THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume). Charles Norris Williamson

in Levoine Street itself. Yet it was scarcely likely that anyone leaving that thoroughfare would escape the notice of this outer fringe of watchers. That was what they were there for.

      Twice that day had Mrs. Buttle journeyed into the main street once to the butcher's, once to a post-office. And each time, curiously enough, one of the waterside labourers or one of the saloon loafers had lounged indifferently in the same direction, dropping back after three or four hundred yards, while the hard-bitten detectives of the H division took up the unobtrusive escort. It was monotonous work. All those taking part in it knew that their vigil might go on for weeks, perhaps for months, and then end without any result.

      Meanwhile, Detective-Sergeant Congreve had routed out a colleague in the division and was more actively engaged. Together they walked along the Commercial Road until they reached a corner shop. The lower half of the big plate glass windows had been blackened and staring white letters announced

      DR. KARL STEINGURT.

      Dispensary. Hours 8 till 10 A.M. 7 till 9 P.M.

      The pair pushed their way into the room bare save for a cupboard and table and a series of hard wooden forms. Women crowded the latter, some with children, some without, and a shrill clatter of tongues died away for the instant as they took stock of the newcomers.

      An anaemic young man busy juggling with bottles and pill boxes nodded abruptly to the vacant end of a bench.

      "You want the doctor? Sit down there and take your turn." He returned to his dispensing. "That'll be thruppence, Mrs. Isaacs to be taken as before. Eh? No, you know very well what the rules are. If you ain't got the money you shouldn't have come. Now who's next? Don't you hear the doctor calling?"

      Indeed, a querulous guttural voice from the top of the stairs which led out of the dispensary was shouting fiercely and two or three women pushed forward. The anaemic dispenser shrilly demanded quiet an order of which not the slightest notice was taken. The argument as to precedence threatened to develop to physical violence and Congreve's colleague stepped forward and took hold on the dispenser's thin arm.

      "That Dr. Steingurt upstairs?" he demanded.

      "Why the blazes don't you go and sit down?" demanded the assistant, feebly wrathful. "He can't see j' all at once, now can he? 'Ere, let go my arm."

      "It's Mr. Hugh a rozzer," said someone, and the tumult stilled. The assistant lost his air of authority as a pricked toy balloon collapses. "Say, you can see the boss is busy. Won't I do? What do you want?"

      "You won't do, son," said Hugh. "We're going right up to the doctor now and you'll have to get these ladies to excuse him five minutes."

      Congreve meanwhile had pushed himself to the stairs.

      Hugh followed. A dozen steps brought them to the consulting-room and face to face with a swarthy little man in a frock coat and dirty linen. Heavy circular spectacles gave him the appearance of an owl.

      "Doctor Steingurt?" asked Congreve. Hugh had softly closed the door behind them.

      The doctor glanced at them through his gold-rimmed spectacles. "Vot's the matter with you, eh?" he demanded briskly. "Speak up, now. You see I haf a lot of people waiting and as I only charge sixpence--"

      Hugh muttered something below his breath. Congreve cut in. "We're not patients. You'll have to give us a little of your attention without any fee this time, doctor. We're police officers."

      "Id is most ungonvenient that you come at this time," protested Steingurt, "I told the goroner "he waved flabby hands at them "that I should not gome again. I was legal oh, I know the law. I am not a jarity. The child would have died anyway and the man which called me didn't haf my fee. Why should I gif up a night's rest for nothing? Dere is the hospital for paupers." He grew more excited. "I tell you I vill not gome to that goroner's court any more. I will see my solicitor. I will not gome."

      Both detectives remembered the standing feud between the coroner of the district and Steingurt.

      "It is most highly ingonvenient," he repeated, "to come in my gonsultation hours and drag me down to that nasty court youst to talk nonsense."

      "Steady, doctor," remonstrated Congreve. "We've nothing to do with that. You were called out last night- or rather this morning. That's what we want to talk about."

      Steingurt blinked behind his spectacles. "I am always being galled out. I will look at my book if you like. Dere iss nothing wrong?"

      "We'll know that when you've told us," said Congreve sharply. "You went to Levoine Street. Who did you see? Why were you called?"

      "That's so," agreed Steingurt. "It was a little girl a bad case of diphtheria."

      "Really!" The detective's voice was silky. "And how much were you paid to keep your mouth shut?"

      The doctor glared at him and suddenly advancing a step shook a fist in his face. Congreve delicately extended the tips of his fingers and touching the other's chest pushed him backwards.

      "This is a gonspiracy to insult me," protested Steingurt. "I don't believe you are police officers. You had bedder go or I will have you thrown out."

      "Was it ten pounds or twenty?" persisted Congreve steadily. "It looks to me as if you knew there was something fishy on or you wouldn't be so unwilling to talk."

      "I gannot talk about my patients. It is professional eddiquet you know very well." Steingurt seemed to have lost a little of his confidence. "You've got no right to question me."

      "Just you listen to me, doctor." Hugh, big, overbearing, threatening, pushed his way into the dialogue. "We know all about professional etiquette, but we know a lot more about crooks and those who get mixed up with them. Savvy? We ain't here for lip-trap so don't you try us too far. Suppose we take him along on suspicion eh, Congreve?"

      Hugh was admirably suited for his work in the East End big, absolutely fearless, direct. He knew exactly when to adopt the customs and language of his surroundings and his peremptory air had its effect.

      Steingurt became civil. "If you will sit down, gentlemen, I will tell my assistant we mustn't be disturbed."

      "That's sensible," said Congreve.

      The doctor gave his orders and returned thoughtfully. "You know this neighbourhood," he said. "I am a busy man very busy. I gan't enquire into the moral character of everybody who gomes for me, can I? It's a big bractice, gentlemen one of the biggest in the world. And every night I get waked up. Last night it was an old woman and she rings and knocks. I was afraid she would have the place down. I told her to go away. ' You're wanted,' she says. ' I'll keep on ringing till I bring you down. I want to talk to you. It will be worth your while.' So I went down and opened the door on the chain.

      "'You must gome along with me at once,' she says. ' Don't stand there gibbering like a monkey, but get some clothes on and gome.' She pushed a folded banknote through the door and when I opened id, id was for five pounds. ' There's four more of those flimsies waiting for you,' she says, ' if you hurry up and come and keep your jaw shut.' ' Where to?' I asked. 'Never mind,' she says. ' Are you goming or must I get someone else?'

      "So, of gorse, gentlemen, twenty-five pounds is twenty-five pounds. So I went. The woman she said nothing of where we were going, bud I knew the district. She took me along to Levoine Street and let me in to one of the houses with a latch key. ' There's a man fell downstairs and hurt himself,' she says. ' I'm afraid it's concussion.' I wondered what she knew of concussion, but I says nothing and she dakes me upstairs. There was a man there. He'd hurt himself pretty much, but it wasn't concussion, and when I'd bandaged him up I told her he'd be all right if he was allowed to lie still for an hour or two. She says sharply, ' Very well, then, that's all right,' and counts out the other five-pound notes and gives them to me. ' You'll forget you've been here? ' she says and I told her I would. ' Not that anyone's likely to ask,' she goes on.

      "And then, when she was bringing me down, she says,

      ' While you're here there's someone else you might look at,' and she knocked