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there?”
    “Because he’s treating it as a hide. He’s not counting it. He thinks he’s safe there.” Luke’s deep voice had become soft. It was almost a purr Mr. Campion thought with sudden astonishment, and he was aware of a small and secret thrill creeping down his spine.
    “You can’t tell what he’s got out there,” Luke was saying. “But it’s something which gives him an entirely false sense of security. It could be a pub where they know him well but in some different character to his real one, or it might be a girl friend who doesn’t ask questions—they do exist they tell me. Anyway he goes there when he wants to leave himself behind. I may sound as if I’m shooting a line but I know his state of mind about that place. He thinks he’s almost
invisible
there and that things he takes from there or chucks away there couldn’t ever be traced to him.” He paused and his quick dark eyes met Campion’s own, “It’s an old idea—sanctuary they call it, don’t they?”
    Mr. Campion shivered. He did not know why. He hastened back to concrete matters.
    “What about this new telephone?” he enquired.
    The dark man chuckled and nodded towards an instrument which stood away from the others on a file in the corner.
    “That’s it,” he said. “That’s caused the trouble downstairs. You can go as batty as you like if you do it cheaply, but spend a bit of Government money on your delusions and authority starts having kittens at once! That’s my private line to the Barrow Road station. If anything comes in from the Garden Green beat I shall hear of it quicker than soon. It’s been waiting, costing all of thirty bob, for a couple of weeks but it’ll ring in the end. You’ll see!”
    The thin man in the horn rims returned to his chair and sat down eyeing the little pile of exhibits on the scales.
    “You make it very convincing, Charles,” he said at last. “Although there’s no great similarity of method you force me to admit there’s a strong family likeness in the mental approach. Of course there are no bodies in the ring story but then there isn’t one in the ’bus business either.”
    Luke thrust his hands in his pockets and began to play softly with the coins there.
    “That idea of Yeo’s about me trying to revive Havoc or the Reddingdale multi-murderer is absurd,” he said. “This chap isn’t a fraction like either of them. Havoc had got out of touch with the Peace-time world in jug and the Reddingdale chap was a bore with a blood-lust like Blue Beard or Christie, but this man is different. He’s almost refreshing. He’s got a brain and he’s got nerve and he’s not neurotic. He’s perfectly sane, he’s merciless as a snake and he’s very careful—doesn’t like witnesses or corpses left around.”
    Mr. Campion studied his finger tips; he was thinking that he had heard white hunters describing game they were after with the same almost loving interest.
    “You see him as simply out for money, do you?” he enquired presently.
    “Oh yes, and not necessarily big money.” As he spoke the Superintendent took a handful of silver out of his pocket absently, glanced at it and put it back again. “He’s a crook. He makes a living by taking all he needs from other people. The really unusual thing about him is that he kills quite coldly when it’s the safest thing to do.”
    He slid off the desk and going round behind it sat down in his chair and swept the exhibits back into their drawer again.
    “He’s the enemy,” he said, catching Campion’s eye with a flicker in his own which was half shy. “My enemy. Professional
and
natural, and I tell you, I’m as certain as if I was reading it on my tombstone, either I’m going to get him or he’s going to get me.”
    Mr. Campion opened his mouth to express a polite hope that he was not beating an empty covert when behind him, on the top of the green file, the newly installed telephone began to ring.

Chapter 3
    GARDEN GREEN
    EARLY IN