THE SOLUTIONS OF

RADFORD SHONE

Being Narratives by Officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, and of the Provincial Police, in respect of dealings with the eminent expert, Mr. Radford Shone.

Communicated to and edited by

Headon Hill

1907

Contents

1: The Lion Lady

2: The Bullion-Room

3: The Missing Bomb

4: The Lost Heiress

5: The Granton Rubies

6:  The Tenth Green

7:  The Japanese Agent

8: The Eton Boy

9: The Thirsty Cat

10:  The Bayswater Boarding-House

11: The Wireless Telegram

12: The Final Error

_________________

The source of the text is "The Adelaide Chronicle" in 1907, through The Australian National Library's digital portal TROVE.

1: The Lion Lady

ORDINARY MISFEASANCES in this unimaginative country run in such well-trammelled grooves that anything like originality of invention in wrong-doing comes as a bracing nerve-tonic to us routine-wearied officials to whom is committed the duty of preventing and detecting crime. The case to which my editor has allotted the above title would, on its merits, as the most novel and daring bit of villainy I have ever had before me officially, grip my memory for all time; but it has a quite separate claim on my interest, inasmuch as it first brought me into touch with Radford Shone, the much-talked-of solver of mysteries.

I had heard, by the side-winds that come to us, of the results gained by this marvellous man, who, from his bachelor rooms in Gower-street, reconciled dukes and duchesses over missing tiaras, used bloodhounds in the wilds of Devon for tracking murderers, and had his fingers on the secrets of kings and queens— always with such tactful finesse that justice was done without a policeman having to tighten his belt or a judge, to don his wig. I was not incredulous— only curious, so I was well pleased when my old Eton schoolfellow's amazing story brought me the chance of gratifying that curiosity.

I had not seen Sir Angus Petrie for four years— since, in fact, he had disappeared into the South African war-cloud at the head of a troop of Imperial Yeomanry. When he was shown into the room which I occupy at Scotland Yard as an Assistant Commissioner of Police, I hardly knew him.

As years, go he was still a young man; his gaunt frame and haggard appearance were those of a man past his prime.

'My dear fellow, but you have indeed spent yourself in your country's cause!' I said, when we had gripped hands and he had sunk wearily into, a chair. 'You should have come home at the close of the war, instead of staying out yonder gold-hunting, as I heard was the case.'

'I wish to heaven I had come home. Bruce! Oh, how l wish I had come home!' he almost wailed. 'I might have been in time to prevent the most horrible thing. You remember Lettice Nuneham?'

I nodded for the beautiful girl to whom he had been engaged was fresh in my memory, as, indeed, she must have been in that of any man who had ever looked upon her fair young face. I remembered, too, that I had not seen her lately in the circles where she had reigned a radiant queen.

Petrie suddenly placed his elbow on my office table; and, leaning his head on his hands, burst into tears. His great frame was shaken with sobs. It was terrible to see the big stalwart soldier all broken up like that. Presently he raised his head, defiantly unashamed of his grief.

'It wasn't South Africa that wrecked me, Bruce,' he said. 'I was as fit as a fiddle when I landed a month ago. It was what I am going to tell you, and I am here to claim your aid officially, mind.'

I had to help out his halting sentences with many a question, sometimes suggesting, the answer myself; but the story which I dragged from him piecemeal was as follows:—

On arriving in London he had gone immediately to call on Miss Nuneham at her house in Cromwell-road. The footman who opened the door had informed him curtly that his mistress was not at home, and Petrie had left his card, with a message to say that he would call again at the same time on the morrow. But on his presenting himself the next, day the servant had been still more explicit. Miss Nuneham was in the house, but had given orders that no visitors were to be admitted.

Questioned as to whether she had received the card and the message, the man had given an affirmative reply and had practically shut the door in my friend's face. He had returned to his hotel and written a passionate letter to his fiancée, begging her to see him, if only to give him her reasons for thus treating a faithful lover who had come back to England in the full confidence that the pledge she had given him held good. He had waited three days and had received no reply to his letter.

Petrie had then sought out a mutual acquaintance— a lady at whose house he had often met Lettice before he went to Africa. The answer he got was as unsatisfactory as his own researches had been. It was well known that Lettice Nuneham had become a recluse, denying herself to everybody, and her withdrawal from the world in which she had lived had been a nine days' wonder. It had long since become an accepted fact and people had ceased to talk about it.

Then had ensued a period of watching and waiting outside the house in Cromwell-road, in the hope that he might waylay the girl, or at least gain sight of her at a window. A week passed thus fruitlessly, except that he learned that visitors of the old days came and went no more. Once he had seen a man in frockcoat of professional cut descend from what looked like a doctor's brougham, to be instantly admitted into the house; and the fear that Lettice might be ill had emboldened Petrie to enquire at the door.

The footman had informed him petulantly that Miss Nuneham was perfectly well.

Once more Petrie had resumed his haunting of the outside of the house, and at last, late on a stormy evening, he had been rewarded with a discovery, but one that made his blood run cold.

'I saw,' he proceeded, raising his lacklustre eyes to mine, 'a woman come from the front door and walk rapidly away along the street. Her figure and graceful poise filled me with glad recognition, and I started off in pursuit, intending to have it out with her once for all. I had no doubt that she was the girl who was to have been my wife, and who, on the veldt and in camp, had ever been in my thoughts. Purposely waiting till she was within the rays of a street lamp, I ranged alongside.

'Lettice!' I said, 'won't you speak to me, dear, and explain what has come between us?'

'She turned, to me with a startled cry, clutching at a veil folded round the rim of her hat and frantically dragging it down over her face— not so quickly, though, that I did not catch a glimpse of her; and, oh, Bruce, that was the most horrible moment that I shall have to endure, here or hereafter. Her features bore only a faint resemblance to those of the girl I had known and loved. It was the face of a beast, with the leonine expression associated with the largest carnivora. But the dreadful part of it was that there was a resemblance, and that the voice in which she addressed me was her voice.

'Angus,' she pleaded, 'I am so sorry for it all, Angus. But you must go away and never come near me again. I shall kill myself if you do. Go now, at once.'

'What could I do,' Bruce, all unstrung as I was by the shock, 'but let her go? I turned away, and heaven only knows how I got back to the hotel. I shudder now when I think of what that veil covered.'

Sir Angus Petrie dropped his head into his hands again, and so remained till a tap at the door and the entrance of a detective-sergeant with a report reminded him that my time belonged to the public. When the officer had retired he resumed his narrative in calmer mood and related his subsequent proceedings.

After a sleepless night at the hotel, racked with doubt as to whether the woman had really been Lettice Nuneham or someone who had taken her place, the doubt had prevailed; and having heard of Radford Shone's success in solving social mysteries, he had called a jab and driven to the rooms of the eminent expert.

'A marvellous man, Bruce,' he said, his eye kindling at the reminiscence. 'I was no sooner shown in than he told me that I had recently returned from Africa— knew it by the exact shade of tan on my face and by the crick in my fingers from using the barbed-wire snickers. He explained it all for my benefit and for that of a woolly brained admirer of his who lives with him. But that is neither here nor there. I stated the case to him just as I have to you, and to-day I have his report.'

'Well?' I demanded, somewhat impatiently, for the story had enlisted all my professional interest. I did not suggest that Shone might have seen his return in the newspapers.

'It is murder, Bruce!' Sir Angus groaned in reply. 'Shone's enquiries leave no doubt that the woman in the Cromwell-road, living in Lettice's house and using her name, is an impostor. Shone proved it conclusively by very cleverly obtaining a scrap of her handwriting, which he compared with letters written to me by Lettice in happier days. There was only a faint resemblance between the two.'

My practical mind prompted the question, 'How about her bankers? I understand that Miss Nuneham was a rich woman, managing her own affairs? The difference should have been noted in her signatures on cheques, if not on other business documents.'

'That is where Radford Shone has scored,' replied Petrie decisively. 'He ascertained that a year ago Lettice's bankers and solicitors were suddenly changed for no apparent reason. In fact, they were highly indignant at losing a wealthy client, though as the transfer was quite in order, and confirmed by Lettice in person, they could do nothing but protest. But Shone's evidence of the murder, on which you will have to act, is the masterpiece. I will leave his report for you to read at leisure, but here is the gist of it:

'Lettice Nuneham was driven in her own carriage to a lonely farmhouse in Hertfordshire about the time of the change in the bankers and solicitors. She is supposed to have remained there six months and then to have returned to Cromwell-road, again using her own carriage for the journey. But— and you will grasp the point at once— Shone has discovered, buried in the garden of the farmhouse, the body of a woman.'

He paused to mark the effect of his communication, as though expecting that I should at once endorse Shone's view that the woman now residing in the Cromwell-road was personating Miss Nuneham, as a sequel to having made away with her. All that I could do, however, was to admit that there was a strong prima facie case of suspicion.

'But tell me,' I said, 'how you get over the fact that this person addressed you by name directly she set eyes on you?'

'There are plenty of my photographs in the house, and no one would have gone into a deep-laid plot of this kind without being thoroughly posted in the victim's circumstances,' was Petrie's reply.

'I presume that while abroad you corresponded with Miss Nuneham? When did you last hear from her?'

'Eighteen months ago. I have been, quite out of touch with mails and post- offices— in the wild country round the head waters of the Zambesi.'

That was a pity, for it ran us against a dead wall in the matter of the handwriting. At least, it increased the difficulty of proving whether the change was sudden or gradual; also of fixing the exact date of its commencement. At that moment a whistle at my speaking-tube summoned me imperatively to the presence of the Chief Commissioner, and I rose and held out my hand.

'You have certainly set us a nut to crack,' I said. 'I will work it myself in conjunction with one of our best men as soon as I have read Shone's report. Of course, as he is unofficial, we shall have to verify his contentions.'

'That is just what he said,' returned Petrie. 'That instead of arresting the woman forthwith you would dawdle about till she got wind of it and had made her escape; while if by any chance you pulled it off, Scotland Yard would get all the kudos.'

Making allowances for his depression, I bade him 'Good-day,' and went to transact the business of the moment, which kept me for some time.

It was not till an hour later that I found myself in my own room again, and sat down to master Shone's report, the calligraphy of which was atrocious enough to bespeak its author's genius. The matter, however, was lucidly put, and when I laid the sheets aside I could understand Petrie's impatience for an arrest. Shone had set to work methodically by getting into communication with the only servant retained by Lettice Nuneham during her stay at Basildon Farm― the coachman who had driven her there at the commencement of her visit and back to Cromwell-road at its termination. The ad-dress of the man, as a material witness was given― Murchison's Mews, Earl's Court― and a note was added that he was now in other service. His name was Sparshott.

Sparshott had told a straightforward story enough. In answer to Shone's questions he had admitted that while at the farm he had noticed a great change in Miss Nuneham's appearance― a change which she took pains to conceal by wearing a heavy veil. On one occasion he had surprised her while walking in the garden without it, and he had been horrified at the alteration. Pressed as to whether the change was sudden or gradual, he had inclined to the former opinion. He was unable to give dates, but he had seen his mistress's face on the drive down, when it had been as usual, but she had almost immediately begun to use the veil.

Asked if his mistress had received any visitors at the farm, Sparshott had answered with a decided negative. And he had voluntarily added that the only occupants of the house, besides Miss Nuneham and himself, had been an old woman and her daughter, who had acted respectively as cook and housemaid. He had heard that these women had been temporarily engaged, and that they were going to America at the termination of the job.

Having finished with Sparshott, Shone had gone down to Basildon Farm, convinced that there had been foul play. He had found the house unoccupied, and that it had remained so since Miss Nuneham's tenancy, it being the property of a farmer who worked two farms and resided on the homestead of the other one. Shone had then commenced a systematic search of the house and grounds, which had resulted in the gruesome discovery of a rudely-dug grave, containing the remains of a woman in an advanced state of decomposition.

There was no denying the force of the eminent expert's reasoning, and yet from the police point of view I was not wholly satisfied. It seemed highly improbable that a woman could have planned and carried out such a crime without male accomplices. The women who were to go to America at the termination of their engagement were certainly a feature to be considered in this respect, but to my mind the absence from the report of all mention of the gentleman whom Petrie had seen descend from a doctor's brougham at Lettice Nuneham's house gave Shone's case a lack of completeness and finality.

On the principle that two heads are better than one, I called to my counsels a very long head indeed. That is to say, I rang my hell and told the messenger to send in Detective-Inspector Kyrle. He came at once — a big, loosely-jointed man, grown iron-grey in the service.

'Just sit down and read that report, Kyrle,' I said. 'Mr. Radford Shone has been pulling our chestnuts out of the fire, you will see.'

He gave me a shrewd glance, at the back of which lurked something I could not put a name to, and settled to his work.

'With all due deference to the Gower-street prophet, he hasn't finished his job,' the inspector snapped as he turned down the last sheet. 'If Shone is correct in his premises the woman is only a cat's-paw.'

'Exactly my view,'' I replied. And I told him of Sir Angus Petrie's shadowing of the house and of the visitor in the brougham.

Inspector Kyrle rose briskly.

'If a love-sick baronet can spot a man going into a house, it oughtn't to be beyond the resources of the Yard to put a name to him.' he said. 'Shall I work on that line?'

I nodded assent and the inspector was gone. He was back again just as I had given him up for the day and was preparing to leave the office. He had got the name, and the caller was a medical man after all— Dr. Michael Bardsley, of Harley-street. I knew him by repute as a specialist in throat diseases, and said so.

'Some one's throat will want a hempen plaster before this affair is over, sir,' was Kyrle's grim reply. 'If you haven't any important private engagement to-night I wish you would come with me and see this coachman, Sparshott. I. can't think he's told Shone all he knows, for I have learned that this Dr. Bardsley was several times at Basildon Farm.'

We boarded an Earl's Court train at Charing Cross, and during the short journey my companion described how he had procured his information. As luck would have it, the doctor chanced to call while Kyrle was hanging about the Cromwell-road, and he had promptly claimed acquaintance with the driver oft the brougham, alleging that he had met him in the neighbourhood of Basildon Farm. The man had fallen into the trap, and while disclaiming all recollection of Kyrle, had admitted that he had frequently driven his master to the farm.

'Queer thing, all this travelling by road when the place is not an hour from Euston,' said Kyrle. 'Establishes a wonderful similarity of ideas between the doctor and the present tenant of Miss Nuneham's house.'

I thought so, too, though not quite on the same lines as Kyrle. His discoveries made me grateful that another of my old school-fellows was a surgeon of even greater eminence than Dr. Bardsley, and to this tried friend I determined to submit certain questions in the event of Lettice Nuneham's former coachman conducting himself as there was just a chance that he would.

Murchison's Mews was the usual gloomy cul-de-sac of coach-houses and stables, with lace curtains and window-boxes in evidence above. Half-way down the mews a burly man in shirt-sleeves was washing the wheels of a smart Victoria. He saw us long before we approached, for by the time we reached him he was standing upright, facing us, arms akimbo.

'We want a man named Sparshott,' I said. 'Can you direct us to him?'

The fellow stuck his tongue in his cheek and looked us over impudently. On the surface he was a jovial creature, with a suggestively grog-blossomed nose; but in his little pig's eyes lurked a latent cunning that flattered that thought of mine which as yet I had not shared with my able colleague.

'I am Sparshott,' he laughed, in a deep bass. 'And you're 'tecs from Scotland Yard, I expect? I guessed you'd be along, after the pumping Mr. Radford Shone gave me. A wonderful man— read what was in my inmost 'eart, but what I didn't dare put speech to till he dragged it out.'

At an imperceptible sign from me the inspector took up the running.

'It isn't what you told Mr. Shone, but what you didn't tell him, that we are after,' said Kyrle. 'Why did you withhold from him the fact that Dr. Michael Bardsley was a frequent visitor to your late mistress at the farmhouse?'

Watching Sparshott closely, I seemed to detect a curious eagerness, blended with apprehension at this revelation of Kyrle's knowledge. Yet his answer rang out without hesitation—

'Because I saw no such person.'

'Then you are in rather a tight corner,' I chipped in in front of Kyrle. 'Because there's been murder done at Basildon Farm, and there must have been a man in it. You are the only man known to have been there during Miss Nuneham's occupation if you deny that Dr. Bardsley was there.'

The coachman looked this way and that, his baggy cheeks quivering with an emotion that it was difficult to analyse. It was like, and yet unlike fear. A moment later it was disclosed as resentment against unkind fate.

'I had better make a clean breast of it,' he said, making a rueful grimace. 'Tom Sparshott is mostly true to his word, but there's no call for him to swing instead of his betters. I held my tongue because the mistress, if so be as 'twas the mistress, gave me a hundred pound to do so. From first to last the doctor was at the farm half a dozen times during the six months.'

Kyrle would have questioned him further but desisted at a sign from me and we took our departure. At the entrance of the mews, however, I wheeled round quickly, and there stood Sparshott, regarding us with malevolent triumph. I informed my colleague of what I had seen and having considerably astonished him with the reason I assigned to the coach-man's mental attitude, I set him a task after his own heart.

We then separated, and having returned to my bachelor chambers for a hasty dinner, I set out to call on my medical friend. Primed with the information he gave me, I was early the next morning at the house in the Cromwell road. In answer to my enquiry for Miss Nuneham, the footman fired off his stereotyped reply that she was not at home and prepared to be aggressively rude.

'Tell Miss Nuneham that my visit is official— that I am an assistant commissioner of police,' I said sternly.

The fellow's manner changed and he left me in the hall while he went away to inform his mistress. On his return he showed me into the library and handed me the newspaper.

Five minutes passed and there swept info the room a woman whose graceful carriage and superb figure brought back the only occasion on which, some three years before, it had been my privilege to dance with Lettice Nuneham at the Duchess of Roscoe's. A heavy veil entirely obscured her features.

'Miss Nuneham?' I said, rising. Our acquaintance had never been intimate and it was not my cue to revive the personal note.

'Yes,' she replied simply. 'You wish to see me on police business?'

'On very serious business. The body of a woman has been found buried in the grounds of Basildon Farm, occupied by you some time ago? Can you throw any light upon it?'

For a moment she seemed overwhelmed and clutched at a chair for support.

'More trouble!' I heard her mutter, and then she spoke aloud— 'No, indeed, I know nothing of it, sir. If you mean to imply that I murdered anyone at the farm you are quite wrong, though I really should be very glad to be hanged!'

'It is not a matter to be treated in a spirit of levity,' I said, with purposeful severity. 'Can you explain why you gave your coachman a hundred pounds to conceal Dr. Bardsley's visits?'

'You are speaking in riddles,' she replied ' I never gave Sparshott anything beyond his ordinary wages.'

'It has been alleged, I went on inexorably, 'that you are not Miss Nuneham, but some woman who has usurped her place and her fortune after making away with her, aided and abetted by Dr. Bardsley.'

The most shocking thing I had to encounter in this case, save one Immediately to follow, was the peal of awful laughter that greeted my grave words.

'Aided and abetted by Dr. Bardsley!' she repeated, when the terrible merriment had abated. 'Look at that— look at what Michael Bardsley has done for me! Now will you understand?'

And she wrenched the veil from her face, disclosing, as she had to Petrie, the indescribable features that were dimly, suggestive of the massive solemnity of the lion. I shuddered away from her; then, with a very real pity at my heart, I held out my hand.

'Yes,' I said, 'I certainly understand that you did not kill Lettice Nuneham. And more than that, I bid you not lose hope.'

'Ah, if I could think that!' she wailed, as the thick lace dropped again over the vision unspeakable.

'You may think it, it you will fully confide in me,' I made answer.

On the following day at noon Kyrle and I were standing in the weed-grown garden of Basildon Farm, the grey gables of the old homestead rising gaunt behind us. We had come down by an early train to make a few enquiries in the village, and were now waiting for Mr. Radford Shone to come and formally indicate the grave mentioned in his report. Disturbed earth at a spot under a laurel hedge had already told us the secret, but we wished the expert to be present at its closer examination. Also, there was another reason.

Presently the sound of wheels were heard from the road and a station fly hove in sight. It stopped at the garden gate to disgorge a tall, lean man, in a flapping frock coat and silk hat, who was followed by a fat young man of brick dust complexion, likewise clad in town garments. If Petrie had never referred to the 'woolly-brained admirer' who lived with Shone, there would not have been any doubt as to which was which. The tall man strode up the path with the evident intention of taking the stage.

'You have arrested the woman?' he said abruptly as he met us. He had large protuberant eyes, which goggled and rolled like glass marbles— a singular feature in one of his spare build.

'We have not reached that point yet,' I replied. 'The police have the evidence that the remains are those of Miss Nuneham. If they are not, there is no case against the lady who professes to be her.'

'The police!' Shone snorted angrily. 'The woman will bolt before you get her. But come along; I'll soon put that right.' He began to hurry towards the laurel hedge; but I stopped him as politely as I could.

'Let us wait for Dr. Bardsley,' I said. 'He was to come down, if he has respected my message, by the same train that that brought you, and if I am not mistaken this is he.

'Dr. Bardsley? What has he got to do with it, and who is he?' cried Shone, rolling, those voluminous eyes of his to the gate, where a second fly was depositing a dapper gentleman correctly dressed for a country trip in quiet tweeds and gaiters.

'Miss Nuneham's medical adviser,' I explained, glancing at the somewhat sinister face of the new arrival. 'It struck me that he might be useful in identifying the remains. I must congratulate you, Mr. Shone, on your wisdom in covering in the grave and observing complete reticence till we had sifted the matter. Premature publicity might have had very awkward results.'

The expert glared and his fat satellite gasped at the trace of patronage in my tone, but there was no time for words, for Dr. Bardsley was upon us. He raised his cap courteously, looking from one to the other of the party till he singled out Radford Shone as the most authoritative per-son present.

'You will be the Mr. Bruce who has requested my attendance,' he said. 'I am more than grieved that my patient, Miss Nuneham should have to be mixed up in such an affair. The state of her health precludes her appearing as a witness.'

Shone laughed raspingly. 'That is Mr. Bruce— the executive arm,' , he snapped, indicating me. 'Official caution must have prevented him from informing you that Miss Nuneham would have to return from Hades to give evidence.'

'You mystify me,' said the doctor, genuinely bewildered.

'Come, let us end this farce and open the grave,' Shone rejoined.

We all moved off to the laurel hedge and gathered round the spot. Kyrle had provided himself with a spade and beyond that details may be dropped. Half-an-hour later we assembled in the kitchen of the house of which we had procured the key.

Radford Shone was bristling with triumph, the doctor looking politely bored.

'Are you satisfied now that your late patient was murdered, that those are her remains that we have just placed in the stable?' Shone enquired.

'I am satisfied of nothing of the kind,' said Bardsley, with a contemptuous shrug. 'Miss Nuneham was alive at her house in Cromwell-road yesterday, I saw her there myself.'

Shone's peculiar 'popping-out' eyes worked furiously, finally settling on me. He at the same time waved his hand towards the doctor as though he were setting a terrier at a rat.

'Don't you see?' he shrilled. 'Oh, this official mind! Surely, Mr. Bruce, there is no need for you to force me to speak?'

'Not in the least, for the good reason that I know what you would say,' I re-plied. 'You are inferring that, because Dr. Bardsley refuses your theory, he must necessarily be an accomplice of the lady in the Cromwell-road. You are wrong in your premises and conclusions, Mr. Shone, for I am able to confirm the doctor's statement. And,' I threw in, 'to add to it considerably.'

Shone and his friend, Mr. Samuel Martin were telling each other in dumb show that I was a hopeless lunatic, but I paid small attention to them, as Dr. Bardsley claimed my sole attention.

At my last words, a nervous spasm had crossed his face and he had glanced apprehensively at Kyrle, who stood behind him. But he pulled himself together, and, striving to read my countenance, indulged in another of his sardonic laughs.

'I am fortunate in having such a powerful backer against Mr. Shone's tremendous charge,' he sneered; but there was an uneasy ring in his voice that told me it was time to act. Medical men, cornered in ill-doing, have a trick of swallowing fatal capsules if you give them half a chance.

'Yes,' I said, 'penal servitude is not so bad as the gallows. Kyrle, the handcuffs for Dr. Bardsley, please. There, there, doctor; it is beneath your dignity to struggle. That's right; it will save you a world of trouble. Now, Kyrle, take him back to London and charge him with grievously assaulting Miss Nuneham. You know what to do.'

When the inspector had led his scowling but helpless prisoner out, Radford Shone purring like a happy cat, advanced with extended hand; I shook it warmly.

'What a quibble!' he exclaimed. 'Oh, you officials! I can detect things, but I don't pretend to understand the red-tape that makes you lock up a murderer on a mere charge of assault. However, I am glad that my humble services have not been barren. We don't make many mistakes, do we, Martin?'

The stout young man giggled assent, and I proffered my cigarette-case to both, seating myself on the .kitchen table. I cared no-thing now that that demon was under lock and key.

'I am sorry to destroy an illusion, because up to a certain point you have been useful to us, Mr. Radford Shone,' I began. 'Had Sir Angus Petrie not put the case in your hands we might never have learned the truth. It would be invidious to guess what would have happened if he had come to us first. Dr. Bardsley is charged with assault, because that is the legal limit of the crime we can fix upon him. The dead woman outside is the wife of Sparshott, Miss Nuneham's coachman, and Sparshott was arrested last night for killing her. He has made a very full confession.

'Surely not; surely not,' Shone murmured feebly.

'It is so,' I continued.

'Yet the wretch just led away is indirectly responsible for that crime as well as for his own. Bardsley was a suitor for Miss Nuneham's hand after Sir Angus Petrie's departure for Africa. She repelled his advances, but having confidence in his medical skill she consulted him about a throat affection from which she suffered. He recommended that she should submit to a slight operation, which was entirely unnecessary. She consented and he took advantage of her consent to perform a very serious operation indeed— no less than the removal the thyroid gland.'

'You can't call that assault,' interposed Shone angrily.

'Wait a minute,' I proceeded. 'It was done with devilish intent. The loss of the thyroid gland causes a disease named myxoedema, which changes the features of the sufferer into the hideous semblance of a beast of prey. A famous doctor discovered it, and in the course of his extensive practice met with only two cases, so rare is the complaint, and never, as here, artificially created. As soon as Miss Nuneham found that she was losing her beauty and changing so terribly she adopted Bardsley's suggestion that she should seclude herself at Basildon Farm till he had cured her, and he made a consent to marry him the price of that cure, alleging that he alone knew the source of the disease and its remedy.

'She indignantly refused, having neither liking for Bardsley, nor forgetfulness of her lover; but this human fiend has continued to persecute her with his conditional offer of a cure, and she has consented to see him in the vain hope that he would relent and cure her unconditionally. She changed her bankers and solicitors from a very womanly desire to conceal from all who knew her the horrible nature of her infirmity, one of the symptoms of which is a thickening of the fingers, causing an altered handwriting.'

'But the body― the body outside?" demanded Shone, his eyes starting out of his head.

'Bardsley's crime bred another,' I replied. 'Sparshott, the coachman, saw his mistress's face one day, and, being a fellow of infinite cunning, he conceived the notion of turning her altered appearance to his own ends. Anxious to rid himself of his wife, he brought the unfortunate woman here late one night, and having killed her buried her in the garden, relying on the theory you adopted if the body should ever be discovered. He was fully prepared to play into your hands when you interviewed him, insinuating that Miss Nuneham had been done to death by, or at the instance of, a woman now personating her.'

'And what made you suspect him?' asked Shone, who still struggled to preserve a tone of incredulity.

'Because he had told you nothing about Bardsley's visits here, and because he appeared, on the surface, anxious to conceal the fact from the police. I say on the surface, inasmuch as he blabbed of the visits readily enough when he got his opening, and was ready with a pat lie to explain his previous reticence on the point. It was part and parcel of the man's ingenious subtlety not to be too profuse with the cards he wanted to force. He thought he was more likely to be believed if he led up to a confession of the human failing of having accepted a bribe which was never offered to him.'

The last word in this singular conclave was reserved for Mr. Samuel Martin, faithful to the end.

'Ah, you see how it is, Shone,' he murmured; 'if Sparshott had given you the facilities he gave the police you would have done all this, and more.'

It remains but to add that the dreadful scourge which the satanic skill of Michael Bardsley had inflicted on a high-spirited girl was very shortly removed by the proper treatment for the rare ailment of myxoedema— tabloids made from the thyroid glands of sheep.

I spent last Christmas with the Petries at their Castle near Caithness, and it required an effort of the imagination, that would have failed but for its background of solid fact, to identify my beautiful hostess with the poor victim who had been given the features of a lioness bereaved of its cubs.

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2: The Bullion-Room

STANDING NEAR the gangway of the great steamship, I was glad that for once in a way I was able to take a human rather than a professional interest in the departing passengers and their farewell to friends who had come to see them off. I was going out in the Petunia to bring home a certain notorious note-forger, known among his associates of the higher criminal circles as 'Flash Taylor.'

Mr. Taylor had been laid by the heels by our colleagues of the New York police, and was being held for extradition. The bell clanged out its final warning for non-voyagers to leave the ship, and there was a swish of skirts and a scurry of feet past my post of vantage. I had to draw back closer against the rails to avoid being swept away by the stream. In doing, so I was jammed against a young man in the smart uniform of the Flower Line, who was taking leave of a pretty girl, quietly dressed in a well-fitting suit of dark serge.

So absorbed were they in each other that for half a minute I became an involuntary listener to their last adieus.

'You must cheer up, Phil,' the girl was saying. 'There is no sense in meeting trouble half-way, and I have no doubt that this wonderful Mr. Radford Shone will safe-guard your treasures. At any rate, he will greatly lighten your responsibility.'

'That is exactly what he won't do,' the young man answered gloomily. 'If anything goes wrong, the company will hold me to blame, while if nothing is taken, or if the thief is caught in the act, Shone will get all the kudos. And it means so 'much' to us, darling! No promotion, no wedding bells for you and me.'

The bell clanged louder, reinforced now by the shriek of the siren, and with a long look in each other's eyes the lovers clasped hands and tore themselves apart. The girl hurried down the gangway, to be lost in the crowds on the quay, and the young officer, having watched her out of sight, turned, and met my gaze. I recognised him at once and held out my hand.

'Why, Mr. Lancaster!' I exclaimed, 'so we are to be shipmates again?'

For I had already made two voyages in other boats of the same line in which he had been serving. He drew back for a moment, as though startled by my presence; then he seized my hand and wrung it warmly.

'How are you, Inspector Royds?' he said. 'You're another on the job, I suppose. The Petunia simply reeks of detective talent this trip. We are carrying the eminent Radford Shone and his friend Mr. Samuel Martin, and now you turn up as the representative of Scotland Yard. My bullion-room ought to be as safe as the Bank of England!'

'Why, yes,' I laughed, 'if Radford Shone is going to mind it. For myself, I am going to enjoy freedom from all official cares on the outward trip.' And I explained my mission— how I had been detailed to fetch 'Flash Taylor' to England to stand his trial at the Old Bailey.

Phil Lancaster, who had always struck me as a bright specimen of the gay-hearted sailor lad, glanced furtively round him. I noticed that his usually frank, healthy face was singularly careworn and haggard. The steamer had warped away from the quay, and her mighty propellers were churning her round in a gigantic curve for her run down the Mersey to the open sea.

'Come to my cabin and smoke; I am not due on the bridge for an hour,' said Lancaster abruptly. 'Ah, there goes the beauty!'

The passengers, the distraction of departure over, were mostly seeking their private accommodation for the bestowal of their travelling necessaries, and Lancaster's concluding soliloquy appeared to refer to a wizened, stooping, elderly man in clerical attire, who was entering one of the upper deck staterooms, followed by a florid, stout young man in very loud checks. I thought that I caught a gleam from the old cleric's prominent eyes directed at my companion, who, without further explanation, led me into a tiny cubicle in the range of deck-houses amidships. He drew forward a camp-stool for me, and perched himself on the edge of his bunk.

'Did you see that old chap dressed like a parson, with the fat bounder in tweeds?' he asked. 'Well, that is Radford Shone, masquerading as the Rev. Joshua Greer, tutor to the Honourable George Dalrymple, otherwise his pal, Mr. Samuel Martin. I don't like the man, Royds— for no better reason than that he is a standing reflection on my efficiency.'

And he went on to tell me that Shone had been engaged by the directors of the Flower Steamship Company to solve the mystery of several robberies that had recently been effected on the Petunia. As one of the 'greyhounds of the Atlantic,' and also a mail boat, the vessel was fitted with a bullion-room that had till quite recently been considered impregnable. Nevertheless, during the past year this strong hold had been twice entered by thieves, who had abstracted valuable uncut gems consigned to leading jewellers in New York. To have removed and landed the heavy gold ingots which sometimes formed part of the cargo was, of course, beyond their ingenuity.

The robberies were the more unaccountable as the bullion-room was guarded by a heavy iron door, which was furnished with an up-to-date combination letter-lock. As second officer, Lancaster had charge of the room and kept the key, though the captain of the ship also had a key and shared, with him the secret of the particular lettering decided on for each voyage, the precaution being intended to provide against the loss of the combination in the event of one or other of them meeting with a fatal accident.

In spite of these safeguards the bullion room had thrice been denuded of its most portable valuables, and as on the present occasion the Petunia was carrying a price less consignment of diamonds for Tiffany of New York, Radford Shone's services had been enlisted with the double purpose of protecting the gems and, if any attempt were made on them, of detecting the thief.

'It is pretty rough on me, Mr. Royds, because I'm engaged to the sweetest girl in the world, and we are only waiting till I get my first officer's certificate to be married. I should have had it before now if it hadn't been for this set-back,' Lancaster concluded.

'Then you ought to hail Mr. Radford Shone as a friend,' I said. 'He has a great reputation, and ought to see you through.'

The young officer flicked a speck of dust from the gold lace on his sleeve and frowned.

'Radford Shone is a vain beast!' he replied fiercely. 'The sort of creature who sticks at foregone conclusions, and if he sticks to his present one he'll be worse than useless.'

'He has formed a theory?' I hazarded.

'He behaves as if he has. But see here, Mr. Royds, I've told you all this in confidence, and I can tell you no more. I don't really know what is in Shone's mind. Captain Smithers and I— and now you— are the only people in the ship aware of his presence on board, and I beg that you will not give me away for having blabbed to you. We have had some pleasant times together, crossing the ditch, so as you were in the same line of business I thought I would like to post you in what was going on. Nothing like having a friend at court, you know.'

A little later, as I leaned over the stern rail and watched the receding river-flats, I found myself wondering at that last cryptic utterance. Why should this frank faced sailor want a 'friend at court' in the shape of a Scotland Yard inspector? Why was the boy worrying so strangely, over the employment of Shone, when the object of that famous investigator was the same as his own— the keeping of felonious hands from the treasures entrusted to his charge? I am a detective by profession, remember, and though I tried to put it away, the thought flashed across me that his hostility to Shone could not have been more pronounced had he had designs on the contents of the bullion-room himself. If so, his apparently open confidence in me would have been a very subtle piece of strategy indeed.

Lancaster was on duty that evening, and did not appear at dinner in the saloon. But I need hardly say that I paid particular heed to my fellow passengers, without, however, recognising among them any criminal of note who might have shipped with nefarious intentions. If such an one was on board he must be a new man who had not yet passed through our hands, for I knew that there were but four old convicts then at large capable of taking up such big business.

Failing in that direction I naturally turned my attention to Mr. Radford Shone, with whom I had never yet been brought into professional association. This was not surprising, from the fact that his principal exploits had been performed in cases of 'hushing-up' order, where police interference was the last thing wanted. So far as I was concerned, his reputation, great as it was, was somewhat shadowy, and I hailed with satisfaction the chance of studying his methods.

There was nothing the matter with his make-up, anyhow, or with his manner. He had been given a seat at the captain's table, between a handsome and vivacious young lady and a tall, aquiline-featured gentleman who wore in his button-hole the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. His friend, Martin, playing the part of his pupil, sat on the other side of the girl, and they seemed to have quickly shaken down into a congenial party. Shone, with the deferential air of the clerical tutor, turned frequently to his distinguished-looking neighbour, while Mr. Samuel Martin engaged the handsome brunette in airy trifling. Indeed, unless the stout youth was an excellent actor— and he did not look it— he had really fallen a victim to her fascinations.

At the close of the meal, before repairing to the smoking-room, I allowed my curiosity to get the better of me so far as to beckon a steward. 'Who is that gentleman who has just risen and is offering his arm to the lady?' I asked.

'That, sir? That is a French nobleman, sir— the Duc de Vionville; and the young-lady is his daughter, the Vicomtesse de Mericourt,' replied the man. And, lowering his voice, he added— 'They're sailed with us before, sir, and I am surprised that they should choose this boat again.'

'How's that?' said I.

'Last voyage they made with us there was a robbery aboard— out of the bullion room. Goodness knows how it was broke into, but among the things taken was a pearl necklace belonging to the Vicomtesse, which she had got the captain to place there for safety. Rough luck, sir, wasn't it?'

'Very,' I rejoined, and I left the saloon pondering on what I had heard.

The question presented itself whether Radford Shone and his assistant were known as private detectives to the Duc and his daughter, or whether the wily Shone was cultivating an acquaintance which might be profitable in the event of his tracing the thieves and possibly recovering their property. On the whole I was inclined to the latter view, for I had had dealings with some of the old French nobility, and it is hardly one of their traits to hobnob on equal terms with private enquiry agents, however eminent.

The Petunia sped westward over an unusually kind Atlantic, and we reached the fifth day out without any untoward development. Young Lancaster, when not on the bridge, bridge, was often with me, and with the narrowing down of the hours which would end his suspense his spirits seemed to fall lower and lower. He talked gloomily to me of his Ethel, and of his fears that a cruel fate would come between them. The bullion-room had evidently got badly on his nerves, and he refused to be comforted by my suggestion that all must be well or Radford Shone would have made some sign.

This the celebrated expert, had not done. There had been no sensational indication of the thief or thieves; no alarums and excursions in the neighbourhood of the bullion-room, or, indeed, anything to show that Shone was exercising any vigilance whatever. He lounged for the most part on deck, avoiding the poker and bridge players in the smoking-room, and lying up to his assumed clerical character by doing the civil to elderly ladies, spending also some portion of his time in promenading with the Duc de Vionville.

The Honourable George Dalrymple, otherwise Mr. Samuel Martin, was equally assiduous in improving his acquaintance with the Duc's piquante daughter. The more I saw of the strangely assorted fellow passengers, the more convinced I became that Shone's real personality had not been divulged. No scions of the old regime would have been so affable to a mere specialist in criminology as was the Duc to Radford Shone. Certainly no such gay dalliance as prevailed between Mr. Samuel Martin and the Vicomtesse would have been permitted.

No; I perforce stuck to my original opinion that Shone was ingratiating himself with a view to reaping a greater reward when he should spring his great surprise upon us. If his researches should lead to the restoration of the stolen necklace, the Duc's, admiration would be enhanced by his having been innocently fooled himself. Nor could it be that there was a deeper undercurrent, born of some secret knowledge gained by Shone, that the Duc and his daughter were themselves guiltily concerned in the robberies?

I put this theory away as inadmissible, arguing that, no detective, private or official, would allow himself to loom so largely in the notice of his quarry. Besides, it was well established that these grandees had themselves been heavy losers by the raids on the bullion-room.

We were expected to make New York harbor on the afternoon of the sixth day, so dinner on the fifth evening bade fair to be a lively function. The great, domed, palm-decorated saloon was a blaze of electric light, illuminating brilliant toilettes fresh from Paris; speculation ran high on the probable winner of the lottery on the ship's daily runs; clean-shaven men with clear eyes and curt speech talked of the Wall-street prices received by Marconigram just before the gong sounded.

For all that, for me the place lacked its Hamlet, for Mr. Radford Shone was absent from table, and so was Mr. Samuel Martin. Glancing hastily round I also missed Phil. Lancaster from the place which, as second officer, he usually occupied at the head of the third table when not on duty on the bridge.

I knew that he had come off watch at six o'clock, and was free till four in the morning— in fact, I had been looking forward to a chat with him during the evening. I was beginning to wonder what his absence portended when there was a commotion at the door of the saloon and Shone's stout young friend rushed in, labouring under the wildest excitement. Ignoring the implied invitation of Helene de Mericourt, who had drawn her skirts together to make room for him at her side he pushed his way to the head of the table, and whispered in the ear of the captain, who rose hurriedly and accompanied him out of the saloon.

Guessing that the supreme moment had come, I too, slipped out and followed them, the chase leading me, as I had expected down to the main deck, along a corridor, up the closed door of the bullion-room. There, under an electric lamp, stood Radford Shone, his dexter finger pointing dramatically to the iron door.

'Got your key, captain?' he said.

'Yes, why?' stammered the blunt old sailor, who was shaking all over with apprehension. 'Because the thief is inside. I have suspected him from the first, but I trod his heels so closely that he put off his attempt to the last night,' replied Shone, who was evidently not going to lose one jot of his triumph. 'I shadowed him here just before dinner, and finding the door ajar, pulled it to and shut him in.

Captain Smithers fumbled with a steel chain at his neck, and produced a key from the inner regions of his underclothing. With this, having set the letter combination he unlocked the door and dragged it open. There, in the dim interior, with his back to a pile of bullion-cases, stood Phil Lancaster, scowling defiance.

'I knew the brute would have me,' he said, shooting at Shone a glance that would have slain. 'I didn't quite see how, except that he carries too many guns for me. What are you going to do with me, sir?'

'Clap you in irons, my lad, and take you back to England,' said the captain sadly, for Lancaster had been one of his favourite officers.

During the next few days the downfall of Phil Lancaster, though not effaced from my memory, was driven into the background of my thoughts by the official routine I had to undergo in New York for taking over my prisoner, 'Flash Taylor'. This was at last satisfactorily concluded in time for us to take berths in the Petunia on her return trip, and we boarded the steamer at the Flower-Line dock in North River ten minutes before she cast off.

I had purposely cut it fine, to give my gentleman no chance of making a dash for liberty. Not till we were out in mid-river, heading for Sandy Hook, was I able to relax my vigilance, after coming to a clear understanding with Mr. Taylor. As long as he behaved himself he was free to come and go on deck as he pleased till we touched at Queenstown, when I should have to ask him to retire to our cabin while the steamer was in communication with the shore. Thus my only risk of losing him would be if he jumped overboard during the voyage— a risk which, as a student of human nature, I was fully prepared to take.

Flash Taylor was the sort of rascal who, when out of prison, enjoyed life far too thoroughly to want to end it by suicide. These preliminaries amicably settled, we were on the best of terms with each other, and together we amused ourselves by taking stock of the other passengers. They were, of course, a different set from those on the, outward voyage, and I soon found that the chief interest centred in that, young and popular peer, Lord Ravensbury, who was taking home his American bride, nee Miss Vanderbilt-Waldorf, the daughter of the multi-millionaire. The young couple had engaged what was known as 'the honeymoon suite,' and their appearance or otherwise in the saloon for meals was being freely canvassed by the loungers in our vicinity on the promenade deck.

'I am in a position to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that his lordship and the countess will certainly take their places at table. The obstacle that might have prevented it has been happily removed,' said a well-remembered voice.

'Oh, tell us! do tell us!?' came the chorus from everyone within earshot. Radford Shone, his clerical attire abandoned in favour of a suit of grey tweed, and with Mr. Samuel Martin at his elbow, stood forth and, nothing loth, took up his parable.

'It was a little matter of Lady Ravensbury's million-dollar tiara, her father's wedding present,' he announced sententiously. 'They were reluctant to let it out of their sight, and equally reluctant to deposit it in the bullion-room on account of certain robberies therefrom on previous voyages. But they have now consented to entrust this priceless treasure to the ship's stronghold, since the captain was able to assure them that it would be as safe there as in the vaults of the Old Lady of Threadneedle-street. I am a modest man; and cannot tell you why.'

'I can though.' Mr. Samuel Martin blurted put, blushing furiously. 'This is the celebrated Mr. Radford Shone, the greatest detective of the age. He caught the thief on the voyage out one of the ships officers, who is down below some-where, going home in irons.'

A buzz of admiration went up, in the midst of which Shone took Martin's arm roughly and walked him off, as though annoyed by his adulation. A soft chuckle at my side caused me to turn to 'Flash' Taylor.

My prisoner's dissipated face was convulsed with strange spasms.

'Mouth watering over that tiara?' I chaffed him.

'No, it wasn't that. I'm no cracksman, and it wouldn't be much of a game with you aboard, Mr. Royds,' Taylor replied affably— for he was a genial rogue who bore me no malice. 'I was just thinking what funny fools there are in the world. When I've done my little bit of time I'm blessed if I don't set up as an expert investigator. Set a thief to catch a thief, don't you know.'

There seemed to be a cryptic meaning in this utterance, which I was too wary to try to extract on the spur of the moment. The more so as the bombastically devised self-advertisement of Shone had sent my thoughts back to that other captive who was making, the voyage home under such infinitely harder conditions than my stoical professional friend. I could picture to myself the dull misery of the young sailor, eating his heart out in the bowels of the ship that was bearing him to justice. Yet, would it be justice if he was called off to expiate his unauthorised presence in the bullion-room? He had put forward no defence nor uttered a word of explanation, preserving a sullen silence in face of Shone's triumphant accusation and the captain's acceptance of the same. He had seemed to acquiesce in the situation, as though the fact of his being found in the bullion room was proof of guilty in tent; and in a way it was so, for it was a strict rule of the ship that except in the case of a fire or wreck neither he nor the captain should enter till the end of the voyage, and then only in the presence of the other.

Yet for all that; it was against the grain to believe Phil Lancaster a thief— one, too, who, if he was a thief at all, must have worked systematically.

As this passed through my mind, my gaze strayed after the author of Lancaster's undoing, and I observed that Shone and his henchman had reached the stern-most limits of the promenade deck, and that, having wheeled round, they would shortly pass us again. At the same moment a suppressed exclamation from Taylor caused me to shift my eyes to the other direction— to the head of the stairs leading up from the deck below.

To my astonishment, the Duc de Vionville and his charming daughter, whom I had naturally supposed to be in New York, had just mounted to the promenade deck and were strolling aft. In a few seconds they would meet Shone and his friend; and as it happened, the meeting took place exactly opposite to where Taylor and I were lounging against the rails. I watched it closely, eager to see how the French grandees would comport them selves under the altered conditions now prevailing between them and their former cronies.

The Duc and the Vicomtesse were deep in conversation, and did not appear to recognise Radford Shone till he stopped; then they greeted him with raised eyebrows, as though surprised at his effrontery in making overtures.

'This is indeed a pleasant and unexpected rencontre,' Shone simpered. 'I had thought that your Grace was making a longer stay than three days in America.'

'Oh, ah! It is our friend the detective,' said De Vionville with haughty condescension. 'Yes, we decided to return at once, to take advantage of any developments that may follow your clever piece of work on the outward voyage. If my daughter's necklace is recovered through your agency, Mr. Radford Shone, you will not find me remiss as a pay master, but you will understand that as there can no longer be any need for the intimacy which doubtless served its turn on the outward voyage, that intimacy must how cease.'

Shone bit his lip and passed on, Martin following with a helplessly unrequited glance of admiration at the Vicomtesse de Mericourt.

And then once more my attention was diverted to my prisoner by the sotto voce— 'Am I on my head or my heels?'

'Nonsense, man; there's no motion. We're not in the open sea yet,' I replied, affecting to misunderstand him. I had not forgotten his exclamation of two minutes ago on first seeing the Duc de Vionville, but it was not my cue to put leading questions to one of his type.

'Come down to the cabin, Mr. Royds,' he breathed earnestly in my ear. 'You have treated me like a gentleman, and I'll do the same by you.'

So we sought our two-berthed stateroom, and there 'Flash' Taylor unburdened to me his wicked but sportsmanlike soul to such a tune that I fairly gasped. When it was all over I knew that the conveyance of that manufacturer of bogus notes to England was by no means the most serious work before me on the Petunia's homeward trip.

It was one of the penalties of my official position on that trip that, travelling now strictly on duty, I was no longer able to use the saloon for meals. I could not well expect decent folk to sit at table with a notorious forger, nor would the captain have permitted it, and I had therefore to mess in the seclusion of the state-room with my prisoner. I had not looked forward to the prospect with much pleasure, but after Taylor's confidence I prepared to take full advantage of my enforced ostracism.

On that first night, however, I contrived to take a peep into the saloon after the passengers had taken their places, and I saw that the Duc de Vionville and his daughter no longer sat with Radford Shone and Martin. The two latter had been relegated to the lower social depth of the doctor's table, and from Shone's lofty air and Martin's volubility I guessed that he was being lionised as the hero of the hour almost to the effacement of Lord Ravensbury and his bride, who occupied the post of honour right and left of the skipper.

Later in the evening I obtained an interview with Captain Smithers in the chartroom, and asked his permission to see Phil Lancaster. The request was none too cordially received for a reason that made me like the old man better than I had ever done before.

'No,' he said angrily. 'There's a good deal too much detective business going on in this ship, what with that chap Shone getting himself gassed among the passengers over Lancaster's disgrace, and now you, Royds, wanting, I reckon, to trip the poor lad into some sort of confession. No, I will take him home for a fair trial, but I'll be hanged if he shall be badgered into talking if he doesn't want to!'

'I have no wish to entrap Mr. Lancaster,' I replied quietly. 'On the contrary, I do not believe that he was in the bullion-room with guilty intent. All I want is to get an assurance from him to that effect, to guard against making a fool of myself, before considerably startling you, captain.'

'What! —Lancaster innocent? Shone wrong! By the little cherub that sits up aloft, but you shall have your palaver anyhow! Come along, right here and now!'

And the captain clapped his gold-banded cap on to his grizzled head, and led ne down to the lower deck and unlocked a door.

The cabin was cramped, and but ill-lit by an oil-lamp, but there was sufficient there for rough-and-ready comfort if the occupant been free to come and go. But the chains at Phil's ankles— the 'irons' which are part even of a modern shipmaster's creed— rattled as we entered, telling of his close confinement.

At sight of me the young man's face cleared a little, and he rose from the bench on which he had been sitting dejectedly.

'This is kind of you, Royds,' he said, 'that is, if you're going to put me with the other professional criminal. 'I'm a bit lonely and shall be glad of company.'

I saw that he was overwrought, and I sharply bade him not to be a fool, but to tell me, as man to man, why he went to the bullion-room that night and gave Radford Shone his chance.

'Not a word more,' I added; 'only your reason. I think I can guess it, but I want to be sure.'

Lancaster shrugged his shoulders wearily.

'I'll tell you, Royds, that I'd have bitten off my tongue rather than tell Shone,' he replied. 'It was simply that my nerves couldn't stand the strain any longer. I had no faith in the fellow, be cause his manner on the first day of the voyage showed that he suspected me. He might, therefore, have overlooked the real thief, and I went to the bullion-room to satisfy myself that nothing had been tampered with. As God is my judge; that is the truth, though I do not suppose that it will avail me in court.'

'If I can lay my hand on the artist who ought to be in your place you will never have to go into court at all,' I answered him. 'Come, captain, let us get back to the chart-room and finish our chat.'

THE NEXT three days passed uneventfully, and then one morning the Vicomtess appeared on deck alone. Luncheon time came, and her father not having joined her, I ascertained from a steward that the Due de Vionville was ill. It was believed that he had developed a touch of influenza, which would keep him in his bunk for the rest of the voyage.

The news, when I imparted it to Taylor was received with a wink.

'I wonder if the great Radford Shone knows what is the matter with him?' he said drily. 'Am I in this with you, Mr. Royds?'

I nodded, and for the remainder of the day we stuck close to our stateroom, Taylor amusing himself with fastening and unfastening the handcuffs which I had brought for use upon him if he had proved refractory. The cabin was in the same corridor as De Vionville's, and between the two was a suite of bathrooms; I was smitten with quite a craze for promiscuous 'tubs' that afternoon, but nothing happened; nor was it to be expected that vigilance would be rewarded while the passengers were in and out of their cabins. It was not till dinner was in progress in the saloon and after our steward had brought us our tray and departed, that anything happened, and then it was only the faint click of a door-latch some way along the corridor, but it sufficed. Flash Taylor laid down his knife and fork and took up the handcuffs which I had entrusted to him.

'You fool!' I whispered. 'You'll never live up to your adage that way. Go on eating. Clatter your crockery, and don't be so keen.'

My prisoner looked his chagrin, but obeyed, and ten minutes later, when the distant door clicked again, I unleashed him with the possibly unkind remark— 'There must be a crime before there can be a conviction, my son, as your own experience ought to have told you. If I am not mistaken the crime has now been accomplished, and you can have your revenge. Come along.'

The door of the Duc de Vionville's stateroom was our goal, and our united efforts broke it down in time to prevent its occupant from throwing Lady Ravensburys million-dollar tiara through the port-hole into the sea.

My prisoner snapped the handcuffs on to the 'French nobleman's' wrists, while I covered him with my pistol.

'There, Toff Larkin,' Taylor panted. 'That'll pay you for rounding on a pal three years ago!'

MR. RADFORD SHONE was not seen much during the last days of the trip ; but when he did appear his sublime egoism carried him through without any confession of defeat. His mouthpiece, Mr. Samuel Martin, laboured to explain that Shone would have caught the sham Duc had it not been for Lancaster's folly in attracting suspicion by his over-anxiety. The eminent expert had, I was told, some very bitter things to say about my alliance with a convict in order to gain my ends.

As a matter of fact, I never tried to conceal that my capture of 'Toff Larkin' was entirely due to his chance recognition by 'Flash' Taylor, whose faithless comrade he had been in a former enterprise.

Taylor was able to tell me that the 'Duc' was one of a gang who had begun to systematically work the mail steamers by assuming a rank that was above suspicion and having as a confederate a young and pretty woman. They had procured a key to fit the bullion-room by taking a wax impression of the captain's key, and after all that was plain sailing with the exception of getting the proper lettering of the combination lock. This they contrived by closely studying the custom of the ship, which was for the captain and the second officer to decide upon just before sailing. One or other of the confederates generally managed to be in the vicinity of the chart-room at the crucial moment and overhear the letters.

Larkin had abstained from robbing the bullion-room on the outward voyage this time because he had ascertained that better plunder was to be obtained on the homeward one, and because he knew that Shone's vigilance would be relaxed after his apparent success.

I considered that I was more than justified by the clearing of Phil Lancaster, who was on the bridge when we reached Liverpool, and as a free man, was able to wave a glad greeting to the girl waiting for him on the quay.

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3: The Missing Bomb

A FEW WEEKS before the great Durbar at Delhi in the Coronation year, I was sent for by one of the chiefs at the Yard and told that I was to proceed to the East forthwith.

An anonymous letter had been received at the Indian Office, conveying the information that a gang of 'swagger' criminals, led by one of the most daring operators in Europe, was going to Delhi to attempt to steal the celebrated diamond known as 'The Star of the South,' which the Nizam of Goojerat would be wearing during the festivities.

There was, of course, the possibility that the communication might be a hoax; but to be on the safe side the authorities had decided to treat it as a genuine warning of a disaffected confederate, and to despatch to Delhi an officer acquainted with the personality and methods of the leaders in the world of crime. The choice had fallen on me, because as a soldier's son I had been born and brought up till the age of eighteen in India, and could speak Hindustani like a native. Also, the chief was good enough to add, because I possessed certain other qualities which modesty prevents me from specifying here.

'Now attend to me, Inspector Quilliam,' he said, in conclusion. 'You must step on the tips of your toes in this matter. The India Office does not want to mar the festivities with a public scandal. English prestige would suffer in native eyes if it became known that such a solemn event had been seized on by Englishmen for despoiling native potentates come to do honour to their sovereign. Stop their game, even kill them, if need be; but don't let us have any arrests, except in the last extremity.'

A month had passed since this conversation, and one brassy morning in December I found myself sitting on the veranda of Mason's Hotel at Delhi, gazing out over the vast perspective of the Maidan. Though the great ceremony of proclamation was not due for a fortnight the camps of the Indian princess, of the press correspondents, and of the wealthier sightseers were everywhere in evidence on the plain, the white canvas shimmering in the heat blaze. Like all the others in the place, the hotel was crowded— at fabulous prices.

Suddenly, from the chair next mine on the veranda, I heard a chuckling laugh, and glancing askance I saw that its occupant had become interested in a paragraph in the Delhi Gazette. He was a heavily built, youngish man, somewhat loudly dressed, and heavily metalled as to watch-chain and rings. Having read the paragraph through, he offered the paper to his neighbour on the other side.

'By Jove, Shone, but your fame precedes you,' he laughed rather nervously. 'Seen this?'

'Read it aloud,' was the response, in a thin, strident voice.

'But— but it gives the show away,' whispered the stout young man, glancing round the thronged veranda.

'Read it aloud,' the other persisted, in a tone that would take no denial.

The first speaker then read as follows:—

We understand that the celebrated investigator, Mr. Radford Shone, has arrived in Delhi, having been specially retained by the Nizam of Goojerat to protect the priceless jewels, including 'The Star of the South,' which His Highness is bringing to wear at the celebrations. Needless to say, the services of such an expert as Mr. Radford Shone entail a fabulous fee; but doubtless the Nizam regards it as a positively safe insurance premium for the protection of his gems.

'Thank you, Martin,'' said the man on the other side of the reader. 'I anticipate great things from that announcement.'

'I was afraid you might be annoyed at it; the— er— publicity—'

A grating laugh interrupted the halting surmise.

'My dear Martin, I put that paragraph in myself,' said the other. 'Don't you see the pull it gives me over any scoundrels who may be plotting to plunder my client? Hearing that Radford Shone has been pitted against them, the chances are in favour of their entirely abandoning the attempt which His Highness has been warned against.'

'I never thought of that,' was the modest reply.

'You seldom think of anything,' came the severe rejoinder— so severe that it induced silence both on the part of its butt and of the other occupants of the veranda, who must have heard every word of the conversation.

To me it had been of absorbing interest for I had not been aware that the Nizam had received a separate warning— still less that he had taken steps for protecting his jewellery by employing an English private detective.

Radford Shone was known to me, by repute only, as a clever investigator who went about his business accompanied by a sort of tame fugleman who was supposed to be writing his memoirs. I will confess at once that his ideas of countering dangerous criminals by advertising himself at their opponent had elements of novelty which hardly appealed to me. But probably he would have bidden his historian note that I was a hidebound official if I had introduced myself and mooted as much.

I was ruminating on this new factor in my task when a gentleman who had been sitting further along the line of chairs, rose and walked slowly by, casting an interested glance at Radford Shone and his companion he passed. He was a tall, spare, clean-shaven ascetic-looking man of some sixty years, noticeable by the professional cut of his European garments, which, unlike the other tourists about, he had not discarded in favour of lighter wear. Save for the puggaree and solar hat, he might have been a spruce consultant just stepped out of his house in Harley-street. His gaze, removed from Radford Shone and Martin, rested on me for the fraction of a second, to be instantly shifted to a clattering crowd of American globe-trotters who came trooping on to the veranda.

And I was glad of that respite, for in that fraction of a second I had recognised the hawk-faced ascetic as one of the princes of crime, known to his associates as 'Deadly Smooth,' and to Scotland Yard by half a score of aliases.

Stay, though! Could I be mistaken? The foremost of the Americans— a big, pursy creature, with plutocrat written large— addressed him by name and shook him genially by the hand. The rest of the tribe, an elderly lady, a very pretty girl in a smart Paris frock, and two attendant cavaliers, seemed equally pleased to meet the man who was beginning to loom so largely in my calculations.

'Ah! Doctor Nightingall,' exclaimed the head of the party, 'I reckoned we should find, you here. We've come to carry you off to our own camp on the plain, so as we can hear some more of those cunning yarns you told on the way up from Bombay. You're the sort of a chance acquaintance that's got to be turned into a friend, I guess. There's a slap-up tent ready for you, and I'll hire another nigger to wait on you.'

'Do come, doctor,' chimed in the pretty girl, and she was backed up by a chorus from her attendant swains. The proposed guest was not of an age to excite their jealousy.

The gentleman who was in such request demurred a little, and it struck me that, though eager to accept the invitation, he was somehow embarrassed by it.

The Americans pressed him hard.

'Very well, Mr. Van Cortlandt; it is difficult to deny oneself such a pleasure,' he yielded suavely at last. 'But I should like to be allowed to defer joining you till this evening, as I have some business to attend to in the city first.'

In his breezy manner old Van Cortlandt assented to the arrangement, and led his chattering crowd away as noisily as they had come. Nightingall stood dreamily looking after them, his stern lips creased with a faint smile, which faded suddenly as he turned away and looked straight at me.

I was not looking at him, but I felt the magnetic influence of his eyes, and I feared that he knew me. Then came relief, as he consulted his watch and walked rapidly away along the veranda.

'Evidently, a gentleman of distinction and in great social demand,' was Mr. Radford Shone's verdict.

'And he's in luck, being asked to the camp for that was a ripping girl,' Martin avowed.

It was not for me to pass judgment on the great expert's complacency, for I was by no means sure that my suspect was the man I took him for. I had never had 'Deadly Smooth' in my hands, and had only seen him once across a crowded court a dozen years before, when he had been sentenced to a long term. But I had his record at my finger-tips, and I knew that if 'Dr. Nightingall' was his latest alias, I should have my work cut out for me.

Impressed with this idea, I rose, determined to find out what was the 'business' which delayed his prompt acceptance of the van Cortlandt hospitality.

At the entrance of the hotel I caught a glimpse of his spare figure entering a shigram, one of those rickety four-wheeled vehicles which are base mockeries of the London 'growler.'

Giving it a sufficient start, I chartered another, and so shadowed my man to the shop of a brass-worker in the metal bazaar.

An hour later, after 'Doctor Nightingall' had departed, a liberal backsheesh opened the craftsman's mouth, and I knew all about the transaction.

The Sahib had called for a hollow wall of gun metal with a hole in it an eighth of an inch in diameter, ordered the previous evening. The thing was undoubtedly a bomb. I knew that I had made no mistake, and that the first time the Nizam appeared in public wearing 'The Star of the South' that bomb would be used with fatal effect, and the jewel rifled in the confusion.

My mind was instantly made up as to the course I would adopt. Remembering van Cortlandt's promise to engage a servant to wait upon Nightingall while his guest, I determined to disguise myself as a native and apply for the situation, trusting to my lucky star to be in time to obtain it.

Making all speed back to the hotel, I took the proprietor partly into my confidence, with the result that with his aid I was soon transformed into the complete semblance of a Bengali khitmagar, stained dusky brown from head to foot. On my way out I had to pass the door of the billiard-room, and the sound of a strident voice inspired a spirit of mischief.

Entering the room, I found that its only occupants were Mr. Radford Shone and Martin, the former enthroned on the settee, contemptuously watching his friend's solitary practice. Shambling over to Shone, I made low obeisance, at the same time addressing him in the vernacular. The response, accompanied by an angry glare, was the question, in English.

'What do you want, you rascal?'

Score one over the great expert. He did not even know the language of the country to which he had come a thief-hunting.

'The fame of the sahib has reached, me,' I said, speaking now also in English but adopting the phraseology of the East. 'I could not resist, worm under his feet that I am, crawling into his presence to feast my eyes on the learned pundit who solves all problems.'

'Do you hear that, Martin?' said Shone pompously. 'The magic of my methods has impressed even the dull wits of these natives.'

'Why not?' his slavish admirer flattered him. 'They would indeed be unenlightened idiots if they didn't appreciate you.'

'Ah! sahibs,' I went on, 'it is because I am an unenlightened idiot that I venture into your presence. A dream came to me last night, showing how it is planned by base robbers to despoil his Highness of Goojerat of his gems. First I said I would go to his Highness and tell the secret for many thousand rupees. Then I ask myself what use, when the great Shone Sahib knows already by other means? No, I say: I will go to Shone Sahib and give him the secret for nothing, to see if it agrees with his. Then, if it proves to be the same, he will reward his humble servant, so that he may keep a still tongue.'

Shone's prominent eyeballs fixed me wrathfully, but he swallowed his gorge, and though not, I suspect, a humorist, he thought he saw the funny side of it, and laughed.

'All right,' he said; 'if you can tell me anything I don't know already, I'll give you a hundred rupees, when it comes off.'

'My dream was of a bomb, Sahib,' I replied eagerly. 'There was a vision of a tall, thin man trying to blow up the Nizam so that he might run off with the big diamond.'

Shone rose wrathfully from in the settee, made as though to spurn me with his foot, thought better of it, and sank down again.

'Go,' he thundered, once more adopting what he thought was the funny side of it. 'Go,' Mr. Native Dreamer, with full leave to come back and claim your hundred rupees when you have proved your bomb.'

And as I fled from the billiard-room with every show of alarm I heard the great man sigh.

'Curious creatures, these niggers, Martin. We didn't win our spurs by dreaming, did we?'

I thought to myself that they must have won them easily, if it was by loafing about a hotel when there was serious work to do.

It was nearly dark when I approached the camp of Mr. van Cortlandt, the unwitting host of the callous villain whom I was pledged to thwart. Though night was now falling on the teeming canvas city I had no difficulty in steering a straight course for my goal. A string of Chinese lanterns, shedding fantastic rays in the gloom, was a sure guide to the pitch of the opulent American.

As I drew, near, fumbling in my cummerbund for the bogus testimonials furnished by the hotel proprietor, I saw that several people were lounging in front of the central pavilion, through the flaps of which gleamed the snowy linen and silver of a well-furnished dinner-table. Mr. van Cortlandt from his lounge chair was declaiming to the ladies and gentlemen— all in evening dress— on the extent and splendour of the vast assemblage.

'Buffalo Bill's Wild West ain't in it with this circus,' he was saying as I entered the circle of lamp-light. 'And what in thunder have we here?' he broke off on catching sight of me. 'A Begum or a Maharajah, I guess, dropped in friendly like for a bit of dinner. And I can't speak a word of the blessed lingo.'

Approaching him with a deep salaam I explained my business, and he was so pleased to find that I spoke English that he engaged me there and then, 'forgiving' me for not being a notable, and not troubling to examine my credentials.

'You can wade in right now and wait at dinner,' said my new employer, rubbing his hands over his acquisition. 'Smartish feller, ain't he, Sophy, with that red sash round his waist?'

The elderly lady addressed, whom I afterwards discovered to be his sister, had just agreed that I should 'come in handy,' when a cultured voice behind, me said:—

'I do trust, Mr. van Cortlandt, that I have not repaid your hospitality by keeping dinner waiting. I was delayed by the business that took me to the bazaar-business connected with my scientific researches.'

It needed all my nerve to prevent me from wheeling round, for the voice was that of Doctor Nightingall, the same which had conversed with the Americans in the veranda of the hotel.

'Liberty Hall, doctor, Liberty Hall,' responded the genial millionaire, rising. 'We'll take our corn now, though, for I'm getting peckish. Here, you, what's your name?' he added, clutching my arm and twirling me round to face Nightingall.

'Manajee,' I answered boldly, though I was seized with fear lest the burning eyes which looked into mine should re cognise me.

'Well, Manajee, one of your duties will be to wait on my guest, Doctor Nightingall,' van Cortlandt went on. 'He'll do to fill your tub and brush your clothes, I reckon doctor.'

Had the crisis really passed, or did it only seem to, in the carelessly murmured thanks which my terrible adversary tendered to his host? There was an unctuous suavity in his tone and a crease at the corner of his cruel mouth that inspired an uneasy doubt, though a general adjournment to the mess-tent and the necessity for schooling myself to my new duties as a waiter relieved the tension.

At least, it was reassuring to find that my disguise held good with my half dozen turbanned fellow servitors. When the soup had gone round I had leisure to size up the other members of the party, and I quickly gathered that the pretty girl, Minna van Cortlandt, was the millionaire's daughter, and an obvious attraction to the two well-groomed young men. These were, respectively, Charley Vanneck, a New York broker, and one Don Ignacio Gomez, a solemn, lank haired, yellow-skinned Mexican ranchero. To the latter I took an instant dislike― chiefly because Nightingall struck me as cultivating him assiduously, and because as a suitor for Minna the lively young New Yorker seemed infinitely preferable.

Standing behind Nightingall's chair, I was wondering whether he meant to utilise these chance acquaintances as innocent instruments in his scheme, when suddenly at a little distance there arose an uproar that, swelling into a mighty volume of sound, caused the still air of the Indian night to quiver and vibrate, bringing Mr. van Cortlandt to his feet with the startled enquiry—

'What in thunder's that?'

As a two days' dweller in the place, I could have told him, but I left the answer to the obsequious Eurasian mess man, who informed his master that the noise was only in the trumpeting of one of the state elephants in the Nizam's camp.

Mr. van Cortlandt reseated himself with a sigh of relief.

'His Highness's elephants are very free,' the mess man supplemented his information.

'He is going to have a dress rehearsal tomorrow of the procession, leading it himself, and wearing all his jewels. It will pass our camp, sir, so you will have a fine view.'

I glanced down at Nightingall. He showed no sign of interest, unless a curious twitch of the muscles at the back of his neck could be taken as such. It was Minna van Cortlandt who commented on the announcement, merrily suggesting that they should humbly offer the Nizam's elephants a bun as it went by.

'I am afraid the common or garden bun isn't a product of the glowing East,' laughed Vanneck.

'Ah, that's only an excuse,' the girl rejoined sharply. 'You are just frightened to do it, I guess. I'd have to do it myself— if only to get a longer look at the famous diamond.'

At this, after a sidelong glance at Don lgnacio, Nightingall looked up quickly.

'If I were younger and more agile, my dear young lady, you would not have to accuse me of lack of gallantry in the matter, ' he said, in the bland tones that had earned him his sobriquet. 'Alas, I fear I should be trampled before I could get out of the way.'

'That's what Charley is afraid of,' snapped Miss Minna, coquettishly determined to pique her favoured swain. 'I am sure that Don Ignacio would do it if I asked him.'

The sombre Mexican opened his mouth to speak, but old van Cortlandt, who evidently preferred his fellow-countryman as a suitor for his daughter, rapped out:—

'Well, you haven't asked him and there ain't any buns, so there's an end of the matter.'

After dinner, having helped to clear the table, I went out into the open where under the Chinese lantern Mr. van Cortlandt was entertaining his guests with stories of his early struggles.

Nightingall being among the audience, I slipped away to the range of sleeping-tents that flanked the large pavilion. I wanted to seize the opportunity of looking round the sham doctor's tent in his absence, and having been told off to valet him, I had an excuse for doing so. The tent had been pointed out to me by the mess man, and unperceived, as I hoped, I drew aside the flap and stole in.

An oil-lamp on the pole shed a feeble light, bringing into relief the scanty furniture and two portmanteaux. The suspicion was strong upon me that Nightingall would turn to account the Nizam's dress rehearsal and I had decided if I could only lay my hand on the bomb to thwart him by simply bolting with it. I bent over the portmanteaux, and was not surprised to find them both locked. I was about to use a pick-lock which I had on my pocket-knife, when I heard a step approaching. Catching up an empty water-can, I made for the entrance, there to run lull into Nightingall himself.

He pushed me roughly back into the tent;

'What are you doing here?' he asked with ominous calm.

'Come to fetch sahib's bath-water,' I replied, with what nonchalance I could assume. He went and sat on the bed, and it was hard to realise that the slender, stooping figure of a man, with silver hair and a scholar's face, was plotting murder and robbery. He fumbled in the pocket of his dress trousers. I thought he would produce a pistol, but out came a bunch of keys, from which he selected two.

'Open those portmanteaux,' he commanded. 'Lay out my pyjamas and shaving tackle, and put the other things away in that chest of drawers.'

His motive I could not guess, but I gutted the portmanteaux thoroughly, conscious all the while that those sardonic eyes were watching me from the bed. When I had completed my task, I took up the can and made as though to retire, but he motioned me to stop.

'Do you know why I made you do that?' he asked, regarding me intently.

'It my business— keep Sahib's tent tidy,' was the best answer I could think of. If only I knew whether he had recognised me, or was merely trying to satisfy himself that I was what I seemed!

'No, it was not because of your duty,' he said, still fixing me with those remorseless eyes. 'It was to show you that something you are curious about is not in my trunks, Manajee.'

'Money, Sahib?' I exclaimed, respectfully indignant. 'I am a high caste man— no thief.'

Would he never take those scorching eyes off me— never cease caressing the breast pocket of his coat, in which, no doubt, a pistol lurked? My own revolver was in my cummerbund, and the slightest movement on his part would have been the signal for me to try and draw first.

But the electric moment passed without an explosion. Either I had deceived this past-master of deceit, or he was confident that he could treat me with contempt. He might easily have hatched an excuse for shooting me, but the formalities consequent on the killing of a marauding servant might have upset his plans for the morrow.

'Take the can,' he said at last. 'After that I shall want nothing more to-night.'

He had left the tent when I returned with the water, and peering out I saw that he had rejoined the party under the lanterns. Creeping as near as I dared, I flung myself on the ground to try and pick up crumbs of talk. The situation was growing desperate, for Nightingall was still in possession of the bomb, and shortly after dawn the Nizam wearing 'The Star of the South,' would pass the encampment.

I gathered little from my ambush, except that Nightingall was again doing the agreeable to the surly Mexican. Once or twice I thought that he drew the Don's attention to Minna van Cortlandt and young Vanneck— good friends again now, and flirting outrageously. Presently, amid laughter, and lingering good-nights, the millionaire and his guests disappeared into their tents, and I, after the fashion of Indian servants, stretched myself in front of Nightingall's tent door. I had an idea that he might communicate with other members of his gang, but no one came. His dispositions must have been made previously, or by subtler methods than receiving midnight visitors.

As I lay under the stars, listening to his quiet breathing within, I strove to penetrate his deadly purpose. That he had concealed the bomb so cunningly as to defy search for it I had no doubt, but the manner in which he meant to use it puzzled me. It was inconceivable that he would stand at the roadside as one of van Cortlandt's guests and fling the death-dealing ball under the royal elephant as it passed. Even though in the confusion confederates might succeed in despoiling the mangled prince of the diamond, he himself could not hope to escape. The first thought of the bystanders would be to seize the thrower of the bomb. Turn it over which way I could I saw no certainty of defeating him, and in my perplexity I fell sound asleep.

When I awoke it was broad daylight and the camp was already astir. Springing to my feet, I boldly entered the tent, ostensibly to valet my master's guest; but to my chagrin he had evidently been up and dressed some time. He was bending over a basket of magnificent mangoes, arranging leaves among the succulent fruit with artistic effect.

'Ah! Manajee, he said, all trace of his suspicion clean gone, 'you are a heavy sleeper, it seems. Fine mangoes, ain't they?'

'Sahib been shopping in the market?' I schooled myself to say.

'No,' was the reply. 'A fruit-seller was here half an hour ago. He had to step over your carcase to get to me. I bought these to please the ladies.'

He took the basket and went out, going towards the mess-tent, outside which old van Cortlandt and his sister, with Minna and her two cavaliers, had posted themselves. Away at the Nizam's camp burst of barbaric music signified the start of the procession, drawing cries of excited anticipation from the merry group, near which I posted myself, as if anxious to make myself useful. The cattle king, catching sight of me, sent ne into the mess-tent for a brandy-and-soda.

When I had come out, a cloud of dust heralded the approach of the procession, while Nightingall, with bows and smiles, distributed his mangoes. Light at last broke in on me. Instead of proffering the basket, he himself selected the fruit, and handed it to each individual, coming last to Don Ignacio, to whom he presented a particularly fine specimen.

Two things I noticed— one that he nodded significantly at the scowling Mexican; the other, that while the rest began at once to eat the luscious fruit, the Don kept his in his hand. Nightingall beckoned me and bade me hold the basket in which there were a few mangoes left. I had evidently ceased to interest him, for he spoke carelessly with all his attention for the crowd of Europeans and natives lined up at the roadside to see the Goojerati chieftain pass. In that crowd, doubtless, were the birds of prey who were to pounce on the mangled heap and seize the priceless diamond under pretence of rendering assistance. Preceded by clashing cymbals and quaintly-garbed footmen, the State elephant came on, the Nizam conspicuous in the howdah by reason of the stream of fire that blazed from his turban.

'The Star of the South' caught the rays of the Indian sun and flung them back on the gaping onlookers and on Nightingall's sternly expectant face. I edged close to Don Ignacio, who, just as the huge beast neared us, seemed to brace himself and start forward.'

I plucked the jealous dupe by the sleeve.

'Here sahib; take this instead,' I said, offering him another mango from the basket. 'That one is not ripe. The elephant will not like it.'

In his haste he snatched the harmless mango, putting into my outstretched hand the one which Nightingall had given him, and which my first clutch of it told me held the bomb.

In a trice I had denuded the fruit of its deadly kernel, and with the baleful glare of the defeated criminal on me, I stepped up to the howdah of the second elephant, from which Radford Shone, superciliously complacent, was appropriating the homage of the spectators.

'Morning, Shone,' I said casually. 'I'll call at the hotel this evening for that hundred rupees. Here is the bomb. If I hadn't watched things it would have been inside the mango, which that idiot is offering to your client's mount.'

At that instant Don lgnacio, felled by a blow from the State elephant's trunk, sprawled upon the ground amid roars of laughter. The procession came to a momentary halt, and under cover of the confusion the celebrated amateur leaned down to me from his howdah, his prominent eyeballs all agog at the perilous brass ball in my hand.

'Who— what are you?' he demanded in a hoarse whisper.

'Only a poor ignorant professional from the Yard,' I replied sweetly, 'come across the sea to pull chestnuts out of the fire for my brilliant betters. Inspector Quilliam, at your service.'

From the motion of the great man's lips I concluded that it was not a blessing that he was invoking on my head and then, the Don having been hauled out of the way, the gorgeous pageant started on again, and that night the hospitable American was minus a guest and a servant, both of whom had left without warning.

Doctor Nightingall, alias 'Deadly Smooth,' aware now that his first recognition of me had been right, gave up the game, while Radford Shone earned his enormous fee by looking mysteriously important during the Durbar festivities.

But he changed his hotel, and did not return to England in the same ship with me.

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4: The Lost Heiress

I was so dead beat that I almost staggered through the doorway, above which a strip of white metal bearing the black-lettered words 'County Police' proclaimed my calling to the world. It was nine o'clock at night, and from five in the morning I had been on my feet, controlling inquisitive sightseers, helping the men with drags and generally superintending the search in the mill-stream for Miss Viola's body.

Ours was only a little cottage, with the front door opening straight into the living-room from the path that split the cabbage-patch in two. My wife, dear soul, cried out when she saw how tired I was, and, jumping up from the table where she sat sewing, took my helmet and deftly unfastened my belt.

'You're about played out, William,' she purred at me. 'I'll have supper on the table in a jiffy. She ain't found, I suppose, or you'd have told?'

'No,' I replied, 'she ain't found, Susan. And there's a longer head than mine on the job now that says she never will be found— leastways, not where we've been looking for her.'

The little woman bustled off to the kitchen, and by the time I had got my boots off and my slippers on, the rashers were sizzling in front of me.

The life of a rural policeman has its consolations, even when the principal young lady of the village is in the hue-and-cry list, if you've got a wife like my Sue. It wasn't only that she was the best of housekeepers.

Though I never let on to anybody, least of all to her, she was really a sort of partner, supplying the brains while I supplied the muscle. Many is the scrape she has saved me from when I have wanted to run in the wrong chap on what I thought was clear evidence; many a time has she given me the wink in the matter of robbed hen-roosts when I couldn't find the ghost of a clue.

But this case that had been occupying me for so many hours was different from the petty larcenies and 'drunks' that made up my common round and daily task.

On the previous day, Miss Viola Dickenson, only daughter and heiress of old Peter Dickenson, the retired millionaire and ironmaster up at the Grange, had disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving behind, however, a tolerably clear indication of her whereabouts, as it seemed to me, in a sunshade that was found floating in the mill-stream.

Seeing that there had been trouble between her and her father about young Doctor Gray, I think that ninety-nine village constables out of a hundred would have jumped at the same conclusion as I did— that she had drowned herself for love.

'And whose might this long head be, that's so cocksure you're wrong?' Sue asked when I had satisfied my hunger and lit my pipe.

'The Superintendant from Rockington, I reckon?'

'The Super is of the same mind as I am,' I replied. 'No, it's a greater than he— a Mr. Radford Shone, from London. Mr. Dickenson telegraphed for him this morning, and he's been making enquiries all the afternoon. I never heard of him before, but they tell me he's a masterpiece at clearing up mysteries.'

'Private detective?' snorted Sue contemptuously. 'Low fellers, and most of 'em humbugs.'

Now the butler at the Grange had painted such a glowing picture of Mr. Shone's doings, and he himself had given me the impression of being such a very superior person, that I felt bound to take up the cudgels in his behalf.

'He doesn't call himself a private detective, but an investigator and an expert in crime,' I answered meekly.

'Same thing,' snapped my better half. 'Never mind what he calls himself. Tell me what he's done.'

'He has ferreted out that Doctor Gray was away up in London all yesterday, and he says that Miss Viola isn't dead at all, but that she ran away of her own accord to join the doctor and get married— after chucking her parasol into the stream as a blind,' I replied.

My wife, who had resumed her sewing, poised her needle in the air and stared at me, speechless for fully a quarter of a minute. But though her eyes were on my face, they seemed quite blank, as if they were looking inward. I couldn't rightly read whether she agreed with Shone's view or mine, or whether she had started one of her own.

Then she put down the frock she was making for our little Gertie, asleep upstairs, and folded her hands in front of her on the table.

'I want to know all about it— right from the beginning,' she said. 'Especially how this Mr. Shone went to work, and how he came to form his opinion.'

To some extent I had to go over old ground, for, of course, Sue was aware of what had happened up to my going to bed very late the night before.

On the morning of the previous day Miss Viola had left the Grange at ten o'clock, after telling her father that she was going to call on Mrs. Vince at the mill who was ailing. She had started off with a basket of things, apparently in high spirits, but at lunch she had not returned and after waiting an hour Mr. Dickenson had sent down to the mill to see if she was still there. The messenger had returned with the news that she had not been there at all.

Old Peter Dickenson, kind-hearted but short-tempered, had fumed and fretted for another hour, and had sent all his male servants, stablemen, grooms, and all, out to scour the country. At six o'clock, just as it was getting dark, one of the men had come back with the sunshade, which he had discovered in the stream, stuck in some rushes about three hundred yards below the mill.

At that I had been at once sent for, but from the lateness of the hour and lack of daylight it was little that I could do beyond calling at the mill and ascertaining from Vince, the miller, that Miss Viola had never reached there. His missis, he said, who was mortal bad with pleurisy, had been wondering why she hadn't been. There was no more to do but to arrange for dragging the stream as soon as it got light, for the road from the Grange to the mill ran alongside it for some distance, and it was reasonable to suppose that the young lady had fallen in and been drowned. She had always been keen on wild flowers, and there was a sight of forget-me-nots on the steep banks that might have tempted her to lean too far over.

I kept my thought of suicide to myself there being no evidence.

So far Sue knew all about it, but she pricked up when I came to that day's doings.

Going to work at dawn, I had first set the drags to work, and had then made a systematic search of the bank to try and find traces of the spot where she might have slipped. Mr. Dickenson, pretty nigh frantic, was there from the first, and the Superintendant, to whom I had sent a message over-night, arrived soon after; but not a trace of any disturbance of the bank could we find. The men with drags did no better, and after breakfast Mr. Dickenson decided to wire to London for this Mr. Radford Shone, of whom he had heard great things. In the meanwhile the search continued on land as well as under water, for I did not omit to enquire in the village, and also at the railway station for news of the missing girl.

When at last, a little after midday, Mr. Radford Shone appeared on the scene, he was good enough to compliment me in a patronising way on these enquiries, which, he said, would save him trouble. For from the first I could see that Shone believed that Miss Viola had neither been drowned by accident nor intention, but was voluntarily absenting herself. He came to this conclusion after his interview with Mr. Dickenson, at which he had doubtless learned what was common knowledge in the village— that Miss Viola and Doctor Gray had been courting in defiance of old Peter's wishes.

The young doctor, a pleasant-faced, genial fellow, had set up a practice in the place a year before, and had not only stolen our bonny Miss Viola's heart, but by his cleverness and popularity had annexed a good proportion of the practice of old Doctor Carthew, who had so far been the only medical man. It was known that old Carthew was so enraged at the loss of his patients that he hated his rival bitterly, and it was the last drop in his cup when Doctor Gray was called in to supplant him as medical attendant at the Grange.

But, though Mr. Dickenson's gout disappeared, and he swore by the younger practitioner in his professional capacity, he would have none of him as a mate for pretty Viola, giving both the young people to understand that his heiress was destined for a higher match.

Having made his money in trade, the old man had hankerings after the peerage, and had marked down a suitable husband for his daughter in Lord Crayleigh, of Crayleigh Priory.

The girl was equally firm on her side, continued to meet her sweetheart, and was barely civil when the lordling turned up at the Grange.

After hearing this, or as much as Peter chose to tell him, Shone spent no more time by the mill-stream, but started off into the village with a sort of hanger-on he'd brought with him, and who is keeping a record of his cases to put in a book. When Shone and this chap Martin came back to the water-side, they had a palaver with Mr. Dickenson, and the old man called me over.

'Constable Vanstone,' he said, and he was that angry his voice shook as he pointed to the punt, 'you can stop that farce of drag-nets and grappling iron. My daughter has bolted with that scoundrel Philip Gray. Mr. Shone has discovered that he went to town yesterday by the 8.50 slow from here, and isn't back yet. She must have walked to the junction and caught the noon express and joined him.'

'Can't Doctor Gray's housekeeper throw any light on it, sir?' I asked.

'Can't or won't,' said the angry old man. 'Says she doesn't know when to expect him back. Mr. Shone is off at once to trace him in London.'

And with my description of their hurrying off to get the dog-cart for the station, and of my determination not to relax our efforts in the stream, my narrative of the day's doings came to an end.

For quite a while after I had finished Susan remained perfectly still, except that she kept drumming the table with her finger-tips. Then she looked across at me and jerked out in that snappy way of hers—

'You're a bit of a muggins, William Vanstone, but you're not such a muggins as this here Shone. Your sticking to the stream after he'd gone hot-footed after a trailed herring shows that. But you're neither of you right. Let me think a little.'

She scowled at that table, drumming away like mad, and then she raised her head.

'What sort is this Radford Shone, anyway?' she flung at me.

'Very important-looking— a tall, thin chap in toff's clothes and a silk hat, and a condescending way of treating you, as if you really weren't dirt but ought to be,' I answered her.

'I thought so,' sniffed Sue. 'He's a fool, that's what he is— to think that our sweet Miss Viola would behave like a kitchen wench.'

'And he'd be a worse fool if he knew her. And you've been and got in a tangle about her drowning herself, too. Old Doctor Carthew is at the bottom of this or I'm a Dutchwoman. You just put on your helmet and button your tunic, while I run up and look at the kids, and then you'll come along with me.'

I knew her better than to ask where, being sure that she would tell me when she was ready, and that wasn't till we were out in the quiet village street under the stars. Then she didn't tell me in words, but by suddenly stopping at Doctor Gray's house, which was only a few doors away, and pulling the night-bell.

'You let me talk when we get inside,' she whispered while we waited.

It was the doctor's housekeeper, Mrs. Brant, who answered the ring, and though the faithful old soul seemed excited, and a trifle scared at the sight of my uniform, she made no bones about admitting us.

'Your Gertie's got croup, Mrs. Vanstone', I expect,' she said, as we stepped into the hall. 'Yes. Doctor Gray is in— come back from London an hour ago. Walk into the surgery please— and here's the doctor.'

For, at the sound of voices the door of the dining-room opened, and old Carthew's successful rival stood on the threshold peering out at us. He didn't look like a successful man just then, with his face all haggard and drawn, and he that nervous he couldn't keep his hands still. It was as good as a revelation to me that what-ever he'd been to London for, it hadn't been to get married. No day old bride-groom ever looked such a picture of misery.

'Come in here,' he said, beckoning us into the room, where the remains of a scarcely touched meal lay on the table. 'I can see that you do not want the surgery. You are here about this horrible business. Has there been any discovery?'

Sue looked hard at him, then at me.

'Didn't I tell you Shone was a fool!' she exclaimed. Then turning, to the doctor: 'Miss Viola isn't found, but I— we and my husband, that is― are going to find her. When did you first hear that she was missing from the Grange, Doctor Gray?'

The question seemed to me to disconcert him.

'When I reached home this evening,' he faltered, after a pause; quailing, I thought, before my wife's, alert, penetrating gaze.

'Don't keep anything back, doctor,' she urged, 'We are your friends and hers. Mrs. Brant will have told you what Mr. Dickenson believes, plummed up by his precious Paul Pry from London. Bill here don't agree with him, and thinks that Miss Viola is drowned. I don't hold with either.'

The young fellow sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

''Vanstone is right,' he sobbed. 'My darling girl is somewhere at the bottom of the stream, and-I— but no— for her sake I cannot, explain why I am so certain that she has been drowned.'

Then I held my breath as that wiry little slip of a woman marched up and shook him by the shoulder.

'That's as good as half a confession,' she said. 'If you don't give us the rest of it I'll order Bill to lock you up this minute.'

'If you'll formulate the charge, Mrs. Vanstone,' he said, looking up at her sullenly, 'I'll do my best to meet it.'

'Being a fool,' she tossed back at him. And with that quick change to wheedling that none knew better than I, she went on: 'Now, doctor dear, won't you treat us as friends? Bill isn't here exactly on duty; anyway, I'll go bail he shan't blab anything to Miss Viola's hurt or yours.'

Then bending over him, she added: 'It's my belief this has been got up by Carthew out of spite.'

Doctor Gray started up as if stung, and looked wildly from one to the other of us.

'If that is so, where is Viola?' he cried. 'If she is alive she is probably in danger.'

'Where is what we want to find out,' Sue answered. 'We cannot do that without your help.'

It only needed a glance at Gray to see that that masterful spouse of mine was to have her way with him. He was all of a tremble now, with the new fear that she had raised, and he had to moisten his lips before he said: 'Well, you shall be told, and make what you can of it. But I think that your husband and Radford Shone are both right. Viola did run away to join me in London, and she must have been drowned on her way to the station. See here.' He took from his pocket this letter, which he handed to my wife, and which I read over her shoulder: —

Dearest—

Dad has become unbearable. Go up to town by 8.50 to-morrow. I will follow by 10.30 to allay suspicion. Meet me at Waterloo and. take me to some decent lodging where I can stay till we can be married at a registrar's. Then you must go back same night, and join me when necessary notice has expired,

Yours, Viola.

Gray had been surprised to receive such a letter, as there had been no hint of any such intention when he had met the girl a day or two previously, and it was not like her to take a step that must finally alienate her from her father. They had both been hoping to wear down his opposition to their union in course of time.

But, as Doctor Gray said, there was nothing for him to do but to obey her request, and he had duly carried out the programme up to the point of meeting the train that followed his at the London terminus. Viola had not come by it, and he had met all the subsequent trains during the day with like result till it was too late to return. Of course he could not telegraph to her at the Grange. Next morning he had again met the first few trains at Waterloo, but there was no Viola, and he had then rushed about in cabs, enquiring for her at hotels. There was just a chance that she might have come by an alternative route to Paddington, after naming the wrong terminus in her letter.

Finding no trace of her anywhere he had returned to the village by an afternoon train, and on reaching the station had heard a confused account of what had happened. Mrs. Brant had furnished further particulars of Radford Shone's visit of enquiry, and hearing of the investigator's ominous insinuations he had decided to preserve silence about the letter. He could only accept the discovery of the sunshade in the stream as evidence that Viola had been drowned on her way to the station, but, for the sake of her father's peace of mind, and to save her name from wagging tongues, he would bear his cross alone.

Sue had kept the letter in her hand during his excited narrative.

'Are you certain that this is in Miss Viola's handwriting?' she asked him now giving the letter back.

'I really didn't look at it very critically,' he said. 'There hasn't been much need for letters between us, you see. It is the paper she uses, but— by Heaven—!'

'The writing isn't hers,' Sue finished for him. 'I'll lay Doctor Carthew wrote that letter, and that he's got Miss Viola somewhere, tight as nails. Twig his game? The sly old fox counted on the very suspicion being raised that Shone has put into Mr. Dickenson's head. It did not matter whether you produced that letter and said you had not seen anything of Miss Viola or not. Either way Mr. Dickenson would think you had hidden the girl in London, and your practice would be ruined.'

'But that means Carthew would have to detain Viola indefinitely; perhaps— oh, you can't think that— make away with her altogether!' Gray exclaimed in sore distress.

'And what about the sunshade?' I put in, loth to part with what had seemed to me such an important clue. 'You think Carthew threw it into the stream to make people credit the young lady with a piece of low cunning?'

My wife withered me with a scornful eye. 'No, I don't,' she snapped. 'I think she threw it in herself for a good reason, which you're soon to learn. 'Now come along both of you, and do a neighbourly act. We'll go down to the mill and see how Mrs. Vance's pleurisy is.'

I began to have an inkling what was in her mind now, but Doctor Gray was too dazed to see it. he even began to protest that it would be a breach of medical etiquette for him to go near Mrs. Vance since, as he had not been called to her professionally, she must be one of Carthew's patients. Impatiently, she grabbed his hat from the sideboard, put it on his head, and half pushed him out into the hall.

'Up to three days ago, Jane Vince never had an hour's illness in her life,' she said. 'Great hulking hussy, as strong as a horse, and her and her husband of gipsy stock, and no better than they should be. Bill here knows Vince's record, though 'twasn't for him to speak so long as the chap behaved. I was able to corroborate with the information that before he took the mill Vince had had been in prison for horse-stealing in Wales.'

The doctor, still too agitated to see our drift, opened the front door, and so came face to face with Radford Shone and his friend Martin.

Shone stood on the step, with his hand out-stretched to pull the bell and the light from the red lamp over the doorway showed the satisfaction on his face. But the next moment, as he noted my uniform in the background, his face fell.

'What's this, constable?' he demanded angrily; 'Have you arrested Doctor Gray?"

'Oh dear no, sir; there's nothing against the doctor,' I replied, and I heard Sue chuckle approval of my answer. It was nice to know I had spoken right. Shone's face cleared, and my awe of the man dwindled, for one can't respect pettiness. I perceived that he had been afraid that he had been forestalled, and that his momentary chagrin had been due to jealousy. Sue would give him something to be jealous of directly, I hoped, if only she could do it in time to save a tragedy. That hope made me impatient of this delay.

'Ah, then, I will put a few questions to Doctor Gray,' said Shone, with a hectoring air. 'I have been hot on your track, sir, all day, and finding traces of you at Waterloo, I followed you down by the next train. Now hadn't you better make a clean breast of—'

Sue, who had been standing behind me in the passage, pushed forward and interrupted. She had only a shawl over her head, but if it had been a crown she couldn't have looked more imposing— to my mind.

'You call yourself an expert in crime, don't you, Mr. Shone?' she asked quietly. 'Well, you'll be aiding and abetting a first-class crime if you stand jawing there. Bill, move him on, there's a good boy, and let's get on to the mill.'

'I am not to be hindered by a person who is evidently a resident lunatic patient!' Shone began to bluster, and that reflection on my partner was enough for me.

I elbowed past Gray, beckoning him and Sue to follow me. At the same time I said to Shone, firmly— 'We are going a little way down the street, sir, on the business of this missing lady. If you like to come with us you can; but I warn you not to interfere,' I added under my breath, 'with Mrs. Vanstone.'

There must be a virtue in a blue tunic and a helmet, to which even the most expert yield, for though Shone spluttered, and his stout historian seemed on the verge of a fit, they fell into line behind Sue and the doctor and me, and pranced after us, whispering.

Our way ran through the deserted village street put into the open country, and then along the road that was flanked on one side by the mill-stream. A hundred yards from the mill the stream curved away from the road, the buildings being set back in the water-meadows, and approached by a private lane that left the main thoroughfare a little beyond the bend in the stream. This lane ended at the mill, which was therefore secluded, from all but its own traffic.

There was a fair show of moon that night, and from the main road we could see the gaunt outline of the mill in its encircling group of poplars. But when we struck into the lane high hedges hid the building till we were close on it. Just as we were leaving the leafy shade for the open moonlit space in front of the house Sue laid one hand on my arm, and raised the other in warning to the pair behind.

'See!' she whispered. 'Carthew is there now!'

Sure enough, fastened to the hitching post by the door was Doctor Carthew's grey pony, with the shabby chaise behind it. A light shone on the blind of the parlour window, while a brighter, unshaded gleam came from the side of the house. Sue released my arm and pointed to the latter.

'That's the scullery, close to the back door,' she whispered. 'If it's unlocked we might slip in and hear what's up in the front room.'

'Not the five of us,' I objected. 'There would be too much racket.'

She nodded assent, and instantly turned to Shone. Her resourcefulness at that moment surpassed all that she had done.

'Mr. Shone,' she said very civilly, 'I and my husband are going into the mill house. Will you and your friend stay here and see that the man you have tracked so cleverly all day doesn't run away or make the slightest noise? When we come back we'll hand the case over to you again with a full report.'

At the same time she contrived to breathe in Gray's ear, 'play up to me, doctor!'

Radford Shone stepped eagerly forward, bridling at the flattery, and happy at the prospect of once more resuming the reins. The curl of his lip showed that he deemed my wife a crank, who might yet be made to serve his turn. Gray had sense enough to accept the situation; and stood submissively between Shone and Martin.

'Got rid of the three of them!' whispered Sue, as she and I made for the scullery light. 'You'll have to take your boots off, Bill.'

I told her that I hadn't got them on. When we left home her orders had been to put on my helmet and button my tunic. I was wearing slippers at the time, I reminded her.

Sue gave me a funny little look, and then, very softly, she tried the back door. It was fast, but the scullery window alongside was slightly open. She raised the window quietly and, standing on tiptoe, inserted her arm. I saw what was the matter, and lifted her bodily to give her reach. A faint scroop followed. She had got to the key in the lock, and a moment later we were inside the house.

The mill-house was old and rambling, and the front was a long way off, but from the direction came the drone of voices. We stole down one passage, passed into a second, scarcely breathing, and so came to the door of the parlour, which was sufficiently open to yield a view of the room through the crack.

Doctor Carthew sat in an easy chair by the fire, his bald head shining within four feet of me. The stalwart Vince towered over him, in an attitude now threatening, now persuasive. On the rug, Mrs. Vance, her forbidding face the picture of health, stood by the table, on which was a tray covered with a white cloth, and on it a plate of stew and a tumble of milk.

'Twenty pun more, doc., before you do it, or we'll blow the whole gaff,' Vince was saying.

'You greedy rascal, I've given you all you asked,' came Carthew's quavering tones.

'But we've got the pull of you, doc, and mean to use it,' Vance answered him. 'Come, whack it down, and the missis shall take up the gal's supper. She's had nothing all day or yesterday, and you needn't fear but what she'll eat it fast enough.'

With a mumbled oath, Carthew produced a leather bag and counted twenty sovereigns into Vince's hand.

'You can have your way now, doctor,' said the miller, motioning to his wife, who brought forward the tray and held it before Carthew. He thrust back the nearly empty money-bag, and out came his hand again, grasping a little blue phial. Drawing the stopper, he smelt the contents and poured half of them into the tumbler of milk.

Sue plucked me by the sleeve, and I found myself in a room at the other side of the passage, just as Mrs. Vince came out of the parlour with the tray and a candle. She mounted the stairs, and when we had given her law enough we followed like cats to the landing, where the sound of her footsteps from a cross-passage told that she was climbing still higher. This was unaccountable, as there were no rooms above the first floor. We waited till the footfall ceased, and then crept cautiously round the corner.

'In the roof !' Sue whispered, pointing to a trap door to which a step-ladder ran up.

'Stay here,' I replied, and climbed quickly through the trap.

The light of the candle carried by Mrs. Vince was a long way off, and showed that the gabled roof-space not only covered the dwelling-house, but the mill itself. The extreme end, however, of the portion over the mill was boarded off, and into this partition the miller's wife was disappearing after unbolting a door.

Ten seconds later I had reached that doorway in time to hear a plaintive voice say— 'You cruel woman! You have nearly starved me!'

'Better late than never,' came the sullen answer. 'Here's some grub and some milk.'

Then I stooped and entered; and there was Miss Viola sitting on a pile of flour-bags her pretty eyes all swollen with weeping, and her hand outstretched eagerly for the tumbler.

'Don't touch it, miss! It's poisoned!' I cried.

And as those two turned and saw my uniform, the contrast on their faces was too great for words— one all glad surprise, the other gone ghastly grey with fear.

But Mrs. Vince kept her wits. Seizing the glass before I could stop her she dropped it through the open space beneath the eaves, so that it splashed with its deadly contents into. the stream below. Then with a wild laugh she fled along the roof to the trapdoor, blowing out the candle as she went, and leaving me to guide Miss Viola along the rafters in darkness.

Sue, waiting at the foot of the ladder, took charge of the half-fainting girl with a coo of delight, and informed me that Mrs. Vince had rushed downstairs.

But when we got down to the parlour there was no one there but old Doctor Carthew, sitting by the hearth and making funny noises at us, like the madman I believe he was. We went to the front door and threw it open. The three men, of whom my wife had so cleverly disposed, came running up at my call.

'There, Mr. Shone, you can take the job on again, now it's finished,' said Sue to the astounded expert. 'Don't look so glum. It wasn't altogether your fault, perhaps, since you didn't know our sweet Miss Viola as well as we do― or as Doctor Gray does, seemingly.'

For the young people were in each other's arms, and then sprang apart as a screech like that of a wounded hare sent me rushing back to the parlour. Doctor Carthew still sat in the easy chair, but his bald head had fallen back, and his sightless eyes were staring at the ceiling. Between his feet on the floor, smashed into a dozen pieces, lay the blue phial, but none of its contents.

Sue's reading of the case had been true in every particular, and so pleased was old Peter up at the Grange that his daughter had not rounded on him that he made it all right for the lovers. Philip Gray and Miss Viola are to be married in the fall.

The Vinces were never caught, but at the inquest on Carthew it came out that the woman had never been really sick, but had shammed at that old fiend's instigation. Her message to Miss Viola to come and see her was clearly a trick to make the poor girl a prisoner. The mystery of the sunshade was made plain by Miss Viola herself.

After the Vinces had laid hands on her and shut her up in the roof, she had thrown it into the stream— through the same aperture under the eaves by which Mrs. Vince had destroyed the testimony of the poisoned milk— in the hopes of making her whereabouts known.

They have made me a sergeant over the job, which means that Sue has more to do than ever. She persists in speaking of the great Radford Shone as a 'private 'tec.,' and is hoping some day to have another turn-up with one of that breed.

_____________________

5: The Granton Rubies

VAGUE RUMORS had reached us at the Netford police-office that the Duchess of Granton had lost her celebrated rubies; but as the loss, had not been reported officially I paid very little attention to the matter, thinking that if the gems had ever been lost at all they must have been speedily found. At any rate, it was no part of my duty as superintendent of the local force to go poking my nose into an affair in which our services were apparently not required.

Then, on the second day, a more precise rumour came in that the rubies were still missing, but that, rather than have recourse to the police, the duchess had sent to London for the fashionable investigator, Radford Stone, who had arrived at Granton Abbey and was conducting a rigid enquiry.

Finally, on the third day, the whole business was lifted out of the region of rumour and automatically crystallised into a police case by the tragedy of the death of Monsieur Lupin, the French tutor. It is open to any one to employ whom they like in the matter of missing property, but when human life has been filched even a duchess has no option but to call in the constituted authorities.

It was shortly after ten o'clock in the morning when the telephone summoned me to the abbey with the meagre information that the tutor was dead, and that I was wanted immediately. Taking a uniformed constable with me in the dog-cart, I quickly traversed the two miles from the town to his grace's ancestral mansion, and was at once shown into the presence of the duchess.

I was aware that the duke was in America on a shooting trip out west. Her grace, a handsome, blonde woman of thirty, received me in her boudoir, and it was easy to see at a glance that she had been shaken up rather badly. From her attitude when I entered I should say that she had been staring out over the park, but she jumped up on hearing my name announced and came forward, talking fast.

'Oh, Mr. Foster!' she began, 'the most dreadful thing has happened! My eldest boy's French tutor has been found hanging in a disused well in the apple orchard quite dead! I feel as sure as can be that it was an accident. There was no reason why he should commit suicide. He was well and cheerful last night. The idea of a murder is not to be entertained for a moment. It is preposterous!'

She spoke in little jerky sentences, her breath coming short. Her face was twitching nervously, and her fingers kept plucking at the buttons of her silk blouse.

'I can better form an opinion on that point when I have viewed the spot and talked with the doctor,' I replied. 'But your grace will pardon me— you speak as if the idea of murder had been mooted.'

'Did I?' she faltered. 'I didn't mean, to. I only thought—' Then she broke down, and, if it is permitted to use the phrase about a lady of such exalted position, looked foolish.

I tried her on a new tack.

'We have heard some gossip in the town about your grace having lost some valuable jewellery,' I said, 'and that you were having the matter investigated privately. I don't want to pry into what may be only kitchen talk, but I need not remind you that if there has been a robbery it may have some bearing on tins gentleman's death. In justice to everyone you ought to give us all your confidence.'

'The two cases are absolutely distinct. Mr. Foster, yet—' she faltered, and then went on as though impelled against her will, 'Yes, this affair of poor Lupin has made concealment impossible. I had hoped to hush it up, but that is out of the question now. It is true that my rubies are lost, and that I sent for Mr. Radford Shone to find them.'

'Is he at the abbey now?' I hazarded.

'In another room, waiting to see you, and full of a theory which I beg you to disregard,' the duchess replied pleadingly. 'He is so convinced that he is right that he insists on imparting his views to you; otherwise I tell you frankly that I should not have put the idea of murder into your head.'

'Your grace, it seems, has lost confidence in Mr. Shone?'

The duchess looked down and hesitated, toying with those blouse buttons so violently, that I expected them to come off.

'N-o-o— not exactly,' she said at last. 'On the contrary I believe him to be very clever. But I know— that is, I feel certain— that he has been misled about the cause of Lupin's death.'

'Has he found the rubies?'

'Not yet. He thinks he has a clue— at least, he suspects someone in whose innocence I believe firmly. But there! I have not patience to discuss it. You would never have heard of Shone's idea if it had not been for this calamitous death of the tutor. As it is, there is no help for it. You had better see Mr. Shone at once and hear what he has to say.'

She touched a bell, and a footman came to conduct me to the room where the eminent investigator awaited me. As I passed through the corridors I could not resist an inward chuckle at the irony of fate which had driven the duchess to employ the costly aid of a private expert, and then to have to beseech the police to treat him with contempt. For, practically, that was what her vehement disclaimer of his theory amounted to.

The servant showed me into a small library where two men were sitting, one on either side of the hearth. The tallest, a clean-shaven fellow with curious cod-fish eyes, jumped up at my entrance; the other, who was stout and stolid, retained his seat and surveyed me with lazy insolence. It was not intended to reach my ears, but I distinctly heard him mutter:―

'The usual type of provincial copper, Shone. Plenty of zeal, but limited intelligence. A nice mess he'd have made of it if you hadn't been here.'

The tall man took no notice; but advanced to meet me, his protuberant eyes making play on my face with what struck me as affected keenness. It was as though he wished to impress me with his powers of insight that he was summing me up and probably finding me deficient.

'I am Radford Shone― you will have heard of me,' he began in a strident, high-pitched voice. 'You will be Superintendent— er— Foster? Well, as this jewel robbery on which I have been engaged has devolved into a case of murder, you will have to take charge, but you can have the benefit of my notes. They will enable you to arrest your prisoner within an hour. '

'That will be very convenient,' I replied. 'It is my duty to view the body and go over the ground as soon as possible, but I shall be glad to hear the opinion you have formed. The duchess hinted—'

Mr. Radford Shone checked me with a wave of his long, bony hand.

'The duchess!' he snorted. 'Her grace is the most impossible client I have ever had. She employs me, sir, to recover her rubies, and then, when I am on the point of adding another to my long list of achievements, she— what's the word, Martin?' he turned angrily to the stout man in the chair.

'Flouts you,' was the response, in a tone almost awe-struck.

'Flouts me,' snapped Shone, affecting an explanation and an introduction in one and added, 'Mr. Samuel Martin, my literary help-meet and — er—'

'Advertising agent?' I could not resist mildly suggesting, for somehow this man chafed me with his airs of superiority.

'Historian,' Shone corrected me in turn with a scowl. 'As I was saying, the duchess declines to accept my theory— flouts me, as Martin puts it— because my discoveries run counter to her personal regards and will hang the son of her pet parson. Here it is in a nut-shell.'

The expert swung himself on to the table, and sat there, dangling his long legs while he plunged into his narrative. Martin watched him with a strange mixture of nervousness and adoration. And I— well, I am only an official, and no genius, as you know, so I simply listened.

On the previous day, in response to an urgent wire, Shone had arrived at the abbey about noon, had been informed by the duchess that the rubies, which she kept in a locked drawer in her sleeping apartment were missing, and had at once started his investigation by questioning her grace's maid. This woman, by name Larraway, informed him that she had seen the duchess place the rubies in the drawer three days since and lock it with a key which she wore night and day on a chain round her neck. Larraway had also been present that morning when the duchess had unlocked the drawer and had discovered that the gems were missing. The lock had not been tampered with and the key had never left the duchess's person, so Shone naturally concluded that a false or skeleton key had been used to open the drawer.

From the maid he had turned his attention to the other inmates of the abbey, but without being able to connect any of them directly with the robbery. Direct evidence not being available he had searched for that of the circumstantial kind, and had elicited the fact that the governess of the younger children, Miss Madeleine Percival, had a lover in the impecunious son of the vicar of the parish. The young people had recently become engaged, but without any prospect of an early marriage. There was, of course, no proof of the crime in this, but is had fixed the attention of Shone on Miss Percival, and from his own showing he must have handled her pretty severely:— so much so that the girl seemed to have lost control of her temper. Though he didn't, say so, I ascertained afterwards that she had called him all kinds of fool, which must have been galling to a person of his eminence.

Compensation, however, was in store for him, from the mouth of the very next witness he examined— Lupin, the French tutor. This individual, pressed hard by Shone, had furnished, with every show of reluctance, a clue confirming the expert's suspicions. Two nights previously he had been sitting late, at his bedroom window, after putting out his light, to smoke a final cigarette. Suddenly he had seen a man, whom he had recognised in the moonbeams as Harold Sterling, the vicar's son, creep from a shrubbery and station himself under Miss Percival's window in the opposite, wing. In a little while Lupin had seen the governess open her window softly and throw down a small parcel, with which young Sterling made off.

'And what more do you want?' Shone demanded, rolling his eyes as if he suspected me of collusion with the thieves.

'Getting warm' I admitted, none too readily; for I liked Harold Sterling, and had sympathised with his lack of prospect— still more with the cause. He had thrown up a good billet in the city to go out to the war with the Yeomanry, and had not been reinstated.

'Warm!' Shone flung at me with a sniff of contempt. 'I call it conclusive. Well, I had the governess in to explain matters to the duchess. The minx met me with a flat denial of the truth of Lupin's story. I sent over for young Sterling and confronted him with the Frenchman in the presence of the duchess. Martin and I had to fling ourselves on him to prevent his flying at the tutor's throat. And then her grace tops it all by believing the precious pair of lovebirds, refuses to prosecute and orders me to begin all over again. And now,' Shone added, after an impressive pause, 'this morning Lupin is found hanging in the old well, and willy-nilly you have to come into the business. A clearer case of murder for the double motive of revenge and of putting out of the way an inconvenient witness never came my way.'

It is not for a police-officer to express opinions, but if I had spoken my mind I should have been bound to admit that on the face of it things looked pretty black against the vicar's son— for the murder, as apart from the robbery. For, knowing the boy as I did, I thought it possible that he might have been betrayed into a violent deed of revenge for a false accusation against his sweetheart and himself in respect of a mean theft, of which they knew themselves innocent.

'Well,' said I, 'it is my duty to see the body first, and the place where it was found. Then, just as a matter of official form, I shall have to verify the evidence which you have collected.'

Muttering something about 'infernal red tape,' Shone swung himself off the table and, followed by his portly henchman and myself, led the way to the stable where the remains of the tutor had been temporarily housed.

The doctor, who had come out on a motorcar, had already finished his examination, and met us on the threshold. His first statement was important. He had viewed the body at half past ten; life had then been extinct for over eight and less than ten hours, proving that death must have taken place between midnight and two in the morning. No need to dwell on the next gruesome five minutes.

We were all glad to reach the sunlit stable-yard again. Shone, in his eagerness to lead the way to the well, stalked ahead with Martin panting at his heels, Dr. Rentoul and I bringing up the rear. This arrangement enabled me to put a whispered question to my old friend the doctor, and to receive his whispered reply—

'The immediate cause of death was strangulation— not a broken neck.'

'Did he ask you that?' I murmured under my breath, with a jerk of my thumb to the hurrying figure ahead.

The doctor cocked his eye at me sideways, shaking his head and making a wry face.

'Not he,' he replied in the same undertone. 'Too big for such a mere detail, I expect.'

We soon came to the orchard, in the far corner of which, amid a tangle of nettles and crumbling brickwork, stood a windlass over the old well. The place was all trampled by the searchers, who had rushed to the scene when one of their party had raised the alarm that the rope had run out from the drum and that something heavy was at the end.

On the ground, just as it had been cast, aside, lay the noose that had been cut from the dead man's neck the moment the body had been hauled up. The rope having been severed with a knife, the knot was intact. I was examining it with interest, when Shone uttered a shrill little cry:—

'Here comes your prisoner, superintendent. He means bluff, by the look of him; but I have given you your case.'

From a wicket-gate in the orchard hedge a young man in flannels and straw hat was coming towards us. The blue wreaths from his briar pipe framed a sun-browned face, tense with something more than curiosity. It was Harold Sterling, and I could have wished him anywhere else just then.

'Morning, Foster,' he said in his breezy way as he reached us. 'Glad to see a responsible officer at last. What do you make of Lupin's latest achievement? Hanged himself from remorse because he'd brought a false charge against honest folk, eh?'

Shone kept nudging me, whispering quite audibly:— 'In fairness; you ought to warn him that anything he says will be used—'

'At my trial for theft and murder, eh, Mr. Radford Shone?' the young man interrupted him. 'I don't think so, if Superintendent Foster is the same keen old fox of a Foster I've known since I was a boy. Possibly there will be a police court case of assault if you are not very careful.'

'Come, come, Mr. Harold,' I interposed, 'You won't make matters easier for any of us by talking that way. I'll have a private chat with you presently. Just now I want to look at this well.'

I could see that Radford Shone was inwardly fuming at my not acting on the strength of his information and arresting young Sterling there and then. But, taking no notice of him for the moment, I closely examined the brick parapet round the well, and peered down the circular shaft as far as the daylight served to show the walls of the abyss. Both on the surface of the parapet and in the interior of the well the bricks were uneven with age, but there were no traces of recent displacement, as there would have been had there been a struggle on the brink.

I drew Shone aside and pointed this out to him. He smiled superior.

'My good sir,' he said, 'I never suggested that there was a struggle on the top. I maintain that the noose was placed round the deceased's neck up here in the orchard, and afterwards pulled tight. He was probably dead when he was thrown over.'

I gazed round rather helplessly, for the trampling of the search-party had destroyed any possible traces of a struggle in the long grass, and Shone's theory took the force out of an argument which I had been hoping to twist favourably for Mr. Harold.

'Here, you. Is there any water in the well?' I demanded of a couple of stable-men who had lounged up.

'Hasn't been any for years,' was the reply.

I thought for a minute, and then I went and looked at the rope on the windlass. It was old, of course; but, being protected from rain by a wooden hood, it was sound enough. I unwound the end a few feet and looped it into a slip-knot. Shone's jealous eyes watched my every action.

'Going to hang yourself?' he asked in the sneering tone that must have made him a friendless man.

'I am going down the well,' I answered him curtly. 'And you, Mr. Sterling, will be good enough to lower me with a due regard for my wife and family. It will keep you from being quarrelsome while I am below.'

'But,' protested Mr. Radford Shone, glancing significantly at the uniformed constable who had now stabled his horse and joined us, 'are you not―?' He made a motion as of putting on handcuffs.

'Not yet,' I said shortly. 'There is no evidence of murder against anyone. I am going down to look for it. Now then, Mr. Sterling, stand-by to lower me, please, and let it be very slowly.'

Fitting the slip-knot under my armpits I waited till Sterling had taken his place at the windlass, and then swung myself over the brink. I had a box of wax-vestas in my hand, and lit them in succession as I sank lower and lower into the gloomy depths. The shaft was very narrow, and all marks on the decaying brickwork were plainly visible, even by the light of my feeble illuminant ; but there was no sign of any great disturbance till I had reached a point forty feet down. There my match showed me several blanks on both sides of the well, the gaps in the walls gleaming red at the moss-grown edges, as though the bricks had. been recently broken by violence, and had been hurled into the abyss below.

Thirty feet lower I touched ground, and slipped out of the knotted rope. There was no water, but the bottom was, covered with a couple of inches of slimy mud, so stiff in consistency that footprints would have shown plainly. None such were visible Here and there the broken bricks displaced from above lay smothered in the ooze. Keeping my own feet firmly planted in their original position so as not to create a false trail, I lit a fresh match and looked for other traces. The flame had nearly burnt to my fingers when I caught sight of a brown-paper parcel embedded in the mud, and so similar in colour that it had escaped my first observation. Throwing aside the match and careful not to light another, I groped in the darkness for the package, and, having secured it, glanced intuitively upwards.

Far above me, seen as through the wrong end of a telescope, the heads of Radford Shone and Martin were craning over the brink. But I knew that down there in the inky blackness of the nether pit, I was invisible to them, and it was the work of a few seconds to undo the parcel and stow the contents in my various pockets. Then, after a last look round by the light of another match, I shouted the word to haul me up.

Shone eyed me curiously as I stopped the parapet and scrambled to solid ground. I am no adept at hiding my emotions, and something in my face may have presaged important discoveries. It was, however, to Harold Sterling, mopping his brow alter his exertions, that I turned.

'I am very sorry, Mr. Sterling, but for the present I must ask you to consider yourself detained on suspicion,' I said. 'I need, hardly say that I hope there will be some explanation— after we have seen her grace.'

The young man's features hardened; in ten seconds he seemed to have grown as many years older.

'You don't mention the charge,' he said in a voice cold and stern, but without a tremor. 'Is it theft or murder?'

'For the present there is no charge, but you are detained on suspicion of receiving the duchess of Granton's rubies,' I replied.

'Very well, Foster. Have it your own way,' he said in a milder tone, after reading the friendly sympathy in my eyes. 'I will go quietly with you. That is the correct phrase, I believe.'

Radford Shone's indefatigable historian had pulled out a note-book and was writing busily in it as we all moved off towards the abbey. Shone himself ranged up alongside me, and with a wary eye for the suspect, from whom my bulky form separated him.

'You seem to have worked wonders below there in establishing the correctness of my contentions,' he whispered. 'Confirmed all my deductions, eh?'

'I have confirmed one of them,' I answered, without troubling to lower my voice.

'Ah, then you have as good as confirmed them all. The murder charge will follow, as night follows day. But you are not communicative, after the valuable assistance I have given you.'

'I haven't much wind for communications after going down that well,' I replied abruptly.'

Shone fell back and joined Martin, and I heard him use the phrase 'official jealousy,' as if he were dictating a new line for his literary adviser's chronicle. Our way from the orchard led us by a flight of stone steps to a broad terrace, where a plainly dressed but sweet-looking girl was walking with two little maids of seven and eight. Till this trouble arose I had not known her by name, but only by right as the governess at the abbey. She grew pale on seeing the little procession with its sprinkling of police uniforms, but she slightly quickened her pace, stepping firmly enough to meet us.

'What is it, Harold?' she said. 'Have the police believed that wretched lie?'

'It seems so; I am in the anomalous position of being detained on suspicion without being actually in custody,' Sterling replied, with a queer laugh.

'As the result of Lupin's testimony to Mr. Radford Shone?' the girl proceeded, shifting her steadfast gaze from her lover to me.

'Entirely as a result of that,' I made answer.

'And I regret to have—'

'To place me in the same anomalous position as Mr. Sterling?' Miss Percival took the words out of my mouth. 'That is quite as it should be, for if you are relying on the paper parcel story. I am concerned as deeply as he is. What are you going to do with us, sir?'

'I was about to lay the matter before her grace; if you will be. so good as to accompany us, we shall be the nearer to clearing it up.'

The toady Martin began to mutter to his chief; 'What's the numskull shilly-shallying for— why's he so civil to 'em?'

But Shone was silent. I think that his superior intelligence grasped that I had carried the case into regions beyond his ken.

Miss Percival turned and joined us, and, when we had all passed into the mansion, bade her puzzled charges run away to the nursery. At my request one of the footmen hovering in the entrance-hall went to inform the duchess of my wish to see her, and she did not keep us waiting long. In less than a minute we heard the swish of her dress, and then she appeared on the first landing of the grand staircase.

She paused and uttered a little cry as she saw Sterling and Miss Percival at my side; then she ran down, two steps at a time, and flung open the dining-room door.

'In here, please― all of you,' she said in a strained voice.

We followed her in and faced her, as she stood with one hand resting on the white draped table and the other plucking more nervously than ever at the buttons of her pretty silk blouse.

'What does this mean, Mr. Foster?' she demanded. 'Surely you have not arrested those two after what I said to you this morning?'

'They are not under arrest at present, your grace,' I replied. 'But I have verified an important detail of the case as formulated by Mr. Radford Shone, and unless there is any explanation it will be my painful duty to bring them before the magistrates. Here are your grace's rubies. I found them in a paper parcel at the bottom of the well.'

With which I produced the gems from my pockets, spreading them in all their blinking splendour on the damask tablecloth, and placing at their side the paper and string with which they had been packed.

Radford Shone and Martin emitted gratified chuckles.

'The parcel theory, your grace will perceive, is justified,' Shone purred unctuously. 'It was because of the information that I extracted from the unfortunate Lupin that these persons are detained on suspicion, Mr. Foster?'

'Without that there would be absolutely nothing against either of them,' I replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

Shone beamed all round. He even looked at Sterling and the governess, as though claiming their applause. Martin wrote in his notebook at furious speed. The two young people on either side of me exchanged glances in which a dawning apprehension could be discerned. Then, suddenly, peal after peal of half-hysterical laughter rang through the room. It came from the duchess, who was nearly exhausted before she mastered herself and said:—

'Mr. Foster, you must take me into custody if you take anybody. That is, for the robbery of my rubies— not for the murder of the tutor.'

'There has been no murder. Lupin's death was due to accident. There is indisputable evidence that he was alive when he descended the well.' I interposed.

'Thank God for that!' her grace proceeded. 'As for the rubies, I did them up in the parcel and threw them down the well myself. You will never guess why— except that it was the act of a very foolish woman who would never have confessed her folly but for the danger which it has brought Madeleine Percival and Harold Sterling. I suppose that to satisfy you I must tell you why I did this silly thing.'

'If your grace pleases.'

'l am tired of bridge― that's all,' she went on, turning her troubled face from one to the other of us. 'I am a martyr to the latest fashionable craze, whatever it may be, and I thought it would be good fun to have Mr. Redford Shone down to the abbey and set him a nut to crack. But I never dreamed of his making such mischief as this.'

'Madam! Your grace!' Shone began to splutter, but the duchess checked him with a gesture.

'I do not blame you, sir, for your credulity in accepting the dead man's spiteful tale, ' she went on. 'I blame myself entirely— nay, I shall never forgive myself— for subjecting you to a test too strong for your powers, and I shall see that you do not suffer financially for an error that is more humiliating to myself than to you.'

A movement behind caused me to look round. The expert and his chronicler could stand no more. Muttering together, and with their very backs eloquent of indignation, the pair were hurrying to the door. When it had closed on them, the duchess tearfully begged forgiveness for the consequences of her whim.

'Of course I ought to have confessed directly Lupin hatched that false evidence,' she faltered. 'But I trusted to my position to overawe Shone into accepting my assurance of your innocence, deferring my explanation till to-day to see what he would do next. Then Lupin's death and the calling in of the police upset all my calculations, and frightened me.'

The lovers forgave her very prettily, losing, I have reason to believe, nothing in the end by the annoyance they had suffered.

Then everyone turned to me for explanations.

I told them that from the first I had no faith in the story that had misled Shone, and that I had descended the well in the hope of proving that Lupin had gone down of his own accord. In this I had been fully justified, my scrutiny of the brickwork convincing me that, having no one to lower him, he had used his feet on the sides of the well, after looping a noose under one of his arms. When he was forty feet down the rope had hitched on the windlass, and the noose, slipping to his neck, had strangled him, the broken bricks showing the marks of his frantic efforts to gain a foothold. Having guessed that he had been killed accidently while endeavouring to secure the rubies for himself I was not surprised to find them at the bottom.

'I had a sort of consciousness that someone was watching me while I threw the parcel down,' said the duchess. 'But what,' she added, smiling faintly for the first time during the interview, 'made you guess so many things, Mr. Foster?'

'Your grace's pardon, but it was your manner this morning. It didn't require a toy detective to see that you were the guilty party,' I replied with deep respect.

_________________

6:  The Tenth Green

IT MUST NOT be taken as a reflection on the Loamshire police that the chief constable of that charming county applied to Scotland Yard for assistance in unravelling the Chetwynd case. The gallant gentleman foresaw from the first that complications touching certain local personages and interests might arise, which would stand a better chance of satisfactory treatment by a man who could approach them from a detached point of view. And it is but fair to place it on record that from start to finish Superintendent Williams and his merry men gave me their cordial co-operation without a trace of professional jealousy.

Williams was on the platform of Honiford station when my train steamed in. The only thing about him that I had cause to quarrel with was his voice, which might very well have brought Colonel Chetwynd back to life.

'Inspector Peters, from Scotland Yard!' he shouted as I descended from my compartment, thereby disclosing my business to all and sundry. That, however, was the limit of his indiscretion, and I will pay him the compliment of saying that the way he put the case before me was a masterpiece of lucidity. This was the story which he un folded as we drove through a network of country lanes to the scene of my labours.

On the previous day Colonel Chetwynd, a local magnate and justice of the peace, had arrived at the club-house of the East Loamshire Golf Club shortly after mid-day, intending to lunch by appointment, with his friend, General Appleyard, with whom he had arranged to play a match during the afternoon. But Appleyard, for domestic reasons since satisfactorily explained, had failed to put in an appearance, and the colonel, having eaten his lunch in high dudgeon, had expressed to other members present his intention of going round the links alone for a solitary practice.

'By the way, you understand the game?' the superintendent interjected, half turning to me from his seat in the dogcart.

I was compelled to plead guilty to the indictment.

'Ah, well,' he sighed as though condoning a fault, 'there isn't much about play in it, but you will understand the few necessary technical terms. I had to learn 'em myself in a hurry yesterday.'

He resumed his story from the mouths of witnesses, who had described to him how Colonel Chetwynd had stumped out of the club-house, and how, on being approached by Raffles, the grown-up caddie whom he generally employed, he had dismissed the man in highly-peppered language, stating that he would carry what few clubs he needed himself. He had then started out alone, the first of the members to leave the building after lunch. Following him at a brief interval, the Messrs. Wilson Neil and Everard Neil, father and son, had gone out for a game, the last-named being, the superintendent informed me in a whisper, the unauthorised lover of Miss Mona Chetwynd, the colonel's only daughter. These two gentlemen had also been unattended by caddies. Lastly, after a further interval, there had started out a foursome of lady members, one of whom was Mona Chetwynd.

At this point in Williams' disclosures we emerged from a steep, up-climbing road into a glorious expanse of heather-clad moorland with a peep of the sea beyond. A little ahead of us was a modern red brick building, flanked by a tall flag-post, with its gaudy bunting drooping at half-mast. This was evidently the headquarters of the East Loamshire Golf Club. Beyond, a hint of emerald here and there in the nearer and farther distances showed the greens and trees of the renowned course.

But the local man was nearing the end of his story. On approaching the tenth green, which was hidden from the tee by rising ground and an artificial bunker, the ladies were horrified to find Colonel Chetwynd lying dead on the green. He had been the victim of ferocious violence, his head having been battered almost out of recognition.

The two Neils, visible some distance ahead, must have passed the green only a few minutes before, but, recalled by the shrieks of the ladies, expressed horror and surprise, avowing that the colonel's body had not been there when they had been 'putting' on the green so recently.

They had believed him either to be a long way ahead, hidden by the undulations of the course, or to have abandoned his practice and gone home. The superintendent said not a word to influence my suspicions, but I saw an ugly time coming for the two Neils if the murder was never brought home to anyone. If nothing worse happened, fingers would be pointed and heads wagged at them; for, as I soon learned in the village, relations had been so strained between the elder Neil and the Colonel that the latter had forbidden his daughter to have anything to do with Everard Neil.

'Well, that is all,' said Williams, as he got down from the trap at the door of the club-house and gave the reins to the constable who bad accompanied us..

'Except that there'll be another Richmond in the field, unless you make an arrest very shortly. Mr. John Chetwynd— that's the colonel's brother and executor— has sworn to call in Radford Shone if the police can't do the trick. Now, would you wish to see the club steward first, or visit the ground? Come along, then; I'll show you round the links.'

I spent three days in the village, pushing my enquiries by methods which by the readers of detective fiction would be regarded as commonplace and dreary, and which shall therefore be omitted here. Though I had formed certain theories I had not seen my way clear to an arrest , and when, on the fourth day, I started out after an early breakfast to pay yet one more visit to the scene of the crime, I was beginning to wonder how soon I should have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Radford Shone.

I had had occasion to call on John Chetwynd, who had assumed the reins of government at the Grange and he had confirmed my friend Williams's statement as to his intention to invoke Shone's aid in the event of my efforts not being speedily successful.

Mr. John Chetwynd, a plethoric little merchant from Mincing-lane, must have been an exact replica of his irascible brother. He spouted fury on the dilatoriness of the police, and laughed Scotland Yard to scorn. I had heard the same sort of thing before, but of course I listened with all due deference, expressing perfect willingness to collaborate with Mr. Radford Shone if he came down. In this I was quite sincere, for I had never yet met the great criminal expert whose marvellous powers of deduction had made him almost a cult amongst moneyed people with secrets to find out. In six months he had become the talk of the town, as the result of his recovery of the duchess of Wilford's jewels— a case which was hushed up before it reached the courts, and with which I myself had no official connection.

My way from my lodgings to the scene of the Colonel's death led me along the switchback crest of the breezy down, amid the succession of tees, bunkers, and greens that formed the East Loamshire golf course. I had left the tenth tee behind and was climbing the slope towards the bunker, a turf bank with gaps for the passage of the players— when I heard voices beyond, and sure enough, on passing through one of the gaps I saw a party of three gentlemen on the green below at the spot which during the past three days had been the focus of my work.

The short stubby one in breeches and gaiters I recognised as Mr. John Chetwynd, the murdered man's brother. He was standing aloof from the other two, his figure thrown into relief by a sombre larch grove to the right of the green. The next one to fill the eye was a tall, loose-jointed man in city clothes, who was very slowly crawling, ventre-a-terre, across the green like a gigantic earth-worm taking an airing. The third was a stout, smooth-faced young man, also wearing the silk hat and velvet-collared overcoat of the town dweller, who with clasped hands seemed to be ecstatically following the serpentine wrigglings of the prone figure, I went down to them over the 'approach,' tricky by reason of the stunted heather.

'Ah, here is Inspector Peters,' cried Mr. Chetwynd. 'Now you will—'

But the man on his stomach twisted round and shook his head reprovingly, while the fat gentleman in his wake held up a warning finger. So I halted in my tracks till, some three minutes later, Mr. Radford Shone saw fit to rise to his feet, pocketing the lens with which he had been examining the ground.

Mr. Chetwynd introduced us formally, also the other man, whose name he gave as Mr. Samuel Martin. There was an ingenuous honesty and earnestness about Mr. Martin which endeared him to me there and then. That, by-the-way, for Mr. Radford Shone naturally claimed my chief attention.

Running the measure of my eye over his lean face I was at once struck by the singular mobility of his protuberant eyes. I had expected something of what fictionists call 'latent fire' in the eyes of the celebrated expert, which would probably be deep-set in cavernous sockets; but Mr. Shone's orbs were like large glass marbles, never still for a moment, rolling and goggling after the fashion of transparency advertisements on the underground railway. His skin was sallow and none too healthy-looking, and I wondered how those spindly arms and legs would serve him in a rough-and-tumble with an ugly customer. But, after all, it was his brain that I was most concerned with, and he was not long in giving me a sample of its quality.

'Well, inspector,' he began in a high-pitched key, after he had extended a thin, nervous hand for me to shake, 'still groping in the dark, eh?'

'Still groping,' I assented with a laugh. 'But you have had better luck, I trust, Mr. Shone?'

'Do you hear that, Martin?' he said, turning on his stout friend so suddenly as to make him jump. 'Can you be surprised at the failures of the official executive when one of their principal men talks about luck in connection with a simple case like this?'

'Very crass,' I heard Mr. Martin murmur in response. He plainly did not intend the remark to reach my ears, but Shone gave him away ruthlessly by repeating loudly— 'Crass indeed! You are merciful in your phrases, Martin, and just a little silly. I should have issued quite another word if I had wanted to be rude — honestly rude— to Inspector Peters.' And he cold-shouldered his crest-fallen follower in order to pulverise me still further.

'Luck, Mr. Peters,' he said, 'does not belong to the equipment of the skilled investigator, and I use the word skilled as distinct from the term experienced. A man may have all the experience in the world and yet be devoid of skill. Now I will give you a lesson in what I mean. Do you see those two mole-hills, one on either side of the green?'

'Yes,' I answered curtly, for I was beginning to be nettled by his discourteous assumption of superiority.

'Good!' he proceeded. 'Exactly between those two mole-hills, at a spot in the middle of the green, I hope to find confirmation of the only logical explanation of Colonel Chetwynd's death. Martin!'

The stout young man, who had been drinking in his words, stepped forward.

'What is it, Shone?' he asked nervously. 'This is one of the rare occasions when brute strength may come to the aid— the supplementary aid— of the art of subtle deduction. Down on your hands and knees, my friend, and tear up the turf along the line I shall indicate— here, and here, and here.'

He pointed with his skinny forefinger to the ground, and Mr. Samuel Martin panting with responsibility, fell upon his allotted task.

Mr. John Chetwynd, who had not ceased to glare balefully at me, drew nearer, and I myself, impelled by a genuine curiosity, followed suit. Mr. Radford Shone's detective methods were certainly impressive to my workaday mind, and there was no reason why they should not be brilliant. In other words, they might arrive by a short cut at the result for which I had been striving in my plodding way through three days and a half.

Martin grubbed and tore at the turf, his jelly bag cheeks shaking with excitement, and then, suddenly, Radford, Shone gave him pause, pushing him unceremoniously aside, and flinging himself down at the spot where the last sod in the mole track had been turned. For a long time he remained flat on the ground, examining the uncovered 'run' with his lens. Then he rose with an air of assured triumph, the tails of his frock coat fluttering in the breeze from the sea.

'Martin?' he said, his thin lips curling in a satisfied smile, 'you remember my monograph on the habits and customs of the mole― the talpa europoea of the ancients?'

'Oh, yes, I read it— splendid,' Mr. Martin replied, picking the earth from his fingernails. You proved, I think— that there, I really forget what you didn't prove. They are funny little beggars. I knew I gathered that.'

'It is something to learn that you gathered anything,' was Mr. Shone's severe verdict on the fatuous remark. And with incredible swiftness he shifted the gaze of these prominent eyeballs to me.

'Inspector Peters,' he addressed me impressively, 'the object lesson which I promised you is complete, and it has led up to the axiom never to despise apparently immaterial things. The knowledge, long since acquired, of the way of the little four-footed animal whose track lay under the green has furnished a clue pointing straight to the murderer of Colonel Chetwynd. It is now ten o'clock in the morning. If you will call upon me at eight this evening, at the King's Arms, I shall be in a position to enable you to arrest the culprit.'

The three moved away, leaving me planted on the green and feeling several sizes smaller in my own estimation. Shone was so assured of success that I could not but believe that by some marvellous method of deduction he had arrived at the same conclusion as myself, but that, unlike myself, he had discovered the means of proving it. It galled me intensely, for my own chain of evidence only lacked one little link to change suspicion into certainty. And Mr. Radford Shone's genius must have soared above ordinary details, for I had observed that he had not once looked in the direction of the larch grove, which to my humbler intelligence had been a source of lively interest.

Returning to the village I spent the morning in a search for the missing link, and then, after a hasty lunch, I left the cottage where I had secured a lodging and strolled up the main street to call on the doctor who had made the autopsy. Having obtained from this gentleman a few additional points as to the injuries of the deceased.

I had just quitted his house in somewhat of a brown study when I heard my name called softly from behind. Wheeling round, I was confronted by a tall girl, dressed in deep morning and heavily veiled. ''

'May I walk a little way with you?'' she said in a voice quivering with emotion. 'I am Mona Chetwynd, and oh, Mr. Peters, I am in such trouble!'

She raised her veil as she spoke, and in the beautiful, anguished eyes I read a grief greater than for the loss of her father. It was more than grief— a haunting dread as well― that searched my face so pleadingly as she preferred her request.

'By all means let us walk together, Miss Chetwynd,' I replied. 'And you may count on me for any assistance that I can render without a breach of duty, for you know, I presume, that I am a police officer?'

'Oh, yes, I know that; it is why I want to speak to you,' the girl faltered as she paced at my side. Then suddenly she looked un at me. 'You don't believe it, do you Mr. Peters, that Everard Neil and his father killed papa?' she asked. 'You are not really going to arrest him to-night?'

'Who says so?' I demanded, with official, caution.

'That wretch, Radford Shone, in whom Uncle John is so— what shall I call it— wrapped up,' Miss Chetwynd replied. 'Mr. Shone was at the Grange this morning, and put questions to me which showed plainly that he thought Everard guilty, and afterwards— was it very wrong, Mr. Peters?— I listened at the door of the study. They said dreadful things about you— that you were an idiot and a bungler, but that you would have no option but to arrest my lover after something they were going to do to-day. Then they all talked at once, and I could make no more sense of it.'

'Hush,' I said, noticing women coming to their cottage doors to listen. 'What is it you wish me to do, Miss Chetwynd?'

'To tell me that Radford Shone is mistaken, and that my dear, good Everard is in no danger of such a horrible indignity,' was the reply.

I comforted her as best I could, but it was not possible for me to give her any real assurances, much as I longed to do so.

'We must hope that Mr. Shone, for all his great reputation, is not infallible,' I concluded lamely.

I think that she recognised that I was friendly, if more or less incapable; for she heard me with several impatient little nods, and held out her hand abruptly.

'Go and see Everard Neil,' she said, drawing her veil over the tear-stained eyes. 'You won't find him quite that sort of man, Mr. Peters.'

And she whisked round and was off up the village street before I had time to tell her that I was then on my way to call on the Neils— father and son.

And, mere rough-hewn product of 'the Yard' as I am, I chuckled a little at the simplicity of that country maiden in trying to pit me against the eminent person who had called me idiot and bungler.

That battle was already set, and his abusive epithets could not add to my desire to be beforehand with him. The trouble was that the day was slipping away and the vital link in the chain, which should give me the pull over him, was still unfounded.

The Neil's house was at the end of the village, a pretty, ivy-clad cottage residence set back form the road under shady trees. It is not to be supposed that this was my first interview with two such important factors in the case, and there was therefore no need for introductions when I was shown inter, their cosy smoking-room. Mr. Neil, senior, a spare elderly man with scanty iron-grey hair, uttered a harsh laugh, on my entrance.

'Got your warrant, inspector?' he blurted out, with a curious glance at his son. Everard Neil, who had been supporting his well-knit inches against the mantelpiece flushed angrily and straightened himself.

'No, gentlemen; I have got no warrants yet,' I said significantly. 'But I am promised a complete case this evening, in which event I shall have to apply for one. Mr. John Chetwynd has placed at my disposal the valuable assistance of Mr. Radford Shone.'

The two exchanged glances.

'That accounts for it,' I heard the elder man mutter under his breath, and I guessed to what he referred. I was already aware that he had been 'cut' by Mr. Chetwynd and other members of the club-house on the links since my encounter with Shone in the morning.

'Well, what do you want of us, inspector?' said Everard, taking a step forward. 'My father, as you see, has been upset by― by something that has occurred ; and, to tell you the truth, I am not in the mood to be civil to you. But if we can supplement our evidence we shall be glad to do so. Without incriminating ourselves— having it taken down and used against us,' he added, with a jerky laugh that was singularly like the elder man's.

'We have not reached that stage ' I answered drily. 'The object of my call is to ask if Mr. Radford Shone has been here. I thought it likely.'

'No; and he had better, keep away if he values his hide,' growled Neil the elder, taking upon himself to reply; and I noticed that he glanced intuitively at a range of hunting crops on the wall. As a player myself, I recognised the temper of the futile golfer in Mr. Wilson Neil's lack of restraint. And lack of restraint is sometimes useful to men of my profession— when the lack is on the other side.

Young Everard checked his irate sire with a click of the tongue and a frown that did not entirely hide the affection behind it.

'Look here, dad,' he said hurriedly, 'you and I had better keep a stiff upper lip.' Then he turned to me and added:— 'Is your colleague Radford Shone an adept at disguise?'

'I understand that he is up to most of the tricks of the game,' I said. 'But why do you ask?'

'Because a fellow called here half an hour ago, and represented that he was a new professional up at the golf links— said he had come to see if we wanted any clubs repaired. We gave him a couple to mend.'

'Thank you,' I replied. 'That was all I wanted to learn.'

And I made as though to depart, Everard Neil accompanied me to the door and showed me out, all stiffly starched till we got to the porch. Then he suddenly thrust out his hand, and a faint smile creased his handsome, worried face.

'Good-bye, Mr. Peters,' he said. 'Or perhaps I ought to say au revoir, as you expect to return fortified with a warrant.'

But I did not take his hand, it being no part of my duty to be familiar with a young gentleman who was like to loom so largely in the criminal annals of the country. I only bade him a civil good-day, and took myself off to the outskirts of the village.

Having passed the intervening hours as profitably as I knew how, I repaired to the King's Arms punctually at eight o'clock. Mr. Radford Shone had secured the use of the one private sitting-room that the inn boasted, and there I found him, pacing to and fro while he held forth to his friend Martin. He broke off on my entrance, and folding his arms across his chest, surveyed me slowly from head to foot.

'I don't know what you call the pay they give you, Inspector Peters— whether salary, or stipend, or wages— but when you go to draw it next; I hope that you will do so with a becoming sense of modesty. I have found your murderer for you. But sit down, man. Martin, set a chair for the officer. He must be tired after his superhuman exertions.'

The great expert's stout henchman blundered forward with a chair, but I waved it aside.'

'I cannot stay long,' I said. 'If your labours are over, Mr. Shone, there remains much for me to do. May I ask you to favour me with your results as speedily as possible?'

Shone seated himself on the table, one skinny leg curled up and the other swinging.

'That is the great fault of the official detective,' he said judicially. 'Your artistic sense, if you ever had any, is blunted. Your thoughts are all for the gross materialism of the handcuffs, without heeding how to place them on the right wrists. Well, Mr. Peters, you will be interested to hear that my little four-footed friend was right, and that I was right in trusting to its guidance. My insight has even astounded Martin here, accustomed as he is to the success of our little excursions.'

'Marvellous, and yet so simple,' Mr. Martin assented in his throaty tones.

'When you know how it's done,' his mentor corrected him. 'Now, inspector, you are dying to know the name of your prospective prisoners,' Shone continued, rolling his great eyeballs at me. 'You can apply for a warrant against Wilson Neil and his son Everard as soon as you like— the former as the actual murderer, and the latter as an accessory both before and after the act.'

'And the grounds of the charge?' I said, producing my notebook.

Mr. Radford Shone saw fit to laugh a little.

'You take it so calmly,' he said, 'that it is plain that you, too, had these men in your mind— with this difference, that you failed to bring the crime home to them. We started, I expect, my dear inspector, from the same thesis that these men were ill friends with Colonel Chetwynd, and that they would materially gain by the marriage of the younger Neil to Mona Chetwynd— a union against which the colonel had set his face. You got no further than that. I did. From the state of the soil in the mole-hills, I calculated to a nicety that the mole must have been at work under the green at the time of the murder. At my bidding our excellent Martin opened up the run, and I saw that at a certain point the animal had tried frantically to burrow into the earth of its run at right angles.

'You're getting it now, inspector,' Martin giggled, only to subside under a reproving scowl from the great man.

'From that,' Shone proceeded; 'I deduced that the mole had been frightened by the thundering footsteps of the Neils overhead, as they fled from the scene of their crime, so as to get forward before the foursome of ladies appeared through the gaps in the bunker. It was all an open book to me. The 'sign', as the American trappers call it, was clear. I had definite cause to take drastic measures, and I took them promptly. You gentleman of the official force do not often use disguises, I think?' he broke off.

'We seldom have occasion to,' I answered.

'Ah, well!' he went on, with a sigh, ' I have. This afternoon I went to Neil's house, got up as a golf professional, attached to the links, and asked if they had any clubs that required mending. I fooled the pair of scoundrels' to the top of their bent. They handed me two clubs, on one of which, belonging to the elder man, is a distinct smear of blood with a hair attaching to it which I have since verified as Colonel Chetwynd's. Martin, surely you're not asleep. Give Inspector Peters that cleek.'

The fat young man stumbled up from his chair, and reverently lifting the damning piece of evidence from the corner by the fireplace, laid it in my hands.

'There's your case.' said Radford Shone with an air of finality, swinging his long legs from his perch one the table and lounging over to point with his long finger at the hair on the golf club.

'Yes,' I replied, examining it with interest. 'It is useful, but— not altogether material, Mr. Shone.'

'What do you mean?' he gasped, glaring at me with the awe of a high priest confronted with an act of sacrilege.

'I mean,' I answered with some relish, that this will help— only help, mind you— to hang the man whom I arrested an hour ago for this little job. Not Mr. Wilson Neil, nor yet Mr. Everard Neil; and my prisoner has simplified matters, by confessing as soon as I had my grip on him. The 'Yard' lacks brilliancy, perhaps, Mr. Shone, but we get there by plodding— sometimes. It was Raffles, the caddie, who killed the colonel.'

And amid a silence broken only by the panting of Martin I went on to inform them that Colonel Chetwynd had not been attacked on the green at all, but in the larch grove flanking it.

'I had found traces of this on the first day of my investigation, and among the trampled undergrowth had picked up a button which had tended to incriminate the caddie. I had been compelled, however, to delay arresting the man till I had traced to his possession the waistcoat from which the button had been wrenched in the struggle. I had accomplished this during the day, and the culprit had confessed that he had beckoned the colonel in to the wood and had there killed him with one of the clubs which, being damaged, the Neils had given him to carry back to their house. After they had passed he had run out and laid the body on the green in the hope of diverting suspicion to them. He had committed the crime partly out of rage at Chetwynd's language to him after lunch, and partly to rob him; though he had been cunning enough to take only coin, leaving the gold watch and such articles as could be traced.'

'But how— how—?' Shone began to stutter.

'How did my suspicion first come to rest on Raffles?' I laughed. 'Well, Mr. Radford Shone, I didn't have to look underground for my clue. The golf ball which the colonel had been practising was nowhere to be found. I know that the two gentlemen, if they had been guilty, would not have taken the ball, whereas a caddie, whose natural prey is a golf-ball, wouldn't under any circumstances have been able to keep his hands off one.'

'Quite a common-place affair, after all,' Shone plucked up spirit to say in his old superior manner.

'Fortunately brought to a satisfactory conclusion because dealt with in a common-place, way,' I retorted, and I could not, refrain from adding— 'You'll have better luck next time, perhaps— yes, luck, I say— if you remember the old adage that 'none are so blind as those who will not see.'

'Like the mole,' murmured Mr. Samuel Martin. And, amid the storm of abuse which this imbecile remark brought upon his devoted head from his chagrined chief, I contrived to slip away.

____________________

7:  The Japanese Agent

THOUGH THE PUBLIC knew nothing about it, we at Scotland Yard suffered a good deal of anxiety during the earlier phases of the great struggle in the East from the presence in England of agents of the Japanese and Russian Governments engaged in buying contraband of war. These gentlemen had a rough-and-ready way with each other when their interests clashed, which sometimes ended in a paragraph in the papers with the stereotyped heading:— 'Body found in the Thames.'

Therefore, the extraordinary story which reached us on a beautiful morning in early summer had on the face of it nothing that was improbable, and the course taken by the authorities was undoubtedly the correct one under circumstances of peculiar difficulty.

When, in answer to an urgent summons, I presented myself in the room of the Chief Commissioner, I found with him a gentleman whose name was very familiar to me as that of an investigator of social mysteries which, when solved, are not destined to tickle the ears of the public. His reputation was perhaps, unique in that respect, inasmuch as it almost invariably escaped the fierce all-sifting crucible of the Law Courts.

On entering the room, after saluting my chief, I glanced at Mr. Radford Shone in some curiosity. He possessed, at any rate, that first qualification for a detective— you could not tell at sight whether he was a wise man or a fool. His large eyes, ruminative as those of a cow in a clover-field, might have betokened contemplative observation, or, so baffling were they, they might have veiled chronic stupidity. One thing about him there was no mistaking― his frock-coat and gloves and glossy hat came from Bond-street.

'Inspector Michaels,' the chief began, 'this gentleman, Mr. Radford Shone, 'has been acting on behalf of the Russian Government in watching Japanese contraband operations in this country. Of course, Mr. Shones' position is that of a private individual to collect information. He has no official locus standi, and so—'

'Pardon me,' Mr. Shone interrupted with great dignity, 'I have no power to arrest. or I should not be here; but my relations with the Russian Government are not only official, but extremely confidential.'

The chief bowed in his most delightful manner.

'Then,' said he with a smile, 'in Russia you would undoubtedly enjoy the position which is denied to you here, and possibly on that score would be entitled to our sympathy. But, as I was saying, Michaels, Mr. Shone has reached an impasse in his work, which calls, in the first place, for enquiry on our part, and it may be, later on, for action. Be good enough, Mr. Shone, to repeat for the inspector s benefit the information which you have just given tome.'

Now I know our worthy chief's little ways, and to listen to a wordy repetition was not one of them, when he could have given Mr. Radford Shone's yarn, and his own instructions as well in half the time. I made a shrewd guess that Sir Walter wanted to compare our visitor's second statement with the notes he had made of the first. At any rate, he kept glancing at the hieroglyphic-covered sheet before him while Shone disburdened himself.

It appeared that one Schouvalinski, a Russian agent, had unearthed the fact that the Japanese were having a submarine-boat constructed at the yard of a yacht-builder on the Itchen, a mile or two above Southampton Water. In the exercise of his duties, Schouvalinski had kept a close watch on the yard, and, being apprehensive of his personal safety, had enlisted the services of Radford Shone to protect him from the Japanese, who were known to be lurking in the neighbourhood. The narrator had reached this point when the chief raised his hand.

'I can see, Michaels,' he said, 'that you are wondering at the necessity of all this fuss. Why don't we step in and embargo the submarine as contraband of war? The answer is that the boat does not become contraband till it is handed over to the purchaser to be shipped to its destination.'

I nodded, and Shone proceeded to relate how he had discovered that Takishura, the Japanese agent who was employing the English builder, had become so irritated by Schouvalinski's attentions that he had planned to murder his Russian rival that very night. Shone had got his information from the foreman of this yard, a young man named Tremayne, who was also the designer of the vessel.

Tremayne having gained the confidence of Takishura, had learned full particulars of the Japanese project, which was the simple one of stabbing Schouvalinski after dark, and throwing his body into the river.

Shone ended his turgid recital, and from the approving nod which Sir Walter gave at his notes I concluded that there had been no glaring flaw in the second version.

'What we have to do is to prevent the attempt, Michaels,' the chief said, turning to me. 'Any trouble of the kind would lead to all sorts of international complications, and I want you to run down to Southampton with Mr. Shone, and give him the benefit of official backing. You will have to be guided by what you find on the spot, and by the enlightenment on minor details which Mr. Shone will give you on the journey down. From what he hinted there is a woman in the case.'

'That ought to simplify matters,' I said, noting the twinkle in the chief's eye.

'Is the lady a Japanese or a Russian?'

'She is neither,' Shone put in pompously. 'She is an English girl, the daughter of Abraham Goulding, the owner of the yacht building yard. Takishura has been making up to her, though young Tremayne has had hopes in that quarter. You will find that it is a very pretty little case of jealousy and revenge, Inspector Michaels; if you will be guided by my data. The chief signed that the interview was over; but as I reached the door in the wake of our informant he beckoned me

back. I was at his side in an instant. Shone was already outside.

'There's some funny game on, Michaels,' Sir Walter whispered. 'Whether that fellow is a player or a pawn in it will be for you to discover. Do your best, as you always do; but— there! a nod's as good as a wink to you.'

In the train Shone furnished me with the 'data' of which he had spoken. Young Tremayne had informed him that Takishura would be working late that night in the construction yard, the submarine being nearly completed. As in duty bound Schouvalinski would be prowling about spying on him, and the Japanese had hinted that he should once for all put an end to the Russian's espionage by murdering him.

'Rather confiding of Mr. Takishura to compromise himself to his rival, was it not?' I asked, as Shone seemed to wait for my applause.

From the opposite corner of the compartment he looked me over with undisguised pity.

'My dear sir,' he rejoined, 'you have not worked with me before, or you would never have put that question. Takishura revealed nothing to Tremayne. I, Radford Shone, got the bare facts from him, and inferred the rest from my knowledge that Takishura has been stalking Schouvalinski with a knife. It was then easy for a man of my calibre to scrape acquaintance with the Japanese himself, and to gain his confidence in the character of a sympathiser. I had the particulars of his intentions at first hand.'

To myself, accustomed to regard the Japs as masterpieces of cleverness and reticence, Mr. Takishura's conduct seemed, to say the least of it, peculiar. To divulge a murderous project such as he entertained was in direct contradiction to the national characteristics. I remembered, however, that Radford Shone had won a great reputation for subtlety, and I could only conclude that he carried too many guns for the wily Oriental.

As the train neared Southampton I could see that Shone was growing fidgety about the course I should pursue, and to pay him out for the superior tone he had adopted toward me I deferred his enlightenment to the last moment. It was only when we were leaving the station that I sketched my programme.

'You and I must part company here, Mr. Radford Shone,' I said, as we stood on the kerb. 'It would be bad policy for these cunning foreigners to see your genius in the company of my official position. I shall run down to the neighbourhood of Goulding's yard and have a look round. You can meet me, say, at Taylor's Hotel at Northern at 6 o'clock, to conclude final arrangements.'

Shone regarded me with a doubtful stare, but my tribute to his genius carried the day.

'You won't get talking to Schouvalinski if you come across him?' he said with affected carelessness. 'I shouldn't wish him to be made aware of the danger from which I am saving him till afterwards. It might make him nervous and prevent your capture of Takishura.'

'Make your mind easy,' I replied. 'If I talk to anyone, it will be to Tremayne and his faithless girl— just to establish a footing, you know, for being on the spot tonight. But I'll post you fully when we meet at the hotel.'

Seeing that he was reluctant to leave me, I took the drastic course of shaking him off by jumping on an electric car, which quickly whirled me to the yacht-builder's quarter. A dive down a side street brought me to the river front, where I soon came to a pair of close wooden gates set in a high wall, surmounted by the inscription:

Abraham Goulding

Yachtbuilder and Ship-chandler

Alongside the gates, flush with the street, was a private dwelling-house with the same name on the front door, showing that the proprietor resided on the scene of his labours. It was obviously impossible to gain access to the yard from that side of the river without ringing the bell either of the yard or of Mr. Goulding's residence, and after a moment's consideration I chose the former. My summons was answered by a sharp faced youth with a pen behind his ear.

'Is Mr. Takishura in the yard?' I enquired, in pursuance of the definite line I had laid down. The question was met by blank amazement on the part of the clerk.

'I don't think so,' he stammered. 'It'll be pretty bad for him if he is, and the governor catches him. Are you a pal of his?'

'No, I only wanted a word with him on a matter of business,' I replied.

'Well, then, you'd better go to his business address,' the youth snapped, and would have slammed the gate in my face had not a young man in his shirtsleeves, very grimy and hot, pushed him aside.

'What is it, Alf ?' demanded the newcomer shortly.

'The gent has called for Mr. Takishura,' giggled the lad. 'I told him this was the wrong shop for Japs, and that he'd best clear out. That was right, wasn't it, Mr. Tremayne?'

So this good-looking young man with the sooty face and hands was the primary source of Mr. Radford Shone's information. I cast a shrewd glance at him, and in so doing encountered a return glance in which there was also shrewdness, but I fancied a trace of apprehension as well.

'Come inside, sir,' he said. 'Perhaps I can be of service to you. Shut and bolt the gate, Alf, and see that we are not disturbed.'

Mr. Tremayne led the way to an office to the left. It was but a step or two to that we had to traverse, but in those few seconds l got a comprehensive glimpse of the yard. I saw workshops all round the enclosing walls, except where, on the right of the gateway, Mr. Goulding's house showed a brave array of window-boxes ablaze with geraniums and lobelia. At the far end, the only unenclosed side, ran the tidal river, with the construction shed dipping from the bank into the sluggish stream.

The foreman pointed to the only chair in the office, and perched himself on the clerk's high stool. I rather liked the young man's face, the normal expression of which I judged was frankness itself, though just now he struck me as harassed by an unexpected emergency.

'Am I right in believing that you are a friend of Mr. Radford Shone?' he asked, rather nervously.

'Hardly that,' I replied. 'I never saw him before to-day. I am Detective Inspector Michaels, of Scotland Yard, and my object is to prevent a row between a Jap. and a Russian, who are interested in a submarine boat which is being built here— for the Japanese Government, Mr. Shone informed us.'

The ghost of a smile flickered over Tremayne's perturbed face.

'And you,' he said, 'being a trained official, and not a brilliant expert, have already spotted that Shone has not been telling you the truth— the whole truth, and all the rest of it, eh?'

'It did not need a genius to argue, from your clerk's reception of my enquiry for Mr. Takishura, that the boat is not being built for the Japanese,' I replied.

'Ah, I thought that Shone would not have told you that the boat is being built for the Russians,' said Tremayne, evidently weighing his words. 'He has been hanging about here for a week, and I do not reckon him as one to follow the straight path.'

Before I could answer him the office door was flung open, and in bounced a handsome, dark-eyed girl in a high state of excitement.

'Oh, Fred, it's too annoying for anything,' she cried, not seeing me. 'That old wretch, Schouvalinski, is having tea with father and Mr. Takishura came along the street and made a face at him through the parlour window. Schouvalinski is in such a fright that he swears he won't leave the house to-night, and he has sent for Radford Shone to come and watch the submarine.'

Tremayne had been making unavailing signals to her, but not till the end of her breathless recital did she notice my presence. It caused her great consternation.

'Who is this, Fred?' she demanded in an awe-struck whisper.

'It is a detective from Scotland Yard, Bella. Shone has been to the police,' was the young foreman's reply, accompanied by a significant glance.

'Oh, dear,' the girl murmured, and there was that in her tone that told of a disappointment too deep for words.

I remembered what Sir Walter had said about there being a 'game' on, but for the present I could not make head or tail of it, except that Radford Shone had been lying to us. Here was the submarine boat being built for the Russians, and not for the Japs; and here was Miss Bella Goulding, who, according to Shone, was carrying on with Mr. Takishura, on confidential terms with the lover whom she was supposed to have discarded. A silence followed Miss Bella's exclamation, and then I took up my parable.

'Now, look here, you two love-birds,' I said. 'Shone has been trying to fool me, and I have found him out. If you try to fool me, I shall find you out. What's the game? You won't have a bitter foe in me if you raise the curtain enough to enable me to turn the tables on Mr. Radford Shone— always provided that you are not breaking the law.'

The two looked at each other, and then Miss Bella looked at me.

'We should like to tell him, shouldn't we, Fred?' she murmured, archly. But Tremayne shook his head.

'There's really nothing to tell, Mr. Michaels, except that you can take it from me that there is no murder planned against the governor's Russian client,' he said. 'Bella and I are courting, as you can see for yourself, and I played a little prank on Shone, merely to get the yard to ourselves after the workmen have knocked off, and while Mr. Goulding. who doesn't favour my suit, is busy with his grog.'

'Do I gather that your calculations have been upset by the determination of the Russian to remain in the house while Shone watches the submarine,' I asked.

'That is so; we are both greatly disappointed,' was Tremayne's reply. He spoke with every appearance of frankness, and yet I was not satisfied that I had got to the bottom of the 'game,' as Sir Walter had called it.

That the lovers should set to work to hoodwink Shone so elaborately merely to enjoy a stolen interview in the yard seemed improbable, and their chagrin at the breakdown of their project was out of all due proportion to it. From their presence in the office together they did not appear to have much difficulty in meeting each other, and the loss or postponement of their evening tryst could hardly account for such a degree of disappointment.

'Then I am to understand that Takishura's part in the business was to aid and abet you in deceiving Radford Shone— that his planned murder of the Russian was a sort of practical joke, eh?'

'Yes, yes— that was it!' they both chimed in with an eagerness that discounted the value of the admission. So instead of being Tremayne's rival for the affections of the boatbuilder's daughter, the Japanese was their ally in thwarting old Mr. Goulding's wishes.

Radford Shone seemed to have misled us, partly with intention and partly because he had been misled himself all along the line; and I decided that I must treat both him and this interesting young couple as quite untrustworthy. That being so, it was my duty, in spite of their assurances, to keep observation on the yard that night.

'Well,' I said, 'I seem to have been put to a good deal of trouble for nothing, and all the fun I shall have out of it will be to tell Shone how you have fooled, him. And the sooner I get back to him the sooner I shall enjoy my laugh,' I added as I made for the door.

'And tell him that he can safely stay between the sheets to-night― that Schouvalinski won't need his protection,' cried Bella excitedly.

But Tremayne checked her enthusiasm with a frown and accompanied me to the gate in the yard wall. The young fellow struck me as making a brave fight not to appear ill at ease.

'Look here, Mr. Michaels,' he said in a low voice as he drew the bolt, 'you have been brought into this by a vain, mercenary idiot, who deserves to suffer for his folly. But I should be sorry for you to be put to any inconvenience through no fault of your own. I can see that things must look fishy to you, but I will give you my word of honour that there is no bloodshed in the affair. Takishura is the kindest, nicest little chap in the world, and though he has been told off to shadow Schouvalinski, would no more hurt him than he would you— unless he was cornered.' There was a glint in the foreman's eye, as he uttered the last four words which almost constituted them a threat.

'Tell me straight what you mean,' I answered him. 'You see my position. I am here to prevent a crime, alleged to be about to be committed by a Japanese upon a Russian, neither of whom I have met. On the face of it the whole thing is a farce, got up to assist a little moonlight lovemaking between you and your young lady. And yet, Mr. Tremayne, I am not altogether a fool. How am I to take your warning as compatible with your assurance that no violence is intended.'

'Take it this way,' he replied, after a pause. 'Where Radford Shone goes tonight you will probably go. It will be your duty. And if I am any judge of men you will do it. But,' and he hesitated again, as if groping for his words, 'don't keep too close to him— that's all.'

He proffered his well-shaped but toil stained hand, and I grasped it in token that I recognised the friendliness of his intention. Nevertheless, I was far from convinced that the young man's designs were as innocent as he would have me think, and I was conscious of having so far failed to locate Mr. Takishura's real position in the affair.

Making my way to Taylor's Hotel I found Radford Shone impatiently waiting for me in the smoking-room. Considering the deceit he had attempted to practise on the police about the ownership of the submarine I did not feel bound to enlighten him as to my discoveries, but contented myself with informing him that I did not apprehend any danger for his client, Schouvalinski.

Shone fairly glared at me.

'That is as good as saying that I have got hold of a mare's nest!' he snorted. 'You must have been talking to that minx Bella Goulding, and she has thrown dust in your eyes. I will prove to you that she has taken you in. Here,' and he dragged a letter from his pocket, 'read that!'

The scrawl was in French, and requested him to go at once to the yard to 'watch that devil Takishura,' who was hanging around. It bore Schouvalinski's signature, and was evidently, inspired by what Bella Goulding had described as 'Takishura making faces through the parlour window.'

'This only proves that Schouvalinski is in a mortal funk― probably of nothing at all,' I replied. 'However, as I presume: that you will be carrying out your instructions, I am prepared to go with you.'

A little later, after partaking of a rather unsociable meal, we started for the yacht-building quarter. I was curious as to how Shone would perform his task. As his Russian client was also Mr. Goulding's customer for the submarine, and was skulking in the builder's private residence, Shone's natural course would have been to go straight to the door of the yard or of the house. But against this was the fact that he had deceived the authorities as to the real purchasers of the boat, and to openly approach the yard in my company would be as good as a confession of duplicity. I anticipated his predicament with considerable amusement.

But Radford Shone was equal to the occasion, being evidently determined to keep up what he believed to be my delusion as to the submarine being a Japanese acquisition. He passed by the yard gate, and the house, and, leading the way along the street, turned presently to the right, climbed a railway embankment, and crossed a bridge which carried the line over the river.

'It is the only way to get into the yard unseen,' he explained, as we stumbled down the embankment on the other side of the bridge. 'I have got a boat here hidden under the bank. We will row over and land on the wharf of Goulding's yard.'

On this side of the river, in sharp contrast to the thickly-built locality from which we had crossed, the water-front was more or less in a state of nature. Instead of boat-builders' yards, rope-walks, and public-houses, green fields stretched to the edge of the tidal stream, with houses scattered over the landscape at infrequent intervals. Away across the Itchen there was a fringe of bricks and mortar of twinkling gas-lamps, and of yachts at their repairing berths; where we stood the fringe was mud and rushes, with no light but the starry sky. Shone found his boat, and we pulled leisurely over towards the dim shape of the construction-shed at Goulding's yard.

To the left of our course the river broadened quickly into the more open reaches of Southampton Water, and there, moored just off the fairway, I saw a large steam-yacht anchored. Radford Shone, I thought, eyed her with interest. A little further sea-ward another vessel's lights were visible, but beyond making out that she was a steamer with two funnels, I could not judge in the gloom whether she was a yacht or a trader. A flight of stone steps ran down from Goulding's yard to the water, and, having hitched our boat to an iron ring, we mounted to the level above. Save in one corner, where the windows of the proprietor's house made splashes of light, the enclosure was in darkness, and appeared to be deserted. Close at hand the construction-shed reared its ungainly frame, as though sliding into the river, and somewhat to my surprise I noticed that the folding-doors on the landward side were open.

I peered in, and by the faint reflection from the gas-lamp over the yard gate I saw the submarine on the slip-way, all ready to be launched— a shining, cigar shaped structure of copper, its vicious snout pointing downwards towards the closed doors on the side of the shed abutting on the river. Beneath the slip-way the rising tide lapped weirdly among the piles.

Suddenly Shone, who had kept very close to my elbow, touched me on the arm and whispered— 'Hush! Someone is coming.'

We drew into the shadows of the side of the shed, and waited as a dim form flitted noiselessly into view from the direction of the gate from the road. As it neared us, I was able to make out that it was short and thick-set, and coming nearer still its features were distinguishable— the little slitty eyes. and oval face of a Japanese. The figure passed into the construction-shed, and a slight, metallic, clang followed.

'Takishura!' Shone breathed in my ear. 'Didn't I tell you he meant murder?'

The situation was certainly growing interesting, but I couldn't resist treating it from the standpoint which Shone had endeavoured to foist upon me.

'Surely there's nothing' strange in the Jap. coming to look after his own boat?' I whispered. 'Naturally he has the run of the yard.'

I heard Shone grind his teeth, but he was saved an awkward answer by a sound that claimed our attention from the interior of the shed. We heard distinctly the scrooping of iron cog-wheels and the gurgle of water. It was not difficult to guess that Mr. Takishura was working the mechanism that opened the doors of the construction-shed on the river side.

This proceeding seemed greatly to agitate Shone, but it did not come within the four corners of my instructions, which were to protect Schouvalinski. As the Russian was probably safe in the house, hobnobbing with Mr. Goulding, I was not concerned.

'I must see what he is doing,' murmured Shone. 'You are a policeman, and have authority to arrest him. Come inside.'

'Not me,' I replied, mindful of Tremayne's warning. 'By your own showing the Jap is only playing with his own property. I'm here to stop him knifing Schouvalinski. Time enough for me to appear when the Russian shows up.'

With a muttered oath Shone left me, and gliding round the angle of the shed, vanished into the interior. At the same instant I heard the scurry of footsteps coming from the house, and, I thought the swish of a woman's skirts. Directly afterwards I was sure. Bella Goulding, a fleecy shawl over her head, flitted by my lurking-place and was also swallowed up in the shed. Her advent was hailed by a chuckling laugh in Tremayne's mellow tenor, and by a smothered remonstrance in the rasping voice of Shone.

'Take your hands off me, Mr. Tremayne. What does this mean? I have help at hand,' he half-threatened, half-pleaded.

'I don't think Inspector Michael's has any cause to intervene,' came the young man's reply, coldly incisive now. 'The information you gave him, that this is a Japanese submarine, constitutes you a trespasser, and it is, therefore, my place, if anyone's, to expect the inspector's aid. What do you say, Takishura? This is a Japanese boat, you know, according to Mr. Radford Shone. Shall we allow, Michaels, who seems a decent sort, to see how hospitably the Japanese requite the espionage of their enemies?'

'Certainly,' was the answer in a high-pitched tone. 'The sluice gates are open, and everything is in readiness. But keep your hand on the starting lever, in case your friend the police doesn't approve of our stratagem.'

'It is too late for him to object,' followed Tremayne's reply. 'Here, Mr. Michaels, come round and see a bit of fun. I know you're out there somewhere, and you deserve to be free of the show.'

The 'show,' as I went and stood at the door of the construction shed, was certainly impressive. The double gates, giving on the river, were open now, and on the slipway lay the submarine boat as before, but with a section of her turtle-back raised, disclosing a group of curiously assorted faces.

Tremayne was there, with his hand on Radford Shone's collar; Takishura's Oriental features wore a bland smile; Bella Goulding, pale but pertly impudent, flung me a look of friendly defiance. They occupied a space in the stem of the boat abaft the glass dome of the conning tower. A glow of electric light from the interior of the boat played on the scene, showing me that Takishura and Tremayne were each grasping a polished lever.

'We knew you would like to say goodbye to Mr. Shone,' Tremayne laughed up at me. 'He's going a little trip with us, to Gibraltar, or wherever we can conveniently land him. Perhaps it will teach him a lesson in veracity. He tried to humbug you, and he tried to humbug me— in both cases with a lamentable want of success. In twenty minutes this boat, which has been built to Russian order, will be shipped on a steamer which is waiting for us outside under the nose of the Russian steamer that would have taken her to the Baltic to-morrow but for Mr. Goulding's singular, antipathy to me as a son-in-law. As it is, since he has made much profit by my brains, I do not think that I am worrying him by transferring Bella and the boat and myself to Tokio, where I have been offered a lucrative post as designer of submarines to the Japanese Government. My good friend Takishura has fooled the brilliant Shone by 'making faces,' as Bella, calls it, at the drunken Russian cur who is cowering in the house when he ought to be looking after the boat which the Russians ordered, but for which the Mikado will cheerfully pay. Are you ready, Tak?'

'All ready!' chanted the little Jap, with a grin at me from his almond eyes.

'Then, farewell, Inspector Michaels,' cried Tremayne, gripping his lever.

'Good-bye,' shouted Bella, blowing me a kiss.

'Au revoir,' the little yellow man said tugging at the brass handle, and bringing; down the lid of the turtle-back on the varying emotions gazing up at me— Shone's anguished scowl, the Jap's imperturbable smile, Tremayne's defiantly friendly grin, and the girl's cheery nod.

My duty, you ask me? What could I do? No sooner had the twin jaws joined with a snap than the boat slid like an alligator down the slip-way into the river, and although I ran to the brink of the wharf no sign of her was to be seen but a fast receding eddy on the surface of the water. But as, a little later, I pulled across to the opposite bank, I saw that the farthest of the two steamers had got her anchor up and was heading out to sea.

No formal protest was ever made to the authorities over Tremayne's audacious appropriation of the Russian submarine as a means of eloping with his employer's daughter. Indeed, Schouvalinski and Shone, as the accredited agents of Russia, had put the Czar's Government, hopelessly out of court by their representations that the boat was being built on Japanese account. They made that statement in bad faith, to conceal the contemplated shipment of the submarine on the steamer that was ready to receive her, little thinking that Tremayne and Takishira's alliance would render their statement true in substance and in fact.

I believe myself that the wily Japanese had really instilled a fear for his life into the Russian, though I am doubtful whether Shone was equally convinced that bloodshed was intended. Rather am I inclined to think that he endeavoured to make a cat's-paw of Scotland Yard in order to get Takishura put under lock and key while the submarine was being shipped to Russia in defiance of the neutrality laws. In which case he was, indeed, hoist with his own petard, and that he felt his defeat keenly I gathered from his demeanour when I met him in the Strand two months after his enforced trip to Gibraltar. At sight of me he drew his glossy silk hat down over his eyes, and, gathering the voluminous skirts of his frock-coat around him, fled up a side-street.

_________________

8: The Eton Boy

IT WAS TEN o'clock in the evening when I was ushered into the magnificent dining room in the Park-lane mansion of Mr. Montagu Lawson, the South African millionaire. The apartment was big enough for a small music-hall, but at the moment of my entry there were only three persons at the end of the long table that was covered with a sumptuous dessert. Such peaches! such grapes! such an array of sparkling decanters! and all for a tired-looking little gentleman, a comely middle-aged lady, and a thirteen-year-old boy with very bright eyes. The last two seemed to me to have been crying.

'Inspector Timpany, from Scotland Yard, sir, in answer to your message,' announced the soft-voiced butler who had admitted me.

As I walked down the vast length of the room I had ample time to study the manner of my reception by its occupants. Mr. Montagu Lawson, with one arm thrown round the boy, who was standing toy his chair, regarded my approach with what struck me as a mixture of eagerness and apprehension. Mrs. Lawson favoured me with a hastily averted frown. The boy rubbed his eyes, as though ashamed of the recent tears and looked me boldly almost defiantly, in the face. I noticed that the youngster, though dressed as an Eton boy, had not the spick-and-span appearance usually associated with the young gentlemen of that ancient foundation. His jacket, was creased and his broad collar was rumpled and none too clean.

Mr. Lawson began at once— rather nervously for a financial magnate of assured position— 'I telephoned for an experienced officer because my son Harry has just come home with such an extraordinary story that, if true, it is a matter for urgent police investigation. I say "if true", not because I have ever found Harry other than truthful, but because the whole thing seems incredible. Yet though his mother doesn't quite agree with me, I maintain that my son at any rate believes what he has told us.'

'Every word of it is true, father. It is hard lines to be received like this after what I have gone through,' said the boy, his sensitive lip quivering. He was a nice looking little chap, and, whatever was wrong, I could not help feeling sorry for him. The story, as narrated by Mr. Lawson, with occasional corrections by his son, was as follows: —

A week ago Harry, who was being educated at Eton, had been walking with a companion of his own age on the Slough road between four and five o'clock. In the dusk of the winter afternoon a motor-car had overtaken them occupied by two men, one of whom had accosted him by name and represented himself as a friend of his father's. He even professed to know Harry himself, alleging that he had met him when dining in Park-lane; but the two men wore masks and goggles, and it was impossible to recognise either of them.

'Jump in,' the affable spokesman had said. 'I'll take you for a spin as far as Slough and bring you back to Eton in time for five o'clock school. Sorry I've got no room for your chum.'

Harry had jumped in and according to his statement had indeed been taken for a spin, the car starting off at a tremendous speed and in spite of his protests, never stopping till in less than an hour it had pulled up in some locality that he did not know, but which, so far as he could judge, was somewhere in South London. There he had been hustled into a dingy house, where he had been kept prisoner for seven days, not unkindly treated, but closely guarded by two men and a woman.

That afternoon he had been suddenly told that he was to be released after dark, and at eight o'clock he had been placed in a closed brougham, which in about half an hour had set him down at Mr. Montagu Lawson's door, the vehicle driving rapidly away the moment he had alighted. He had found his father and mother dining for once alone together and in perfect ignorance that he was not pursuing his studies at school.

'Then you had had no communication from the authorities at Eton that Master Lawson was missing?' I put the obvious question at the close of this amazing story. It was Mrs. Lawson who answered me, her words tumbling over each other in a torrent of half-hysterical excitement.

'No, we have not heard!' she almost wailed. 'Of course they would have let us know. It is that that makes it all so ridiculous— and so disappointing. Harry was to have gone home with his friend the Marquis of Allanton, a fellow-student, to spend the Christmas holidays at Castle Chieveley, the seat of the Duke of Sunderland, and the marquis's father. I had set my heart on it, but that must all come to nothing now. It isn't likely they'll have Harry there after his absurd behaviour.'

'Where does the absurdity come in, mother? Perhaps I was a fool to get into the motor, but I couldn't help myself after that, could I?' the boy blurted out, flushing angrily.

'Hush, sonny!' the millionaire soothed him. 'Mr. Timpany is here to put you right. What do you make of it, inspector?'

So far I had made nothing, except that the expected breakdown of the ducal visit might be a sidelight worth probing, and I was about to put a question on that point, when the butler announced— 'Mr. Pryme.'

'Harry's house-master, by Jove! Now we shall get at it!' exclaimed Mr. Lawson, and releasing the boy from his half-caress, he rose to receive the short sighted gentleman who was blinking his way towards us through the opulent splendour of the dining-room.'

'Ah! my dear Mr. Lawson,' said the house-master, shaking hands, 'I see you have your son with you. In one way it is a relief to find him here, though what can have induced him to run away from school is more than I can imagine. It has caused me great anxiety, and, as soon as we had exhausted every means of searching for him at Eton I decided to come up by a late train and inform you.'

'But surely you might have let us know before,' Mr. Lawson protested. 'For the boy to be missing for a whole week and only now to— '

'A whole week!' Mr. Pryme interrupted in puzzled surprise. 'I really don't understand you. There would be a very just cause of complaint if what you imply was the case, but your son was present at the boy's two o'clock dinner to-day. His absence was first remarked at afternoon school— only seven hours ago. I cannot charge myself with any remissness in the matter.'

Mrs. Lawson groaned aloud at this apparent confirmation of her disbelief in Harry's story and the lad himself, whom I was watching narrowly, went as white as a sheet.

'It's a beastly conspiracy, father, to make me out a liar!' he cried. 'I haven't been at Eton for a week. You know I haven't sir, and if you don't you ought to!' he broke out at his astonished housemaster.

Mr. Mr. Pryme, who struck me as a kindly if somewhat self-opinionated . and obstinate man, looked genuinely grieved.

'Come, my boy, you ought not to adopt that tone to me,' he said. 'We have always been the best of friends till— well, till quite recently. You only left Eton today, as you are very well aware, though I am curious to hear what you have told your people.'

Mr. Montagu Lawson for the first time asserted himself.

'Laura, take the boy into the drawing room,' he said to his wife. 'I should prefer to discuss the matter with Mr. Pryme and the inspector alone.'

The lady rose with an air of protest and beckoning Harry to follow, swept from the room. In the doorway she paused and looked back.

'I shall do my best to get Harry to retract this ridiculous fairy-tale,' she said. 'You will be well advised, Montagu, to persuade Mr. Pryme to hush it up and allow our son to go back and be punished for giving way to a fit of homesickness which led him to come to London this afternoon without obtaining leave.'

When the door had closed Mr. Lawson invited the Eton master and myself to be seated; offering us the hospitality of his decanters, which we were both too interested to accept. He then repeated for Mr. Pryme's benefit the statement to which I had already listened.

The Master heard it with open incredulity, yet with a manly sympathy that commanded respect.

'My dear Mr. Lawson,' he said at the finish, ' I cannot tell you how sorry I am about this hallucination of your son. He is such a nice little fellow, and such a general favourite. Of course there is not a word of truth in all this, for I pledge you my honour that Harry has slept under my roof up to and including last night. He attended chapel and school this morning, made good show with his knife and fork at dinner, and was only missed this afternoon at three o'clock. I can only account for this strange behaviour by the fact that growing boys of his age are sometimes temporarily neurotic.'

'What is your, opinion?' Mr. Lawson asked of me. There was a tinge of restiveness in his tone. Though he looked so tired, and was, I gathered, a trifled hen-pecked, I could understand that among the marts where men congregate he could hold his own, and more.

'I am inclined to believe your son, sir,' I replied. 'At any rate, as you have called in the police I cannot let the matter drop here. There must be further investigation.'

'That is my view,' said Mr. Lawson with a grateful glance. 'I stand by Harry, come what may. I am sorry, Mr. Pryme, because I know what care you have taken of the lad and how good you have been to him. But I am not going to have him branded as a liar, or yet as a— what was it— neurotic idiot, without trying to prove the contrary.'

Mr. Pryme rose and held out his hand. 'Then I will say good-night,' he said with a snap of his jaw. 'I have just time to catch the last train back. I deplore the necessity, but I shall have to take steps to demonstrate to you that I am right.'

The housemaster having departed the anxious parent turned to me for comfort, but I had none to give beyond promising to go down to Eton on the following day and pursue enquiries on the spot. In the face of the contradictory statements made by master and pupil, and of the fact that the boy could not have been in two places at once, it was impossible to form an opinion at present.

'One thing I am certain of,' I said, as the millionaire accompanied me to the front door, 'we have not come to the villain of the piece yet. If I know anything of human nature, both Mr. Pryme and Master Lawson are honestly convinced of the truth of their respective statements.'

The next morning, after reporting to my superiors at the Yard, I was officially detailed to take up the case. We had no option in the matter. Complaint had been made to us of a crime alleged to have been committed in the Metropolitan district— the illegal detention of one of His Majesty's lieges, Harry Lawson to wit— and we were bound to investigate it. On my way to Paddington I called at the Park-Lane mansion, to ascertain the name of the boy who had been out walking with Harry when the motor-car overtook them. The financier was in the city and Mrs. Lawson refused me access to her son, sending but a verbal answer to my pencilled query. Harry's companion on that eventful stroll had been Curtice minor, the message came out, with the qualifying addition, 'Harry says.'

The precincts of the college were more or less deserted when I reached Eton, it being the recreative spell known as 'after twelve,' when the boys were mostly in the playing-fields. But I found Mr. Pryme in his pupil-room, busily correcting exercises, which, from the zig-zag lines thereon, I judged to be those scholastic tours de force for which Eton is so justly famous— Latin verses. Courteous as ever, the master rose to receive me, blinking through his double glasses.

'I half expected you, inspector,' he began pleasantly. 'From Mr. Lawson's attitude last night I saw that this wretched business would have to go on officially, so I took measures to fortify my standpoint with an expert and independent investigation. It has just been concluded by Mr. Radford Shone, of whom you will have heard. He is still, I believe, in the house, having some lunch, if you would like to compare notes with him.'

'I have, so far, practically no notes to compare, sir,' I smiled in reply. 'But I have no objection to hearing Mr. Shone's views. He has a great reputation as an amateur detective.'

'Not amateur— private; there's nothing like accurate phraseology,' the amiable pedagogue corrected me. 'An amateur works for pleasure, whereas Mr. Radford Shone's terms— well, I mustn't mention the amount of his cheque. I will take you to him. Ah! there is no need. Here is Mr. Shone.'

A gentleman, rather aggressively dressed as a gentleman, in comparison with whose silk-lapelled frock-coat and fancy vest my sombre tweeds were as a crow's to a peacock's plumage, had entered the room with confident tread, a patronising smirk for his client, and a haughty stare for me. Whatever his capabilities as a detective, he had evidently been smart enough to recognise me as an official from the Yard, thanks to our meagre pittance for expenses that does not admit of adequate disguise.

Of course, we of the regular force are not gentlemen, nor do we hanker after the appellation, but Mr. Radford Shone impressed me as the embodiment of that subtly descriptive term— a bounder. Behind him loomed a stout young man with a foolish face, who was popularly supposed to be a sort of secretary, though I have since had cause to modify that view of Mr. Samuel Martin's functions. I believe that he was a crank with more money than brains, smitten with a craze for detective work, and that the celebrated expert had turned this foible to good account in financing his operations.

'As usual I perceive that the official enquiry begins just as mine has ended,' said Shone, showing his teeth.

'But I really don't think that there is anything more for me to do or say, Mr. Pryme, except to assure you that you have no cause for uneasiness. I will furnish you with a written report of my investigations, which should convince even the boy's father that the kidnapping story is a tissue of falsehoods.'

'If you will be so good,' said Mr. Pryme. 'And it might save Mr. Timpany here— Inspector Timpany, from Scotland Yard— some trouble if you would run through the heads of your report now.'

'Martin!' snapped Mr. Radford Shone. He was evidently too great a personage to oblige directly a mere policeman, for his henchman produced a notebook, and, while his chief surveyed me with calm insolence, proceeded to read a précis of the case.

Compressed still further, the sum of Mr. Shone's enquiries was as follows. He had confounded Harry's statement that he had been away from Eton for a week by questioning his schoolfellows, eliciting that young Lawson had been very much in evidence till the afternoon of the previous day. He had, in fact, been more than usually under notice through have distinguished himself by getting 'swished' twice in five days for offences quite foreign to his lovable nature. So disagreeable had he made himself to his own particular chum Lord Allanton, that the latter had declined to have any more to do with him. The only ray of truth in the story that he had brought to his people was as to the ride in the motor-car.

Curtice minor had testified as to their being overtaken by the car and to Lawson having been invited to jump in, but Curtice added that in less than an hour Lawson had turned up at five o'clock school, thus showing that the occupant of the car had redeemed his promise to bring him back in time.

And, to wind up, Radford Shone had discovered that and Eton boy, answering to Harry Lawson's description, had left Windsor by the 3.45 train on the previous afternoon for Waterloo.

The deduction at which the expert arrived was that the boy was unhinged by a hypochondriacal attack, which had influenced his recent behaviour at school and caused him to run away the day before.

'There, Mr.— er— Timpany,' Shone yawned as his fat satellite concluded his plethoric recital. 'I'm afraid your chance of unearthing the South London house where they shut up little Eton boys has gone out to zero, eh?'

'You have saved me a good deal of time and trouble in looking for it,' was my reply. It seemed to give him infinite satisfaction and as he took up his glossy hat to go, he purred—:

'Make a note, Martin— a note that we ought to have stereotyped, "We have saved the police trouble," Ha, ha!'

When the pair had bowed themselves out, good Mr. Pryme turned to me rather nervously.

'It seems all very clear, does it not, inspector?' he said. 'I confess I do not like the man— there's something about him rubs you the wrong way. He talked to young Allanton and Curtice minor and the rest as if he was three sizes bigger than the head-master. But I can bear out what he says about Harry Lawson's conduct. I was loth to distress his parents by referring to it last night, especially in the boy's presence, but really it has been most outrageous.'

'For how long? I asked. Mr. Pryme pursed up his lips.

'Let me see,' he mused aloud. 'On Tuesday evening the matron caught him drinking bottled Bass in his study. On Thursday he used disgusting language to my footman. On Saturday he broke the nose of Hobson minimus, a poor little chap three years his junior. And he has entirely neglected his studies. He was never particularly brilliant, but he seems to have forgotten everything he ever learned.'

'I think, sir, that you would not be altogether displeased if Mr. Radford Shone's theory broke down and Harry's apparently impossible romance were proved true?' I hazarded after a pause.

'Frankly, I should be delighted,' the house-master replied. 'The boy is really a charming little fellow when he is all right. And I like the father, too. Of course he is a self-made man— Levisohn, I believe was his name till he changed it under letters patent after his successes in South Africa― but he is a gentleman at heart, if not by birth, and I have received every consideration from him till yesterday. But you do not speak seriously, in hinting at a confutation of the great Shone?'

'May I see Lord Allanton?' was my reply, indirect and non-committal. Mr. Pryme, however, must have seen its significance, judging by the avidity with which he jumped at it.

'I will fetch him at once, if he has come in from football,' he said. In another minute I was confronting a tousled little figure in a muddy shirt, who was nevertheless a marquis and the heir to a dukedom. In this most democratic of aristocratic institutions his title was not for use, except when 'absence' was called by the head-master.

'Allanton,' said 'Mr. Pryme, 'this is an officer from Scotland Yard who wants to ask you about Lawson.'

The boy looked at me coolly over from head to foot, then broke into a friendly grin. 'Fire away,' he said. 'I'll tell you anything I can, but that brute Shone tired me so that I shut up.'

'Then, perhaps you won't mind beginning at the point where you shut up,' I suggested.

'Well, I told him what a little beast Lawson had grown all of a sudden; but Shone kept my-lording me till I turned sulky just as I was coming to our row after dinner yesterday. Lawson had been coming home with me next week to Castle Chievely for the holidays, but after the way he had treated Hobson minimus and other things I let him have it straight. I said he wasn't the sort of person I cared to know in private life, and that I had written to my mother asking her to cancel the invitation.'

'About what time did this unpleasantness take place?' was my next question.

'At a quarter to three.'

'And, according to Mr. Shone, Lawson left Windsor station for London at 3.45 p.m. Mr. Pryme,' I added, 'if you will excuse me for ten minutes I should like to run out as far as the post-office; but first, Lord Allanton, will kindly inform me whether Harry Lawson made any reference lately to the Duchess of Sunderland's famous jewels?'

'Rather! that was one of the things that bored me about him,' said the lad. 'For the last week he has been gassing to me about our family diamonds and wondering whether he should see them when he was at the castle.'

When I returned from a visit to the post office, where I obtained a sight of the telegram despatched the previous day, Mr. Pryme was alone.

'No, sir,' I said, in answer to his questioning glance, 'I can give you nothing definite yet. But will you see me, and possibly Mr. Montagu Lawson, at that gentleman's house in Park-lane to-morrow at three o'clock? And it might not be amiss if you asked Mr. Radford Shone to meet us there also.'

'Certainly. To-morrow is a half-holiday, and anyhow I shall be there,' the tutor replied. And then, coming closer he whispered, 'Did you get your inspiration from what Allanton incidentally remarked?'

'What remarks, sir?' I asked in my most innocent manner.

'That for the past week Harry Lawson hasn't seemed like the same boy.'

Discretion forbade words; but though the worthy master was the employer of Shone and ostensibly in the opposite camp to mine, he was so obviously sympathetic to my point of view that I could not resist giving him a token. For the first, and probably for the last, time in my life I enjoyed the privilege of winking, unrebuked, at an Eton master.

At the appointed time next day I was seated in the library of the Park-lane mansion with the owner thereof, who, after half-an-hour's talk, looked neither tired nor henpecked. On the floor between us lay some fragments of pink paper at which he kept glancing regretfully in the intervals of consulting the clock on the mantelpiece. To us was admitted, by the bland butler, Mr. Pryme, fully charged with nervous curiosity as to the nature of his reception, which our host promptly ended by warmly shaking his hand. Mr. Lawson would have plunged into explanations had not Mr. Radford Shone followed hot on the heels of Harry's tutor. The great investigator wore an amused smile.

'I trust I am not too late for a front seat at the play which I presume we owe to Inspector Timpany?' he said, goggling his eyes.

'Not a bit of it, and you're not in front— you're on the stage!' cried the little millionaire, skipping round to find him a chair. 'We're all on the stage, but it would be 'Hamlet' minus Hamlet without you, Mr. Radford Shone?'

Shone, though puzzled, accepted the remark as a compliment and sat down with a smirk. I think that the chief feeling in his mind was one of regret that the wealthy financier was not his client instead of that more moderately dowered Eton master. Possibly it was induced by the litter of pink paper on the floor, at which he kept shooting furtive glances, and which were obviously the fragments of a torn-up cheque.

'Shall I tell them, or will you, inspector, what a debt of gratitude we owe to Mr. Shone for unwittingly helping you to prove that my son is neither the blackguard nor the lying little fool he laboured to make him out?' said Mr. Lawson.

'Sir!' Shone protested, tapping his chest, 'I never do anything, least of all help a policeman, unwittingly. As to your son not being what the irrefutable testimony I collected among his schoolfellows shows— noblemen, sir, some of them with the stamp of truth upon their lips― well, Timpany must be playing on your parental fondness if he has induced you to believe that.'

'The noble schoolfellows with the stamp of truth, my dear Mr. Shone, having been misled themselves, misled you,' Mr. Lawson laughed. 'But there, you tell him, Timpany. The fellow makes me want to giggle and I should be incoherent.'

'This is it, then, gentlemen,' I began. 'Harry Lawson's story of having been carried off and shut up in South London is true in substance and in fact, the motive of his abductors having been to introduce a substitute into Mr. Pryme's house who should accompany Lord Allanton is Chievely Castle and assist in a well-planned scheme for stealing the Sunderland family jewels.'

'Good gracious!' The mild expletive escaped Mr. Pryme.

'Yes, it sounds incredible,' I proceeded, enjoying the dismay that was beginning to spread over Shone's face. 'Though the idea of a substitute occurred to me from the first, I dismissed it as too far-fetched till you, Mr. Pryme, took me a step further in the right direction by mentioning that Mr. Lawson had changed his name from Levisohn. That is where we of the regular force score over irresponsible genius,' I added with a bow to Shone.

He was glaring at me, open-mouthed, now, but beyond a funny little gurgling noise made no comment.

'I remembered that among our records at the Yard,' I continued, 'was one dealing with a criminal who had absconded from the Cape several years ago after robbing his partner, who was named Levisohn. I also remembered that these two partners, one an honest man and the other a scoundrel, had married twin sisters, the daughters of a lawyer, at Kimberley. The recollection was useful as bearing on this case by the fact that Samuels, the absconding partner; had utilised the extraordinary likeness between his wife and child and Mr. Levisohn's wife and child to make good his escape. The escape was made good and we had lost sight of Samuels till late yesterday evening when I had the pleasure of arresting him in a house at Vauxhall— the same house where Harry Lawson had spent a very unhappy week.'

Shone perked up a little.

'The arrest was due to the information gave you about 'the Eton boy leaving Windsor by the 8.45 train?' he interjected.

'You may have saved me an hour on two,' I conceded him; 'but I must really take credit for something, Mr. Shone. My guess that the spurious Harry— really Ikey Samuels, as clever a young rascal as I had met— would have telegraphed to his people after Lord Allanton's straight talk to him expedited matters most. I got the Vauxhall address from the telegram at the post-office, which read―'

'Broken down. Returning.'

'That must have been pre-arranged in case of failure to sustain the assumed character!' exclaimed Mr. Pryme.

'Exactly, sir,' I said. 'So that they could release Harry directly there was no reason for detaining him longer.'

Radford Shone, still with one eye on the bits of pink paper, cocked the other at the financier.

'I presume, sir,' he said, 'that I shall be a material witness in the charge which you will bring against Samuels for abducting your son?'

'I think I understand what you mean,' said Mr. Lawson, and going to his writing table he scribbled a cheque. Then he handed it to Shone.

'I am bringing no charge against Samuels for this Eton business,' he said. 'There is quite enough against my old partner, now that the police have got him, without that. As Mr. Timpany has nipped the projected robbery at Chievely in the bud, there is no reason for you to go round talking about it, you understand? this cheque is to keep you quiet.'

'My dear sir, I shall be dumb,' replied Shone, pocketing the cheque, and bowing himself out with the air of having saved the situation.

We laughed a little after his departure, and then Mr. Lawson looking ruefully at the torn paper on the floor, said:— 'Won't you think better of it, Timpany? Let me write you another— for half the amount, if you like.'

'If you do, I shall tear it up again,' I replied. 'It will be quite enough for me to know that Harry is going back to Eton with Mr. Pryme, to be put right with his schoolfellows, and eventually to fulfil his engagement at Chievely Castle.'

'He shall do all those things,' said the master, shaking hands with me solemnly. 'And if, Mr. Timpany, you should find yourself in the neighbourhood of Eton next fourth of June, please remember that my house is an open house on that day— for the boys' friends.'

_______________

9: The Thirsty Cat

'OH, NURSEY, nursey, I want to see the thirsty cat!' cried the blue-eyed little girl, as, perched on a chair, she clutched at the window-bars. Mr. Radford Shone raised his hand for silence, and for the sixth time since we entered the nursery the good-looking nurse picked up her noisy charge and taking her on her lap tried to soothe her. But the quiet thus obtained lasted only a minute or so. Nurse Melvin, absorbed in the wisdom that was dropping from the great man's lips, relaxed her hold, and once again the little one scrambled to the window sill.

'Want to see the thirsty cat, nursey!' the shrill clamour broke afresh, bringing Mr. Shone's discourse to an effectual full-stop, and an angry flush to his sparsely-covered brow.

'Really, it is impossible to proceed while the child is making that noise,' he said impatiently.

'Come, Ella, you must keep still,' the nurse exclaimed, making another pounce on the little obstructionist. 'These gentlemen want to find your little brother Maurice, and they can't talk about him if you are so naughty. You mustn't trouble them about that silly cat.'

'But I want the thirsty cat. Maurice wants her, too,' pleaded the struggling captive.

'We had better pursue the matter in another room,' said Shone in despair, as he strode to the door. 'We have no time to be worried by thirsty cats that can have no possible bearing on the case.'

A gleam of intense relief, or some kindred emotion, seemed to flit over the nurse's face, causing me to linger for a moment before following Shone out of the room.

'What does the child mean by the thirsty cat'?' I asked her.

'Oh, nothing at all, sir, really— at least nothing that's of any consequence,' was the reply. 'She and Master Maurice used to sit at the window and watch a cat that was often drinking milk out of a saucer on one of the window sills of the house opposite. It hasn't been there for the last few days, and Miss Ella is put out about it.'

There had been a great sensation on its becoming known in West-End circles that the seven-year-old son and heir of Lord and Lady Tressilian was missing. His lordship's enormous wealth, and the circumstances of his marriage nine years before, sufficed to lift the case out of the commonplace and classify it as a first-class mystery with possible family complications.

At the time of the marriage, which had created so much talk, Lord Tressilian had been sixty-five years old, and till within a few months of the ceremony had been regarded as a confirmed bachelor. His presumptive heir had been his nephew, the hon. Ralph Weyland, a young officer in the Guards, whose extravagant living and excesses about town had gained him an unenviable notoriety.

Ralph Weyland's final escapade of marrying a third-rate music-hall artiste had so disgusted Lord Tressilian that he had also made an excursion into the realms of matrimony, taking to himself a wife in his old age in the hope of providing himself with a direct heir who should keep his disreputable nephew out of the title and entailed estates. His lordship's hope was entirely realised, a son having been born to him in the second year of his married life, and a daughter a year later.

Thence onward the affairs of the Tressilians were of the quiet and jog-trot order till one morning, several years later, Lady Tressilian walked into the Vine-street police-station, and asked to see the inspector on duty. I happened to be that individual, and went forward to attend to the lady. She was a tall, angular woman, past her prime, and was labouring under considerable agitation.

It appeared from her disjointed narrative that her little boy, the hon. Maurice Weyland, had been missing for three days, and that she was now seeking the assistance of the police to recover him.

'I know,' she said angrily, when I pointed out that we should be handicapped by the delay in coming to us. 'It is owing to Lord Tressilian's absurd family pride; and even now I am here without his knowledge. He formed the idea that his nephew and former heir, Ralph Weyland, was responsible for the disappearance, so he has been moving heaven and earth to get the boy back without a public scandal. Have you heard of Mr. Radford Shone?'

'The private investigator? Yes, I have heard that he has a very extensive practice,' was my non-committal rejoinder.

'Well, Lord Tressilian rushed off to him and entrusted the finding of our child to him,' her ladyship continued. 'Mr. Shone agrees with my husband that Ralph Weyland is at the bottom of the business, but he has utterly failed to obtain a shred of evidence substantiating that view. I could not allow the matter to drift any longer, so I decided to report it officially.'

I told her that she had done wisely, as however talented a private investigator might be, the police have facilities in disappearance cases which he could not be expected to enjoy. Advising her to go home and inform Lord Tressilian that she had called in the police, I promised to follow her almost immediately to her house in Upper Brook-street.

On my arrival there I had just been in time to witness the close of a painful interview between Lord and Lady Tressilian, the aged peer having greatly resented his wife's appeal for police assistance, with its possible consequence of besmirching the family name. I had tried to smooth matters by pointing out that Mr. Radford Shone having failed in three days to justify his suspicion of Ralph Weyland there might be an entirely different explanation of the affair. I had hardly made the suggestion, when Shone himself was announced, and I was asked to go with him to the nursery to hear what the nurse had to say.

Nurse Melvin's narrative, curtailed in the manner I have described, had been meagre indeed. On the previous Monday afternoon she had left both the children in the nursery according to her usual custom while she went down to the basement to fetch their tea. On her return Maurice was not there and though a prompt search was instituted, no trace of the little fellow was to be found in the house.

Shone's theory, which he had been expounding when Ella had interrupted him, was that the boy had been beckoned by Ralph Weyland from the street below, and had run down and joined him, there being no one in the front hall at that hour of the servants' tea. To hurry the boy into a four-wheeled cab or closed carriage would have been the work of an instant, and the trick would have been done.

The surmise was not without its merits; yet from my own standpoint it had this drawback— that it was the most obvious explanation of the affair. Mr. Weyland, in planning the abduction that was to reconstitute him his uncle's heir, would have known that he would be the first to be suspected of having hand a hand in it. And he must have been a very clever man if he had carried out his plan so as to baffle detection by a man of Shone's reputation.

From the first I had been conscious of a certain latent hostility on the part of Mr. Radford Shone, due, no doubt, to a perfectly natural desire to finish a lucrative case without official interference. As I caught him up on the stairs I did my best to disarm this feeling by wrapping up my doubt of his theory in a little judicious flattery on the lines indicated.

'But Mr. Ralph Weyland has not baffled me,' he protested with that superior smirk of his. 'If Lady Tressilian had exercised a little patience I should have satisfied her on that point.'

Just then we entered the library, where Lord and Lady Tressilian were waiting us, and Shone continued in the same vein— 'I have been telling Inspector Hammond that by to-morrow at latest I shall be in possession of full proofs against Mr. Ralph Weyland,' he said. 'Of course, as the police have been imported into the case, they must pursue an independent investigation, if they please.'

'You would let Mr. Hammond have the benefit of hearing what you have already achieved?' said Lady Tressilian eagerly. But Mr. Radford Shone shook his head grimly.

'My experience is that if the police cannot help themselves it is of very little use trying to help them,' he replied, with an air of lofty disdain. 'I do not mind repeating, however, what I have already reported to your lordship and your ladyship, that the strict watch which I have set on Mr. Ralph Weyland's cottage at Mitcham has revealed some very suspicious circumstances, which I am confident that I shall convert into actual proof no later than to-night.'

Lord Tressilian turned angrily on his wife.

'See how premature you have been Augusta?' he cried. He was a well-pre served old gentleman, with snow-white hair and pink complexion— erect as a dart, in spite of his seventy-five years. 'If Maurice is traced to Ralph the police will have no option but to furnish food for scandal-mongers by locking my nephew up.'

'But my boy may have been murdered,' wailed the poor lady. 'Surely, you would not have Ralph go scot free just for the honour of the house?'

'There are no indications that the child has met with foul play— yet,' Shone inter-posed significantly. 'Though if Mr. Weyland were too hard pressed by the police there is no knowing what might not happen.'

With this last malevolent shaft for Lady Tressilian and, incidentally, for the force to which I am proud to belong, Mr. Radford Shone bowed himself out, alleging that the case would absorb every minute of the day.

After his departure I lingered behind at a gesture from Lord Tressilian.

'You heard what Shone's view is,' said the old peer, eyeing me askance.' 'Your meddling in this matter may cost my son his life. Humanity demands that you should make no move till Shone has completed his task.'

I had both of the parents against me now; for, Lady Tressilian, frightened by what Shone had said about the boy's safety, joined forces with her husband, and besought me with tears in her eyes to do nothing, that day at any rate. In one way the picture which Shone had conjured up had good results, inasmuch as it effectually reconciled the elderly couple. The old peer put his arm round his wife, and together they faced me pleading as they believed with a ruthless policeman who wouldn't mind how many children were sacrificed if he could only run Mr. Ralph Weyland in.

So far was this from being the case that I was touched by their distress.

'See here, my lord,' I said, 'we of the police do not accept outside dictation, and there is nothing but Shone's word for it that your nephew has stolen your son. I shall take up the case on no such assumption, and shall not go near Mr. Ralph Weyland unless my clue leads to him, and then only after due precautions for your son's safety. At present my clue is as likely to lead me to his Majesty the King as to your nephew, for all I know.'

'You have found a clue already?' they both exclaimed to me.'

'What may be a clue,' I replied. 'And with your permission I should wish to go and get to work on it.'

Lord Tressilian was as anxious now as he had been reluctant that I should take up the case and accompanied me to the door with an exaggerated courtesy intended to atone for his initial rudeness. Cutting short his protestations, I asked him rather curtly how long Nurse Melvin had been in his employ.'

'Two months or thereabout,' was the reply. 'But surly you don't think that she—'

'I don't think, and I never speak till I know, my lord,' I said, as I nodded and ran down the steps into the street.

Making my way to a public-house at the corner of the nearest mews, I borrowed a directory and looked up the house opposite Lord Tressilian's— the one from the window sill of which the little girl Ella had so missed what she called 'the thirsty cat.' There being no name opposite the number in the directory, I concluded that the house was of the class that are let furnished to temporary tenants, which was so far in favour of the notion that had possessed me since my visit to the nursery.

In less than half-an-hour I had confirmed my surmise by calling on several neighbouring house-agents, the last of whom informed me that he had recently let the house, No. 3000B, to a Captain Masterman. The captain had taken the house for two months, paying one month's rent in advance.

From the agents I went back to the police-station, and selecting a young constable of guileless appearance, ordered him to put on plain clothes and call at No. 330B, Upper Brook-street, in the character of a book canvasser. My instructions to him were to get into conversation with one or more of the servants, and learn what he could of the house- and antecedents of Captain Masterman.

The constable departed, but was back at the station in next to no time. He had rung and knocked both at the front and area doors of no. 300B, without meeting with any response. So far as he could judge the house was unoccupied. On receiving this report I changed into plain clothes myself, and bidding the young constable accompany me set out for the house. Having sought admission by the ordinary methods, I descended to the basement and affected an entrance by slipping back the catch of the kitchen window.

A glance told me that the house had been evacuated hastily, and that possession had not been given up in the ordinary way to the agents. No tenants would have been so shameless as to leave the place in such a chaos of unwashed crockery, dirty sauce-pans, and littered floors. Making our way upstairs we found, the reception rooms in scarcely better condition. The furniture, in the dining-room, the windows of which faced the street, was all higgledy-piggledy, and on the table were the remains of a half-consumed meal, with covers laid for two.

But what drew from my companion and myself a, simultaneous cry of surprise was a huge, black, sleek-haired cat that was squatting on the side-board near an empty saucer, regarding us with a fixed stare from two shining eyes.

Approaching the animal closer, I saw that it was wearing a collar to which was attached a long string, the end of which was not fastened to anything but trailed to the floor.

'Puss, puss! Poor, pussy!' said my assistant, eliciting, however, no friendly 'Miauw' in reply. Then he went up and stroked it, turning to me the next moment, with a sheepish grin.

'The thing ain't real, he cried. 'It s a stuffed cat.'

I had guessed as much directly I saw the collar and the trailing string, and I knew that I had made no mistake in following the clue of the 'thirsty cat.' Whether or no it would lead me to Mr. Ralph Weyland as the culprit was another; but I had the satisfaction of certainty that mine was an entirely different starting-point from that of Mr. Radford Shone. I was considering my next step when out of the tail of my eye I caught sight of Nurse Melvin coming from the area gate of Lord Tressilian's house opposite. Glancing nervously, at the windows of the house we were searching, she made off down the street at a fast walk.

'Shadow that woman,' I said pointing her out to my companion. 'When you have located her destination report to me at the station.'

The young constable sped downstairs on his congenial errand, and I continued my examination of the house. I was now tolerably well assured what had happened. Some persons or persons had taken the house with the special purpose of kidnapping Lord Tressilian's little son and heir, and Nurse Melvin was in collusion. The stuffed cat had been used to excite the boy's interest and curiosity from his nursery window, and finally at a convenient hour to lure him across the street. The door once shut upon him he would have been at the mercy of his captors, and had doubtless been removed after dark to some place at a distance for greater security. The nurse's anxiety to check little Ella's persistent references to the 'thirsty cat' had planted the germ of suspicion in me, and I now had little doubt that, having seen me enter the vacated house, she had found some pretext for asking leave to go out, so that she might warn her employers or confederates that the police were following a true scent.

There was nothing, of course, in this reading of the case to contravene Shone's theory that the Hon. Ralph Weyland was at the bottom of the plot, and I might find that the 'Captain Masterman,' of No. 300B, was none other than Lord Tressilian's nephew. At the same time, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had gained a legitimate clue, while Shone had suspected Mr. Weyland through jumping to a conclusion about him as the most interested, party. It would be a curious coincidence if these two divergent methods drew together at the finish. Personally, as a believer in beginning at the right end of a case, I hoped that the late owner of the 'thirsty cat' would prove to be someone quite different.

The only other material fact that I found at the house was that the late tenants must have been of slovenly, not to say dirty, habits, though there was evidence that there had been plenty of eating and drinking, especially the latter. On the whole, I was inclined to the view that 'Captain Masterman' was not a scion of the aristocracy; but I was immediately afterwards shaken in it by remembering that he had made a mesalliance. The music-hall artiste to whom Lord Tressilian had taken such exception might be responsible for the un-made beds and unswept carpets.

I returned to the police-station, and shortly afterwards my hopes of confounding Radford Shone were knocked out to zero by the receipt of a telegram from the constable, detailed to follow Nurse Melvin. It ran―

'Traced woman to Lime Tree Villa, Acacia Grove, New Malden. She stayed only two minutes, and is now on her way back to London.'

Now New Malden, that residential suburb beyond Wimbledon, had been mentioned by Shone as the place where Mr. Ralph Weyland had a cottage, upon which he himself had been keeping observation. The natural inference was that he had jumped to the correct conclusion, and that Nurse Melvin had been warn her confederates that the police had spotted No. 300B, Upper Brook-Street as the lair from which the kidnapping had been contrived.

In a few minutes I was at Waterloo, and half an hour later strolled into Acacia Grove, New Malden. Lime Tree Villa stood self-confessed by the name on its gate— a small detached house lying back from the road amidst a tangle of shrubs and fruit trees. I was turning away to perfect my plans when two men wearing the baize aprons of furniture removers came down the circular carriage-sweep, and out of the gate, chuckling audibly.

One of them, the tallest and leanest of the two, cocked his eye at me in passing and in spite of his disguise I recognised Shone. Perceiving that I knew him, he beckoned me to follow him to the end of the road.

'So you made use of my theory after all, Inspector Hammond,' he said in his arrogant manner. 'Well, I can add fact to theory now. Ralph Weyland has got the boy right enough. We have been mouching around in the character of furniture men who had mistaken the house, and we heard Weyland talking to his wife.'

'Gave the whole show away, she did,' sniggered Shone's companion, who, as I subsequently ascertained, was Mr. Samuel Martin, the great man's admirer and understudy.

'Have they got the boy in the house now?' I asked, none too well pleased by the turn of events; for I had hoped that my cat clue hadn't got the disappointed heir at the end of it. Mr. Radford Shone would be able to brag that he had done by mere intuition what the police had to do by routine methods.

'Yes; I gathered from what they said that the youngster is boxed up in one of the upper rooms,' replied Shone. 'But there's someone else in it, at another house here, with whom Weyland and his wife have got an appointment at ten o'clock to night. It's a regular conspiracy, and if you want to bag the lot you should put the arrest off till then.'

'Why,' I could not resist saying, 'you seems uncommonly keen on the arrest of Mr. Weyland, in spite of it being so distasteful to your client.'

'Oh, it will teach old Tressilian to keep his wife in order,' said Shone airily. 'He's only got himself to thank for letting her bring you into the business, and I shall appreciate the advertisement of having given a lead to the police.'

The fellow was insufferable; but there was no way out of it but to make the arrest and recover the child on his information. As I wished for the purpose of the evidence which I should have to present in court, to pursue some enquiries on my account, I fell in with Shone's suggestion, and consented to defer the final overthrow of Mr. Ralph Weyland's scheme till the evening.

Before we parted I asked Shone who was the other man with whom Weyland and his wife had the appointment.

'I couldn't overhear his name,' was the reply. But he is some pal of Weyland's from whom they expect to obtain an advance of money to enable them to take the boy out of the country.'

WHEN I approached Lime Tree Villa at ten o'clock that night, a tall, spare phantom and a stout one glided from the shadows at the roadside to meet me and my two constables. It was so dark that only when they were close up did I recognise Shone and his toady.

'I am come to enjoy my triumph,' whispered the expert. 'I was willing to stake my reputation from the first that Ralph Weyland had got the boy, so it is only fair that I should see the coping stone put on my theory— especially as you didn't quite see eye to eye with me, inspector.'

I had not expected to see Shone there, but never was I more glad to meet anyone in my life. Ignoring the hasty hint that he had come in person to see that I did not allow Weyland to escape in order to spite an unofficial rival, I gave instructions to one of my men.

When the occupants of the villa emerged he was to enter the house, as soon as they were out of sight, and take possession of little Maurice. The other constable was to accompany me in the wake of the culprits so that we could surprise them at their rendezvous. We had not long to wait before a man and a woman came out of the gates. With the exception of the officer told off to remain, the rest of us moved off discreetly after them, and guided by the footsteps of our quarry, followed them along Acacia Grove, across a short connecting road, and so into another thoroughfare running parallel with the one whence we had started.

The man and woman turned into the grounds of a small house which, like most of those around was embowered in trees. The front door faced the road, and from two open French windows at the side of the house a gentle glow of lamplight shone upon a cluster of laurel bushes.

'Let them gain admission; then we will make an entrance at the window,' was my whispered order, which was acted on directly the door had closed. Stealing to the laurels we ensconced ourselves just as the visitors were shown into the room by a maid-servant. A good-looking man of forty and a dark-eyed little lady a decade younger, sitting at dessert, were regarding the newcomers with puzzled surprise.

'For conspirators the parties don't seem particularly well acquainted,' I breathed in Shone's ear, drawing from him a suppressed snort.

'Good evening, sir,' began the male visitor, a dissipated looking fellow with a husky voice. 'I and the missis have had a stroke of luck by which you can benefit if you'll make it worth our while— two thousand quid, in fact, to go abroad with.'

The female visitor, a coarse-featured, Hebraic woman, took up the parable. 'We should never trouble you again, and the kid should never be heard of,' she put in. 'The fact is this blamed old country is too hot to hold us, and we are in a hurry to cross the 'ditch' to New York.'

'I really don't understand you extraordinary people,' murmured the gentleman of the house, his hand intuitively seeking the bell.

'Don't go too fast,' said the first speaker. 'We have got old Tressilian's boy, and taken a sight of trouble to get him, planting a nurse on 'em, hiring the opposite house and all. Now isn't it worth your while to do a deal— on the basis of a total disappearance of yours truly, and the young 'un as well? It occurred to us, through living near and hearing that you were a needy toff, that we might be mutually useful. So we just worked up the scheme.'

The owner of the house rose slowly from his chair and with a swift jerk of his hand seized the man by the collar.

'You infernal scoundrel!' he said. 'So that is the secret of my little cousin's disappearance, is it? You thought I was fair game for a dirty bargain and subsequent blackmail. You've come to the wrong shop, my son; I'm going to send for the police.'

I sprang through the window.

'I'll save you the trouble. Mr. Weyland,' I said. 'Here, Jem, you take the woman,' indicating the female intruder to my constable.

'But― but― but―' spluttered Shone who had followed us, 'this is Weyland,' and he pointed the scowling fellow of whom I had relieved his original captor.

'No, Mr. Radford Shone,' I said quietly. 'This gentleman here, who has just given him into my custody, is Mr. Ralph Weyland. Having had the honour of serving under him in the Coldstreams ten years ago, I thought from the first that you had bungled it. And I haven't even to thank you for finding the boy, for my own clue would have done that."

'Delighted to see you, Hammond. I remember you well; but I'm in a bit of a fog,' said Mr. Weyland, shaking my by the hand. 'What does it all mean?'

'It means that Mr. Radford Shone jumped to too many conclusions for absolute accuracy,' I replied. 'When Lord Tressilian called him in to find the boy, he pitched on you as the most interested party. Conclusion one. Then Lord Tressilian told him that you lived at Acacia Villa, Lime Grove, and on Shone coming down here to pry about, Lime Tree Villa, Acacia Grove, when he saw it on the gate, was near enough for a genius with his mind made up. Conclusion two. I was in a fog myself till I made a few enquiries and found out the real name of your house— Acacia Villa. And this soi-disant Captain Masterman I recognise as Denver Joe, and American 'crook', for whom we have been looking for a long while.'

'By George,' Captain Weyland cried, 'it all comes of having to live in a suburb of umbrageously named streets and houses. Lydia, dear, Mr. Radford Shone looks ill; get him a glass of wine.'

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10:  The Bayswater Boarding-House

CHELTENHAM-ROAD, Bayswater, is an eminently respectable thoroughfare, composed mostly of private residences. From end to end there is no such thing as an 'Apartment' card to be seen over its spotless fanlights or in its neatly-curtained windows; but there are a few boarding-houses of a superior class, all priding themselves on looking more private than the really private abodes next door or over the way.

The most favoured of these establishments was kept by a Mrs. Lorimer, an officer's widow, whose propriety had never been in doubt since her daughter Ida grew to years of discretion. And discretion is a sorely needed asset for a pretty girl whose business in life it is to aid her mother in making boarders feel at home. For if the process is overdone there is always the risk that some male 'paying guest' may make himself too much at home with disastrous results.

I had not been five minutes in the house before I came to the conclusion that some such breakdown in Miss Ida's programme had been the cause of my being hurriedly sent for from the police-station by the constable on the beat. As the message contained the ominous word 'murder,' I need not say that my footsteps did not lag.

On entering the front door, I found the whole place buzzing like a hive of bees. White faces peeped out of the dining-room, whence the smell of coffee and bacon told of an interrupted breakfast; from the drawing-room across the hall came the suppressed murmur of women's voices, while a louder commotion on the first floor landing indicated the centre of disturbance.

Running upstairs, I found the constable surrounded by a little knot of persons who all seemed eager to fill with their own surmises the note-book which as a matter of form he held in his hand. At that moment Dr. Winthrop, a local practitioner well known to me, emerged from an open bedroom door.

'Yes, the poor fellow is quite dead,' he said, addressing a comely, middle-aged woman dissolved in tears, adding, as he caught sight of me, 'Ah, here is Inspector Burke! Just step inside here, Burke, please, and you too, Mrs. Lorimer. It may save time if we put our heads together.'

The weeping landlady and I followed him into the room, where, so calm and peaceful, lay the silent figure on the bed that it was difficult to believe that anything was wrong. But drawing aside the bed-clothes, the doctor disclosed the dreadful fact that the motionless figure was lying on sheets saturated with blood, which had evidently welled from a punctured wound over the heart. The body was that of a dark-skinned Oriental dressed in silk pyjamas, the jacket of which the doctor had disarranged to make his first examination.

'Roughly speaking, he's been dead about five hours, which puts the crime at four o'clock this morning,' said Winthrop. 'He must have been struck in his sleep and killed instantly. The absence of a weapon put the theory of suicide out of court, even if it were surgically tenable, which it is not.'

'But,' wailed Mrs. Lorimer with clasped hands, 'the door was bolted on the inside. We broke it open to get in when he did not come down to breakfast. How could any body have got in?'

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. 'That is for Inspector Burke to say,' he replied shortly.

For the first time I removed my eyes from the corpse and let them range round the room, which was a fair-sized one, with a window facing towards the street. The window was open by about three inches at the top, Mrs. Lorimer explaining, in answer to a question from me, that it was the dead man's custom always to sleep with the window in that state. Going over to it, I saw that it was highly improbable, though not actually impossible, that an entrance could have been effected by that route, in full view of the road and the houses opposite as it was.

'Tell me as briefly as you can what you know of the deceased, his habits and associations,' I said, turning to the landlady.

Mrs. Lorimer's account of her late boarder was enlightening as far as it went, but somehow it left the impression on my mind that she was holding something in reserve. The lifeless clay on the bed was that of Mr. Chunder Dass, a young Hindoo barrister, who had been over in England for the purpose of studying law at the Middle Temple. He had been well supplied with money, and being of a generous and sociable nature had been a favourite with the other boarders.

'With the gentleman, madam, or with the ladies?' I interposed.

The question seemed to cause Mrs. Lorimer some slight embarrassment.

With both,' she replied after a moment's hesitation. 'With the ladies most, perhaps. He was very musical, and was more often in the drawing-room after dinner than in the smoking-room with the men.'

At this point I became conscious that some of the boarders congregated on the landing were gradually pressing into the room, and I raised my voice rather sharply to bid them stand clear of the doorway. They most of them obeyed― all but a tall spare man with curious protuberant eyes and a stout stupid-looking individual in a loud check suit, to whom the former was whispering, regardless of my injunction.

'Come, sir! Be so good as to step outside,' I said peremptorily. 'I cannot have the general public in here at present.'

The spare man surveyed me with an insolent stare.

'So you class me with the general public on an occasion of this sort, do you, Mr. Inspector?' he said in a high pitched squeaky voice that reminded me of a bag-pipe.

'It is Mr. Radford Shone, the celebrated private detective,' Mrs. Lorimer whispered to me hurriedly. 'He is boarding here with his friend while his rooms in Gower-street are being repainted.'

Now the reputation of this gentleman as a specialist in investigation cases had reached me from several sources, and I recognised that he was not quite on the same footing as the gaping spectators on the landing. It was natural that he should take a professional interest in the tragedy, and it was even possible, that the trained acumen of an expert who had chanced to be living in the house prior to the crime might be useful to me.

At any rate, Mr. Radford Shone might be expected to put matters tersely and lucidly which otherwise I should have to sift from a mass of inconsequent verbiage.

'I didn't know you,' I said in a tone of half-apology. 'This is a bad business, Mr. Shone, in which, perhaps, your experience has led you to form a conclusion?'

He gave a short, laugh, in which his companion joined.

'The whole thing is an open book to me, but then, of course, I have had the advantage of residing here for over a week and have been able to study the social under-currents of the house.'

'Oh, Mr. Shone, I am sure that there are no under-currents in our pleasant little circle,' the unhappy landlady began. 'Everything is quite above board, and you can't think that any of my boarders—'

'If I can have a few words with you alone, inspector, I can make the thing perfectly plain to you,' Shone interrupted her rudely. 'In the meanwhile just look at this.'

That to which he drew my attention was a brass bolt on the inside of the door, having its bar still protruding, just as it had been wrenched away from its moorings in order to break into the room when its occupant had made no sign. It was not, however, to the general wreck of the bolt that Shone's lean forefinger was pointing, but to an almost invisible strand of yellow silk tied round the shank of the bolt and broken off short at the knot.

Having examined it cursorily, I followed Shone into his own bedroom, which was down a passage on the same floor. His friend, Mr. Samuel Martin, came with us.

'You see what that bit of silk means?' said Shone as soon as we were shut into his room. 'It was used to draw the bolt into its socket, so as to give the impression that the door had remained bolted all night, by someone leaving the room by way of the door. I don't think you will want to pay any more attention to the window, inspector.'

'The inference being that the murderer is an inmate of this house?' I suggested rather doubtfully. I was by no means carried away by the force of his theory, though it was by no means untenable. Yet it seemed to me that if it was correct the murderer must have left a good deal to chance. To take one instance alone, he could have been by no means certain that even after many attempts he would be able to steer the bolt into its socket through the damping rings from the other side of the door. And it would have been leaving a good deal to Providence to expect to be able to break the silk off short at the knot after it had served its purpose without leaving a loose end that would have been noticeable even by an ordinary police officer.

'What other inference could there be?' said Shone, exchanging a glance with his hanger-on, as though commiserating my density.

'You could have found that much out for yourself, I should hope, without any undue strain upon your intelligence— provided when you came to make an examination of the room you had noticed the circle of silk. I can go further than that, thanks to having exercised my powers of observing while residing in the house, and indicate to you which particular inmate of the house is the murderer.'

His tone jarred my self-respect, but it was clearly my duty to hear what he had to say, and as civilly as I could I asked him to enlighten me.

'Jack Kentish is the fellow's name,' he said. 'It's simply a case of common or garden jealousy. Kentish and the dead man were both sweet upon Ida Lorimer, the landlady's daughter, and the fair Ida favoured the darkie.'

And Shone proceeded to describe how the young Indian barrister had been recently taking Miss Lorimer out a good deal to theatres and concerts, to the unconcealed annoyance of Mr. Kentish, who, according to the gossip of the older boarders, had been the girl's undeclared lover till Chunder Dass appeared on the scene.

'A case of magnetic attraction for the heaviest metal, I imagine,' sneered Shone coarsely. 'The blackamoor was uncommonly well supplied with cash and was able to give her a better time than Kentish, who is only a clerk in a bank.'

I thought all along that for a professional mystery-monger Shone was using that strident, high-pitched voice of his rather freely, and I was not altogether surprised when the door was flung violently open to admit a girl in a first-class rage.

'That odious creature has been telling you lies!' she burst forth at me. And, turning her pretty, flushed face on Shone, she literally poured out the vials of her wrath on him. He was an infamous spy, whose business in life it was to make mischief. It was a bad day for her mother's house when he had set foot in it; Jack Kentish had no more killed Chunder Dass than she had herself; it was a wicked calumny to say that she had preferred the Indian because of his wealth; she had not preferred him at all, and more to the same effect.

Mr. Samuel Martin looked horror-struck at this irreverence to his chief, but Mr. Radford Shone himself stood the onslaught easily and sneeringly. To Miss Ida herself he made no direct reply, but to me he remarked with an ugly grin— 'I suppose that a live bank clerk is better than a dead Baboo, from the feminine point of view.'

These recriminations were not conducive to clearing up the mystery and it behoved me to nip them in the bud. I did so by informing Miss Lorimer soothingly that there was nothing against Mr. Kentish at present and by telling Shone that his discovery of the silk on the bolt had certainly furnished important matter for enquiry. By this means I managed to separate the conflicting parties, the angry girl retiring to the lower regions, and Shone putting on his hat preparatory to going out, he was careful to say, on business connected with some stones which were missing from the Duchess of Bealieu's tiara.

'Kentish is employed at the Fleet-street branch of the London and Suburban Bank,' said Shone as, followed by Martin, he made for the stairs. 'He left the house before Dass's room was broken open, so you'll be able to take him by surprise if you look sharp. Of course, what you said to the girl was nonsense. You have, in the little précis I have given you, quite sufficient to arrest him on.'

The gesture with which alone I answered him might have meant assent or mere civility, for I was not prepared to arrest Mr. Kentish or anyone else without further investigation.

To this end I returned to the death chamber which I had left in charge of the constable, and where Dr. Winthrop was now making a more prolonged examination of the body. First turning my attention to the bolt, my first impression was confirmed. Once in fifty times, perhaps, the attempt to pull the brass bar into the socket by means of the slender strand of silk passed between the door and the door-post might have succeeded, but the necessary failures would have been far from noiseless in the dead of night, and would have taken up so much time that it would have needed a murderer of iron nerves to persist.

I came to the conclusion that Radford Shone might have fallen into the trap that always yawns for superficial amateur cleverness, and fitted his discovery of the silken strand on to his preconceived notions of Miss Ida's love affairs. It was quite possible that a cunning criminal might nave tied the silk round the bolt with the very purpose of inducing the view that Shone had taken. To have accepted his theory also begged the question that the deceased had gone to bed leaving his room door unbolted. This being so, I went back to the only other means of entrance— the window looking out over the street. Measuring distances with my eye, I saw that it would be just possible for an active man to swing himself from the roof of the portico over the front door to within gripping distance of the sill of the window. Shone's argument as to the risk of observation run by anyone attempting the window was a potent one, but it was a quiet thoroughfare, and at any rate the thing could be done.

Having established this, I saw Mrs. Lorimer again and endeavoured to learn what I could of the dead man's habits and connections. Of these she could tell me little, except that he was of a studious disposition, and that she believed that he had spent his whole days at his chambers in the Temple. Here a bit of luck was in store for me. On asking for his address in the Temple I found that the chambers were in the same building in Pump-court as those of Mr. Noel Straddon, the well-known Old Bailey barrister, with whom I had a long-standing acquaintance. I determined at once to go and see if Mr. Straddon knew anything of the Hindoo student, and to take the opportunity of looking in on Mr. Kentish at the London and Suburban Bank.

Leaving the house in charge of a sergeant and several constables, I took a cab and drove eastwards, instructing the cabman to stop first at the bank. It would give Mr. Radford Shone too great a pull over me to neglect the hint he had furnished as to the jealousy subsisting between Kentish and Chunder Dass, since if it turned out to be the key to the mystery I should never hear the last of it. And as the investigation had to be made it would be better to make it before Mr. Kentish, presuming his innocence, had heard of his rival's death.

But as my cab drew to the kerb outside the bank l received a nasty jar. Another cab, which had been waiting opposite the great swing doors, was moving a few paces on to make room for mine, when a stylishly attired young lady dashed out of the bank and jumped into it. She must have given her orders to the driver through the flap, for the cab promptly wheeled round, and went off at speed, disclosing to me the face of its occupant. It was Ida Lorimer, who caught my eye and flung me back a look of defiance. The girl had evidently been to warn Kentish of the discovery at the boarding-house and I hardly knew how to regard her action. It cut the ground from under me in tackling Kentish with all the advantage of surprise, while on the other it had indirectly refuted Shone's theory that Miss Lorimer preferred the Hindoo suitor. And if Shone's theory were refutable in part, it might fall to pieces altogether.

I entered the bank and on running my eye along the range of busy clerks behind the counter had little difficulty in picking out the man who had just received Ida Lorimer's hastily conveyed news. A young fellow, who evidently occupied the position of an assistant cashier, was staring with unseeing eyes at a customer who had just presented a cheque. Deadly pale, he passed his handkerchief once or twice across his brows, and only when the customer sharply demanded attention did he mechanically take the cheque. I waited till the customer had finished his business and then quietly slipped into his place at the counter.

'Mr. Kentish, I believe?' said I.

He nodded, a faint tinge of colour coming into his pallid cheeks, at sight of my uniform.

'I expected you, but hardly so soon,' he said, 'If you want to take me into custody, I should be obliged if you would not do it here at the counter before all my colleagues. I will come out to you.'

'Not so fast,' I sad. 'It is lucky for you that I saw Miss Lorimer and am therefore aware how you obtained news of what has happened at your lodgings. Otherwise what you have just said would bear an ugly construction. At present I am only here to ask questions, and my first shall be— "Why are you in such a hurry to suggest your own guilt by taking it for granted that I want to arrest you?" '

'Because that beast Radford Shone has got his knife into me for chaffing him at the dinner-table, and Ida— Miss Lorimer, that is— says that he has been getting at you about me,' was the reply.

It was a good sign that it was spoken in a tone betokening more of anger and less of fear.

'You can make your mind easy that you won't be arrested on mere gossip,'' I assured him. 'At the same time I am bound to pursue enquiries when information is tendered. Is it true that there was bad blood between you and Mr. Chunder Dass?'

The young man hung his head, then raised it quickly and looked me squarely in the face.

'You can't exactly call it bad blood,' he said, 'but in the smoking room the other night I told him that he was a dirty little nigger and ought to be killed.'

'H'm, hardly a threat, but dangerous language to have used as it turns out, Mr. Kentish,' I said with difficulty repressing a smile, for now that we had joined issue his demeanour was scarcely that of a midnight assassin.

'One doesn't like to have one's best girl pilfered by a chap like that,' he rejoined. 'But there,' he added, 'Ida was very nice to me just now and explained that if I got into trouble it was all her fault. She had taken up Dass, it seems, to worry me a bit, after a slight difference of opinion, but its all right between us now.'

'You heard nothing in the course of last night to call for remark?' I asked.

'Not I. I slept as usual without waking,' was the reply.

As the other bank clerks were beginning to take notice, it was desirable in his interest to terminate the interview, and I did so by thanking him audibly for his civility in answering my questions I then quitted the bank and made my way to the Temple, hoping for better results there, for I was pretty, nearly convinced that a more subtle influence had been at work than Radford Shone's sketchy tale of boarding-house jealousy.

A board at the entrance of 99, Pump-court, told me that the chambers of Mr. Chunder Dass were on the second floor of the building and those of Mr. Straddon on the ground floor, so I determined to call at the latter first. The clerk admitted me to the outer office and conducted me to the inner sanctum, where I found the eminent counsel busy on a pile of briefs. On recognising me he tossed his work aside and pointed to a chair, which, however, I declined.

'In a hurry, eh? and where do I come in?' said Mr. Straddon with his usual cheery good-nature. Without beating about the bush or even imparting my reason, I asked him if he could tell me anything about Chunder Dass, the Hindoo barrister and law-student who had chambers two floors above. As I put the question I noticed that Mr. Straddon turned a half -unconscious glance to a small, four-paned window set in the inner wall with the obvious purpose of bringing more light into the room from the staircase, which was visible through it.

'I have but the slightest acquaintance with him, though I see him several times a day through that window as he passes up or down the stairs,' was the reply. 'He is very keen on law and must have taken it up more as a hobby than a source of lively-hood, for he informed me not long ago that he was heir to a very large estate in Bengal. But what has he been up to, Burke? Nothing to the discredit of the Inn, I trust?'

'Depends on how you look at it, sir,'' I said drily. 'Mr. Chunder Dass has been up to getting himself murdered in his boarding-house at Bayswater last night.'

For the moment I was completely staggered by the celebrated advocate's reception of my news. He stared at me as though hardly believing his ears and his clever, smooth-shaven face worked strangely. Inured as he was to startling surprises and to every known phase of crime, I could not understand why he should be so moved by the death of one whom he had just described as only a slight acquaintance.

'At what hour did death take place?' he asked in a queer, low voice.

'During the night— between three and four o'clock, according to the medical evidence,' I replied.

'Seven hours — for it is now nearly eleven in the forenoon,' said Mr. Straddon musingly, as he glanced at his watch. And then, with a quick change to his ordinary, incisive manner, he added— 'You saw the body yourself, I presume, Inspector Burke?'

'Certainly,' I answered.

'Well, would you be surprised to hear,' he went on, pointing dramatically to the window in the wall, 'that I saw Chunder Dass through there, passing up the stairs, not ten minutes before you came in. Nor have I seen him come down since.'

'Then he must be up there now,' I murmured, not knowing what to think. I suppose that this shrewd criminal barrister and I, the hardened police-officer, were the two least likely men in London to be shaken by such a situation, but we regarded each other with mutually puzzled eyes before either spoke. Then Mr. Straddon rose quietly.

'Come,' he said. 'You mustn't let it rest at this. Shall I tell you what I make of it?'

'If you please, sir,' I said, for I confess to being nonplussed by the emergency.

'What if the Hindoo whom I saw going upstairs is a compatriot, possibly a relation of Chunder Dass, closely resembling him? What if he is searching in the dead man's chambers for something of value to himself?'

And Stardom's low tones carried a world of suggestion as he looked into my eyes.

'In that case,' I said, 'the chances are that the person up there knows something about the murder.'

Mr. Straddon opened the door of his chambers for me, but did not offer to come out himself.

'On second thoughts you had better go up alone,' he said. 'I mustn't be a witness in a case in which the chances are that I shall be professionally engaged.'

Nodding assent, I mounted the stairs to the second landing, where a name in black letters on one of the old 'oaks' gave me the necessary information. The door was shut, and tip-toeing to it I stood listening. From inside came the sounds of rustling palmers and of drawers being opened and shut. I softly tried the door, but it was locked.

'Mr. Chunder Dass! Mr. Chunder Dass!' I cried through the panel.

There was a slight delay, and then there opened to me a Hindoo gentleman in European dress— the very image of that other whom I had left an hour ago lying dead in the Bayswater boarding-house. If anything had been needed to emphasise the impossibility of it being the same man it was the momentary gleam of alarm that flashed in the black, beady eyes of the individual before me.

'Mr. Chunder Dass?' I said, this time interrogatively, as I stepped past him into the room.

'Yes,' he faltered, following me in after one despairing glance at the door. 'What is your business with me, sir?'

'You are the Mr. Chunder Dass who boards at Mrs. Lorimer's in the Cheltenham-road, Bayswater?' I persisted.

'Have I not admitted it?' he said, forcing an oily smile. 'I hope that you have nothing very serious against me, Mr. Police-officer. What is it that you require?'

I could see that he was hoping that I had called on the tenant of those Chambers on some trivial matter, in ignorance of what had happened at the boarding-house, and that having transacted my business I should quickly take my leave. My reply, therefore, must have come upon him like a thunderclap.

'I want you to come back with me to Mrs. Lorimer's and explain to me why you tied a piece of yellow silk round the bolt on the door of Mr. Chunder Dass's bed-room.'

He gazed at me out of his large, soft, melancholy eyes like a terrified hare, then, as they often do, collapsed utterly.

'No, no, no ! anywhere but there. Take me to prison and I will confess, but not there!— oh, not there !' he screamed at me.

So it turned out that Mr. Radford Shone was too precipitate in attributing the murder of the law student, Chunder Dass, to Miss Ida Lorimer's fickle behaviour towards her mother's boarders. The crime had its roots in a more sordid passion than Mr. Jack Kentish's calf-love for his land-lady's pretty daughter― in no less than the greed of a younger brother for the inheritance of an elder. The wretched creature upon whom my grip fell while he was rummaging among the papers of the kinsman he had slain had journeyed to England, unknown to his victim and to relatives in India, in order to remove from his path the brother who stood between him and a fortune.

Ram Lal— such was the murderer's name— had been lying close in Soho for six weeks before he had completed his preparations by a careful study of his brother's habits both at his boarding-house and his chambers. He had then, just as I had surmised, gained access to Chunder Dass's bedroom by scaling the portico and entering by the window, his Oriental cunning prompting him to tie the strand of silk round the bolt in order to induce the belief that the criminal was an inmate of the house. If he could have foreseen, when engaged in that nefarious act that the first person he would mislead thereby would be 'the eminent expert' he would have been more confident of immunity than was justified by events.

That night certain routine duties in connection with the case took me to Mrs. Lorimer's again. When I approached the house a luggage-laden hansom was at the door. In the hall Radford Shone and Martin were putting on their overcoat amid a fire of chaff from their late fellow boarders, who had evidently, read of the arrest in the evening papers and had made the place too hot to hold them.

'Ah, inspector!' a delighted old colonel grinned at sight of me. 'We are losing our distinguished detective, you see! Mr. Shone is going back to Gower-street to practise the science of door-bolting from the wrong side in his own diggings.'

'Doing a bolt, eh, sir?' I could not resist saying as the departing guests went scowling down the steps to the cab.

_________________

11: The Wireless Telegram

WHEN I ENTERED the chief's office in response to an urgent summons I found that busy man engaged with Mr. Thomas Sutherland, the chairman of the Flower Steamship Company, which owned one of the most important of the fleets of Trans-Atlantic mail boats using the port of Liverpool.

'This is Inspector Kellaway, whom I propose to detail—' the chief was beginning, but Mr. Sutherland stopped him with a wave of his hand.

'Kellaway and I are old acquaintances,' he said. 'There is no officer to whom I would rather have the interests of the company committed.'

'Then I can go straight to the point,' said the chief, who was never one to waste words. And, turning to me, he continued—

'A wireless telegram has been received by the Flower Steamship Company from the captain of the Escholtsia, now in mid-ocean, to the effect that last night an enormous robbery of negotiable bonds, involving a probably fatal assault upon the owner of the securities, was committed on board. There is no trace of the thief, though, of course, both he and the stolen property must still be on the ship. I want you to hurry across to Queenstown, board the liner there, and come on in her to Liverpool, doing all you can during the short voyage to take hold before the passengers have left the ship.'

'Very good, sir; but some of them would be leaving her at Queenstown,' I suggested.

'That has been foreseen and provided for,' replied the chief. 'Instructions by wireless have already been sent to Captain Attlee to allow no on to go ashore at Queenstown. As soon as the tug has taken off the mails the steamer will come straight on here.'

'You will understand, Kellaway,' Mr. Sutherland put in, 'that it does not pay a steamship company to have this sort of thing happening on board their vessels. If you are instrumental in recovering the property we shall be happy to give you a suitable reward, though the owner will probably go us one better in that respect. He is Mr. Jacob van Schuyler, a prominent financier of New York.'

Such were the meagre particulars but tempting inducement with which I started for Holyhead to commence my journey to Dublin, and thence across Ireland to join the Escholtsia at Queenstown.

It was winter time, and when I reached Holyhead the dirty weather gave promise of an unpleasant crossing, which was by no means belied when I boarded the packet. I myself am a good sailor, but such a sea was running out in the Channel that we hadn't been out ten minutes before the stewards were in request among the sea-sick travellers. It may have been hard-hearted of me in my own immunity from the miserable malady to be amused by the misfortunes of others, but my sense of humour was compelled to yield to the sad plight of two of the worst sufferers. They appeared to be fellow-travellers― a tall, spare man of middle age and a very stout man, with a fair, stupid, moon-calf face, much younger than the other.

So long as the packet remained at the landing-stage they swaggered about with the air of ancient mariners, using nautical terms for the edification of bystanders but no sooner did the vessel begin to pitch in the heavy sea outside than disaster swooped upon them. The stout man was the first to collapse and he received but scant sympathy from his companion as he sat groaning in a corner. The tall man chaffed him unmercifully in a nasty, sarcastic way, advising all sorts of ridiculous remedies. But retribution was at hand. The tall man suddenly turned green and subsided into his friend's lap, whence he rolled limply to the deck and lay there in sorry case till I propped him up alongside the other. So they remained for the rest of the passage, and when they staggered ashore at Kingstown a more bedraggled and dilapidated couple it would have been impossible to imagine.

I was not destined to have seen the last of these two human wrecks, though when I next caught a glimpse of them on the platform at the North Wall railway station they had regained some, if not all, of their jaunty demeanour. Doubtless a visit to the refreshment rooms, from which they were emerging, had proved a restorative. They got into the train by which I was travelling though not into the same compartment, and I dismissed them from my mind as intending passengers by one of the liners calling at the great port of arrival and departure for which I was bound.

Even now, however, I had not done with the two victims of the wrath of St. George's Channel. On arriving at Queenstown I found by due enquiry that the Escholtsia was not expected till early the following morning; so, having arranged with the agent of the Flower Line to be taken off to the steamer in the tug that went for the mails, I went to the Queen's Hotel and engaged a bed for the night. What with a stormy crossing and the tedious railway journey, I had had a tiring day, and I was not sorry to sit down to a bit of dinner in the coffee-room. I had hardly disposed of my soup when in walked my pair of sea-sick heroes of the morning.

Having had the start of them, and as they both did ample justice to the carte du jour, I had finished my dinner considerably in advance of them, and moved by the curiosity which is, I suppose, no fault in a detective, I strolled out into the hall and glanced at the register lying on the counter of the bureau. Besides my own, the only names recently added were those of Mr. Radford Shone and Mr. Samuel Martin, both of London; and it was, therefore, fairly certain that the entries referred to the two gentlemen now in the coffee-room.

The name of Radford Shone seemed, somehow, familiar to me, and cudgelling my memory I presently 'placed' him as a private enquiry agent, enjoying a lucrative practice among fashionable circles in the metropolis. His particular line, was, I vaguely remembered, the elucidation and subsequent hushing-up of the misdeeds of highly-placed amateur lawbreakers, whom it was not desired, for family and other reasons, to prosecute. Not altogether a savoury calling from the police point of view.

What could Radford Shone be doing at Queenstown? Probably he had a commission to shadow some passenger expected by one of the incoming liners; for, on the journey from Holyhead I had not noticed that he possessed any heavy baggage pointing to his being an outward-bound passenger himself. Interested in my discovery, I went into the smoking-room in the hope that he and his friend would turn up there when they had finished their dinner, and possibly satisfy my curiosity.

In this I was not disappointed. I had hardly got my cigar under wav when they both entered, laughing and talking loudly. They merely glanced at my unobtrusive personality, and continued their conversation as though I did not exist.

'Another feather in your cap, my dear Shone, to be called in in preference to the regular police,' the stout young man was saying, as they took their seats by the fire. 'The very name, too, of the prospective client seems to reek of money. A Jacob van Schuyler could be nothing less than a millionaire, at least.'

Shone looked across at me, as though to impress me with his reply. He probably took me for a commercial traveller, who would be likely to spread his fame 'on the road.'

'Well, I am hardly a novice at crumpling up the police,' he said, in a tone of lofty disdain. 'That stimulus will be wanting in our present excursion, however; as I shall have solved the mystery long before the Escholtsia reaches the jurisdiction of the Liverpool force.'

Naturally, I pricked up my ears at this and as they continued the conversation in the same strain I soon gathered that Shone was practically bound on the identical errand as myself, with this difference that he had been sent for by wireless telegram at the instance of Mr. van Schuyler's friends on the liner, whereas I had come officially, on behalf of the company, in consequence of a similar message from the captain. The situation bade fair to become interesting, especially when Radford Shone made a remark which showed that he was ignorant, as of course he would be, of the instruction telegraphed to the captain not to allow any passengers to leave the ship at Queenstown.

'I do not anticipate any difficulty through the culprit coming ashore here,' he said, in answer to a question from his companion.

'The odds are against his exciting attention by attempting to do so; but if he does I can safely trust my instinct to spot him.'

'You are not likely to make a mistake in that respect,' was Mr. Samuel Martin's admiring comment.

Now, I could not resist the opportunity; for gently 'pulling; the leg' of the cocksure gentleman and his faithful worshipper.

'You won't have a chance to spot the man who lifted Van Schuyler's bonds as he leaves the Escholtsia, here,' I said quietly, looking at them over my newspaper. 'By order all the passengers are to go on to Liverpool before being permitted to disembark.'

If a shell from a four-point-seven gun had burst in the room they could not have been more astonished. Shone, spitting like an angry cat, was the first to recover himself. 'What — what — what is this, sir?' he gasped. 'What do you know about Mr. Van Schuyler and the Escholtsia?'

'Only that I happen to be the police-officer detailed to investigate the alleged robbery— Detective-Inspector Kellaway, of Liverpool, at your service,' I replied.

Shone scowled thoughtfully; but the stout understudy began to cackle like an old hen.

'Egad, Shone,' he sniggered, 'but the police are in it and we shall have some sport after all. Alleged robbery is good isn't it? The same old red-tape talk begun already.'

'Your people were advised by wireless telegram, I presume?' Shone asked me, ignoring Martin's foolishness.

'Well, yes,' I replied. 'I haven't heard of any later invention than Marconi's for communicating with a vessel fifteen hundred miles out at sea.'

'I am Radford Shone, of Gower-street, London; and I have been sent for by Mr. van Schuyler's daughter, who is on board with him, to join the ship here and go round to Liverpool in her, pursuing my enquiry en route,' the eminent expert announced pompously. 'I daresay I shall not have been many minutes on the steamer before I shall be able materially to assist the official investigation, if you care to avail yourself of my studies in philosophic criminology.'

'Always glad of the straight tip, even if it's wrapped up in long words,' I replied. 'In the meanwhile, in case you should have any difficulty, under the circumstances, of boarding the Escholtsia, let me offer you the hospitality of the mail tug. If you come under my wing there won't be much trouble about getting you passed on board.'

Evidently galled at having to be beholden to officialism, Shone muttered a few words of grudging thanks and shortly afterwards I retired to my own room. I confess to being a little puzzled by the introduction of the private enquiry element into what on the surface was pre-eminently a police case and had been treated as such by the owners of the ship. Of course there is no accounting for the ways of American millionaires and it might turn out to be sheer wasteful extravagance that had prompted him to have an independent investigation by a fashionable 'expert' at his own expense.

At seven o'clock next morning I was informed that the Escholtsia had been signalled; and dressing hastily I went down to the landing-pier, where the mail tug was waiting. Radford Shone arrived with Martin hard on my heels and we were soon ploughing the choppy waters of the harbor towards the leviathan liner, dimly seen a mile off shore through the chilly mists of the winter dawn.

Shone preserved a haughty and distant demeanour, retiring after the interchange of nods, to the shelter of the funnel, where he remained in whispered colloquy with his companion till we reached the Escholtsia's towering side. There he enjoyed a minor triumph over me. The officer in charge of the gangway admitted him on board without demur, causing Shone's prominent eyes to glisten and Martin to break into an audible guffaw.

Their merriment was cut short by having to attend to business. A sprucely, dressed young man came hurrying along the board deck and, intuitively discarding Martin, looked sharply from me to Shone and back again to me.

'Which of you gentleman is Mr. Radford Shone?' he asked in a strong American accent. 'My name is Coyle, Newman Coyle and I am Mr. Jacob van Schuyler's secretary.'

Shone, with the air of introducing an emperor, stepped forward and introduced himself.

'Ah, yes, I thought so,' said the secretary quietly; and turning to me he added— 'Then you, sir, will be the police detective. If you will both step along to my cabin, it will save time if I post you up in the particulars together.'

'Pardon me,' I said, 'but I have been called in by the company and I must see their representative first. When I have interviewed the captain I have no doubt that you will be of the greatest service to me.'

'As you like,' replied Mr. Coyle, though a petulant twist at the corner of his clean shaved upper lip gave me the impression that he was not best pleased at having to play second fiddle as a source of information.

'These fellows are bound by rule— hardly dare call their souls their own,' I heard Shone explaining to the young Americanos they stepped to a range of deck cabins amidships, followed by the elephantine Martin, who supplemented his chief's rudeness with a malicious chuckle presumably at my expense.

'If you will come with me you will have time to have your palaver with the skipper before breakfast,' said the gangway officer. 'You'll not find him exactly in love with this notion of Coyle's for having a private enquiry as well as your own.'

He led me to a state-room under the mighty bridge, and tapping at the door introduced me to a portly, red-faced gentleman who was finishing his toilet by struggling into a brass-buttoned blue coat— no less than Captain Julius Attlee, autocrat of the ship and commodore of the line. Bidding his officer he careful that no one sneaked into the tender while the mails were being unloaded, the captain dismissed him and turned to me.

'The thing happened the night before last, while the first-cabin passengers were at dinner,' he began, plunging at once into his statement. 'Van Schuyler, who has been half killed and robbed of over a million in sterling bonds, is a partner in the Wall-street firm of Van Schuyler & Gage, stockbrokers and financiers. Like so many of these wealthy Yanks, he is on his way to Europe on a trip combining business with pleasure, his party consisting of himself and his wife, his secretary, Newman Coyle, and Miss Lucy Gage, his partner's daughter, who is making the voyage in Mrs. Van Schuyler's care. There also happens to be travelling in the ship a friend of the Van Schuylers, one Doctor Skipwith, a New York surgeon, who has been much in their company.'

Captain Attlee went on to say that there had been nothing to distinguish the demeanour of any of the party from that of other rich Americans of position, except that early in the voyage Miss Lucy Gage had struck up an acquaintance with one of the passengers, a Mr. Angus Morrison, a young Scotchman, who was returning from ranching in Arizona. This shipboard acquaintance had shown signs of ripening into a warmer attachment, and Mr. and Mrs. van Schuyler had caused some surprise by seeming to encourage it— rather a strange attitude in people entrusted with the care of an attractive girl.

This was the state of affairs on the evening when there had happened the episode which had thrown the ship into consternation. Dinner had been announced and, with two exceptions, all the passengers were assembled in the first saloon. These two exceptions were Mr. van Schuyler and Mr. Angus Morrison, the last-named, however, entering rather hurriedly and taking his seat at table next Miss Gage half-way through the first course. The soup having been disposed of, and Mr. van Schuyler, usually a most regular and appreciative attendant at meals, not having put in an appearance, Mr. Coyle had gone to his employer's cabin to see what was wrong. Something was very wrong indeed. Mr. van Schuyler lay across his berth in an unconscious condition, bleeding from a would in his head, while the wallet in which he kept the bonds was lying, empty and ripped open, on the floor. A peculiar feature was that the injured man held, tightly clutched in his right hand, a single bond for a thousand dollars, the only one saved from the unknown plunderer. Newman Coyle had at once raised the alarm and at the request of Mrs. van Schuyler Doctor Skip-with had taken charge of the patient. 'But has the ship's doctor also seen him?' I asked.

'No,' replied Captain Attlee, with a queer smile. 'Coyle and Mrs. van Schuyler insisted that Skipwirth, as an old friend, would be preferable to a stranger. They wish to run the show entirely, it seems. They couldn't prevent me sending a wireless to the company asking for police aid, but they used the same method for summoning Shone on their own hook. I didn't like it, but what was I to do?'

'Humph! Grin and bear it, like me,' I replied. 'Is Mr. van Schuyler still unconscious.'

'Unfortunately, yes,' said Captain Attlee. 'Of course, if he regains his senses before the passengers leave the ship at Liverpool there should be an end to the mystery, and all you will have to do will be to arrest the man he indicates as the robber. But Skipwirth declares that, if he recovers at all, he may remain in a state of coma for a fortnight.'

'What is your view, captain?' I asked, abruptly.

The old sea-dog frowned thoughtfully.

'Well. I'm no detective,' he said at length, but it looks to me as if one of his own crowd was in it. Private doctor, private enquiry agent — everything under their own thumb— it seems a bit fishy to me.' 'The passengers are sure to be talking. What is the gossip of the ship?' I demanded.

'Same view as mine, only they're narrowed it down a bit to Angus Morrison, the young fellow who has been sparking the girl,' the captain answered. I don't go so far as that myself. Morrison was late at the dinner-table, it is true, but he doesn't strike me as a bad sort.'

'How does that explain his being late?' said I.

'He hasn't been asked to,' the captain replied. 'Rather a delicate question to put to him, almost an accusation, and one which will come better from you than any one else, Mr. Kellaway. And now let's go to the saloon and get some breakfast. It will give you a chance to take stock of the parties.'

The great dome-roofed, white-and-gold first saloon of the Escholtsia was on the promenade deck; and when the captain and I entered the passengers had taken their seats at the bounteous table. I slipped into a chair at my conductor's side without attracting any attention, for the simple reason that Mr. Radford Shone had already succeeded in drawing all eyes and ears on himself as the detective charged with the elucidation of the bond-robbery. I think that very few people had grasped the fact that there were two Richmonds in the field, and that by most he was credited with having the conduct of the official enquiry.

Shone was sitting between Newman Coyle and Martin, keeping up a whispered conversation in the intervals of staring, in what struck me as a highly offensive manner, at a good-looking, weather-beaten young man opposite, who was chatting unconcernedly with a very pretty girl at his side. Next to the girl on the other side sat an overdressed languid woman of forty, who was evidently trying to achieve the feat of listening to two conversations at once. The strained look with which she followed the motions of Shone's lips as he posed and mouthed across the table was blended with occasional sidelong glances at the young couple next her.

'That's the lot,' Captain Attlee growled in my ear, 'all except Skipwith, the doctor, who's on duty in the sick man's cabin. You've seen Coyle, the sharp-looking customer talking to Shone. The young man opposite to him is Angus Morrison, and the girl next him is Miss Gage. The elder lady beyond her is Mrs. van Schuyler— rather an elaborate show of dry goods and diamonds for nine o'clock in the morning, isn't she?'

But for the moment my interest had been transferred from the financier's wife to Shone, who was bending across the table with the evident, intention of catching Angus Morrison's eye. The steamer was still motionless in the harbor, so that there was no sound to prevent the high-pitched tones of the eminent expert from reaching me.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' he said, 'but may I trouble you to hand me that fruit knife in front of you.'

Morrison, hardly appearing to notice the speaker and without discontinuing his conversation with Miss Gage, grasped the knife by the ivory handle, and with the blade held towards himself, as required by good manners, passed it over to Shone, who on receiving it glanced from Coyle to Martin with a self-satisfied smirk which it was hard to understand after such a trivial action.

His next proceeding was even more remarkable. Preserving an inscrutable air, so obviously self-conscious as not to deceive me at any rate, he rose from his seat and stalked out of the saloon, closely followed by Coyle and Martin, and gingerly carrying the fruit knife in his hand. Glancing from this extraordinary procession to the party on the other side of the table, I saw that Mrs. van Schuyler had leaned back in her chair, although relieved by Shone's achievement, and that the two young people were still absorbed in each other.

Ruminating on what I had seen, I finished my breakfast as quickly as possible, and Captain Attlee, noting my preoccupation, was good enough not to disturb my reflections. We both, however, rose at the same time, and the captain was therefore at my elbow when on passing out into the vestibule we were met by Shone and the other two who had made such an abrupt departure from the saloon. Newman Coyle's thin, clean-shaven lips were curled in a triumphant smile as he addressed me.

'Come into the smoking-room a minute— you, too, captain; of course,' he said. 'I rather guess I've justified myself in sending for Mr. Radford Shone. He's a wizard, no less.'

'You mean that he has cleared up the mystery?' I hazarded, as I followed into the smoking-room, which at that early hour was unoccupied.

'That's about the size of it,' the secretary responded, as we all gathered round one of the marble-topped tables, upon which Shone, with the air of an officiating high priest, was placing the fruit-knife and a United States Treasury bond for a thousand dollars. Having arranged them to his liking, the expert drew a lens from his pocket and handed it to me.

'I am about to apply the Bertillon fingermark test to these articles,' said Shone pompously. 'I have already satisfied myself, but I must convince you, inspector, before you can make the arrest. Just look at this spot on the bond, if you please. You will quite plainly see the faint impression of a thumb.'

'Quite correct,' I assented, after careful scrutiny of the paper.

'And now be good enough to examine the handle of this knife, and tell me if the impression you will detect upon it is not identical in tracing with that on the bond.'

Again, lens in hand, I bent over the table and again I admitted the correctness of his assertion. 'The mark on the fruit-knife is the impress of the thumb of one Morrison, a passenger who was late for dinner on the day Mr. van Schuyler was robbed and assaulted; the bond which you have examined is the one which Mr. van Schuyler held clutched in his hand when he was found,' said Shone, folding his arms with the air of a Napoleon surveying a victorious field.

'The deduction is obvious, unless Mr. Morrison can explain how he came to have handled the bond,' said I.

Radford Shone preserved his attitude of lofty disdain, but Martin giggled— 'Explain! Of course Morrison will explain, but it will be a funny sort of explanation, I expect.'

'Who is that taking my name in vain?' said a pleasant voice, as a shadow darkened the doorway and Angus Morrison walked into the smoking-room. I thought it best to take the bull by the horns at once.

'This gentleman has been applying the Bertillon system to a bond found in the hand of van Schuyler,' I said. 'The bond bears traces of having been fingered by you, and as it is one of the series that is missing, I shall be glad to hear how you account for it. I had better add that I am a detective-inspector charged with the investigation.'

He looked blankly from one to the other; and then, realising that the veiled accusation came from the smirking Shone, seemed on the point of knocking him down. It was with an obvious effort that he controlled himself.

'The gentleman is very complimentary,' he said in a tone of dangerous quiet. 'Yes, I can account for the handling of the bond in the simplest manner. It was shown to me by Mr. van Schuyler himself. The day before the robbery he waylaid me as I was returning from the bathroom and asked me to step into his cabin. He then requested me to look at a bond which, he said, he thought was a counterfeit. I couldn't see anything wrong with it and passed it back to him.'

The fatuous Martin began to giggle, but stopped abruptly when the young Scotch-man took a step towards him.

'And as to your being late for dinner that night?' I said civilly.

'That again is simple,' Morrison replied. 'I couldn't find my dress jacket. Someone must have played a practical joke on me, for I eventually discovered it on the cabin floor under my bunk.'

'I am obliged to you,' I said, without indicating what was in my mind, and therefore visibly disappointing Shone, who must have expected me to effect the arrest there and then.

'And now, captain, I should like to see the state-room where the robbery and assault took place,' I added.

'You will be very careful, please; any disturbance might be fatal to Mr. van Schuyler,' Coyle murmured with unaffected anxiety.

'I shall do him no harm,' said I as we trooped along the deck and down a handsome staircase to the corridor where was the sleeping accommodation. The financier's stateroom was one of the best in the ship, ornate with silk and damask draperies, and furnished with a brass bedstead on which lay the patient. By the side of the bed sat a stout man with a very bald head, who eyed our entrance with obvious displeasure.

'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' he exclaimed, starting up. 'I really cannot permit—'

'All right, Doctor Skipworth— a mere matter of form. We shan't stay a second,' interrupted Coyle nervously. 'The affair is practically finished.'

I stood still, asking no questions, and troubling very little about the cabin itself, all my attention being riveted on its principal occupant— the man on the bed. He was lying with his eyes shut, breathing stertorously, and his forehead and part of his skull was disfigured with a large plaster. One, two, three minutes I stood perfectly motionless watching him, and then the signal for action came in the very slight raising of one of the closed eyelids. As I had expected ever since Morrison's explanation, Mr. van Schuyler was shamming. I went over and shook him. No one tried to stop me. The mere action showed that the game was up.

'If you will get off that bed, Mr. van Schuyler, I will find your bonds for you,' I said. 'They are between the mattresses.'

With a shame-faced grin the Wall-street magnate obeyed and sat on the edge of the bed.

'How in thunder did you know that?' he asked.

'Because it is the most obvious place in which a bogus invalid would hide the proceeds of a bogus robbery till he could remove the plunder,' said I, and plunging my hands into the bedding I verified my words by dragging out the missing bonds.

'Not much bogus about the robbery,' the blunt old captain glowered, after a silence that could be felt. 'Where would his partner have come in?'

The answer to Captain Attlee's question furnished the keynote of the whole conspiracy got up by van Schuyler and aided and abetted by Coyle, Skipwith, and his own wife. If he could have left the ship with the bonds in his possession, yet believed to have been stolen, his partner would have 'come in nowhere.'

Of course there had been no assault, the medical confederate immediately covering up the supposed injuries with plaster.

When we reached Liverpool the cables were busy, but no arrest followed, though Miss Lucy Gage was put under the protection of Angus Morrison's mother and the partnership between her father and van Schuyler was speedily dissolved. The introduction of the girl as an unconscious decoy for picking up a passenger to serve as a scapegoat in a crime by which he own father was to suffer was the crueller part of the scheme, though it fortunately ended in wedding bells.

I do not know whether Shone was more angry with me or with the client who had duped him into throwing suspicion on an innocent man. I can only say that during the few hours we were shipmates he and his understudy kept out of my way.

_________________

12: The Final Error

THE WAITING-ROOM where we receive informatory visitors at Scotland Yard, are not upholstered in saddle-bags or draped with silken hangings. The beefy, over-dressed young man who rose at my entrance wore an air of blended disgust and preoccupation— disgust at the hardness of the chair upon which, he had been asked to 'take a seat,' preoccupation over the terrible business he had come to unfold.

'Chief Inspector Mitford?' he blurted eagerly, his large, stupid face quivering with agitation. I bowed assent and asked him what was wrong.

'Radford Shone is missing!' he announced, all short as one would tell you that the King was dead or the bottom fallen out of the Bank of England— something too stupendous for comment or explanatory remark.

'Indeed,' I said politely, cudgelling my brain for the half-familiar name he mentioned; then, after extracting Radford Shone from one of my mental pigeon-holes duly labelled as a well-known private 'investigator,' I added:— 'That is almost a national calamity I presume.'

My visitor looked me over with a kindling eye.

'National!' he exclaimed. 'It will be a world-wide one if, as I expect Mr. Radford Shone has been foully murdered by the gang of criminals upon whom he had nearly closed his iron grip. And to me, personally, his loss will be—'

'Irreparable,' I suggested, as he floundered for his word.

'Personally and financially irreparable,' he conceded. 'I am bound to Shone by ties of affection— no, not quite that— by ties of respect for his enormous powers, and― er― for the little bit of cash I've put into his show. And to think that he is probably lying cold and dead somewhere just because he has met his match at last in— in Professor Mallandine!'

'Professor Mallandine!' I repeated, really interested now, for this name was a very real one to me, pregnant with meaning. 'Come, sir! let me have your information as briefly as possible, please.'

With sundry deviations into sidetracks, whence he had to be sharply recalled, Mr. Samuel Martin unfolded his story.

He and Shone occupied rooms together in Gower-street, and four nights previously his patron or partner, or whatever he considered the object of his adoration, had entered the joint sitting-room, in sorry plight, carefully locking the door behind him. His clothes were mud-soiled and his forehead, when he removed his battered top hat, was seen to be disfigured with a band of sticking-plaster. For a long time he had vouchsafed no explanation, but had paced the room, apparently deep in thought. Martin avowed that he knew him too well to question him when in that mood, but had watched him with growing apprehension.

'I am at the parting of the ways, Martin,'' he had said at last, flinging himself wearily into a chair. 'Either I inscribe my name in indelible characters on the roll of fame in the next few days, or I succumb to the only individual in the visible universe who is my peer in subtlety. And the price of defeat, if defeat it is to be, will be my life, which has already been attempted three times to-day.'

Martin had expressed his sympathetic horror, and Radford Shone had gone on to say that he was in active conflict with a dangerous confederacy of criminals dominated by one Professor Mallandine— a cultured predatory who directed world-wide operations in forgery, blackmail, and theft on the grand scale, with murder as their frequent attendant. Shone avowed that he only needed one link in the chain which be had woven round Professor Mallandine to complete his enmeshment and that of the whole of the gang, after which he should be able to turn them over to the police. But the professor was fighting him inch by inch for that link, and the odds were about even that the arch criminal would kill him before he reached his goal.

'I am going to have some food now, Martin, and then I am going out again,' Shone had continued. 'I shall in any case be absent two days, but if I do not return at the end of three you will never see me alive again. I shall have lost the game and paid forfeit with my life. Mallandine is not likely to make another mistake in selecting his method and his tools for my undoing.'

While he discussed a chop and a bottle of Bass he had thrilled Martin with an account of his hair-breadth escapes of the day. He had been nearly run down by a furiously driven van in Queen Victoria street; he had been narrowly missed by a bullet from an air-gun fired from an empty house in Chelsea, and finally he had been hustled off the crowded platform at Baker-street station in front or an advancing train, only saying himself by lying flat between the rails.

When he had finished his narrative and his supper, Shone had retired to his bed-room, shortly to emerge in the disguise of a carpenter, white apron, bag of tools and all. Mr. Samuel Martin had then accompanied him down to the front door to speed him on his fateful errand.

'I was a bit upset,' my stout informant concluded. 'You see, we had chummed together for a goodish while, and it seemed hard to part with him like that, small beer though he thought me. I had never heard him own before that anyone could best him at any sort of game, and it looked as if he had a presentiment that he'd never come back.'

'It did rather,' I agreed reflectively. 'Did you take his instructions against such an unfortunate contingency?'

'I suggested that the moment the three days were up I should inform the police in the event of his not having returned,' was the reply. 'But Shone would not hear of it. He insisted that I should let five days go by before taking that step. 'We— he had rather a prejudice against the regular force, you know, Mr. Inspector.'

'That is not unlikely,' I remarked. 'How is it, then sir, that you have disregarded Mr. Radford Shone's injunction by reporting to us when only three clear days have passed? Doubtless you had good reason?'

The normal expression of Mr. Samuel Martin's face was sheepish, though I could conceive that in happier moments it had capabilities of impudence. At my question his expression grew more sheepish than ever. 'I shall get into dreadful trouble over it— if you find him,' he stammered. 'But you see I should be awfully cut up it anything had happened to poor Shone. If he has really been put away I shall have lost a good deal of money as well. So I decided that if he is above ground he had better be found— even if he wipes the floor with me afterwards. He is rather fond of doing that and I expect that will be the end of it. I shall have queered his pitch in this Professor Mallandine business, and he'll make a mop of me if you find him.'

'But you would get your money back,' I said shortly. 'There would be compensation in that, supposing we rescued him from the clutch of this desperate villain?'

Mr. Martin admitted that he had suffered so much from the rough side of his friend's tongue that he would bear a little more gladly if he could get a bit of his own back. He had no deed of partnership or any document showing Shone's indebtedness to him. He explained that if the great investigator had, as he put it, 'fallen at the post of duty,' he himself would have no legal claim on any of the assets that might be left behind. They would all go to the deceased's next-of-kin— a brother, who was a clerk in the Probate Registry at Somerset House.

'And,' added Mr. Martin ruefully, 'from what little I've seen of Mr. Myland Shone he is not likely to loose his grip on what the law gives him.'

'Well, you have stated a truly startling case,' I said. 'It is a little early— ten o clock only— but I think we will begin by looking up Professor Mallandine. I hardly anticipate that he will confess, but we shall clear the ground if we can get him to admit, by word or manner, that he is interested in Mr. Shone.'

I led my visitor along the corridor to the Embankment entrance and followed him into the hansom which drew up at my summons. He seemed surprised that I was able to give the driver the address of the professor in Saville-street.

'Queer that you should know where he hangs out,' said Martin. 'I thought that Shone was the only one who had spotted him as a criminal.

'Mr. Shone is quite entitled to that credit,' I answered sedately. 'But I know of Mallandine in his respectable character— the side of him that he turns towards the public you know— the pose of a man of science.'

Martin took some time to assimilate this and having done so suddenly grew nervous.

'Don't you think,' he bawled in my ear as the cab plunged into the thick of the Piccadilly traffic, 'that it's taking a big risk to tackle a king of crime like this single-handed— er— that is, for two of us only to go into what is probably a den of high-class cut-throats.'

The phrase amused me.

'I don't anticipate that they will be very high-class,' I said. 'You must remember that the prestige of on official policeman is a useful make-weight against the genius of a Radford Shone.'

Mr. Martin made a sorry attempt at appearing satisfied, but when we stopped it was a very nervous man who followed me up the steps to the door.

At any rate there was no sign of prevarication or subterfuge in the manner of our reception. A smiling parlour-maid at once admitted that Professor Mallandine was at home, and evinced no alarm at being asked to announce 'Chief -Inspector Mitford, of New Scotland Yard.' Nor was there the slightest trace of flurry about the occupant of the room to which she conducted us.

He was a tall, thin, lean-faced man, with the stooping shoulders of the student, and for the moment he was too absorbed in manipulating the screws of a huge microscope to so much as look up at us. Not till he had got the adjustment to his liking did he favour me and my trembling companion with two piercing glances— one for each, though mine was accompanied by a curt nod.

'You find me busy,' he jerked out. 'Is it anything urgent or serious, Mr. Mitford.'

I answered his question with another. 'You haven't by any chance murdered a gentleman named Radford Shone, have you, professor?'

He reached over the table behind which he was standing— a table laden with scientific paraphernalia— and lifted from its stand a test-tube half filled with a colourless liquid. '

'For Heaven's sake take care! Martin breathed in my ear. 'It is a deadly poison, I expect, or an explosive or something, and he's going to throw it at us!'

I waved the fatuous creature away and turned to the professor. He leisurely screwed the test-tube into the receiver under the microscope, then threw at me a frosty smile.

'No, I have not murdered Mr. Radford Shone, though there is no knowing what may not happen, if he comes my way,' he replied grimly. 'As it is, I have had no truck with him for a year or more.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'I felt sure that there had been some mistake. Good-day to you, Professor Mallandine. I am sorry to have disturbed your researches.'

With which I pushed Martin out into the passage and thence out of the house. Glad as he was to be clear of it, he was no sooner in the cab than he voiced his astonishment at my taking Mallandine's word so easily.

'You were so open with the old villain, he protested. 'I don't understand police methods, but Shone would have tackled him in a very different way.'

'What would he have done?' I enquired.

'Oh, he would have pitched him some yarn and drawn him out a bit. You hardly seemed to appreciate— pardon my saying so, inspector― that my poor friend is either dead or in very grave peril at the instance of that monster of iniquity.'

'On the contrary, I appreciate Mr. Radford Shone's peril to the fullest extent,' I made answer. 'It may be more imminent than even you imagine, Mr. Martin. We will now proceed to Somerset House and see if Mr. Myland Shone can shed any light on his brothers disappearance.'

But when we reached the Probate Registry a check was in store for us. The gentleman we had come to question was not at his post, and the information, which I gathered from his fellow-clerks added greatly to Martin's anxiety. Myland Shone received a telegram shortly after arriving at the office that morning in consequence of which he had obtained leave of absence for two days and had immediately gone away. The reason he had given had been that he had to go into the country to identify some clothing that was believed to belong to a relative and which had been found in a position that suggested a fatal accident.

On this I saw the chief of the department and learned that this was correct, and also the additional fact that the place to which Mr. Myland Shone had been summoned was Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight. The telegram was from the local police. Martin followed my interrogations with open-eyed and open-mouthed consternation. By the time we had got out into the Strand again the suggestion that some dire misfortune had befallen his friend had reduced him almost to tears.

'That fiend Mallandine has done poor Shone!' he whimpered. 'What do you propose to do about it, inspector? Arrest that old schemer in Saville-street?'

'I must have some evidence against him first,' I said, glancing at my watch. 'There is a train from Waterloo in three-quarters of an hour. If you will get over the bridge to the terminus I will join you there and we will run down to the Wight together. I must pop round to the Yard first and let them know what I'm up to.'

When, a little later, I met him in the booking-office he was more doleful than ever, and we negotiated the four hours' journey in alternate fits of moody silence and noisy lamentations on the part of my travelling companion. Never in my life had I been subjected to so many silly questions in such a short space of time, and, if for that reason only, I was heartily glad when the coach from Yarmouth set us down at the principal hotel in the picturesque little village at the back of the island.

Mr. Samuel Martin was for at once questioning the hotel people as to any fatality that had occurred in the neighbourhood, but, preferring to do police business in police ways, I insisted that we should make our first enquiries of the local constable. It is the fashion to deride these humble custodians of his Majesty's peace as lacking in intelligence, but I have always found that, properly handled, they can rise to the occasion.

The Freshwater constable, who fortunately lived near the hotel, had a plain story to tell, and told it lucidly enough. Coining to the door of his cottage, he pointed to the landward side of the lofty downs whose seaward face is a sheer precipice, running down six hundred feet from the brink into five fathoms of water. At the highest point the great stone cross of the Tennyson memorial cuts the sky-line.

'It was up there last night that the coastguard made the discovery, sir,' said the constable. 'He was on his rounds along the top of the downs to the Needles, when, close to the Memorial and not three feet from the edge of the cliff, he found a gentleman's overcoat with a cloth cap. There was considerable disturbance in the turf at the spot, which looked as if there had been a struggle. In one of the pockets of the coat there was a letter, stamped ready for post and addressed to Myland Shone, Esquire, at Somerset House, London; so on the matter being reported to me I sent him a wire the first thing this morning.'

'Has he arrived?' I asked.

'Yes, sir; he crossed by the mid-day boat and is putting up at the hotel,' was the reply. 'He has identified the coat as belonging to his brother, Mr. Radford Shone, a well-known private detective.'

'Does the letter throw any light on the occurrence?' I continued.

'None whatever; it simply stated that the writer was detained here on business and would not return to London for a day or two,' the constable replied. And he went on to say that boats had been round to the base of the cliff to search for the body, but entirely without result.

This was only to be expected, since even at low tide there was deep water close inshore, and anyone thrown or fallen over would have been carried away by the swirling current.

In reply to a further question the constable stated that no one answering to the description furnished by Mr. Myland Shone could be traced as having stayed at any of the hotels or lodging-houses in the neighbourhood. Thanking the man for his information, I turned away to return to the hotel but after enduring the first outbreak of woe from Martin, who had listened all agape to the conversation, I bade my companion stay where he was for a minute and ran back to the cottage, where I obtained from the policeman the description which Mr. Myland Shone had given of his brother. Never having set eyes on the great Radford it interested me much.

'Now,' I said on rejoining the disconsolate Martin, 'we will go and condole with the bereaved relative and learn his views.' We made our way back to the hotel, and on entering the hall a little ahead of Martin I observed a chubby, rose-cheeked little man, who was examining a map on the wall with the air of one who finds time hang heavily on his hands. He tallied exactly with the impression the constable had just given me of the personality of Mr. Myland Shone.

'Is that your missing friend or his brother?' I asked, pointing out the lounger to Martin.

'That!' he exclaimed with loyal indignation. 'Why, he's no more like Radford Shone than I am. It is his brother Myland, though— the chap we want to see. What on earth could make you think it was Radford, I wonder.'

'Never mind that,' I replied, experiencing the curious thrill of satisfaction which I always feel when coming to close grips with my case. 'Introduce me to the gentleman, please, not forgetting to mention my profession and rank in the force.'

Myland Shone heard our entrance and now turned towards us. Keenly alive to the value of surprise in certain situations, I watched him narrowly as his gaze passed me blankly by to settle on his brother's sleeping partner. I was almost sure that there was a trace of annoyance, not un-mingled with alarm, in his recognition of Mr. Samuel Martin. If so it was gone in an instant and it was with a solemnity befitting the occasion that he came forward to meet us.

'You have heard the terrible news, then?' he said in a rolling bass voice that was singular by contrast with his diminutive size. As he shook hands , he kept glancing interrogatively at me.

'This gentleman, Chief-Inspector Mitford, of the Criminal Investigation Department, got on to it,' replied Martin, with a queer note of apology. It was as if he wished to repudiate responsibility, being conscious of a sort of sacrilege in having broken the great Radford's injunctions, even in an effort to save or avenge him. And if the same idea had occurred to Mr. Myland Shone he could not have put reproach in plainer terms than in the question.

'You took upon yourself then, to report to Scotland Yard that the poor fellow was missing!'

'Mr. Martin very sensibly came to us this morning and I learned at Somerset House of the telegram that brought you to these parts,' I chimed in. 'Were you aware that, as Mr. Martin informs me, your brother went in fear of his life?'

The little man struck an attitude of terrified astonishment. 'Certainly not!' he exclaimed. 'If that was so I suppose we must fear the worst. I have been hoping that all this was only one of Radford's little tricks in the way of business— to get himself believed to be dead for a while. He was so infernally clever, you know.'

Mr. Myland Shone pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed it at his eyes; then, appearing to master his emotion with an effort, he turned on Martin.

'Why did you not inform me that my brother was in danger?' he thundered in that incongruous voice. 'Why did you not let me protect him against foul play if you were unable to do so yourself? You ought to be charged as an accessory before the fact.'

The worm turned at this unmerited taunt. 'I had a good deal more reason than you to protect him, and should have done so if he hadn't been too masterful,' Martin retorted hotly. 'Considering that his death will entitle you to all the money he has left and a few thousands of it are mine.'

Mr. Myland Shone's manner changed as by magic. In place of the half-distraught bereaved brother he became the courteous gentleman, brimming over with conscientiousness, and honestly anxious to yield without a moment's delay any advantage which the strict letter of the law might have given him.

'My dear sir, you need be under no misapprehension of that kind,' he replied. 'You have only to furnish me with a statement of any moneys which you may have advanced to my poor brother and I, as his heir and executor, shall pay you the amount out of his estate without demur or cavil. Enough of this sordid haggling! I hope, sir,' the little man added, turning briskly to me, 'that Mr. Martin's insight into my brother's schemes, so strangely withheld from me, will enable you to punish this atrocious crime.'

'I have a most promising clue, thanks to Mr. Martin,' I made non-committal answer.

'Which doubtless will detain you in Freshwater for a day or two,' was the prompt comment. 'I also shall make this place my headquarters till they have exhausted every means for recovering the body. And that reminds me, I have only two days' leave of absence from my official duties. I will just walk up to the post-office and wire my chief for an extension.'

And favouring us with a mournful smile he passed out of the hall door into the gathering dusk of the early spring evening.

'Couldn't have behaved better, could he about my coin, I mean?' said Martin cheerfully.

'Run after him,' said I, disregarding the silly remark, 'and offer to go with him to the post-office, so as to tell him about Professor Mallandine and all that. But it he objects don't press yourself upon him. Come back straight to me.'

Martin looked puzzled, but, compelled by something in my manner, did as he was bid. He was back again in less than three minutes, shaking his foolish head.

'Won't have me at any price; wants to be alone with his grief,' he explained.

'Then we will shadow him and his grief!' was my triumphant comment.

And enjoining silence on my astounded companion, I preceded him down the carriage drive of the hotel to the village street. Myland Shone had disappeared in the twilight, but from afar off came the sound of running footsteps.

'Keep on the grass at the side of the road and sprint for all you're worth,' I whispered.

So it was that after a quarter of a mile at top speed we were near enough to see the flying figure ahead of us turn aside into the garden-gate of an old thatched cottage at the roadside. It was certainly not the post-office. I had noticed that on our way to the hotel and it was considerably farther along the road. Still commanding silence by pressing Martin's arm, I crept up to the gate and found that Myland Shone had disappeared into the cottage. There was a light in the lattice window to the right of the door and to this I trod softly. The blind was drawn, but the window was open, and from within came the sound of voices— not the subdued murmur of an established conversation, but the opening sentences of one recently and excitedly commenced.

'The idiot! he was always a crass idiot!' the piping treble of an unfamiliar voice complained. 'But I thought he was too much afraid of me to go to the police till the five days were up. This means that I must get across to Southampton to-night, Myland, so as to be safe from recognition by my late financial backer.'

'When does the royal mail steamer for Rio sail?' came the sonorous question in the full tones so lately heard in the hall of the hotel.

'Three o'clock to-morrow afternoon and glad I shall be to be on board her with what is left of Sammy's little pile. After you have had your hundred for helping me I shall have four thousand to go away with, so I shan't have done so badly.'

At this point I felt a hot breath on my neck, and saw that Mr. Samuel Martin had stolen up close behind me. His broad stupid face was working with a piteous mixture of rage and shame.

'That man in there— the one who has just spoken— it is Radford Shone!' he murmured hoarsely in my ear. 'The thief is going to bolt with my money.'

'Oh no, he isn't!' I replied grimly. 'I have suspected this all along— ever since you reported that fool-talk about Professor Mallandine, who is a most respectable analyst employed by the Home Office, and in constant touch with Scotland Yard. We will go in and adjust your partnership account, Mr. Martin.'

Without more ado I entered the cottage and in the room on the right surprised the little family party. Our chubby little friend of the hotel raised his hands in mute appeal; a tall man of sallow features and unpleasant, protuberant eyes took a menacing step forward, but at sight of Martin at my elbow broke into a harsh laugh.

'So you couldn't wait, Sam?' he said, striving for composure.

'Well, your premature alarm has prevented me from running the gang to earth.'

'It has prevented you from running off to South America with Mr. Martin's money,' said I. 'There is no reason that I know of why you shouldn't sail for Rio if you like, provided you pay your partner out first— with the notes or securities which you doubtless have on your person.'

That was the end of Mr. Radford Shone's meteoric career as an 'expert in crime,' and it was, perhaps, a fitting end that he was narrowly saved from putting a coping stone to that career, by being arrested by one of the regular police whom it was one of his trade secrets to denounce as incompetent. But when he had paid Martin four thousand pounds on the cottage table I had no right to detain him. And we left him a free and penniless man. His final error of remaining too long at the lodging which he had taken for the purpose of enacting his own 'murder' proved his undoing, and his sly idea of, through his brother, furnishing the local constable with a description of the missing man as exactly like the chubby little Myland came to naught.

The last I heard of this egregious charlatan was from a professional colleague in the New York police, who wrote me that a cadaverous man with 'popping-out eyes' was distributing hand bills outside a dime museum.

End

Table of Contents

1: The Lion Lady

2: The Bullion-Room

3: The Missing Bomb

4: The Lost Heiress

5: The Granton Rubies

6:  The Tenth Green

7:  The Japanese Agent

8: The Eton Boy

9: The Thirsty Cat

10:  The Bayswater Boarding-House

11: The Wireless Telegram

12: The Final Error