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

there'd not be a thing left in the place as evidence."

      A gleam of temper showed in Foyle's blue eyes. "That's all very well, Mr. Penny. It won't do to tell me that you've known of this place for a month and that it is still carried on. Why didn't you let a man try single-handed? With the door once open he could force his way in."

      "I couldn't send a man on a job like that," protested the other. "Why, you don't know the place. They'd murder him before we could get at him."

      He flinched away from Foyle as though afraid his superior would strike him. For the superintendent's hands were clenched and his eyes were blazing. Yet when he spoke it was with dangerous quietness.

      "A man of your experience ought to know by now that it's his business to take risks. If you'd made up your mind there was no other way of obtaining evidence you should have sent a man in. Never mind that now. Take your orders from Mr. Green for the day. Green, I'll be back in an hour. I'm going into that place. Act according to your own discretion if you think I'm in difficulties."

      Chapter XXXVII

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      The game of faro is one that makes no strenuous demands on the skill of the players. It is chance pure and simple, and therein lies its fascination. While baccarat or chemin-de-fer are almost invariably games to be most in favour when the police raid a gambling-house in the West End, at the other side of the town it is invariably discovered that faro holds first place in the affections of gamblers. In its simplest form it is merely betting on the turn of each card throughout a pack.

      Although it was broad daylight, the room in which the operations took place was shuttered and had the blinds drawn. A three-light gaselier beat down on a big table in the centre of the room, round three sides of which were ranged a dozen or fifteen men eagerly intent on the operations of the banker. A heavy-jowled man with overhanging black eyebrows, he was seated in a half-circle cut into the centre of one side of the table. In front of him was a bright steel box sufficiently large to contain a pack of cards with the face of the top card discernible at an opening at the top. The cards were pressed upwards in the box by springs, and at the side a narrow opening allowed the operator to push the cards out one at a time, thus disclosing the faces of those underneath and deciding the bets. On each side of the box were the discarded winning and losing cards, and on the dealer's left a tray which served the purpose of a till in receiving or paying out money. A cloth with painted representations of the thirteen cards of a suit was pinned to the table nearest to the players, and they placed stakes on the cards they fancied would next be disclosed. Twice the box would click out cards amid a dead silence. Those who had staked out money on the first card disclosed won, those who had staked on the second lost.

      There was often dead silence while the turn was being made, save for the click of a marker shown on the wall and guarded by a thick-set little man with red hair, fierce eyes, and an enormous chest. But directly afterwards babel would break out, to be sternly quelled by the heavy-jowled man.

      "I 'ad set on sa nine," ... "Say, that king was coppered," ... "I ought ter have split it."

      The jargons of all the world met and crossed at such time. It was rarely that there arose a serious quarrel, for Keller and his myrmidons had a swift way of dealing with malcontents. When a man became troublesome, the fierce-eyed little marker with the big chest would tap him on the shoulder.

      "That's enough, you," he would say menacingly.

      If the warning were not sufficient the left hand of the little man would drop to his jacket pocket, and when it emerged it would be decorated with a heavy brass knuckle-duster. It took but one blow to make a man lose all interest in the game, and thereafter he would be handed over to the tender mercies of "Jim," a giant of a door-keeper, who after dark would drop him into the street at some convenient moment, with a savage warning to keep his mouth shut lest a worse thing befall him.

      This was the place Heldon Foyle had made up his mind to enter single-handed—a place in which the precautions against surprise were so complete that every article which could be identified as a gambling implement was made of material which could be readily burnt, or soluble at a temperature lower than that of boiling water. A big saucepan was continually simmering on the fire, so that the implements could be dropped in it at a second's notice.

      But Heldon Foyle had hopes. At the worst he could only fail. He returned to Scotland Yard and shut himself up for twenty minutes in the make-up room. When he reached Smike Street again he was no longer the spruce, upright, well-dressed official. A grimy cap covered tousled hair. His face was strained, his eyes bloodshot and his moustache combed out raggedly. A set of greasy mechanic's overalls had been drawn over his own clothes. He walked uncertainly.

      Green and the local inspector saw him reel past the public-house in which they still remained, as affording an excuse to be near the spot, and reel up Smike Street. Towards the end he appeared confused and gravely inspected several houses before approaching the gambling-joint. He rapped on the door with his knuckles, ignoring both the knocker and the bell. It opened a few inches wide, enough for the scowling face of Jim the door-keeper to appear in the aperture.

      Supporting himself with one hand on the door-post, Foyle leered amiably at the Cerberus. "Hello, old sport, I want t'come in. Open the door, can't you?"

      "Git out of it, you drunken swab. You don't live here," said Jim, taking stock of the drunken intruder and coming to a quick decision.

      The door slammed. Foyle beat a tattoo on the panels with his hands, swaying perilously to and fro the while. Again the door opened the cautious six inches, and Jim's face was not pleasant to look on as he swore at the disturber.

      "Tha'ss allri', ol' sport," hiccoughed Foyle. "I want to come in. A Bill Reid tol' me if I wanted—hic—game I was to come here. You know ol' Bill Reid"—this almost pleadingly—"he'll tell you I'm allri', eh?"

      The door-keeper of the gaming-house holds an onerous responsibility. On him depends the safety of the gamblers from interference by the representatives of law and order. Jim's suspicions were lulled by Foyle's quite obvious drunkenness. Nevertheless, a drunken man who had apparently been told of the place was a danger so long as he remained clamouring for admittance on the step. Jim tried tact.

      "There's nothing doing now," he explained. "You go away and come back to-night. It'll be a good game then."

      "Tha'ss a lie," said Foyle, with an assumption of drunken gravity. "Old Bill Reid he says to me, he says——"

      But Jim had lost the remainder of his small stock of patience. He jerked the door again in Foyle's face, pulled off the chain and leapt out, his intention of throwing the other into the street and so ending the argument once for all written on every line of his stalwart figure.

      That was his programme. But Foyle had also his programme. He had got the door open. All that remained between him and the entrance was the muscular figure of Jim. He suddenly became sober. The door-keeper's hand grasping at his collar clutched empty air. The detective's head dropped. Jim was met half-way by a short charge and Foyle's shoulder caught him in the chest. Both men were forced by the momentum of the charge back through the open door and fell in a heap just within.

      At ordinary times the two would have been fairly evenly matched. Both were big men, though the door-keeper had slightly the advantage in size. He had, however, been taken by surprise and received no opportunity to utter more than a stifled oath before his breath was taken away. Inside the house Foyle stood on no ceremony in order to silence his opponent before those within could be alarmed. He had fallen on top of Jim. Pressing down on him with head and knee, he swung his right fist twice. Jim gave a grunt and his head rocked loosely on his neck. He had, in the vernacular of the ring, been put to sleep.

      The effects of a knockout blow, however deftly administered, do not last long. The detective's first move was to close the street door, leaving the bolts and chains undone, so that it was fastened merely by the catches of the Yale locks. Then he