Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 28, No. 3, November 12, 1927

Half an hour later one of those two men, Superintendent Bell, was making his report to the chief of the criminal investigation department.

Mr. Fortune joined them, to be received by a cock of a quizzical eyebrow familiar ‘to the friends of the Hon. Sidney Lomas. “Well, Reginald, so there was nothing doing after all.”

“No.” Mr. Fortune’s round face had a childlike gravity. “He won’t speak. He’s going to die to-night.”

“God help him,” said Superintendent Bell.

“Yes. Yes,” Mr. Fortune murmured, sank down into a chair and sighed.

“Oh, quite,” Lomas agreed. “But Bell says he did speak; he told you he was damaged in a fair fight; no foul play; no complaints.”

“Yes. That’s what he told us. Poor chap. He’s a good fellow in his fashion.”

The superintendent shook a solemn head. “Been in with a nasty crowd, sir. Done some dirty work in his time. But he is a good plucky one, I don’t mind owning I didn’t think he’d die so game.”

“Knows he’s dying, does he?” said Lomas.

“Oh, Lord, yes!” said Mr. Fortune wearily. “He made up his mind he was going to die as soon as he was conscious.”

“No reason why he should be afraid to tell the truth then. If he says he was smashed in a fair fight and nobody’s to blame, we might as well believe him.”

“It would save trouble, wouldn’t it?” said Mr. Fortune. “Sorry, Lomas. I shall have to give evidence at the inquest. And I’m going to say he was sandbagged and kicked to death.”

“Though he said there was no foul play,” Lomas frowned. Lomas lit a cigarette. “That makes rather a nasty business of it, Reginald.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“He was afraid of the fellows that killed him even when he was dying!”

“Well… afraid of something if he told the truth, or hoping something if he didn’t.”

“Hoping while he was dying, sir?” Bell cried.

“He has a wife, you know. She came to see him this afternoon. You’d better look after Mrs. George Akers, Bell.”

“It was a gang set on him, I suppose?” said Lomas.

“Several in it, yes.”

“You believe he knows who they were?”

“He knows, all right. I thought he would have told me. He came near it this morning. But he’s hardened since his wife saw him.”

“And what’s the theory, Reginald?”

“He knows who smashed him. He knows why he was smashed. He won’t tell us, because his wife said he mustn’t. Well, the inference is somebody’s been getting at her.”

Lomas inhaled smoke. “That is to say we’ve hit up against somebody in a large way of business?”

“Yes. Yes. It could be. What do you know about George Akers?”

Lomas shrugged and looked at Bell. “Loafer about the west end, sir. Only been through our hands for hustling with pickpockets. But we have had a notion he was working for some of the dope merchants. Giving them the office; standing by as bully when they wanted one, and so forth. Nothing to lay hold of, you know, but that’s our idea.”

“Hasn’t been working for you, by any chance?” said Mr. Fortune.

Bell shook his head. “No, sir. One of our men did try to make something of him. This dope business has been getting out of hand. I don’t know where the supplies are coming from.”

“Somebody in a large way of business,” Mr. Fortune murmured.

“Oh, it’s a big business all right,” said Bell. “But that don’t account for George Akers being murdered. He didn’t give anything away. Never came near it. It’s months ago since we stopped trying for him. Whatever George Akers was smashed for, it wasn’t for standing in with the police.”

“They may have thought he was. They may have thought he would.”

“The fellows who are managing the dope trade? Don’t you believe it, Mr. Fortune. They know their men all right. You don’t catch them running amuck.”

“We haven’t caught them, have we?” said Mr. Fortune mildly. “Do you remember that case in Paris, Bell? Gentleman in the dope industry who used to say to his employees ‘The police won’t kill you for refusing to inform, but if you do, I shall!’ and it was so.”

“But Akers didn’t inform, sir,” Bell objected.

“No. But he may have threatened. He may have run rusty. He may have got to know too much. He may have declined some unusually dirty job. Or he may not have been in the dope trade at all.”

Lomas laughed. Bell breathed hard. “You do skip about, Mr. Fortune,” he complained. “All you’ve been arguing is that he was.”

“Oh, no. No. You said he was in the dope trade, not me. I was only workin’ out the idea, suggestive and provisional.”

“It’s all guessing,” Lomas pronounced.

“No, I wouldn’t say that. Quite solid facts. Murder by a gang. Dying man not surprised that he’d been killed. Thinks his murderers so powerful that he’d better die without getting ’em punished for it; so powerful they can make it worth his wife’s while to keep in with them. And George isn’t a timid spirit. But I don’t want to believe he’s right, Lomas.”