The Safety Pin by J.S. Fletcher

Pemberton, baulked of Bartlett's services in the matter of bill distributing, turned elsewhere. He had no difficulty in finding a substitute, there were plenty of idle men about, any one of whom were glad enough to earn the half-sovereign which Bartlett spurned. And by nine o'clock next morning every shop window in the business quarter of Southernstowe was displaying the bill, and early risers were wondering if anybody would be lucky enough to gain the thousand pounds reward.

Mellapont saw the bills as he came down from his house on the outskirts of the city and swore softly to himself. From the start out of his career in the police force he had always been wanting a case, a big case, a suitable cause celebre, and it had seemed to him that at last he had one in the Chancellor Hotel mystery. He had meant to keep it to himself, to do all the spade work himself, to have all the credit of detection and discovery for himself. He had purposely avoided the calling in of outside assistance; he did not want any sleuth hounds from the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard poking their noses into Southernstowe, or sticking their fingers in his pie--he wanted to be able to say, when the job was done, that he had lone it all unaided and by his own astuteness and ability. And now here was interference, and of the very sort that, just then, he certainly did not want. It was vexing--and when he had finished his routine duties at the police station he went round to Shelmore's office and said so, plainly. Shelmore shook his head and spread out his hands.