The Dusky Hour by E.R. Punshon

Why should he take a trip like that every year? He has no business over there. If he does go, he must be deliberately keeping quiet about it. He does,” added the colonel, with a touch of uneasiness in his voice, “take rather a long holiday every autumn, and never seems to have much to say about it.”
    â€œInquiries,” hinted Bobby, “could be made at the steamship offices.”
    â€œI’ll see to it,” said the colonel briefly, “though I’m sure there’s nothing in it.”
    â€œMr. Hayes,” Bobby went on, “seemed quite enthusiastic about the country and country life. I never heard anyone quite so – well, almost lyrical.”
    â€œI suppose it’s why he came here,” the colonel said.
    â€œThe servants gave rather a different impression,” Bobby pointed out. “They seemed to think it bored him to death; said he was only cheerful the days he was running up to town.”
    â€œDifferent moods, perhaps,” suggested the colonel, and then he chuckled. “I must say,” he went on, “Hayes can put away the drink all right, and I do like a man with a good head. He had had some before we got there, he had three or four stiff glasses while we were talking, and it hadn’t the least effect. Sometimes the way, though, with these dried-up little men; they lap it up like so many sponges. The New York police didn’t give you any description of the man they are inquiring about, did they? Hayes was quite open about that, too. Knew all about the share-pushing game, evidently. Possibly he may be able to identify the body.”
    â€œGreat help if he does,” said Bobby, though he thought few things less likely. “It wasn’t the New York police we heard from though. It was the F.B.I.”
    â€œF.B.I.?” repeated the colonel, puzzled, thinking of the Federation of British Industries, for which he had a great respect as the bulwark of the world’s prosperity, peace, and general well-being. “How do you mean? How do they come into it?”
    â€œI don’t quite know,” answered Bobby, for whom the initials stood for the United States Federal Board of Investigation. “Some question of a Federal Bank having been let in, I think. The U.S. police system is a bit complicated. There are ten or twenty different bodies apparently, besides the State police and the local men as well, not to mention the recognised private detective forces. If a burglar sends a post-card arranging for a pal to meet him, then the post-office inspectors come in – unlawful use of mails. If he crosses a State border going to or from a job, then that makes it a Federal offence, and the F.B.I., the Federal Board of Investigation, comes in – the “G-men,” as they call them on the films. If he doesn’t make a correct income-tax return of his profits from burgling, then the Treasury agents follow it up. Any suspicion that he uses cocaine to buck him up before going burgling, and the Narcotic Board is on his trail. And so on. If he is very, very careful, he may have only the State police to deal with, but that seems exceptional. I suppose it works out all right, but it sounds more like a crossword puzzle than a police system. Anyhow, the F.B.I. people seem to be the ones interested this time. And they seemed to think we should know at once whom they meant without any details from them – seemed to have an idea England was such a small country, we would know all our crooks the way a village policeman knows all the bad characters on his round.”
    â€œBut surely they gave some indication?”
    â€œWell, what it came to wasn’t much more than that they thought he was an Englishman by birth, and probably a Londoner, very quiet and self-possessed and unassuming, cool as hell ”
    â€œCool as – what?” asked the colonel, slightly startled by this metaphor.
    â€œCool as hell,” Bobby