The Mysterious Commission by Michael Innes

recorder here. You won’t mind if I switch it on?’
    ‘Not in the least.’ It came to Honeybath as a sudden and wonderful thing that he had nothing but truth to tell. It was possibly going to be rather dull for Keybird, whose métier was so clearly catching out liars. But he suspected that, to date, the Crime Squad or whatever it was called hadn’t made much progress with their investigation. He was their substantial hope. And he’d do his best for them. After all, running the robbers to earth appeared to offer the only possible chance of recovering The Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman.
     
    Half an hour later Keybird switched off the tape recorder.
    ‘What first strikes me about your story,’ he said easily, ‘is that it hangs together quite well.’
    ‘Thank you very much. But of course it may have been carefully rehearsed, may it not? Don’t be taken in, Mr Keybird, or in too much of a hurry.’
    ‘That’s a fair warning, would you say?’ Keybird had received this resentful and sarcastic speech as a mild whimsy. ‘On the other hand, it doesn’t ring a bell.’
    ‘Just what do you mean by that?’
    ‘Well, here’s a large-scale robbery – not twenty yards from where you and I are sitting now. That rings a bell, only a bell with a lesser timbre , so to speak.’ Keybird paused on this enigmatic remark. ‘I’ll tell you what quite often happens. A gang of burglars – for that’s what they are – scouts around until they find a bank, or some such promising prospect, next door to an uninhabited house or an untenanted shop. They gain entrance to house or shop unobtrusively, and then they go to work. In some respects the tunnelling technique is child’s play. You’d scarcely believe it, but half the banks in London have strong rooms or the like almost completely vulnerable from down below. Such folly’s enough to break a man’s heart, trust me.’ Keybird made one of his pauses on this sudden human note. ‘What is tricky, is the time factor. Tunnelling and boring, avoiding pipes and cables, shoring up weight-bearing areas, and all the rest of it: these things can’t be done in a hurry. Then again, really worthwhile targets with empty premises next door aren’t to be found in every street. So there’s a second technique. You actually take on a tenancy, and boldly appear to be setting up a new business, or moving into a new house. Very advantageous that can be, in some ways. You can move in a whole gang of navvies, and pretty well demolish what you please in full view of the world, and have the whole job finished before local authorities and the like begin to think of inquiring about permits and licences and planning permissions and the rest of it. Keep a line of pantechnicons in the street, if you care to. Slackness all round, you know. Heartbreak again. Ours can be an uphill job.’
    ‘I sympathize with you,’ Honeybath said.
    ‘I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure.’ Keybird’s smile came again. ‘But there’s a third technique. You do a deal with some seedy little man, known to be hard up, and hopefully none too scrupulous, whose shop or whatever–’
    ‘Whose studio, for instance.’
    ‘Why, yes.’ Keybird appeared innocently surprised. ‘A studio it might be. And you provide him with a colourable excuse for making himself scarce – say taking a fortnight at the sea to visit his old auntie. Of course the fellow’s accepting a certain risk. Eventually, awkward questions will be asked. So you have to make it well worth his while.’
    ‘Two thousand guineas.’
    ‘Well, no.’ Keybird was at his easiest. ‘Precisely not that. Not money of that order at all. So that’s where any bell of this sort doesn’t exactly ring true. But another thing. You mustn’t mistake me. These chaps who conveniently take themselves off are sometimes quite honest. Only, perhaps, a bit thick.’
    ‘Do I understand, Mr Keybird, that you’re prepared to be rather charitable, and lump me in with the