sure to be remaining in Adelaide, for he is in the dark now about McSwiney. Nothing has got in the papers yet about what happened on the beach last Saturday, and blackguard number two will be chary of making any fresh move in case he puts his foot in it. But we are quite at a standstill too, and can do nothing. We are helpless, as you see.

“Now, Mr. Stratton, for your part in this. You went to Victoria Park and made a nice sum of money. Suppose, for the sake of argument, McSwiney saw you draw this money, and suppose he followed you and tried to rob you, and you killed him in self-defence.

“Just suppose that. Now, if he saw you, there is a chance that you saw him, and if you saw him you might also by chance have noticed he was with a companion. Perhaps then, you might remember what the companion was like. Mind you, you are not committing yourself, for on my honour you go free when we have finished this conversation, whatever you decide.”

I hesitated, and looked thoughtfully from the Chief to his companion. I knew I should be taking on something if I once admitted I had even seen McSwiney. It was breaking down all my defence and leaving me practically at the mercy of these two men. Then I thought of all the Chief had told me, and a great wave of anger swept through me, at the idea that this other wretch should go free. I would help them if I could, and chance the risk. But did I remember the man? I shut my eyes and tried to visualise the scene at the pay-window at Victoria Park.

McSwiney, I could remember well, but the other man was not so clear at first. Then I remembered him as spitting while he smoked, and his face and clothes came up at once to my mind. A medium-sized, common-looking man in blue clothes. Nothing particular about him but dark eyes and a rather flat broad nose. I could remember nothing more.

I opened my eyes and smiled at the anxious way I was being regarded by the Chief and his companion.

“Did the little girl in the woodstack,” I asked, breaking into the silence at last, “give any sort of description of this second man?”

“Yes,” said the Chief, “but not a very good one.”

“Would she know him again?”

“Yes, she said she would.”

“Well, did she say he was a dark man, or medium-sized, or had a thick-set nose?”

“That’s all right,” cried the Chief exultingly; “you know him. She described him as dark and ugly and not big. I thought the course we decided to take with you was the best one. Now, can you help us on any more?”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t think I can. I told you the exact truth this morning. I never knew the man at all.”

“If we had searched him, Mr. Stratton, do you think,” asked the Inspector, breaking in quietly, “we should have found anything more to help us — on the body?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head; “nothing more than you already know.”

“His pocket-book, for instance,” gently suggested the Chief with an insinuating smile, “he must have had a pocket-book surely?”

“A crepe mask, a packet of red pepper, the landlady’s card of his apartments, and the rest — you have already,” I replied calmly.

The Chief and the Inspector exchanged meaning glances. “Yes, those notes,” said the former, turning to me again, “were a part of the money taken at Mount Gambier. The poor man who was killed had sold some beasts only the previous day, and had been paid direct in new notes from the bank. No doubt our friend found the racecourse the most safe way of gradually disposing of them. Well, Mr. Stratton, the chances of catching the gentleman are not particularly rosy, but still it’s more than possible that our good luck may be in.

“As I said before, Tod’s friend does not know what’s become of Tod, but he must be getting now mighty anxious to know. I am convinced he won’t make any inquiries at Tod’s rooms, because, in towns and cities these two men, although undoubtedly working together, always kept themselves severely apart so far as their sleeping places were concerned. What this man will do will be to look out for Tod at the places he would be most likely to knock up against him. Hotel bars, for example, and possibly the races at Gawler on Saturday. Don’t you agree, Inspector Kitson?”

The little man made a sign of assent, and then asked me, “Have you seen the man several times?”

“No, only once.”

“And then not for long, I suppose?”

“No. Barely a couple of minutes I should think, at Victoria Park.”

“Well,” said the Chief after a moment’s hesitation, “I think we know now all that there is to be got out of you, Mr. Stratton, and this is what I propose you should do.

“I’ll send down to the station for your bag, and you can just get into one of these nice new suits you have bought. Then we’ll alter your appearance a little bit and turn you loose in the city. You know Adelaide probably as well as I do, and I’ll leave it to your own discrimination where to go. But I would suggest that in particular you pay attention to the medium class of hotel bars; that’s where our friend is most likely to turn up. Now, you will never be alone. You will be shadowed wherever you go, by some of my best men. Mind you, you will never see them and you will never know that they are standing by, but ——” and here his voice took on an impressive tone of warning, “if you should ever by chance spot our man, be careful — be very careful not to arouse his suspicions. He is of the type of man that stops at nothing, and of the type too that is seldom taken alive. If you should meet him, fumble with your coat collar at the back. That shall be your signal and wherever you are and at whatever time, you shall find ample help about you. Now, this is all for the present. I feel sure you’ll do your best for us.”

He dismissed me with a pleasant smile, and accompanied by the great Melbourne detective, I left the room to get ready for my new role.