Chapter 1: Valmon Dain
To the chief commissioner,
``C.I.D. , new Scotland Yard,
``Intimation no. 34.
``Ref.:. The silver Arrow Group.
``per midday post.
``SIR,
"on Tuesday next a deliberate attempt will be made to steal the Duchess of Renburgh's jewel collection, at present housed at Thorne Lodge, park Lane. the raid is timed for 2.30 a.m.
Entry will be made through the big kitchen window at the back. the glass will be cut and the entire pane removed. this will eliminate all possibility of contact with burglar alarms. positions of all alarms are known. Thieves concerned are the surviving members of the silver Arrow Group. there is also one other, but, except that is mame is Lyall, he is unknown to me.
"acknowledge through usual channels, otherwise copy of this intimation will be forwarded to her grace."
Valmon Dain finished writing and sat back in his chair, thoughtfully scanning the document. it was a letter-carded, undated and unsigned, just a plainly printed card on which the square if writing stood out as neat and compact as a block of letterpress. Dain wrote in a meticulously neat hand, using a print script, every letter being distinct and separate.
His long, brown fingers pulled slowly at his chin as he read, and a deep frown of concentration creased across his forehead.
Judged on certain standards, Dain was a strikingly handsome man. There was a touch of the hawk about him, a he-hawk whose hunting ground was the granite heights of the back block ranges. He was very dark, with a skin tanned to a healthy bronze. There were times when he seemed to his real self behind a mixture of aggression and reserve --two very opposite characteristics which,in him, seemed to blend in some indefinably natural way. His black hair, strong and lustrous, was brushed back from his temples, and the lines on his face were so deeply cut that they might have been tooled out with a chisel. his eyes, too were a contradiction. They were brown and warm with something almost like a caress in them. and yet they were pitilessly cold.
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