The inspector thought that quite likely. It was impossible that Larry had had any dealings direct with this drug-sodden crook. "Who put you up to this Streetly House business?" he demanded. "Tell me how you got into that." "That," Stebbins reflected. "Oh, it was Billy Bungey who gave me the tip that I could get a job there. He got me some references and all. Say, there's a nice little bird at that place. She's a peach. You ought----" "Did she have anything to do with this business?" A languid gesture of denial met the question. "Oh, no. Not in that way. 'Course I learned a few things from her." "Never mind about her for the moment then. Tell me how Billy came to ask you to bear a hand. What did you have to do, and how much did you get out of it?" In stumbling and random phrases Stebbins told what the inspector believed to be a truthful story of his association with the robbery. It was difficult always to keep him to the point, and Malone who was laboriously writing down his statement in longhand clicked his tongue impatiently at times, as he waited with poised pen, until a few incisive questions from Labar had unravelled the tangle. Stebbins was a type of a shiftless cunning species of crook which is well known to the Criminal Investigation Department. He was a drifter, weak and unscrupulous, lacking the imagination or skill of more successful rogues. Without leadership it was inevitable that any of his clumsy crimes, from smashing a jeweller's window to petty thefts in the suburbs, should bring him straight into the hands of the police. In this manner had the terms of imprisonment which had been ferreted out from the records been brought to him. He had dodged hopelessly to the United States where he had also been harried, until the lapse of years had brought him back to this country, where as a minor thief he was nearly forgotten, to act when occasion offered as jackal to bolder and more enterprising spirits. Billy Bungey, it appeared, had stumbled across him by accident at some race meeting, and learned that Stebbins--which of course was not his real name--was making a more or less precarious existence by washing windows at the Palatial Restaurant. There had been one or two small pilferings and Stebbins confided that he expected at any moment to lose his job. With the spacious condescension of a race-gang leader to an inferior being Billy had hinted that he might find Stebbins profitable work. A meeting had been arranged to take place later at a public-house a few hundred yards from Blackfriars Bridge, and there it had been suggested to him that he might get an appointment as odd-job man at Streetly House. Billy even had his references all in order. Stebbins was to apply to the butler and to say that he was the man that Mr. Hughes had spoken about. "You go and get this job, first," said Billy Bungey. "Then we'll talk about what we want you to do."