"Blah, all blah. Easy talk. Look here, Moreland, my percentages of unsolved crime are up--but you know why. Curse it all, Winter knows as well as I do that Larry Hughes is operating in my district. No one, not even the old man himself, has ever pinned anything to Larry. I'm to be the goat. Why didn't they give me an easy division when they promoted me, instead of the wealthiest in London, infested by all the slickest crooks in the world? What right has the old man to be sore at me?" Moreland slid from his stool and put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Listen to me, Harry. They gave you the job because they thought you could do it. To blazes with your golf handicap. Now you go and take a pill and get on with it." He pushed the other gently from the room. To few other men than Moreland would Labar have confided his troubles. He passed swiftly out of the little back door from the C.I.D. headquarters, dodging the Assistant Commissioner with some skill, for he felt that that official might be no less emphatic, if more urbane, than the Chief Constable on the state of crime in the West End. His mind was focussed upon Larry Hughes. Larry was a gentleman who had never been in a criminal court in his life--a sleek, cultivated man about town, with a taste in literature and art, and enough money to run his own steam yacht and a racing stud. His life was apparently open to the world, his character to all seeming flawless, impeccable. Any head-strong police officer who had ventured to put a public slur on Larry's character, by hauling him to a dungeon cell, would have very promptly found himself with a suit for heavy damages on his hands. Yet to Labar, as to many men in the police circles of the world, it was certain knowledge that Larry Hughes was the most adroit and intelligent crime organiser in London, or for the matter of that anywhere. It was certain but utterly unprovable. There are half a dozen men in London, another half a dozen in New York, three in Paris, a couple in Amsterdam, and a few more knocking about other capitals of the world, who run crime on the principles of big business. Through many intermediaries there filters to them much knowledge which they have the means to turn to profit. These are eclectic in their enterprises, but in general they are receivers. They will organise and finance a burglary, a forgery, or a hold-up, but they keep well in the background. The casual thief has never heard of them; even the big professional crook frequently has only a dim conception of their identity. The loot never reaches them in any tangible and identifiable shape. They have their agents, and their tools, and many of them die in an atmosphere of eminent respectability.