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Max Carrados

by Ernest Bramah · English · Gutenberg #34732 · 412,270 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Max Carrados

Author: Ernest Bramah


        
Release date: December 23, 2010 [eBook #34732]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAX CARRADOS ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Megan Miller and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









  MAX CARRADOS


  By

  Ernest Bramah


  Methuen & Co., Ltd.

  1914




  CONTENTS


                                          PAGE

  THE COIN OF DIONYSIUS                      1

  THE KNIGHT'S CROSS SIGNAL PROBLEM         25

  THE TRAGEDY AT BROOKBEND COTTAGE          66

  THE CLEVER MRS STRAITHWAITE               99

  THE LAST EXPLOIT OF HARRY THE ACTOR      138

  THE TILLING SHAW MYSTERY                 187

  THE COMEDY AT FOUNTAIN COTTAGE           224

  THE GAME PLAYED IN THE DARK              262




MAX CARRADOS




THE COIN OF DIONYSIUS


It was eight o'clock at night and raining, scarcely a time when a
business so limited in its clientele as that of a coin dealer could hope
to attract any customer, but a light was still showing in the small shop
that bore over its window the name of Baxter, and in the even smaller
office at the back the proprietor himself sat reading the latest _Pall
Mall_. His enterprise seemed to be justified, for presently the door
bell gave its announcement, and throwing down his paper Mr Baxter went
forward.

As a matter of fact the dealer had been expecting someone and his manner
as he passed into the shop was unmistakably suggestive of a caller of
importance. But at the first glance towards his visitor the excess of
deference melted out of his bearing, leaving the urbane, self-possessed
shopman in the presence of the casual customer.

"Mr Baxter, I think?" said the latter. He had laid aside his dripping
umbrella and was unbuttoning overcoat and coat to reach an inner pocket.
"You hardly remember me, I suppose? Mr Carlyle--two years ago I took up
a case for you----"

"To be sure. Mr Carlyle, the private detective----"

"Inquiry agent," corrected Mr Carlyle precisely.

"Well," smiled Mr Baxter, "for that matter I am a coin dealer and not an
antiquarian or a numismatist. Is there anything in that way that I can
do for you?"

"Yes," replied his visitor; "it is my turn to consult you." He had taken
a small wash-leather bag from the inner pocket and now turned something
carefully out upon the counter. "What can you tell me about that?"

The dealer gave the coin a moment's scrutiny.

"There is no question about this," he replied. "It is a Sicilian
tetradrachm of Dionysius."

"Yes, I know that--I have it on the label out of the cabinet. I can tell
you further that it's supposed to be one that Lord Seastoke gave two
hundred and fifty pounds for at the Brice sale in '94."

"It seems to me that you can tell me more about it than I can tell you,"
remarked Mr Baxter. "What is it that you really want to know?"

"I want to know," replied Mr Carlyle, "whether it is genuine or not."

"Has any doubt been cast upon it?"

"Certain circumstances raised a suspicion--that is all."

The dealer took another look at the tetradrachm through his magnifying
glass, holding it by the edge with the careful touch of an expert. Then
he shook his head slowly in a confession of ignorance.

"Of course I could make a guess----"

"No, don't," interrupted Mr Carlyle hastily. "An arrest hangs on it and
nothing short of certainty is any good to me."

"Is that so, Mr Carlyle?" said Mr Baxter, with increased interest.
"Well, to be quite candid, the thing is out of my line. Now if it was a
rare Saxon penny or a doubtful noble I'd stake my reputation on my
opinion, but I do very little in the classical series."

Mr Carlyle did not attempt to conceal his disappointment as he returned
the coin to the bag and replaced the bag in the inner pocket.

"I had been relying on you," he grumbled reproachfully. "Where on earth
am I to go now?"

"There is always the British Museum."

"Ah, to be sure, thanks. But will anyone who can tell me be there now?"

"Now? No fear!" replied Mr Baxter. "Go round in the morning----"

"But I must know to-night," explained the visitor, reduced to despair
again. "To-morrow will be too late for the purpose."

Mr Baxter did not hold out much encouragement in the circumstances.

"You can scarcely expect to find anyone at business now," he remarked.
"I should have been gone these two hours myself only I happened to have
an appointment with an American millionaire who fixed his own time."
Something indistinguishable from a wink slid off Mr Baxter's right eye.
"Offmunson he's called, and a bright young pedigree-hunter has traced
his descent from Offa, King of Mercia. So he--quite naturally--wants a
set of Offas as a sort of collateral proof."

"Very interesting," murmured Mr Carlyle, fidgeting with his watch. "I
should love an hour's chat with you about your millionaire
customers--some other time. Just now--look here, Baxter, can't you give
me a line of introduction to some dealer in this sort of thing who
happens to live in town? You must know dozens of experts."

"Why, bless my soul, Mr Carlyle, I don't know a man of them away from
his business," said Mr Baxter, staring. "They may live in Park Lane or
they may live in Petticoat Lane for all I know. Besides, there aren't so
many experts as you seem to imagine. And the two best will very likely
quarrel over it. You've had to do with 'expert witnesses,' I suppose?"

"I don't want a witness; there will be no need to give evidence. All I
want is an absolutely authoritative pronouncement that I can act on. Is
there no one who can really say whether the thing is genuine or not?"

Mr Baxter's meaning silence became cynical in its implication as he
continued to look at his visitor across the counter. Then he relaxed.

"Stay a bit; there is a man--an amateur--I remember hearing wonderful
things about some time ago. They say he really does know."

"There you are," exclaimed Mr Carlyle, much relieved. "There always is
someone. Who is he?"

"Funny name," replied Baxter. "Something Wynn or Wynn something." He
craned his neck to catch sight of an important motor car that was
drawing to the kerb before his window. "Wynn Carrados! You'll excuse me
now, Mr Carlyle, won't you? This looks like Mr Offmunson."

Mr Carlyle hastily scribbled the name down on his cuff.

"Wynn Carrados, right. Where does he live?"

"Haven't the remotest idea," replied Baxter, referring the arrangement
of his tie to the judgment of the wall mirror. "I have never seen the
man myself. Now, Mr Carlyle, I'm sorry I can't do any more for you. You
won't mind, will you?"

Mr Carlyle could not pretend to misunderstand. He enjoyed the
distinction of holding open the door for the transatlantic
representative of the line of Offa as he went out, and then made his way
through the muddy streets back to his office. There was only one way of
tracing a private individual at such short notice--through the pages of
the directories, and the gentleman did not flatter himself by a very
high estimate of his chances.

Fortune favoured him, however. He very soon discovered a Wynn Carrados
living at Richmond, and, better still, further search failed to unearth
another. There was, apparently, only one householder at all events of
that name in the neighbourhood of London. He jotted down the address and
set out for Richmond.

The house was some distance from the station, Mr Carlyle learned. He
took a taxicab and drove, dismissing the vehicle at the gate. He prided
himself on his power of observation and the accuracy of the deductions
which resulted from it--a detail of his business. "It's nothing more
than using one's eyes and putting two and two together," he would
modestly declare, when he wished to be deprecatory rather than
impressive, and by the time he had reached the front door of "The
Turrets" he had formed some opinion of the position and tastes of the
man who lived there.

A man-servant admitted Mr Carlyle and took in his card--his private card
with the bare request for an interview that would not detain Mr Carrados
for ten minutes. Luck still favoured him; Mr Carrados was at home and
would see him at once. The servant, the hall through which they passed,
and the room into which he was shown, all contributed something to the
deductions which the quietly observant gentleman was half unconsciously
recording.

"Mr Carlyle," announced the servant.

The room was a library or study. The only occupant, a man of about
Carlyle's own age, had been using a typewriter up to the moment of his
visitor's entrance. He now turned and stood up with an expression of
formal courtesy.

"It's very good of you to see me at this hour," apologized the caller.

The conventional expression of Mr Carrados's face changed a little.

"Surely my man has got your name wrong?" he exclaimed. "Isn't it Louis
Calling?"

The visitor stopped short and his agreeable smile gave place to a sudden
flash of anger or annoyance.

"No, sir," he replied stiffly. "My name is on the card which you have
before you."

"I beg your pardon," said Mr Carrados, with perfect good-humour. "I
hadn't seen it. But I used to know a Calling some years ago--at St
Michael's."

"St Michael's!" Mr Carlyle's features underwent another change, no less
instant and sweeping than before. "St Michael's! Wynn Carrados? Good
heavens! it isn't Max Wynn--old 'Winning' Wynn?"

"A little older and a little fatter--yes," replied Carrados. "I _have_
changed my name, you see."

"Extraordinary thing meeting like this," said his visitor, dropping into
a chair and staring hard at Mr Carrados. "I have changed more than my
name. How did you recognize me?"

"The voice," replied Carrados. "It took me back to that little
smoke-dried attic den of yours where we----"

"My God!" exclaimed Carlyle bitterly, "don't remind me of what we were
going to do in those days." He looked round the well-furnished, handsome
room and recalled the other signs of wealth that he had noticed. "At all
events, you seem fairly comfortable, Wynn."

"I am alternately envied and pitied," replied Carrados, with a placid
tolerance of circumstance that seemed characteristic of him. "Still, as
you say, I am fairly comfortable."

"Envied, I can understand. But why are you pitied?"

"Because I am blind," was the tranquil reply.

"Blind!" exclaimed Mr Carlyle, using his own eyes superlatively. "Do you
mean--literally blind?"

"Literally.... I was riding along a bridle-path through a wood about a
dozen years ago with a friend. He was in front. At one point a twig
sprang back--you know how easily a thing like that happens. It just
flicked my eye--nothing to think twice about."

"And that blinded you?"

"Yes, ultimately. It's called amaurosis."

"I can scarcely believe it. You seem so sure and self-reliant. Your eyes
are full of expression--only a little quieter than they used to be. I
believe you were typing when I came.... Aren't you having me?"

"You miss the dog and the stick?" smiled Carrados. "No; it's a fact."

"What an awful infliction for you, Max. You were always such an
impulsive, reckless sort of fellow--never quiet. You must miss such a
fearful lot."

"Has anyone else recognized you?" asked Carrados quietly.

"Ah, that was the voice, you said," replied Carlyle.

"Yes; but other people heard the voice as well. Only I had no
blundering, self-confident eyes to be hoodwinked."

"That's a rum way of putting it," said Carlyle. "Are your ears never
hoodwinked, may I ask?"

"Not now. Nor my fingers. Nor any of my other senses that have to look
out for themselves."

"Well, well," murmured Mr Carlyle, cut short in his sympathetic
emotions. "I'm glad you take it so well. Of course, if you find it an
advantage to be blind, old man----" He stopped and reddened. "I beg your
pardon," he concluded stiffly.

"Not an advantage perhaps," replied the other thoughtfully. "Still it
has compensations that one might not think of. A new world to explore,
new experiences, new powers awakening; strange new perceptions; life in
the fourth dimension. But why do you beg my pardon, Louis?"

"I am an ex-solicitor, struck off in connexion with the falsifying of a
trust account, Mr Carrados," replied Carlyle, rising.

"Sit down, Louis," said Carrados suavely. His face, even his incredibly
living eyes, beamed placid good-nature. "The chair on which you will
sit, the roof above you, all the comfortable surroundings to which you
have so amiably alluded, are the direct result of falsifying a trust
account. But do I call you 'Mr Carlyle' in consequence? Certainly not,
Louis."

"I did not falsify the account," cried Carlyle hotly. He sat down,
however, and added more quietly: "But why do I tell you all this? I have
never spoken of it before."

"Blindness invites confidence," replied Carrados. "We are out of the
running--human rivalry ceases to exist. Besides, why shouldn't you? In
my case the account _was_ falsified."

"Of course that's all bunkum, Max," commented Carlyle. "Still, I
appreciate your motive."

"Practically everything I possess was left to me by an American cousin,
on the condition that I took the name of Carrados. He made his fortune
by an ingenious conspiracy of doctoring the crop reports and unloading
favourably in consequence. And I need hardly remind you that the
receiver is equally guilty with the thief."

"But twice as safe. I know something of that, Max.... Have you any idea
what my business is?"

"You shall tell me," replied Carrados.

"I run a private inquiry agency. When I lost my profession I had to do
something for a living. This occurred. I dropped my name, changed my
appearance and opened an office. I knew the legal side down to the
ground and I got a retired Scotland Yard man to organize the outside
work."

"Excellent!" cried Carrados. "Do you unearth many murders?"

"No," admitted Mr Carlyle; "our business lies mostly on the conventional
lines among divorce and defalcation."

"That's a pity," remarked Carrados. "Do you know, Louis, I always had a
secret ambition to be a detective myself. I have even thought lately
that I might still be able to do something at it if the chance came my
way. That makes you smile?"

"Well, certainly, the idea----"

"Yes, the idea of a blind detective--the blind tracking the alert----"

"Of course, as you say, certain faculties are no doubt quickened," Mr
Carlyle hastened to add considerately, "but, seriously, with the
exception of an artist, I don't suppose there is any man who is more
utterly dependent on his eyes."

Whatever opinion Carrados might have held privately, his genial exterior
did not betray a shadow of dissent. For a full minute he continued to
smoke as though he derived an actual visual enjoyment from the blue
sprays that travelled and dispersed across the room. He had already
placed before his visitor a box containing cigars of a brand which that
gentleman keenly appreciated but generally regarded as unattainable, and
the matter-of-fact ease and certainty with which the blind man had
brought the box and put it before him had sent a questioning flicker
through Carlyle's mind.

"You used to be rather fond of art yourself, Louis," he remarked
presently. "Give me your opinion of my latest purchase--the bronze lion
on the cabinet there." Then, as Carlyle's gaze went about the room, he
added quickly: "No, not that cabinet--the one on your left."

Carlyle shot a sharp glance at his host as he got up, but Carrados's
expression was merely benignly complacent. Then he strolled across to
the figure.

"Very nice," he admitted. "Late Flemish, isn't it?"

"No. It is a copy of Vidal's 'Roaring lion.'"

"Vidal?"

"A French artist." The voice became indescribably flat. "He, also, had
the misfortune to be blind, by the way."

"You old humbug, Max!" shrieked Carlyle, "you've been thinking that out
for the last five minutes." Then the unfortunate man bit his lip and
turned his back towards his host.

"Do you remember how we used to pile it up on that obtuse ass Sanders
and then roast him?" asked Carrados, ignoring the half-smothered
exclamation with which the other man had recalled himself.

"Yes," replied Carlyle quietly. "This is very good," he continued,
addressing himself to the bronze again. "How ever did he do it?"

"With his hands."

"Naturally. But, I mean, how did he study his model?"

"Also with his hands. He called it 'seeing near.'"

"Even with a lion--handled it?"

"In such cases he required the services of a keeper, who brought the
animal to bay while Vidal exercised his own particular gifts.... You
don't feel inclined to put me on the track of a mystery, Louis?"

Unable to regard this request as anything but one of old Max's
unquenchable pleasantries, Mr Carlyle was on the point of making a
suitable reply when a sudden thought caused him to smile knowingly. Up
to that point he had, indeed, completely forgotten the object of his
visit. Now that he remembered the doubtful Dionysius and Mr Baxter's
recommendation he immediately assumed that some mistake had been made.
Either Max was not the Wynn Carrados he had been seeking or else the
dealer had been misinformed; for although his host was wonderfully
expert in the face of his misfortune, it was inconceivable that he could
decide the genuineness of a coin without seeing it. The opportunity
seemed a good one of getting even with Carrados by taking him at his
word.

"Yes," he accordingly replied, with crisp deliberation, as he recrossed
the room; "yes, I will, Max. Here is the clue to what seems to be a
rather remarkable fraud." He put the tetradrachm into his host's hand.
"What do you make of it?"

For a few seconds Carrados handled the piece with the delicate
manipulation of his finger-tips while Carlyle looked on with a
self-appreciative grin. Then with equal gravity the blind man weighed
the coin in the balance of his hand. Finally he touched it with his
tongue.

"Well?" demanded the other.

"Of course I have not much to go on, and if I was more fully in your
confidence I might come to another conclusion----"

"Yes, yes," interposed Carlyle, with amused encouragement.

"Then I should advise you to arrest the parlourmaid, Nina Brun,
communicate with the police authorities of Padua for particulars of the
career of Helene Brunesi, and suggest to Lord Seastoke that he should
return to London to see what further depredations have been made in his
cabinet."

Mr Carlyle's groping hand sought and found a chair, on to which he
dropped blankly. His eyes were unable to detach themselves for a single
moment from the very ordinary spectacle of Mr Carrados's mildly
benevolent face, while the sterilized ghost of his now forgotten
amusement still lingered about his features.

"Good heavens!" he managed to articulate, "how do you know?"

"Isn't that what you wanted of me?" asked Carrados suavely.

"Don't humbug, Max," said Carlyle severely. "This is no joke." An
undefined mistrust of his own powers suddenly possessed him in the
presence of this mystery. "How do you come to know of Nina Brun and Lord
Seastoke?"

"You are a detective, Louis," replied Carrados. "How does one know these
things? By using one's eyes and putting two and two together."

Carlyle groaned and flung out an arm petulantly.

"Is it all bunkum, Max? Do you really see all the time--though that
doesn't go very far towards explaining it."

"Like Vidal, I see very well--at close quarters," replied Carrados,
lightly running a forefinger along the inscription on the tetradrachm.
"For longer range I keep another pair of eyes. Would you like to test
them?"

Mr Carlyle's assent was not very gracious; it was, in fact, faintly
sulky. He was suffering the annoyance of feeling distinctly unimpressive
in his own department; but he was also curious.

"The bell is just behind you, if you don't mind," said his host.
"Parkinson will appear. You might take note of him while he is in."

The man who had admitted Mr Carlyle proved to be Parkinson.

"This gentleman is Mr Carlyle, Parkinson," explained Carrados the moment
the man entered. "You will remember him for the future?"

Parkinson's apologetic eye swept the visitor from head to foot, but so
lightly and swiftly that it conveyed to that gentleman the comparison
of being very deftly dusted.

"I will endeavour to do so, sir," replied Parkinson, turning again to
his master.

"I shall be at home to Mr Carlyle whenever he calls. That is all."

"Very well, sir."

"Now, Louis," remarked Mr Carrados briskly, when the door had closed
again, "you have had a good opportunity of studying Parkinson. What is
he like?"

"In what way?"

"I mean as a matter of description. I am a blind man--I haven't seen my
servant for twelve years--what idea can you give me of him? I asked you
to notice."

"I know you did, but your Parkinson is the sort of man who has very
little about him to describe. He is the embodiment of the ordinary. His
height is about average----"

"Five feet nine," murmured Carrados. "Slightly above the mean."

"Scarcely noticeably so. Clean-shaven. Medium brown hair. No
particularly marked features. Dark eyes. Good teeth."

"False," interposed Carrados. "The teeth--not the statement."

"Possibly," admitted Mr Carlyle. "I am not a dental expert and I had no
opportunity of examining Mr Parkinson's mouth in detail. But what is
the drift of all this?"

"His clothes?"

"Oh, just the ordinary evening dress of a valet. There is not much room
for variety in that."

"You noticed, in fact, nothing special by which Parkinson could be
identified?"

"Well, he wore an unusually broad gold ring on the little finger of the
left hand."

"But that is removable. And yet Parkinson has an ineradicable mole--a
small one, I admit--on his chin. And you a human sleuth-hound. Oh,
Louis!"

"At all events," retorted Carlyle, writhing a little under this
good-humoured satire, although it was easy enough to see in it
Carrados's affectionate intention--"at all events, I dare say I can give
as good a description of Parkinson as he can give of me."

"That is what we are going to test. Ring the bell again."

"Seriously?"

"Quite. I am trying my eyes against yours. If I can't give you fifty out
of a hundred I'll renounce my private detectorial ambition for ever."

"It isn't quite the same," objected Carlyle, but he rang the bell.

"Come in and close the door, Parkinson," said Carrados when the man
appeared. "Don't look at Mr Carlyle again--in fact, you had better stand
with your back towards him, he won't mind. Now describe to me his
appearance as you observed it."

Parkinson tendered his respectful apologies to Mr Carlyle for the
liberty he was compelled to take, by the deferential quality of his
voice.

"Mr Carlyle, sir, wears patent leather boots of about size seven and
very little used. There are five buttons, but on the left boot one
button--the third up--is missing, leaving loose threads and not the more
usual metal fastener. Mr Carlyle's trousers, sir, are of a dark
material, a dark grey line of about a quarter of an inch width on a
darker ground. The bottoms are turned permanently up and are, just now,
a little muddy, if I may say so."

"Very muddy," interposed Mr Carlyle generously. "It is a wet night,
Parkinson."

"Yes, sir; very unpleasant weather. If you will allow me, sir, I will
brush you in the hall. The mud is dry now, I notice. Then, sir,"
continued Parkinson, reverting to the business in hand, "there are dark
green cashmere hose. A curb-pattern key-chain passes into the left-hand
trouser pocket."

From the visitor's nether garments the photographic-eyed Parkinson
proceeded to higher ground, and with increasing wonder Mr Carlyle
listened to the faithful catalogue of his possessions. His
fetter-and-link albert of gold and platinum was minutely described. His
spotted blue ascot, with its gentlemanly pearl scarfpin, was set forth,
and the fact that the buttonhole in the left lapel of his morning coat
showed signs of use was duly noted. What Parkinson saw he recorded but
he made no deductions. A handkerchief carried in the cuff of the right
sleeve was simply that to him and not an indication that Mr Carlyle was,
indeed, left-handed.

But a more delicate part of Parkinson's undertaking remained. He
approached it with a double cough.

"As regards Mr Carlyle's personal appearance; sir----"

"No, enough!" cried the gentleman concerned hastily. "I am more than
satisfied. You are a keen observer, Parkinson."

"I have trained myself to suit my master's requirements, sir," replied
the man. He looked towards Mr Carrados, received a nod and withdrew.

Mr Carlyle was the first to speak.

"That man of yours would be worth five pounds a week to me, Max," he
remarked thoughtfully. "But, of course----"

"I don't think that he would take it," replied Carrados, in a voice of
equally detached speculation. "He suits me very well. But you have the
chance of using his services--indirectly."

"You still mean that--seriously?"

"I notice in you a chronic disinclination to take me seriously, Louis.
It is really--to an Englishman--almost painful. Is there something
inherently comic about me or the atmosphere of The Turrets?"

"No, my friend," replied Mr Carlyle, "but there is something
essentially prosperous. That is what points to the improbable. Now what
is it?"

"It might be merely a whim, but it is more than that," replied Carrados.
"It is, well, partly vanity, partly _ennui_, partly"--certainly there
was something more nearly tragic in his voice than comic now--"partly
hope."

Mr Carlyle was too tactful to pursue the subject.

"Those are three tolerable motives," he acquiesced. "I'll do anything
you want, Max, on one condition."

"Agreed. And it is?"

"That you tell me how you knew so much of this affair." He tapped the
silver coin which lay on the table near them. "I am not easily
flabbergasted," he added.

"You won't believe that there is nothing to explain--that it was purely
second-sight?"

"No," replied Carlyle tersely; "I won't."

"You are quite right. And yet the thing is very simple."

"They always are--when you know," soliloquized the other. "That's what
makes them so confoundedly difficult when you don't."

"Here is this one then. In Padua, which seems to be regaining its old
reputation as the birthplace of spurious antiques, by the way, there
lives an ingenious craftsman named Pietro Stelli. This simple soul, who
possesses a talent not inferior to that of Cavino at his best, has for
many years turned his hand to the not unprofitable occupation of
forging rare Greek and Roman coins. As a collector and student of
certain Greek colonials and a specialist in forgeries I have been
familiar with Stelli's workmanship for years. Latterly he seems to have
come under the influence of an international crook called--at the
moment--Dompierre, who soon saw a way of utilizing Stelli's genius on a
royal scale. Helene Brunesi, who in private life is--and really is, I
believe--Madame Dompierre, readily lent her services to the enterprise."

"Quite so," nodded Mr Carlyle, as his host paused.

"You see the whole sequence, of course?"

"Not exactly--not in detail," confessed Mr Carlyle.

"Dompierre's idea was to gain access to some of the most celebrated
cabinets of Europe and substitute Stelli's fabrications for the genuine
coins. The princely collection of rarities that he would thus amass
might be difficult to dispose of safely but I have no doubt that he had
matured his plans. Helene, in the person of Nina Bran, an Anglicised
French parlourmaid--a part which she fills to perfection--was to obtain
wax impressions of the most valuable pieces and to make the exchange
when the counterfeits reached her. In this way it was obviously hoped
that the fraud would not come to light until long after the real coins
had been sold, and I gather that she has already done her work
successfully in several houses. Then, impressed by her excellent
references and capable manner, my housekeeper engaged her, and for a few
weeks she went about her duties here. It was fatal to this detail of
the scheme, however, that I have the misfortune to be blind. I am told
that Helene has so innocently angelic a face as to disarm suspicion, but
I was incapable of being impressed and that good material was thrown
away. But one morning my material fingers--which, of course, knew
nothing of Helene's angelic face--discovered an unfamiliar touch about
the surface of my favourite Euclideas, and, although there was doubtless
nothing to be seen, my critical sense of smell reported that wax had
been recently pressed against it. I began to make discreet inquiries and
in the meantime my cabinets went to the local bank for safety. Helene
countered by receiving a telegram from Angiers, calling her to the
death-bed of her aged mother. The aged mother succumbed; duty compelled
Helene to remain at the side of her stricken patriarchal father, and
doubtless The Turrets was written off the syndicate's operations as a
bad debt."

"Very interesting," admitted Mr Carlyle; "but at the risk of seeming
obtuse"--his manner had become delicately chastened--"I must say that I
fail to trace the inevitable connexion between Nina Brun and this
particular forgery--assuming that it is a forgery."

"Set your mind at rest about that, Louis," replied Carrados. "It is a
forgery, and it is a forgery that none but Pietro Stelli could have
achieved. That is the essential connexion. Of course, there are
accessories. A private detective coming urgently to see me with a
notable tetradrachm in his pocket, which he announces to be the clue to
a remarkable fraud--well, really, Louis, one scarcely needs to be blind
to see through that."

"And Lord Seastoke? I suppose you happened to discover that Nina Brun
had gone there?"

"No, I cannot claim to have discovered that, or I should certainly have
warned him at once when I found out--only recently--about the gang. As a
matter of fact, the last information I had of Lord Seastoke was a line
in yesterday's _Morning Post_ to the effect that he was still at Cairo.
But many of these pieces----" He brushed his finger almost lovingly
across the vivid chariot race that embellished the reverse of the coin,
and broke off to remark: "You really ought to take up the subject,
Louis. You have no idea how useful it might prove to you some day."

"I really think I must," replied Carlyle grimly. "Two hundred and fifty
pounds the original of this cost, I believe."

"Cheap, too; it would make five hundred pounds in New York to-day. As I
was saying, many are literally unique. This gem by Kimon is--here is his
signature, you see; Peter is particularly good at lettering--and as I
handled the genuine tetradrachm about two years ago, when Lord Seastoke
exhibited it at a meeting of our society in Albemarle Street, there is
nothing at all wonderful in my being able to fix the locale of your
mystery. Indeed, I feel that I ought to apologize for it all being so
simple."

"I think," remarked Mr Carlyle, critically examining the loose threads
on his left boot, "that the apology on that head would be more
appropriate from me."




THE KNIGHT'S CROSS SIGNAL PROBLEM


"Louis," exclaimed Mr Carrados, with the air of genial gaiety that
Carlyle had found so incongruous to his conception of a blind man, "you
have a mystery somewhere about you! I know it by your step."

Nearly a month had passed since the incident of the false Dionysius had
led to the two men meeting. It was now December. Whatever Mr Carlyle's
step might indicate to the inner eye it betokened to the casual observer
the manner of a crisp, alert, self-possessed man of business. Carlyle,
in truth, betrayed nothing of the pessimism and despondency that had
marked him on the earlier occasion.

"You have only yourself to thank that it is a very poor one," he
retorted. "If you hadn't held me to a hasty promise----"

"To give me an option on the next case that baffled you, no matter what
it was----"

"Just so. The consequence is that you get a very unsatisfactory affair
that has no special interest to an amateur and is only baffling because
it is--well----"

"Well, baffling?"

"Exactly, Max. Your would-be jest has discovered the proverbial truth. I
need hardly tell you that it is only the insoluble that is finally
baffling and this is very probably insoluble. You remember the awful
smash on the Central and Suburban at Knight's Cross Station a few weeks
ago?"

"Yes," replied Carrados, with interest. "I read the whole ghastly
details at the time."

"You read?" exclaimed his friend suspiciously.

"I still use the familiar phrases," explained Carrados, with a smile.
"As a matter of fact, my secretary reads to me. I mark what I want to
hear and when he comes at ten o'clock we clear off the morning papers in
no time."

"And how do you know what to mark?" demanded Mr Carlyle cunningly.

Carrados's right hand, lying idly on the table, moved to a newspaper
near. He ran his finger along a column heading, his eyes still turned
towards his visitor.

"'The Money Market. Continued from page 2. British Railways,'" he
announced.

"Extraordinary," murmured Carlyle.

"Not very," said Carrados. "If someone dipped a stick in treacle and
wrote 'Rats' across a marble slab you would probably be able to
distinguish what was there, blindfold."

"Probably," admitted Mr Carlyle. "At all events we will not test the
experiment."

"The difference to you of treacle on a marble background is scarcely
greater than that of printers' ink on newspaper to me. But anything
smaller than pica I do not read with comfort, and below long primer I
cannot read at all. Hence the secretary. Now the accident, Louis."

"The accident: well, you remember all about that. An ordinary Central
and Suburban passenger train, non-stop at Knight's Cross, ran past the
signal and crashed into a crowded electric train that was just beginning
to move out. It was like sending a garden roller down a row of
handlights. Two carriages of the electric train were flattened out of
existence; the next two were broken up. For the first time on an English
railway there was a good stand-up smash between a heavy steam-engine and
a train of light cars, and it was 'bad for the coo.'"

"Twenty-seven killed, forty something injured, eight died since,"
commented Carrados.

"That was bad for the Co.," said Carlyle. "Well, the main fact was plain
enough. The heavy train was in the wrong. But was the engine-driver
responsible? He claimed, and he claimed vehemently from the first and he
never varied one iota, that he had a 'clear' signal--that is to say, the
green light, it being dark. The signalman concerned was equally dogged
that he never pulled off the signal--that it was at 'danger' when the
accident happened and that it had been for five minutes before.
Obviously, they could not both be right."

"Why, Louis?" asked Mr Carrados smoothly.

"The signal must either have been up or down--red or green."

"Did you ever notice the signals on the Great Northern Railway, Louis?"

"Not particularly. Why?"

"One winterly day, about the year when you and I were concerned in being
born, the engine-driver of a Scotch express received the 'clear' from a
signal near a little Huntingdon station called Abbots Ripton. He went on
and crashed into a goods train and into the thick of the smash a down
express mowed its way. Thirteen killed and the usual tale of injured. He
was positive that the signal gave him a 'clear'; the signalman was
equally confident that he had never pulled it off the 'danger.' Both
were right, and yet the signal was in working order. As I said, it was a
winterly day; it had been snowing hard and the snow froze and
accumulated on the upper edge of the signal arm until its weight bore it
down. That is a fact that no fiction writer dare have invented, but to
this day every signal on the Great Northern pivots from the centre of
the arm instead of from the end, in memory of that snowstorm."

"That came out at the inquest, I presume?" said Mr Carlyle. "We have had
the Board of Trade inquiry and the inquest here and no explanation is
forthcoming. Everything was in perfect order. It rests between the word
of the signalman and the word of the engine-driver--not a jot of direct
evidence either way. Which is right?"

"That is what you are going to find out, Louis?" suggested Carrados.

"It is what I am being paid for finding out," admitted Mr Carlyle
frankly. "But so far we are just where the inquest left it, and, between
ourselves, I candidly can't see an inch in front of my face in the
matter."

"Nor can I," said the blind man, with a rather wry smile. "Never mind.
The engine-driver is your client, of course?"

"Yes," admitted Carlyle. "But how the deuce did you know?"

"Let us say that your sympathies are enlisted on his behalf. The jury
were inclined to exonerate the signalman, weren't they? What has the
company done with your man?"

"Both are suspended. Hutchins, the driver, hears that he may probably be
given charge of a lavatory at one of the stations. He is a decent,
bluff, short-spoken old chap, with his heart in his work. Just now
you'll find him at his worst--bitter and suspicious. The thought of
swabbing down a lavatory and taking pennies all day is poisoning him."

"Naturally. Well, there we have honest Hutchins: taciturn, a little
touchy perhaps, grown grey in the service of the company, and
manifesting quite a bulldog-like devotion to his favourite 538."

"Why, that actually was the number of his engine--how do you know it?"
demanded Carlyle sharply.

"It was mentioned two or three times at the inquest, Louis," replied
Carrados mildly.

"And you remembered--with no reason to?"

"You can generally trust a blind man's memory, especially if he has
taken the trouble to develop it."

"Then you will remember that Hutchins did not make a very good
impression at the time. He was surly and irritable under the ordeal. I
want you to see the case from all sides."

"He called the signalman--Mead--a 'lying young dog,' across the room, I
believe. Now, Mead, what is he like? You have seen him, of course?"

"Yes. He does not impress me favourably. He is glib, ingratiating, and
distinctly 'greasy.' He has a ready answer for everything almost before
the question is out of your mouth. He has thought of everything."

"And now you are going to tell me something, Louis," said Carrados
encouragingly.

Mr Carlyle laughed a little to cover an involuntary movement of
surprise.

"There is a suggestive line that was not touched at the inquiries," he
admitted. "Hutchins has been a saving man all his life, and he has
received good wages. Among his class he is regarded as wealthy. I
daresay that he has five hundred pounds in the bank. He is a widower
with one daughter, a very nice-mannered girl of about twenty. Mead is a
young man, and he and the girl are sweethearts--have been informally
engaged for some time. But old Hutchins would not hear of it; he seems
to have taken a dislike to the signalman from the first and latterly he
had forbidden him to come to his house or his daughter to speak to him."

"Excellent, Louis," cried Carrados in great delight. "We shall clear
your man in a blaze of red and green lights yet and hang the glib,
'greasy' signalman from his own signal-post."

"It is a significant fact, seriously?"

"It is absolutely convincing."

"It may have been a slip, a mental lapse on Mead's part which he
discovered the moment it was too late, and then, being too cowardly to
admit his fault, and having so much at stake, he took care to make
detection impossible. It may have been that, but my idea is rather that
probably it was neither quite pure accident nor pure design. I can
imagine Mead meanly pluming himself over the fact that the life of this
man who stands in his way, and whom he must cordially dislike, lies in
his power. I can imagine the idea becoming an obsession as he dwells on
it. A dozen times with his hand on the lever he lets his mind explore
the possibilities of a moment's defection. Then one day he pulls the
signal off in sheer bravado--and hastily puts it at danger again. He may
have done it once or he may have done it oftener before he was caught in
a fatal moment of irresolution. The chances are about even that the
engine-driver would be killed. In any case he would be disgraced, for it
is easier on the face of it to believe that a man might run past a
danger signal in absentmindedness, without noticing it, than that a man
should pull off a signal and replace it without being conscious of his
actions."

"The fireman was killed. Does your theory involve the certainty of the
fireman being killed, Louis?"

"No," said Carlyle. "The fireman is a difficulty, but looking at it from
Mead's point of view--whether he has been guilty of an error or a
crime--it resolves itself into this: First, the fireman may be killed.
Second, he may not notice the signal at all. Third, in any case he will
loyally corroborate his driver and the good old jury will discount
that."

Carrados smoked thoughtfully, his open, sightless eyes merely appearing
to be set in a tranquil gaze across the room.

"It would not be an improbable explanation," he said presently.
"Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would say: 'People do not do these
things.' But you and I, who have in our different ways studied
criminology, know that they sometimes do, or else there would be no
curious crimes. What have you done on that line?"

To anyone who could see, Mr Carlyle's expression conveyed an answer.

"You are behind the scenes, Max. What was there for me to do? Still I
must do something for my money. Well, I have had a very close inquiry
made confidentially among the men. There might be a whisper of one of
them knowing more than had come out--a man restrained by friendship, or
enmity, or even grade jealousy. Nothing came of that. Then there was the
remote chance that some private person had noticed the signal without
attaching any importance to it then, one who would be able to identify
it still by something associated with the time. I went over the line
myself. Opposite the signal the line on one side is shut in by a high
blank wall; on the other side are houses, but coming below the butt-end
of a scullery the signal does not happen to be visible from any road or
from any window."

"My poor Louis!" said Carrados, in friendly ridicule. "You were at the
end of your tether?"

"I was," admitted Carlyle. "And now that you know the sort of job it is
I don't suppose that you are keen on wasting your time over it."

"That would hardly be fair, would it?" said Carrados reasonably. "No,
Louis, I will take over your honest old driver and your greasy young
signalman and your fatal signal that cannot be seen from anywhere."

"But it is an important point for you to remember, Max, that although
the signal cannot be seen from the box, if the mechanism had gone wrong,
or anyone tampered with the arm, the automatic indicator would at once
have told Mead that the green light was showing. Oh, I have gone very
thoroughly into the technical points, I assure you."

"I must do so too," commented Mr Carrados gravely.

"For that matter, if there is anything you want to know, I dare say
that I can tell you," suggested his visitor. "It might save your time."

"True," acquiesced Carrados. "I should like to know whether anyone
belonging to the houses that bound the line there came of age or got
married on the twenty-sixth of November."

Mr Carlyle looked across curiously at his host.

"I really do not know, Max," he replied, in his crisp, precise way.
"What on earth has that got to do with it, may I inquire?"

"The only explanation of the Pont St Lin swing-bridge disaster of '75
was the reflection of a green bengal light on a cottage window."

Mr Carlyle smiled his indulgence privately.

"My dear chap, you mustn't let your retentive memory of obscure
happenings run away with you," he remarked wisely. "In nine cases out of
ten the obvious explanation is the true one. The difficulty, as here,
lies in proving it. Now, you would like to see these men?"

"I expect so; in any case, I will see Hutchins first."

"Both live in Holloway. Shall I ask Hutchins to come here to see
you--say to-morrow? He is doing nothing."

"No," replied Carrados. "To-morrow I must call on my brokers and my time
may be filled up."

"Quite right; you mustn't neglect your own affairs for
this--experiment," assented Carlyle.

"Besides, I should prefer to drop in on Hutchins at his own home. Now,
Louis, enough of the honest old man for one night. I have a lovely thing
by Eumenes that I want to show you. To-day is--Tuesday. Come to dinner
on Sunday and pour the vials of your ridicule on my want of success."

"That's an amiable way of putting it," replied Carlyle. "All right, I
will."

Two hours later Carrados was again in his study, apparently, for a
wonder, sitting idle. Sometimes he smiled to himself, and once or twice
he laughed a little, but for the most part his pleasant, impassive face
reflected no emotion and he sat with his useless eyes tranquilly fixed
on an unseen distance. It was a fantastic caprice of the man to mock his
sightlessness by a parade of light, and under the soft brilliance of a
dozen electric brackets the room was as bright as day. At length he
stood up and rang the bell.

"I suppose Mr Greatorex isn't still here by any chance, Parkinson?" he
asked, referring to his secretary.

"I think not, sir, but I will ascertain," replied the man.

"Never mind. Go to his room and bring me the last two files of _The
Times_. Now"--when he returned--"turn to the earliest you have there.
The date?"

"November the second."

"That will do. Find the Money Market; it will be in the Supplement. Now
look down the columns until you come to British Railways."

"I have it, sir."

"Central and Suburban. Read the closing price and the change."

"Central and Suburban Ordinary, 66-1/2 - 67-1/2, fall 1/8. Preferred
Ordinary, 81 - 81-1/2, no change. Deferred Ordinary, 27-1/2 - 27-3/4, fall
1/4. That is all, sir."

"Now take a paper about a week on. Read the Deferred only."

"27 - 27-1/4, no change."

"Another week."

"29-1/2 - 30, rise 5/8."

"Another."

"31-1/2 - 32-1/2, rise 1."

"Very good. Now on Tuesday the twenty-seventh November."

"31-7/8 - 32-3/4, rise 1/2."

"Yes. The next day."

"24-1/2 - 23-1/2, fall 9."

"Quite so, Parkinson. There had been an accident, you see."

"Yes, sir. Very unpleasant accident. Jane knows a person whose sister's
young man has a cousin who had his arm torn off in it--torn off at the
socket, she says, sir. It seems to bring it home to one, sir."

"That is all. Stay--in the paper you have, look down the first money
column and see if there is any reference to the Central and Suburban."

"Yes, sir. 'City and Suburbans, which after their late depression on the
projected extension of the motor bus service, had been steadily
creeping up on the abandonment of the scheme, and as a result of their
own excellent traffic returns, suffered a heavy slump through the
lamentable accident of Thursday night. The Deferred in particular at one
time fell eleven points as it was felt that the possible dividend, with
which rumour has of late been busy, was now out of the question.'"

"Yes; that is all. Now you can take the papers back. And let it be a
warning to you, Parkinson, not to invest your savings in speculative
railway deferreds."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir, I will endeavour to remember." He lingered
for a moment as he shook the file of papers level. "I may say, sir, that
I have my eye on a small block of cottage property at Acton. But even
cottage property scarcely seems safe from legislative depredation now,
sir."

The next day Mr Carrados called on his brokers in the city. It is to be
presumed that he got through his private business quicker than he
expected, for after leaving Austin Friars he continued his journey to
Holloway, where he found Hutchins at home and sitting morosely before
his kitchen fire. Rightly assuming that his luxuriant car would involve
him in a certain amount of public attention in Klondyke Street, the
blind man dismissed it some distance from the house, and walked the rest
of the way, guided by the almost imperceptible touch of Parkinson's arm.

"Here is a gentleman to see you, father," explained Miss Hutchins, who
had come to the door. She divined the relative positions of the two
visitors at a glance.

"Then why don't you take him into the parlour?" grumbled the ex-driver.
His face was a testimonial of hard work and general sobriety but at the
moment one might hazard from his voice and manner that he had been
drinking earlier in the day.

"I don't think that the gentleman would be impressed by the difference
between our parlour and our kitchen," replied the girl quaintly, "and it
is warmer here."

"What's the matter with the parlour now?" demanded her father sourly.
"It was good enough for your mother and me. It used to be good enough
for you."

"There is nothing the matter with it, nor with the kitchen either." She
turned impassively to the two who had followed her along the narrow
passage. "Will you go in, sir?"

"I don't want to see no gentleman," cried Hutchins noisily.
"Unless"--his manner suddenly changed to one of pitiable
anxiety--"unless you're from the Company, sir, to--to----"

"No; I have come on Mr Carlyle's behalf," replied Carrados, walking to a
chair as though he moved by a kind of instinct.

Hutchins laughed his wry contempt.

"Mr Carlyle!" he reiterated; "Mr Carlyle! Fat lot of good he's been.
Why don't he _do_ something for his money?"

"He has," replied Carrados, with imperturbable good-humour; "he has sent
me. Now, I want to ask you a few questions."

"A few questions!" roared the irate man. "Why, blast it, I have done
nothing else but answer questions for a month. I didn't pay Mr Carlyle
to ask me questions; I can get enough of that for nixes. Why don't you
go and ask Mr Herbert Ananias Mead your few questions--then you might
find out something."

There was a slight movement by the door and Carrados knew that the girl
had quietly left the room.

"You saw that, sir?" demanded the father, diverted to a new line of
bitterness. "You saw that girl--my own daughter, that I've worked for
all her life?"

"No," replied Carrados.

"The girl that's just gone out--she's my daughter," explained Hutchins.

"I know, but I did not see her. I see nothing. I am blind."

"Blind!" exclaimed the old fellow, sitting up in startled wonderment.
"You mean it, sir? You walk all right and you look at me as if you saw
me. You're kidding surely."

"No," smiled Carrados. "It's quite right."

"Then it's a funny business, sir--you what are blind expecting to find
something that those with their eyes couldn't," ruminated Hutchins
sagely.

"There are things that you can't see with your eyes, Hutchins."

"Perhaps you are right, sir. Well, what is it you want to know?"

"Light a cigar first," said the blind man, holding out his case and
waiting until the various sounds told him that his host was smoking
contentedly. "The train you were driving at the time of the accident was
the six-twenty-seven from Notcliff. It stopped everywhere until it
reached Lambeth Bridge, the chief London station of your line. There it
became something of an express, and leaving Lambeth Bridge at
seven-eleven, should not stop again until it fetched Swanstead on
Thames, eleven miles out, at seven-thirty-four. Then it stopped on and
off from Swanstead to Ingerfield, the terminus of that branch, which it
reached at eight-five."

Hutchins nodded, and then, remembering, said: "That's right, sir."

"That was your business all day--running between Notcliff and
Ingerfield?"

"Yes, sir. Three journeys up and three down mostly."

"With the same stops on all the down journeys?"

"No. The seven-eleven is the only one that does a run from the Bridge to
Swanstead. You see, it is just on the close of the evening rush, as they
call it. A good many late business gentlemen living at Swanstead use
the seven-eleven regular. The other journeys we stop at every station to
Lambeth Bridge, and then here and there beyond."

"There are, of course, other trains doing exactly the same journey--a
service, in fact?"

"Yes, sir. About six."

"And do any of those--say, during the rush--do any of those run non-stop
from Lambeth to Swanstead?"

Hutchins reflected a moment. All the choler and restlessness had melted
out of the man's face. He was again the excellent artisan, slow but
capable and self-reliant.

"That I couldn't definitely say, sir. Very few short-distance trains
pass the junction, but some of those may. A guide would show us in a
minute but I haven't got one."

"Never mind. You said at the inquest that it was no uncommon thing for
you to be pulled up at the 'stop' signal east of Knight's Cross Station.
How often would that happen--only with the seven-eleven, mind."

"Perhaps three times a week; perhaps twice."

"The accident was on a Thursday. Have you noticed that you were pulled
up oftener on a Thursday than on any other day?"

A smile crossed the driver's face at the question.

"You don't happen to live at Swanstead yourself, sir?" he asked in
reply.

"No," admitted Carrados. "Why?"

"Well, sir, we were _always_ pulled up on Thursday; practically always,
you may say. It got to be quite a saying among those who used the train
regular; they used to look out for it."

Carrados's sightless eyes had the one quality of concealing emotion
supremely. "Oh," he commented softly, "always; and it was quite a
saying, was it? And _why_ was it always so on Thursday?"

"It had to do with the early closing, I'm told. The suburban traffic was
a bit different. By rights we ought to have been set back two minutes
for that day, but I suppose it wasn't thought worth while to alter us in
the time-table, so we most always had to wait outside Three Deep tunnel
for a west-bound electric to make good."

"You were prepared for it then?"

"Yes, sir, I was," said Hutchins, reddening at some recollection, "and
very down about it was one of the jury over that. But, mayhap once in
three months, I did get through even on a Thursday, and it's not for me
to question whether things are right or wrong just because they are not
what I may expect. The signals are my orders, sir--stop! go on! and it's
for me to obey, as you would a general on the field of battle. What
would happen otherwise! It was nonsense what they said about going
cautious; and the man who started it was a barber who didn't know the
difference between a 'distance' and a 'stop' signal down to the minute
they gave their verdict. My orders, sir, given me by that signal, was
'Go right ahead and keep to your running time!'"

Carrados nodded a soothing assent. "That is all, I think," he remarked.

"All!" exclaimed Hutchins in surprise. "Why, sir, you can't have got
much idea of it yet."

"Quite enough. And I know it isn't pleasant for you to be taken along
the same ground over and over again."

The man moved awkwardly in his chair and pulled nervously at his
grizzled beard.

"You mustn't take any notice of what I said just now, sir," he
apologized. "You somehow make me feel that something may come of it; but
I've been badgered about and accused and cross-examined from one to
another of them these weeks till it's fairly made me bitter against
everything. And now they talk of putting me in a lavatory--me that has
been with the company for five and forty years and on the foot-plate
thirty-two--a man suspected of running past a danger signal."

"You have had a rough time, Hutchins; you will have to exercise your
patience a little longer yet," said Carrados sympathetically.

"You think something may come of it, sir? You think you will be able to
clear me? Believe me, sir, if you could give me something to look
forward to it might save me from----" He pulled himself up and shook his
head sorrowfully. "I've been near it," he added simply.

Carrados reflected and took his resolution.

"To-day is Wednesday. I think you may hope to hear something from your
general manager towards the middle of next week."

"Good God, sir! You really mean that?"

"In the interval show your good sense by behaving reasonably. Keep
civilly to yourself and don't talk. Above all"--he nodded towards a
quart jug that stood on the table between them, an incident that filled
the simple-minded engineer with boundless wonder when he recalled it
afterwards--"above all, leave that alone."

Hutchins snatched up the vessel and brought it crashing down on the
hearthstone, his face shining with a set resolution.

"I've done with it, sir. It was the bitterness and despair that drove me
to that. Now I can do without it."

The door was hastily opened and Miss Hutchins looked anxiously from her
father to the visitors and back again.

"Oh, whatever is the matter?" she exclaimed. "I heard a great crash."

"This gentleman is going to clear me, Meg, my dear," blurted out the old
man irrepressibly. "And I've done with the drink for ever."

"Hutchins! Hutchins!" said Carrados warningly.

"My daughter, sir; you wouldn't have her not know?" pleaded Hutchins,
rather crest-fallen. "It won't go any further."

Carrados laughed quietly to himself as he felt Margaret Hutchins's
startled and questioning eyes attempting to read his mind. He shook
hands with the engine-driver without further comment, however, and
walked out into the commonplace little street under Parkinson's
unobtrusive guidance.

"Very nice of Miss Hutchins to go into half-mourning, Parkinson," he
remarked as they went along. "Thoughtful, and yet not ostentatious."

"Yes, sir," agreed Parkinson, who had long ceased to wonder at his
master's perceptions.

"The Romans, Parkinson, had a saying to the effect that gold carries no
smell. That is a pity sometimes. What jewellery did Miss Hutchins wear?"

"Very little, sir. A plain gold brooch representing a merry-thought--the
merry-thought of a sparrow, I should say, sir. The only other article
was a smooth-backed gun-metal watch, suspended from a gun-metal bow."

"Nothing showy or expensive, eh?"

"Oh dear no, sir. Quite appropriate for a young person of her position."

"Just what I should have expected." He slackened his pace. "We are
passing a hoarding, are we not?"

"Yes, sir."

"We will stand here a moment. Read me the letterpress of the poster
before us."

"This 'Oxo' one, sir?"

"Yes."

"'Oxo,' sir."

Carrados was convulsed with silent laughter. Parkinson had infinitely
more dignity and conceded merely a tolerant recognition of the
ludicrous.

"That was a bad shot, Parkinson," remarked his master when he could
speak. "We will try another."

For three minutes, with scrupulous conscientiousness on the part of the
reader and every appearance of keen interest on the part of the hearer,
there were set forth the particulars of a sale by auction of superfluous
timber and builders' material.

"That will do," said Carrados, when the last detail had been reached.
"We can be seen from the door of No. 107 still?"

"Yes, sir."

"No indication of anyone coming to us from there?"

"No, sir."

Carrados walked thoughtfully on again. In the Holloway Road they
rejoined the waiting motor car. "Lambeth Bridge Station," was the order
the driver received.

From the station the car was sent on home and Parkinson was instructed
to take two first-class singles for Richmond, which could be reached by
changing at Stafford Road. The "evening rush" had not yet commenced and
they had no difficulty in finding an empty carriage when the train came
in.

Parkinson was kept busy that journey describing what he saw at various
points between Lambeth Bridge and Knight's Cross. For a quarter of a
mile Carrados's demands on the eyes and the memory of his remarkable
servant were wide and incessant. Then his questions ceased. They had
passed the "stop" signal, east of Knight's Cross Station.

The following afternoon they made the return journey as far as Knight's
Cross. This time, however, the surroundings failed to interest Carrados.
"We are going to look at some rooms," was the information he offered on
the subject, and an imperturbable "Yes, sir" had been the extent of
Parkinson's comment on the unusual proceeding. After leaving the station
they turned sharply along a road that ran parallel with the line, a dull
thoroughfare of substantial, elderly houses that were beginning to sink
into decrepitude. Here and there a corner residence displayed the brass
plate of a professional occupant, but for the most part they were given
up to the various branches of second-rate apartment letting.

"The third house after the one with the flagstaff," said Carrados.

Parkinson rang the bell, which was answered by a young servant, who took
an early opportunity of assuring them that she was not tidy as it was
rather early in the afternoon. She informed Carrados, in reply to his
inquiry, that Miss Chubb was at home, and showed them into a melancholy
little sitting-room to await her appearance.

"I shall be 'almost' blind here, Parkinson," remarked Carrados, walking
about the room. "It saves explanation."

"Very good, sir," replied Parkinson.

Five minutes later, an interval suggesting that Miss Chubb also found it
rather early in the afternoon, Carrados was arranging to take rooms for
his attendant and himself for the short time that he would be in London,
seeing an oculist.

"One bedroom, mine, must face north," he stipulated. "It has to do with
the light."

Miss Chubb replied that she quite understood. Some gentlemen, she added,
had their requirements, others their fancies. She endeavoured to suit
all. The bedroom she had in view from the first _did_ face north. She
would not have known, only the last gentleman, curiously enough, had
made the same request.

"A sufferer like myself?" inquired Carrados affably.

Miss Chubb did not think so. In his case she regarded it merely as a
fancy. He had said that he could not sleep on any other side. She had
had to turn out of her own room to accommodate him, but if one kept an
apartment-house one had to be adaptable; and Mr Ghoosh was certainly
very liberal in his ideas.

"Ghoosh? An Indian gentleman, I presume?" hazarded Carrados.

It appeared that Mr Ghoosh was an Indian. Miss Chubb confided that at
first she had been rather perturbed at the idea of taking in "a black
man," as she confessed to regarding him. She reiterated, however, that
Mr Ghoosh proved to be "quite the gentleman." Five minutes of affability
put Carrados in full possession of Mr Ghoosh's manner of life and
movements--the dates of his arrival and departure, his solitariness and
his daily habits.

"This would be the best bedroom," said Miss Chubb.

It was a fair-sized room on the first floor. The window looked out on to
the roof of an outbuilding; beyond, the deep cutting of the railway
line. Opposite stood the dead wall that Mr Carlyle had spoken of.

Carrados "looked" round the room with the discriminating glance that
sometimes proved so embarrassing to those who knew him.

"I have to take a little daily exercise," he remarked, walking to the
window and running his hand up the woodwork. "You will not mind my
fixing a 'developer' here, Miss Chubb--a few small screws?"

Miss Chubb thought not. Then she was sure not. Finally she ridiculed the
idea of minding with scorn.

"If there is width enough," mused Carrados, spanning the upright
critically. "Do you happen to have a wooden foot-rule convenient?"

"Well, to be sure!" exclaimed Miss Chubb, opening a rapid succession of
drawers until she produced the required article. "When we did out this
room after Mr Ghoosh, there was this very ruler among the things that he
hadn't thought worth taking. This is what you require, sir?"

"Yes," replied Carrados, accepting it, "I think this is exactly what I
require." It was a common new white-wood rule, such as one might buy at
any small stationer's for a penny. He carelessly took off the width of
the upright, reading the figures with a touch; and then continued to run
a finger-tip delicately up and down the edges of the instrument.

"Four and seven-eighths," was his unspoken conclusion.

"I hope it will do, sir."

"Admirably," replied Carrados. "But I haven't reached the end of my
requirements yet, Miss Chubb."

"No, sir?" said the landlady, feeling that it would be a pleasure to
oblige so agreeable a gentleman, "what else might there be?"

"Although I can see very little I like to have a light, but not any kind
of light. Gas I cannot do with. Do you think that you would be able to
find me an oil lamp?"

"Certainly, sir. I got out a very nice brass lamp that I have specially
for Mr Ghoosh. He read a good deal of an evening and he preferred a
lamp."

"That is very convenient. I suppose it is large enough to burn for a
whole evening?"

"Yes, indeed. And very particular he was always to have it filled every
day."

"A lamp without oil is not very useful," smiled Carrados, following her
towards another room, and absentmindedly slipping the foot-rule into his
pocket.

Whatever Parkinson thought of the arrangement of going into second-rate
apartments in an obscure street it is to be inferred that his devotion
to his master was sufficient to overcome his private emotions as a
self-respecting "man." At all events, as they were approaching the
station he asked, and without a trace of feeling, whether there were any
orders for him with reference to the proposed migration.

"None, Parkinson," replied his master. "We must be satisfied with our
present quarters."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Parkinson, with some constraint. "I
understood that you had taken the rooms for a week certain."

"I am afraid that Miss Chubb will be under the same impression.
Unforeseen circumstances will prevent our going, however. Mr Greatorex
must write to-morrow, enclosing a cheque, with my regrets, and adding a
penny for this ruler which I seem to have brought away with me. It, at
least, is something for the money."

Parkinson may be excused for not attempting to understand the course of
events.

"Here is your train coming in, sir," he merely said.

"We will let it go and wait for another. Is there a signal at either end
of the platform?"

"Yes, sir; at the further end."

"Let us walk towards it. Are there any of the porters or officials about
here?"

"No, sir; none."

"Take this ruler. I want you to go up the steps--there are steps up the
signal, by the way?"

"Yes, sir."

"I want you to measure the glass of the lamp. Do not go up any higher
than is necessary, but if you have to stretch be careful not to mark on
the measurement with your nail, although the impulse is a natural one.
That has been done already."

Parkinson looked apprehensively around and about. Fortunately the part
was a dark and unfrequented spot and everyone else was moving towards
the exit at the other end of the platform. Fortunately, also, the signal
was not a high one.

"As near as I can judge on the rounded surface, the glass is four and
seven-eighths across," reported Parkinson.

"Thank you," replied Carrados, returning the measure to his pocket,
"four and seven-eighths is quite near enough. Now we will take the next
train back."

Sunday evening came, and with it Mr Carlyle to The Turrets at the
appointed hour. He brought to the situation a mind poised for any
eventuality and a trenchant eye. As the time went on and the
impenetrable Carrados made no allusion to the case, Carlyle's manner
inclined to a waggish commiseration of his host's position. Actually, he
said little, but the crisp precision of his voice when the path lay open
to a remark of any significance left little to be said.

It was not until they had finished dinner and returned to the library
that Carrados gave the slightest hint of anything unusual being in the
air. His first indication of coming events was to remove the key from
the outside to the inside of the door.

"What are you doing, Max?" demanded Mr Carlyle, his curiosity overcoming
the indirect attitude.

"You have been very entertaining, Louis," replied his friend, "but
Parkinson should be back very soon now and it is as well to be prepared.
Do you happen to carry a revolver?"

"Not when I come to dine with you, Max," replied Carlyle, with all the
aplomb he could muster. "Is it usual?"

Carrados smiled affectionately at his guest's agile recovery and touched
the secret spring of a drawer in an antique bureau by his side. The
little hidden receptacle shot smoothly out, disclosing a pair of
dull-blued pistols.

"To-night, at all events, it might be prudent," he replied, handing one
to Carlyle and putting the other into his own pocket. "Our man may be
here at any minute, and we do not know in what temper he will come."

"Our man!" exclaimed Carlyle, craning forward in excitement. "Max! you
don't mean to say that you have got Mead to admit it?"

"No one has admitted it," said Carrados. "And it is not Mead."

"Not Mead.... Do you mean that Hutchins----?"

"Neither Mead nor Hutchins. The man who tampered with the signal--for
Hutchins was right and a green light _was_ exhibited--is a young Indian
from Bengal. His name is Drishna and he lives at Swanstead."

Mr Carlyle stared at his friend between sheer surprise and blank
incredulity.

"You really mean this, Carrados?" he said.

"My fatal reputation for humour!" smiled Carrados. "If I am wrong,
Louis, the next hour will expose it."

"But why--why--why? The colossal villainy, the unparalleled audacity!"
Mr Carlyle lost himself among incredulous superlatives and could only
stare.

"Chiefly to get himself out of a disastrous speculation," replied
Carrados, answering the question. "If there was another motive--or at
least an incentive--which I suspect, doubtless we shall hear of it."

"All the same, Max, I don't think that you have treated me quite
fairly," protested Carlyle, getting over his first surprise and passing
to a sense of injury. "Here we are and I know nothing, absolutely
nothing, of the whole affair."

"We both have our ideas of pleasantry, Louis," replied Carrados
genially. "But I dare say you are right and perhaps there is still time
to atone." In the fewest possible words he outlined the course of his
investigations. "And now you know all that is to be known until Drishna
arrives."

"But will he come?" questioned Carlyle doubtfully. "He may be
suspicious."

"Yes, he will be suspicious."

"Then he will not come."

"On the contrary, Louis, he will come because my letter will make him
suspicious. He _is_ coming; otherwise Parkinson would have telephoned
me at once and we should have had to take other measures."

"What did you say, Max?" asked Carlyle curiously.

"I wrote that I was anxious to discuss an Indo-Scythian inscription with
him, and sent my car in the hope that he would be able to oblige me."

"But is he interested in Indo-Scythian inscriptions?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," admitted Carrados, and Mr Carlyle was
throwing up his hands in despair when the sound of a motor car wheels
softly kissing the gravel surface of the drive outside brought him to
his feet.

"By gad, you are right, Max!" he exclaimed, peeping through the
curtains. "There is a man inside."

"Mr Drishna," announced Parkinson, a minute later.

The visitor came into the room with leisurely self-possession that might
have been real or a desperate assumption. He was a slightly built young
man of about twenty-five, with black hair and eyes, a small, carefully
trained moustache, and a dark olive skin. His physiognomy was not
displeasing, but his expression had a harsh and supercilious tinge. In
attire he erred towards the immaculately spruce.

"Mr Carrados?" he said inquiringly.

Carrados, who had risen, bowed slightly without offering his hand.

"This gentleman," he said, indicating his friend, "is Mr Carlyle, the
celebrated private detective."

The Indian shot a very sharp glance at the object of this description.
Then he sat down.

"You wrote me a letter, Mr Carrados," he remarked, in English that
scarcely betrayed any foreign origin, "a rather curious letter, I may
say. You asked me about an ancient inscription. I know nothing of
antiquities; but I thought, as you had sent, that it would be more
courteous if I came and explained this to you."

"That was the object of my letter," replied Carrados.

"You wished to see me?" said Drishna, unable to stand the ordeal of the
silence that Carrados imposed after his remark.

"When you left Miss Chubb's house you left a ruler behind." One lay on
the desk by Carrados and he took it up as he spoke.

"I don't understand what you are talking about," said Drishna guardedly.
"You are making some mistake."

"The ruler was marked at four and seven-eighths inches--the measure of
the glass of the signal lamp outside."

The unfortunate young man was unable to repress a start. His face lost
its healthy tone. Then, with a sudden impulse, he made a step forward
and snatched the object from Carrados's hand.

"If it is mine I have a right to it," he exclaimed, snapping the ruler
in two and throwing it on to the back of the blazing fire. "It is
nothing."

"Pardon me, I did not say that the one you have so impetuously disposed
of was yours. As a matter of fact, it was mine. Yours is--elsewhere."

"Wherever it is you have no right to it if it is mine," panted Drishna,
with rising excitement. "You are a thief, Mr Carrados. I will not stay
any longer here."

He jumped up and turned towards the door. Carlyle made a step forward,
but the precaution was unnecessary.

"One moment, Mr Drishna," interposed Carrados, in his smoothest tones.
"It is a pity, after you have come so far, to leave without hearing of
my investigations in the neighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue."

Drishna sat down again.

"As you like," he muttered. "It does not interest me."

"I wanted to obtain a lamp of a certain pattern," continued Carrados.
"It seemed to me that the simplest explanation would be to say that I
wanted it for a motor car. Naturally I went to Long Acre. At the first
shop I said: 'Wasn't it here that a friend of mine, an Indian gentleman,
recently had a lamp made with a green glass that was nearly five inches
across?' No, it was not there but they could make me one. At the next
shop the same; at the third, and fourth, and so on. Finally my
persistence was rewarded. I found the place where the lamp had been
made, and at the cost of ordering another I obtained all the details I
wanted. It was news to them, the shopman informed me, that in some parts
of India green was the danger colour and therefore tail lamps had to
show a green light. The incident made some impression on him and he
would be able to identify their customer--who paid in advance and gave
no address--among a thousand of his countrymen. Do I succeed in
interesting you, Mr Drishna?"

"Do you?" replied Drishna, with a languid yawn. "Do I look interested?"

"You must make allowance for my unfortunate blindness," apologized
Carrados, with grim irony.

"Blindness!" exclaimed Drishna, dropping his affectation of unconcern as
though electrified by the word, "do you mean--really blind--that you do
not see me?"

"Alas, no," admitted Carrados.

The Indian withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket and with a
tragic gesture flung a heavy revolver down on the table between them.

"I have had you covered all the time, Mr Carrados, and if I had wished
to go and you or your friend had raised a hand to stop me, it would have
been at the peril of your lives," he said, in a voice of melancholy
triumph. "But what is the use of defying fate, and who successfully
evades his destiny? A month ago I went to see one of our people who
reads the future and sought to know the course of certain events. 'You
need fear no human eye,' was the message given to me. Then she added:
'But when the sightless sees the unseen, make your peace with Yama.' And
I thought she spoke of the Great Hereafter!"

"This amounts to an admission of your guilt," exclaimed Mr Carlyle
practically.

"I bow to the decree of fate," replied Drishna. "And it is fitting to
the universal irony of existence that a blind man should be the
instrument. I don't imagine, Mr Carlyle," he added maliciously, "that
you, with your eyes, would ever have brought that result about."

"You are a very cold-blooded young scoundrel, sir!" retorted Mr Carlyle.
"Good heavens! do you realize that you are responsible for the death of
scores of innocent men and women?"

"Do _you_ realise, Mr Carlyle, that you and your Government and your
soldiers are responsible for the death of thousands of innocent men and
women in my country every day? If England was occupied by the Germans
who quartered an army and an administration with their wives and their
families and all their expensive paraphernalia on the unfortunate
country until the whole nation was reduced to the verge of famine, and
the appointment of every new official meant the callous death sentence
on a thousand men and women to pay his salary, then if you went to
Berlin and wrecked a train you would be hailed a patriot. What Boadicea
did and--and Samson, so have I. If they were heroes, so am I."

"Well, upon my word!" cried the highly scandalized Carlyle, "what next!
Boadicea was a--er--semi-legendary person, whom we may possibly admire
at a distance. Personally, I do not profess to express an opinion. But
Samson, I would remind you, is a Biblical character. Samson was mocked
as an enemy. You, I do not doubt, have been entertained as a friend."

"And haven't I been mocked and despised and sneered at every day of my
life here by your supercilious, superior, empty-headed men?" flashed
back Drishna, his eyes leaping into malignity and his voice trembling
with sudden passion. "Oh! how I hated them as I passed them in the
street and recognized by a thousand petty insults their lordly English
contempt for me as an inferior being--a nigger. How I longed with
Caligula that a nation had a single neck that I might destroy it at one
blow. I loathe you in your complacent hypocrisy, Mr Carlyle, despise and
utterly abominate you from an eminence of superiority that you can never
even understand."

"I think we are getting rather away from the point, Mr Drishna,"
interposed Carrados, with the impartiality of a judge. "Unless I am
misinformed, you are not so ungallant as to include everyone you have
met here in your execration?"

"Ah, no," admitted Drishna, descending into a quite ingenuous frankness.
"Much as I hate your men I love your women. How is it possible that a
nation should be so divided--its men so dull-witted and offensive, its
women so quick, sympathetic and capable of appreciating?"

"But a little expensive, too, at times?" suggested Carrados.

Drishna sighed heavily.

"Yes; it is incredible. It is the generosity of their large nature. My
allowance, though what most of you would call noble, has proved quite
inadequate. I was compelled to borrow money and the interest became
overwhelming. Bankruptcy was impracticable because I should have then
been recalled by my people, and much as I detest England a certain
reason made the thought of leaving it unbearable."

"Connected with the Arcady Theatre?"

"You know? Well, do not let us introduce the lady's name. In order to
restore myself I speculated on the Stock Exchange. My credit was good
through my father's position and the standing of the firm to which I am
attached. I heard on reliable authority, and very early, that the
Central and Suburban, and the Deferred especially, was safe to fall
heavily, through a motor bus amalgamation that was then a secret. I
opened a bear account and sold largely. The shares fell, but only
fractionally, and I waited. Then, unfortunately, they began to go up.
Adverse forces were at work and rumours were put about. I could not
stand the settlement, and in order to carry over an account I was
literally compelled to deal temporarily with some securities that were
not technically my own property."

"Embezzlement, sir," commented Mr Carlyle icily. "But what is
embezzlement on the top of wholesale murder!"

"That is what it is called. In my case, however, it was only to be
temporary. Unfortunately, the rise continued. Then, at the height of my
despair, I chanced to be returning to Swanstead rather earlier than
usual one evening, and the train was stopped at a certain signal to let
another pass. There was conversation in the carriage and I learned
certain details. One said that there would be an accident some day, and
so forth. In a flash--as by an inspiration--I saw how the circumstance
might be turned to account. A bad accident and the shares would
certainly fall and my position would be retrieved. I think Mr Carrados
has somehow learned the rest."

"Max," said Mr Carlyle, with emotion, "is there any reason why you
should not send your man for a police officer and have this monster
arrested on his own confession without further delay?"

"Pray do so, Mr Carrados," acquiesced Drishna. "I shall certainly be
hanged, but the speech I shall prepare will ring from one end of India
to the other; my memory will be venerated as that of a martyr; and the
emancipation of my motherland will be hastened by my sacrifice."

"In other words," commented Carrados, "there will be disturbances at
half-a-dozen disaffected places, a few unfortunate police will be
clubbed to death, and possibly worse things may happen. That does not
suit us, Mr Drishna."

"And how do you propose to prevent it?" asked Drishna, with cool
assurance.

"It is very unpleasant being hanged on a dark winter morning; very cold,
very friendless, very inhuman. The long trial, the solitude and the
confinement, the thoughts of the long sleepless night before, the
hangman and the pinioning and the noosing of the rope, are apt to prey
on the imagination. Only a very stupid man can take hanging easily."

"What do you want me to do instead, Mr Carrados?" asked Drishna
shrewdly.

Carrados's hand closed on the weapon that still lay on the table between
them. Without a word he pushed it across.

"I see," commented Drishna, with a short laugh and a gleaming eye.
"Shoot myself and hush it up to suit your purpose. Withhold my message
to save the exposures of a trial, and keep the flame from the torch of
insurrectionary freedom."

"Also," interposed Carrados mildly, "to save your worthy people a good
deal of shame, and to save the lady who is nameless the unpleasant
necessity of relinquishing the house and the income which you have just
settled on her. She certainly would not then venerate your memory."

"What is that?"

"The transaction which you carried through was based on a felony and
could not be upheld. The firm you dealt with will go to the courts, and
the money, being directly traceable, will be held forfeit as no good
consideration passed."

"Max!" cried Mr Carlyle hotly, "you are not going to let this scoundrel
cheat the gallows after all?"

"The best use you can make of the gallows is to cheat it, Louis,"
replied Carrados. "Have you ever reflected what human beings will think
of us a hundred years hence?"

"Oh, of course I'm not really in favour of hanging," admitted Mr
Carlyle.

"Nobody really is. But we go on hanging. Mr Drishna is a dangerous
animal who for the sake of pacific animals must cease to exist. Let his
barbarous exploit pass into oblivion with him. The disadvantages of
spreading it broadcast immeasurably outweigh the benefits."

"I have considered," announced Drishna. "I will do as you wish."

"Very well," said Carrados. "Here is some plain notepaper. You had
better write a letter to someone saying that the financial difficulties
in which you are involved make life unbearable."

"But there are no financial difficulties--now."

"That does not matter in the least. It will be put down to an
hallucination and taken as showing the state of your mind."

"But what guarantee have we that he will not escape?" whispered Mr
Carlyle.

"He cannot escape," replied Carrados tranquilly. "His identity is too
clear."

"I have no intention of trying to escape," put in Drishna, as he wrote.
"You hardly imagine that I have not considered this eventuality, do
you?"

"All the same," murmured the ex-lawyer, "I should like to have a jury
behind me. It is one thing to execute a man morally; it is another to do
it almost literally."

"Is that all right?" asked Drishna, passing across the letter he had
written.

Carrados smiled at this tribute to his perception.

"Quite excellent," he replied courteously. "There is a train at
nine-forty. Will that suit you?"

Drishna nodded and stood up. Mr Carlyle had a very uneasy feeling that
he ought to do something but could not suggest to himself what.

The next moment he heard his friend heartily thanking the visitor for
the assistance he had been in the matter of the Indo-Scythian
inscription, as they walked across the hall together. Then a door
closed.

"I believe that there is something positively uncanny about Max at
times," murmured the perturbed gentleman to himself.




THE TRAGEDY AT BROOKBEND COTTAGE


"Max," said Mr Carlyle, when Parkinson had closed the door behind him,
"this is Lieutenant Hollyer, whom you consented to see."

"To hear," corrected Carrados, smiling straight into the healthy and
rather embarrassed face of the stranger before him. "Mr Hollyer knows of
my disability?"

"Mr Carlyle told me," said the young man, "but, as a matter of fact, I
had heard of you before, Mr Carrados, from one of our men. It was in
connexion with the foundering of the _Ivan Saratov_."

Carrados wagged his head in good-humoured resignation.

"And the owners were sworn to inviolable secrecy!" he exclaimed. "Well,
it is inevitable, I suppose. Not another scuttling case, Mr Hollyer?"

"No, mine is quite a private matter," replied the lieutenant. "My
sister, Mrs Creake--but Mr Carlyle would tell you better than I can. He
knows all about it."

"No, no; Carlyle is a professional. Let me have it in the rough, Mr
Hollyer. My ears are my eyes, you know."

"Very well, sir. I can tell you what there is to tell, right enough, but
I feel that when all's said and done it must sound very little to
another, although it seems important enough to me."

"We have occasionally found trifles of significance ourselves," said
Carrados encouragingly. "Don't let that deter you."

This was the essence of Lieutenant Hollyer's narrative:

"I have a sister, Millicent, who is married to a man called Creake. She
is about twenty-eight now and he is at least fifteen years older.
Neither my mother (who has since died), nor I, cared very much about
Creake. We had nothing particular against him, except, perhaps, the
moderate disparity of age, but none of us appeared to have anything in
common. He was a dark, taciturn man, and his moody silence froze up
conversation. As a result, of course, we didn't see much of each other."

"This, you must understand, was four or five years ago, Max," interposed
Mr Carlyle officiously.

Carrados maintained an uncompromising silence. Mr Carlyle blew his nose
and contrived to impart a hurt significance into the operation. Then
Lieutenant Hollyer continued:

"Millicent married Creake after a very short engagement. It was a
frightfully subdued wedding--more like a funeral to me. The man
professed to have no relations and apparently he had scarcely any
friends or business acquaintances. He was an agent for something or
other and had an office off Holborn. I suppose he made a living out of
it then, although we knew practically nothing of his private affairs,
but I gather that it has been going down since, and I suspect that for
the past few years they have been getting along almost entirely on
Millicent's little income. You would like the particulars of that?"

"Please," assented Carrados.

"When our father died about seven years ago, he left three thousand
pounds. It was invested in Canadian stock and brought in a little over a
hundred a year. By his will my mother was to have the income of that for
life and on her death it was to pass to Millicent, subject to the
payment of a lump sum of five hundred pounds to me. But my father
privately suggested to me that if I should have no particular use for
the money at the time, he would propose my letting Millicent have the
income of it until I did want it, as she would not be particularly well
off. You see, Mr Carrados, a great deal more had been spent on my
education and advancement than on her; I had my pay, and, of course, I
could look out for myself better than a girl could."

"Quite so," agreed Carrados.

"Therefore I did nothing about that," continued the lieutenant. "Three
years ago I was over again but I did not see much of them. They were
living in lodgings. That was the only time since the marriage that I
have seen them until last week. In the meanwhile our mother had died and
Millicent had been receiving her income. She wrote me several letters
at the time. Otherwise we did not correspond much, but about a year ago
she sent me their new address--Brookbend Cottage, Mulling Common--a
house that they had taken. When I got two months' leave I invited myself
there as a matter of course, fully expecting to stay most of my time
with them, but I made an excuse to get away after a week. The place was
dismal and unendurable, the whole life and atmosphere indescribably
depressing." He looked round with an instinct of caution, leaned forward
earnestly, and dropped his voice. "Mr Carrados, it is my absolute
conviction that Creake is only waiting for a favourable opportunity to
murder Millicent."

"Go on," said Carrados quietly. "A week of the depressing surroundings
of Brookbend Cottage would not alone convince you of that, Mr Hollyer."

"I am not so sure," declared Hollyer doubtfully. "There was a feeling of
suspicion and--before me--polite hatred that would have gone a good way
towards it. All the same there _was_ something more definite. Millicent
told me this the day after I went there. There is no doubt that a few
months ago Creake deliberately planned to poison her with some
weed-killer. She told me the circumstances in a rather distressed
moment, but afterwards she refused to speak of it again--even weakly
denied it--and, as a matter of fact, it was with the greatest difficulty
that I could get her at any time to talk about her husband or his
affairs. The gist of it was that she had the strongest suspicion that
Creake doctored a bottle of stout which he expected she would drink for
her supper when she was alone. The weed-killer, properly labelled, but
also in a beer bottle, was kept with other miscellaneous liquids in the
same cupboard as the beer but on a high shelf. When he found that it had
miscarried he poured away the mixture, washed out the bottle and put in
the dregs from another. There is no doubt in my mind that if he had come
back and found Millicent dead or dying he would have contrived it to
appear that she had made a mistake in the dark and drunk some of the
poison before she found out."

"Yes," assented Carrados. "The open way; the safe way."

"You must understand that they live in a very small style, Mr Carrados,
and Millicent is almost entirely in the man's power. The only servant
they have is a woman who comes in for a few hours every day. The house
is lonely and secluded. Creake is sometimes away for days and nights at
a time, and Millicent, either through pride or indifference, seems to
have dropped off all her old friends and to have made no others. He
might poison her, bury the body in the garden, and be a thousand miles
away before anyone began even to inquire about her. What am I to do, Mr
Carrados?"

"He is less likely to try poison than some other means now," pondered
Carrados. "That having failed, his wife will always be on her guard. He
may know, or at least suspect, that others know. No.... The
common-sense precaution would be for your sister to leave the man, Mr
Hollyer. She will not?"

"No," admitted Hollyer, "she will not. I at once urged that." The young
man struggled with some hesitation for a moment and then blurted out:
"The fact is, Mr Carrados, I don't understand Millicent. She is not the
girl she was. She hates Creake and treats him with a silent contempt
that eats into their lives like acid, and yet she is so jealous of him
that she will let nothing short of death part them. It is a horrible
life they lead. I stood it for a week and I must say, much as I dislike
my brother-in-law, that he has something to put up with. If only he got
into a passion like a man and killed her it wouldn't be altogether
incomprehensible."

"That does not concern us," said Carrados. "In a game of this kind one
has to take sides and we have taken ours. It remains for us to see that
our side wins. You mentioned jealousy, Mr Hollyer. Have you any idea
whether Mrs Creake has real ground for it?"

"I should have told you that," replied Lieutenant Hollyer. "I happened
to strike up with a newspaper man whose office is in the same block as
Creake's. When I mentioned the name he grinned. 'Creake,' he said, 'oh,
he's the man with the romantic typist, isn't he?' 'Well, he's my
brother-in-law,' I replied. 'What about the typist?' Then the chap shut
up like a knife. 'No, no,' he said, 'I didn't know he was married. I
don't want to get mixed up in anything of that sort. I only said that
he had a typist. Well, what of that? So have we; so has everyone.' There
was nothing more to be got out of him, but the remark and the grin
meant--well, about as usual, Mr Carrados."

Carrados turned to his friend.

"I suppose you know all about the typist by now, Louis?"

"We have had her under efficient observation, Max," replied Mr Carlyle,
with severe dignity.

"Is she unmarried?"

"Yes; so far as ordinary repute goes, she is."

"That is all that is essential for the moment. Mr Hollyer opens up three
excellent reasons why this man might wish to dispose of his wife. If we
accept the suggestion of poisoning--though we have only a jealous
woman's suspicion for it--we add to the wish the determination. Well, we
will go forward on that. Have you got a photograph of Mr Creake?"

The lieutenant took out his pocket-book.

"Mr Carlyle asked me for one. Here is the best I could get."

Carrados rang the bell.

"This, Parkinson," he said, when the man appeared, "is a photograph of a
Mr----What first name, by the way?"

"Austin," put in Hollyer, who was following everything with a boyish
mixture of excitement and subdued importance.

"--of a Mr Austin Creake. I may require you to recognize him."

Parkinson glanced at the print and returned it to his master's hand.

"May I inquire if it is a recent photograph of the gentleman, sir?" he
asked.

"About six years ago," said the lieutenant, taking in this new actor in
the drama with frank curiosity. "But he is very little changed."

"Thank you, sir. I will endeavour to remember Mr Creake, sir."

Lieutenant Hollyer stood up as Parkinson left the room. The interview
seemed to be at an end.

"Oh, there's one other matter," he remarked. "I am afraid that I did
rather an unfortunate thing while I was at Brookbend. It seemed to me
that as all Millicent's money would probably pass into Creake's hands
sooner or later I might as well have my five hundred pounds, if only to
help her with afterwards. So I broached the subject and said that I
should like to have it now as I had an opportunity for investing."

"And you think?"

"It may possibly influence Creake to act sooner than he otherwise might
have done. He may have got possession of the principal even and find it
very awkward to replace it."

"So much the better. If your sister is going to be murdered it may as
well be done next week as next year so far as I am concerned. Excuse my
brutality, Mr Hollyer, but this is simply a case to me and I regard it
strategically. Now Mr Carlyle's organization can look after Mrs Creake
for a few weeks but it cannot look after her for ever. By increasing the
immediate risk we diminish the permanent risk."

"I see," agreed Hollyer. "I'm awfully uneasy but I'm entirely in your
hands."

"Then we will give Mr Creake every inducement and every opportunity to
get to work. Where are you staying now?"

"Just now with some friends at St Albans."

"That is too far." The inscrutable eyes retained their tranquil depth
but a new quality of quickening interest in the voice made Mr Carlyle
forget the weight and burden of his ruffled dignity. "Give me a few
minutes, please. The cigarettes are behind you, Mr Hollyer." The blind
man walked to the window and seemed to look out over the cypress-shaded
lawn. The lieutenant lit a cigarette and Mr Carlyle picked up _Punch_.
Then Carrados turned round again.

"You are prepared to put your own arrangements aside?" he demanded of
his visitor.

"Certainly."

"Very well. I want you to go down now--straight from here--to Brookbend
Cottage. Tell your sister that your leave is unexpectedly cut short and
that you sail to-morrow."

"The _Martian_?"

"No, no; the _Martian_ doesn't sail. Look up the movements on your way
there and pick out a boat that does. Say you are transferred. Add that
you expect to be away only two or three months and that you really want
the five hundred pounds by the time of your return. Don't stay in the
house long, please."

"I understand, sir."

"St Albans is too far. Make your excuse and get away from there to-day.
Put up somewhere in town, where you will be in reach of the telephone.
Let Mr Carlyle and myself know where you are. Keep out of Creake's way.
I don't want actually to tie you down to the house, but we may require
your services. We will let you know at the first sign of anything doing
and if there is nothing to be done we must release you."

"I don't mind that. Is there nothing more that I can do now?"

"Nothing. In going to Mr Carlyle you have done the best thing possible;
you have put your sister into the care of the shrewdest man in London."
Whereat the object of this quite unexpected eulogy found himself
becoming covered with modest confusion.

"Well, Max?" remarked Mr Carlyle tentatively when they were alone.

"Well, Louis?"

"Of course it wasn't worth while rubbing it in before young Hollyer,
but, as a matter of fact, every single man carries the life of any other
man--only one, mind you--in his hands, do what you will."

"Provided he doesn't bungle," acquiesced Carrados.

"Quite so."

"And also that he is absolutely reckless of the consequences."

"Of course."

"Two rather large provisos. Creake is obviously susceptible to both.
Have you seen him?"

"No. As I told you, I put a man on to report his habits in town. Then,
two days ago, as the case seemed to promise some interest--for he
certainly is deeply involved with the typist, Max, and the thing might
take a sensational turn any time--I went down to Mulling Common myself.
Although the house is lonely it is on the electric tram route. You know
the sort of market garden rurality that about a dozen miles out of
London offers--alternate bricks and cabbages. It was easy enough to get
to know about Creake locally. He mixes with no one there, goes into town
at irregular times but generally every day, and is reputed to be
devilish hard to get money out of. Finally I made the acquaintance of an
old fellow who used to do a day's gardening at Brookbend occasionally.
He has a cottage and a garden of his own with a greenhouse, and the
business cost me the price of a pound of tomatoes."

"Was it--a profitable investment?"

"As tomatoes, yes; as information, no. The old fellow had the fatal
disadvantage from our point of view of labouring under a grievance. A
few weeks ago Creake told him that he would not require him again as he
was going to do his own gardening in future."

"That is something, Louis."

"If only Creake was going to poison his wife with hyoscyamine and bury
her, instead of blowing her up with a dynamite cartridge and claiming
that it came in among the coal."

"True, true. Still----"

"However, the chatty old soul had a simple explanation for everything
that Creake did. Creake was mad. He had even seen him flying a kite in
his garden where it was bound to get wrecked among the trees. 'A lad of
ten would have known better,' he declared. And certainly the kite did
get wrecked, for I saw it hanging over the road myself. But that a sane
man should spend his time 'playing with a toy' was beyond him."

"A good many men have been flying kites of various kinds lately," said
Carrados. "Is he interested in aviation?"

"I dare say. He appears to have some knowledge of scientific subjects.
Now what do you want me to do, Max?"

"Will you do it?"

"Implicitly--subject to the usual reservations."

"Keep your man on Creake in town and let me have his reports after you
have seen them. Lunch with me here now. 'Phone up to your office that
you are detained on unpleasant business and then give the deserving
Parkinson an afternoon off by looking after me while we take a motor run
round Mulling Common. If we have time we might go on to Brighton, feed
at the 'Ship,' and come back in the cool."

"Amiable and thrice lucky mortal," sighed Mr Carlyle, his glance
wandering round the room.

But, as it happened, Brighton did not figure in that day's itinerary. It
had been Carrados's intention merely to pass Brookbend Cottage on this
occasion, relying on his highly developed faculties, aided by Mr
Carlyle's description, to inform him of the surroundings. A hundred
yards before they reached the house he had given an order to his
chauffeur to drop into the lowest speed and they were leisurely drawing
past when a discovery by Mr Carlyle modified their plans.

"By Jupiter!" that gentleman suddenly exclaimed, "there's a board up,
Max. The place is to be let."

Carrados picked up the tube again. A couple of sentences passed and the
car stopped by the roadside, a score of paces past the limit of the
garden. Mr Carlyle took out his notebook and wrote down the address of a
firm of house agents.

"You might raise the bonnet and have a look at the engines, Harris,"
said Carrados. "We want to be occupied here for a few minutes."

"This is sudden; Hollyer knew nothing of their leaving," remarked Mr
Carlyle.

"Probably not for three months yet. All the same, Louis, we will go on
to the agents and get a card to view, whether we use it to-day or not."

A thick hedge, in its summer dress effectively screening the house
beyond from public view, lay between the garden and the road. Above the
hedge showed an occasional shrub; at the corner nearest to the car a
chestnut flourished. The wooden gate, once white; which they had passed,
was grimed and rickety. The road itself was still the unpretentious
country lane that the advent of the electric car had found it. When
Carrados had taken in these details there seemed little else to notice.
He was on the point of giving Harris the order to go on when his ear
caught a trivial sound.

"Someone is coming out of the house, Louis," he warned his friend. "It
may be Hollyer, but he ought to have gone by this time."

"I don't hear anyone," replied the other, but as he spoke a door banged
noisily and Mr Carlyle slipped into another seat and ensconced himself
behind a copy of _The Globe_.

"Creake himself," he whispered across the car, as a man appeared at the
gate. "Hollyer was right; he is hardly changed. Waiting for a car, I
suppose."

But a car very soon swung past them from the direction in which Mr
Creake was looking and it did not interest him. For a minute or two
longer he continued to look expectantly along the road. Then he walked
slowly up the drive back to the house.

"We will give him five or ten minutes," decided Carrados. "Harris is
behaving very naturally."

Before even the shorter period had run out they were repaid. A
telegraph-boy cycled leisurely along the road, and, leaving his machine
at the gate, went up to the cottage. Evidently there was no reply, for
in less than a minute he was trundling past them back again. Round the
bend an approaching tram clanged its bell noisily, and, quickened by the
warning sound, Mr Creake again appeared, this time with a small
portmanteau in his hand. With a backward glance he hurried on towards
the next stopping-place, and, boarding the car as it slackened down, he
was carried out of their knowledge.

"Very convenient of Mr Creake," remarked Carrados, with quiet
satisfaction. "We will now get the order and go over the house in his
absence. It might be useful to have a look at the wire as well."

"It might, Max," acquiesced Mr Carlyle a little dryly. "But if it is, as
it probably is, in Creake's pocket, how do you propose to get it?"

"By going to the post office, Louis."

"Quite so. Have you ever tried to see a copy of a telegram addressed to
someone else?"

"I don't think I have ever had occasion yet," admitted Carrados. "Have
you?"

"In one or two cases I have perhaps been an accessory to the act. It is
generally a matter either of extreme delicacy or considerable
expenditure."

"Then for Hollyer's sake we will hope for the former here." And Mr
Carlyle smiled darkly and hinted that he was content to wait for a
friendly revenge.

A little later, having left the car at the beginning of the straggling
High Street, the two men called at the village post office. They had
already visited the house agent and obtained an order to view Brookbend
Cottage, declining, with some difficulty, the clerk's persistent offer
to accompany them. The reason was soon forthcoming. "As a matter of
fact," explained the young man, "the present tenant is under _our_
notice to leave."

"Unsatisfactory, eh?" said Carrados encouragingly.

"He's a corker," admitted the clerk, responding to the friendly tone.
"Fifteen months and not a doit of rent have we had. That's why I should
have liked----"

"We will make every allowance," replied Carrados.

The post office occupied one side of a stationer's shop. It was not
without some inward trepidation that Mr Carlyle found himself committed
to the adventure. Carrados, on the other hand, was the personification
of bland unconcern.

"You have just sent a telegram to Brookbend Cottage," he said to the
young lady behind the brasswork lattice. "We think it may have come
inaccurately and should like a repeat." He took out his purse. "What is
the fee?"

The request was evidently not a common one. "Oh," said the girl
uncertainly, "wait a minute, please." She turned to a pile of telegram
duplicates behind the desk and ran a doubtful finger along the upper
sheets. "I think this is all right. You want it repeated?"

"Please." Just a tinge of questioning surprise gave point to the
courteous tone.

"It will be fourpence. If there is an error the amount will be
refunded."

Carrados put down a coin and received his change.

"Will it take long?" he inquired carelessly, as he pulled on his glove.

"You will most likely get it within a quarter of an hour," she replied.

"Now you've done it," commented Mr Carlyle, as they walked back to their
car. "How do you propose to get that telegram, Max?"

"Ask for it," was the laconic explanation.

And, stripping the artifice of any elaboration, he simply asked for it
and got it. The car, posted at a convenient bend in the road, gave him a
warning note as the telegraph-boy approached. Then Carrados took up a
convincing attitude with his hand on the gate while Mr Carlyle lent
himself to the semblance of a departing friend. That was the inevitable
impression when the boy rode up.

"Creake, Brookbend Cottage?" inquired Carrados, holding out his hand,
and without a second thought the boy gave him the envelope and rode away
on the assurance that there would be no reply.

"Some day, my friend," remarked Mr Carlyle, looking nervously towards
the unseen house, "your ingenuity will get you into a tight corner."

"Then my ingenuity must get me out again," was the retort. "Let us have
our 'view' now. The telegram can wait."

An untidy workwoman took their order and left them standing at the door.
Presently a lady whom they both knew to be Mrs Creake appeared.

"You wish to see over the house?" she said, in a voice that was utterly
devoid of any interest. Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned to
the nearest door and threw it open.

"This is the drawing-room," she said, standing aside.

They walked into a sparsely furnished, damp-smelling room and made a
pretence of looking round, while Mrs Creake remained silent and aloof.

"The dining-room," she continued, crossing the narrow hall and opening
another door.

Mr Carlyle ventured a genial commonplace in the hope of inducing
conversation. The result was not encouraging. Doubtless they would have
gone through the house under the same frigid guidance had not Carrados
been at fault in a way that Mr Carlyle had never known him fail before.
In crossing the hall he stumbled over a mat and almost fell.

"Pardon my clumsiness," he said to the lady. "I am, unfortunately, quite
blind. But," he added, with a smile, to turn off the mishap, "even a
blind man must have a house."

The man who had eyes was surprised to see a flood of colour rush into
Mrs Creake's face.

"Blind!" she exclaimed, "oh, I beg your pardon. Why did you not tell me?
You might have fallen."

"I generally manage fairly well," he replied. "But, of course, in a
strange house----"

She put her hand on his arm very lightly.

"You must let me guide you, just a little," she said.

The house, without being large, was full of passages and inconvenient
turnings. Carrados asked an occasional question and found Mrs Creake
quite amiable without effusion. Mr Carlyle followed them from room to
room in the hope, though scarcely the expectation, of learning something
that might be useful.

"This is the last one. It is the largest bedroom," said their guide.
Only two of the upper rooms were fully furnished and Mr Carlyle at once
saw, as Carrados knew without seeing, that this was the one which the
Creakes occupied.

"A very pleasant outlook," declared Mr Carlyle.

"Oh, I suppose so," admitted the lady vaguely. The room, in fact, looked
over the leafy garden and the road beyond. It had a French window
opening on to a small balcony, and to this, under the strange influence
that always attracted him to light, Carrados walked.

"I expect that there is a certain amount of repair needed?" he said,
after standing there a moment.

"I am afraid there would be," she confessed.

"I ask because there is a sheet of metal on the floor here," he
continued. "Now that, in an old house, spells dry rot to the wary
observer."

"My husband said that the rain, which comes in a little under the
window, was rotting the boards there," she replied. "He put that down
recently. I had not noticed anything myself."

It was the first time she had mentioned her husband; Mr Carlyle pricked
up his ears.

"Ah, that is a less serious matter," said Carrados. "May I step out on
to the balcony?"

"Oh yes, if you like to." Then, as he appeared to be fumbling at the
catch, "Let me open it for you."

But the window was already open, and Carrados, facing the various points
of the compass, took in the bearings.

"A sunny, sheltered corner," he remarked. "An ideal spot for a
deck-chair and a book."

She shrugged her shoulders half contemptuously.

"I dare say," she replied, "but I never use it."

"Sometimes, surely," he persisted mildly. "It would be my favourite
retreat. But then----"

"I was going to say that I had never even been out on it, but that would
not be quite true. It has two uses for me, both equally romantic; I
occasionally shake a duster from it, and when my husband returns late
without his latchkey he wakes me up and I come out here and drop him
mine."

Further revelation of Mr Creake's nocturnal habits was cut off, greatly
to Mr Carlyle's annoyance, by a cough of unmistakable significance from
the foot of the stairs. They had heard a trade cart drive up to the
gate, a knock at the door, and the heavy-footed woman tramp along the
hall.

"Excuse me a minute, please," said Mrs Creake.

"Louis," said Carrados, in a sharp whisper, the moment they were alone,
"stand against the door."

With extreme plausibility Mr Carlyle began to admire a picture so
situated that while he was there it was impossible to open the door more
than a few inches. From that position he observed his confederate go
through the curious procedure of kneeling down on the bedroom floor and
for a full minute pressing his ear to the sheet of metal that had
already engaged his attention. Then he rose to his feet, nodded, dusted
his trousers, and Mr Carlyle moved to a less equivocal position.

"What a beautiful rose-tree grows up your balcony," remarked Carrados,
stepping into the room as Mrs Creake returned. "I suppose you are very
fond of gardening?"

"I detest it," she replied.

"But this _Glorie_, so carefully trained----?"

"Is it?" she replied. "I think my husband was nailing it up recently."
By some strange fatality Carrados's most aimless remarks seemed to
involve the absent Mr Creake. "Do you care to see the garden?"

The garden proved to be extensive and neglected. Behind the house was
chiefly orchard. In front, some semblance of order had been kept up;
here it was lawn and shrubbery, and the drive they had walked along.
Two things interested Carrados: the soil at the foot of the balcony,
which he declared on examination to be particularly suitable for roses,
and the fine chestnut-tree in the corner by the road.

As they walked back to the car Mr Carlyle lamented that they had learned
so little of Creake's movements.

"Perhaps the telegram will tell us something," suggested Carrados. "Read
it, Louis."

Mr Carlyle cut open the envelope, glanced at the enclosure, and in spite
of his disappointment could not restrain a chuckle.

"My poor Max," he explained, "you have put yourself to an amount of
ingenious trouble for nothing. Creake is evidently taking a few days'
holiday and prudently availed himself of the Meteorological Office
forecast before going. Listen: '_Immediate prospect for London warm and
settled. Further outlook cooler but fine._' Well, well; I did get a
pound of tomatoes for _my_ fourpence."

"You certainly scored there, Louis," admitted Carrados, with humorous
appreciation. "I wonder," he added speculatively, "whether it is
Creake's peculiar taste usually to spend his week-end holiday in
London."

"Eh?" exclaimed Mr Carlyle, looking at the words again, "by gad, that's
rum, Max. They go to Weston-super-Mare. Why on earth should he want to
know about London?"

"I can make a guess, but before we are satisfied I must come here again.
Take another look at that kite, Louis. Are there a few yards of string
hanging loose from it?"

"Yes, there are."

"Rather thick string--unusually thick for the purpose?"

"Yes; but how do you know?"

As they drove home again Carrados explained, and Mr Carlyle sat aghast,
saying incredulously: "Good God, Max, is it possible?"

An hour later he was satisfied that it was possible. In reply to his
inquiry someone in his office telephoned him the information that "they"
had left Paddington by the four-thirty for Weston.

It was more than a week after his introduction to Carrados that
Lieutenant Hollyer had a summons to present himself at The Turrets
again. He found Mr Carlyle already there and the two friends awaiting
his arrival.

"I stayed in all day after hearing from you this morning, Mr Carrados,"
he said, shaking hands. "When I got your second message I was all ready
to walk straight out of the house. That's how I did it in the time. I
hope everything is all right?"

"Excellent," replied Carrados. "You'd better have something before we
start. We probably have a long and perhaps an exciting night before us."

"And certainly a wet one," assented the lieutenant. "It was thundering
over Mulling way as I came along."

"That is why you are here," said his host. "We are waiting for a certain
message before we start, and in the meantime you may as well understand
what we expect to happen. As you saw, there is a thunderstorm coming on.
The Meteorological Office morning forecast predicted it for the whole of
London if the conditions remained. That was why I kept you in readiness.
Within an hour it is now inevitable that we shall experience a deluge.
Here and there damage will be done to trees and buildings; here and
there a person will probably be struck and killed."

"Yes."

"It is Mr Creake's intention that his wife should be among the victims."

"I don't exactly follow," said Hollyer, looking from one man to the
other. "I quite admit that Creake would be immensely relieved if such a
thing did happen, but the chance is surely an absurdly remote one."

"Yet unless we intervene it is precisely what a coroner's jury will
decide has happened. Do you know whether your brother-in-law has any
practical knowledge of electricity, Mr Hollyer?"

"I cannot say. He was so reserved, and we really knew so little of
him----"

"Yet in 1896 an Austin Creake contributed an article on 'Alternating
Currents' to the American _Scientific World_. That would argue a fairly
intimate acquaintanceship."

"But do you mean that he is going to direct a flash of lightning?"

"Only into the minds of the doctor who conducts the post-mortem, and
the coroner. This storm, the opportunity for which he has been waiting
for weeks, is merely the cloak to his act. The weapon which he has
planned to use--scarcely less powerful than lightning but much more
tractable--is the high voltage current of electricity that flows along
the tram wire at his gate."

"Oh!" exclaimed Lieutenant Hollyer, as the sudden revelation struck him.

"Some time between eleven o'clock to-night--about the hour when your
sister goes to bed--and one-thirty in the morning--the time up to which
he can rely on the current--Creake will throw a stone up at the balcony
window. Most of his preparation has long been made; it only remains for
him to connect up a short length to the window handle and a longer one
at the other end to tap the live wire. That done, he will wake his wife
in the way I have said. The moment she moves the catch of the
window--and he has carefully filed its parts to ensure perfect
contact--she will be electrocuted as effectually as if she sat in the
executioner's chair in Sing Sing prison."

"But what are we doing here!" exclaimed Hollyer, starting to his feet,
pale and horrified. "It is past ten now and anything may happen."

"Quite natural, Mr Hollyer," said Carrados reassuringly, "but you need
have no anxiety. Creake is being watched, the house is being watched,
and your sister is as safe as if she slept to-night in Windsor Castle.
Be assured that whatever happens he will not be allowed to complete his
scheme; but it is desirable to let him implicate himself to the fullest
limit. Your brother-in-law, Mr Hollyer, is a man with a peculiar
capacity for taking pains."

"He is a damned cold-blooded scoundrel!" exclaimed the young officer
fiercely. "When I think of Millicent five years ago----"

"Well, for that matter, an enlightened nation has decided that
electrocution is the most humane way of removing its superfluous
citizens," suggested Carrados mildly. "He is certainly an
ingenious-minded gentleman. It is his misfortune that in Mr Carlyle he
was fated to be opposed by an even subtler brain----"

"No, no! Really, Max!" protested the embarrassed gentleman.

"Mr Hollyer will be able to judge for himself when I tell him that it
was Mr Carlyle who first drew attention to the significance of the
abandoned kite," insisted Carrados firmly. "Then, of course, its object
became plain to me--as indeed to anyone. For ten minutes, perhaps, a
wire must be carried from the overhead line to the chestnut-tree. Creake
has everything in his favour, but it is just within possibility that the
driver of an inopportune tram might notice the appendage. What of that?
Why, for more than a week he has seen a derelict kite with its yards of
trailing string hanging in the tree. A very calculating mind, Mr
Hollyer. It would be interesting to know what line of action Mr Creake
has mapped out for himself afterwards. I expect he has half-a-dozen
artistic little touches up his sleeve. Possibly he would merely singe
his wife's hair, burn her feet with a red-hot poker, shiver the glass of
the French window, and be content with that to let well alone. You see,
lightning is so varied in its effects that whatever he did or did not do
would be right. He is in the impregnable position of the body showing
all the symptoms of death by lightning shock and nothing else but
lightning to account for it--a dilated eye, heart contracted in systole,
bloodless lungs shrunk to a third the normal weight, and all the rest of
it. When he has removed a few outward traces of his work Creake might
quite safely 'discover' his dead wife and rush off for the nearest
doctor. Or he may have decided to arrange a convincing alibi, and creep
away, leaving the discovery to another. We shall never know; he will
make no confession."

"I wish it was well over," admitted Hollyer. "I'm not particularly
jumpy, but this gives me a touch of the creeps."

"Three more hours at the worst, Lieutenant," said Carrados cheerfully.
"Ah-ha, something is coming through now."

He went to the telephone and received a message from one quarter; then
made another connection and talked for a few minutes with someone else.

"Everything working smoothly," he remarked between times over his
shoulder. "Your sister has gone to bed, Mr Hollyer."

Then he turned to the house telephone and distributed his orders.

"So we," he concluded, "must get up."

By the time they were ready a large closed motor car was waiting. The
lieutenant thought he recognized Parkinson in the well-swathed form
beside the driver, but there was no temptation to linger for a second on
the steps. Already the stinging rain had lashed the drive into the
semblance of a frothy estuary; all round the lightning jagged its course
through the incessant tremulous glow of more distant lightning, while
the thunder only ceased its muttering to turn at close quarters and
crackle viciously.

"One of the few things I regret missing," remarked Carrados tranquilly;
"but I hear a good deal of colour in it."

The car slushed its way down to the gate, lurched a little heavily
across the dip into the road, and, steadying as it came upon the
straight, began to hum contentedly along the deserted highway.

"We are not going direct?" suddenly inquired Hollyer, after they had
travelled perhaps half-a-dozen miles. The night was bewildering enough
but he had the sailor's gift for location.

"No; through Hunscott Green and then by a field-path to the orchard at
the back," replied Carrados. "Keep a sharp look out for the man with the
lantern about here, Harris," he called through the tube.

"Something flashing just ahead, sir," came the reply, and the car slowed
down and stopped.

Carrados dropped the near window as a man in glistening waterproof
stepped from the shelter of a lich-gate and approached.

"Inspector Beedel, sir," said the stranger, looking into the car.

"Quite right, Inspector," said Carrados. "Get in."

"I have a man with me, sir."

"We can find room for him as well."

"We are very wet."

"So shall we all be soon."

The lieutenant changed his seat and the two burly forms took places side
by side. In less than five minutes the car stopped again, this time in a
grassy country lane.

"Now we have to face it," announced Carrados. "The inspector will show
us the way."

The car slid round and disappeared into the night, while Beedel led the
party to a stile in the hedge. A couple of fields brought them to the
Brookbend boundary. There a figure stood out of the black foliage,
exchanged a few words with their guide and piloted them along the
shadows of the orchard to the back door of the house.

"You will find a broken pane near the catch of the scullery window,"
said the blind man.

"Right, sir," replied the inspector. "I have it. Now who goes through?"

"Mr Hollyer will open the door for us. I'm afraid you must take off
your boots and all wet things, Lieutenant. We cannot risk a single spot
inside."

They waited until the back door opened, then each one divested himself
in a similar manner and passed into the kitchen, where the remains of a
fire still burned. The man from the orchard gathered together the
discarded garments and disappeared again.

Carrados turned to the lieutenant.

"A rather delicate job for you now, Mr Hollyer. I want you to go up to
your sister, wake her, and get her into another room with as little fuss
as possible. Tell her as much as you think fit and let her understand
that her very life depends on absolute stillness when she is alone.
Don't be unduly hurried, but not a glimmer of a light, please."

Ten minutes passed by the measure of the battered old alarum on the
dresser shelf before the young man returned.

"I've had rather a time of it," he reported, with a nervous laugh, "but
I think it will be all right now. She is in the spare room."

"Then we will take our places. You and Parkinson come with me to the
bedroom. Inspector, you have your own arrangements. Mr Carlyle will be
with you."

They dispersed silently about the house. Hollyer glanced apprehensively
at the door of the spare room as they passed it but within was as quiet
as the grave. Their room lay at the other end of the passage.

"You may as well take your place in the bed now, Hollyer," directed
Carrados when they were inside and the door closed. "Keep well down
among the clothes. Creake has to get up on the balcony, you know, and he
will probably peep through the window, but he dare come no farther. Then
when he begins to throw up stones slip on this dressing-gown of your
sister's. I'll tell you what to do after."

The next sixty minutes drew out into the longest hour that the
lieutenant had ever known. Occasionally he heard a whisper pass between
the two men who stood behind the window curtains, but he could see
nothing. Then Carrados threw a guarded remark in his direction.

"He is in the garden now."

Something scraped slightly against the outer wall. But the night was
full of wilder sounds, and in the house the furniture and the boards
creaked and sprung between the yawling of the wind among the chimneys,
the rattle of the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was a time to
quicken the steadiest pulse, and when the crucial moment came, when a
pebble suddenly rang against the pane with a sound that the tense
waiting magnified into a shivering crash, Hollyer leapt from the bed on
the instant.

"Easy, easy," warned Carrados feelingly. "We will wait for another
knock." He passed something across. "Here is a rubber glove. I have cut
the wire but you had better put it on. Stand just for a moment at the
window, move the catch so that it can blow open a little, and drop
immediately. Now."

Another stone had rattled against the glass. For Hollyer to go through
his part was the work merely of seconds, and with a few touches Carrados
spread the dressing-gown to more effective disguise about the extended
form. But an unforeseen and in the circumstances rather horrible
interval followed, for Creake, in accordance with some detail of his
never-revealed plan, continued to shower missile after missile against
the panes until even the unimpressionable Parkinson shivered.

"The last act," whispered Carrados, a moment after the throwing had
ceased. "He has gone round to the back. Keep as you are. We take cover
now." He pressed behind the arras of an extemporized wardrobe, and the
spirit of emptiness and desolation seemed once more to reign over the
lonely house.

From half-a-dozen places of concealment ears were straining to catch the
first guiding sound. He moved very stealthily, burdened, perhaps, by
some strange scruple in the presence of the tragedy that he had not
feared to contrive, paused for a moment at the bedroom door, then opened
it very quietly, and in the fickle light read the consummation of his
hopes.

"At last!" they heard the sharp whisper drawn from his relief. "At
last!"

He took another step and two shadows seemed to fall upon him from
behind, one on either side. With primitive instinct a cry of terror and
surprise escaped him as he made a desperate movement to wrench himself
free, and for a short second he almost succeeded in dragging one hand
into a pocket. Then his wrists slowly came together and the handcuffs
closed.

"I am Inspector Beedel," said the man on his right side. "You are
charged with the attempted murder of your wife, Millicent Creake."

"You are mad," retorted the miserable creature, falling into a desperate
calmness. "She has been struck by lightning."

"No, you blackguard, she hasn't," wrathfully exclaimed his
brother-in-law, jumping up. "Would you like to see her?"

"I also have to warn you," continued the inspector impassively, "that
anything you say may be used as evidence against you."

A startled cry from the farther end of the passage arrested their
attention.

"Mr Carrados," called Hollyer, "oh, come at once."

At the open door of the other bedroom stood the lieutenant, his eyes
still turned towards something in the room beyond, a little empty bottle
in his hand.

"Dead!" he exclaimed tragically, with a sob, "with this beside her. Dead
just when she would have been free of the brute."

The blind man passed into the room, sniffed the air, and laid a gentle
hand on the pulseless heart.

"Yes," he replied. "That, Hollyer, does not always appeal to the woman,
strange to say."




THE CLEVER MRS STRAITHWAITE


Mr Carlyle had arrived at The Turrets in the very best possible spirits.
Everything about him, from his immaculate white spats to the choice
gardenia in his buttonhole, from the brisk decision with which he took
the front-door steps to the bustling importance with which he had
positively brushed Parkinson aside at the door of the library,
proclaimed consequence and the extremely good terms on which he stood
with himself.

"Prepare yourself, Max," he exclaimed. "If I hinted at a case of
exceptional delicacy that will certainly interest you by its romantic
possibilities----?"

"I should have the liveliest misgivings. Ten to one it would be a jewel
mystery," hazarded Carrados, as his friend paused with the point of his
communication withheld, after the manner of a quizzical youngster with a
promised bon-bon held behind his back. "If you made any more of it I
should reluctantly be forced to the conclusion that the case involved a
society scandal connected with a priceless pearl necklace."

Mr Carlyle's face fell.

"Then it _is_ in the papers, after all?" he said, with an air of
disappointment.

"What is in the papers, Louis?"

"Some hint of the fraudulent insurance of the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite's
pearl necklace," replied Carlyle.

"Possibly," admitted Carrados. "But so far I have not come across it."

Mr Carlyle stared at his friend, and marching up to the table brought
his hand down on it with an arresting slap.

"Then what in the name of goodness are you talking about, may I ask?" he
demanded caustically. "If you know nothing of the Straithwaite affair,
Max, what other pearl necklace case are you referring to?"

Carrados assumed the air of mild deprecation with which he frequently
apologized for a blind man venturing to make a discovery.

"A philosopher once made the remark----"

"Had it anything to do with Mrs Straithwaite's--the Hon. Mrs
Straithwaite's--pearl necklace? And let me warn you, Max, that I have
read a good deal both of Mill and Spencer at odd times."

"It was neither Mill nor Spencer. He had a German name, so I will not
mention it. He made the observation, which, of course, we recognize as
an obvious commonplace when once it has been expressed, that in order to
have an accurate knowledge of what a man will do on any occasion it is
only necessary to study a single characteristic action of his."

"Utterly impracticable," declared Mr Carlyle.

"I therefore knew that when you spoke of a case of exceptional interest
to _me_, what you really meant, Louis, was a case of exceptional
interest to _you_."

Mr Carlyle's sudden thoughtful silence seemed to admit that possibly
there might be something in the point.

"By applying, almost unconsciously, the same useful rule, I became aware
that a mystery connected with a valuable pearl necklace and a beautiful
young society belle would appeal the most strongly to your romantic
imagination."

"Romantic! I, romantic? Thirty-five and a private inquiry agent! You
are--positively feverish, Max."

"Incurably romantic--or you would have got over it by now: the worst
kind."

"Max, this may prove a most important and interesting case. Will you be
serious and discuss it?"

"Jewel cases are rarely either important or interesting. Pearl necklace
mysteries, in nine cases out of ten, spring from the miasma of social
pretence and vapid competition and only concern people who do not matter
in the least. The only attractive thing about them is the name. They are
so barren of originality that a criminological Linnaeus could classify
them with absolute nicety. I'll tell you what, we'll draw up a set of
tables giving the solution to every possible pearl necklace case for the
next twenty-one years."

"We will do any mortal thing you like, Max, if you will allow Parkinson
to administer a bromo-seltzer and then enable me to meet the officials
of the Direct Insurance without a blush."

For three minutes Carrados picked his unerring way among the furniture
as he paced the room silently but with irresolution in his face. Twice
his hand went to a paper-covered book lying on his desk, and twice he
left it untouched.

"Have you ever been in the lion-house at feeding-time, Louis?" he
demanded abruptly.

"In the very remote past, possibly," admitted Mr Carlyle guardedly.

"As the hour approaches it is impossible to interest the creatures with
any other suggestion than that of raw meat. You came a day too late,
Louis." He picked up the book and skimmed it adroitly into Mr Carlyle's
hands. "I have already scented the gore, and tasted in imagination the
joy of tearing choice morsels from other similarly obsessed animals."

"'Catalogue des monnaies grecques et romaines,'" read the gentleman.
"'To be sold by auction at the Hotel Drouet, Paris, salle 8, April the
24th, 25th, etc.' H'm." He turned to the plates of photogravure
illustration which gave an air to the volume. "This is an event, I
suppose?"

"It is the sort of dispersal we get about once in three years," replied
Carrados. "I seldom attend the little sales, but I save up and then have
a week's orgy."

"And when do you go?"

"To-day. By the afternoon boat--Folkestone. I have already taken rooms
at Mascot's. I'm sorry it has fallen so inopportunely, Louis."

Mr Carlyle rose to the occasion with a display of extremely gentlemanly
feeling--which had the added merit of being quite genuine.

"My dear chap, your regrets only serve to remind me how much I owe to
you already. _Bon voyage_, and the most desirable of Eu--Eu--well,
perhaps it would be safer to say, of Kimons, for your collection."

"I suppose," pondered Carrados, "this insurance business might have led
to other profitable connexions?"

"That is quite true," admitted his friend. "I have been trying for some
time--but do not think any more of it, Max."

"What time is it?" demanded Carrados suddenly.

"Eleven-twenty-five."

"Good. Has any officious idiot had anyone arrested?"

"No, it is only----"

"Never mind. Do you know much of the case?"

"Practically nothing as yet, unfortunately. I came----"

"Excellent. Everything is on our side. Louis, I won't go this
afternoon--I will put off till the night boat from Dover. That will give
us nine hours."

"Nine hours?" repeated the mystified Carlyle, scarcely daring to put
into thought the scandalous inference that Carrados's words conveyed.

"Nine full hours. A pearl necklace case that cannot at least be left
straight after nine hours' work will require a column to itself in our
chart. Now, Louis, where does this Direct Insurance live?"

Carlyle had allowed his blind friend to persuade him into--as they had
seemed at the beginning--many mad enterprises. But none had ever, in the
light of his own experience, seemed so foredoomed to failure as when, at
eleven-thirty, Carrados ordered his luggage to be on the platform of
Charing Cross Station at eight-fifty and then turned light-heartedly to
the task of elucidating the mystery of Mrs Straithwaite's pearl necklace
in the interval.

The head office of the Direct and Intermediate Insurance Company proved
to be in Victoria Street. Thanks to Carrados's speediest car, they
entered the building as the clocks of Westminster were striking twelve,
but for the next twenty minutes they were consigned to the general
office while Mr Carlyle fumed and displayed his watch ostentatiously. At
last a clerk slid off his stool by the speaking-tube and approached
them.

"Mr Carlyle?" he said. "The General Manager will see you now, but as he
has another appointment in ten minutes he will be glad if you will make
your business as short as possible. This way, please."

Mr Carlyle bit his lip at the pompous formality of the message but he
was too experienced to waste any words about it and with a mere nod he
followed, guiding his friend until they reached the Manager's room.
But, though subservient to circumstance, he was far from being
negligible when he wished to create an impression.

"Mr Carrados has been good enough to give us a consultation over this
small affair," he said, with just the necessary touches of deference and
condescension that it was impossible either to miss or to resent.
"Unfortunately he can do little more as he has to leave almost at once
to direct an important case in Paris."

The General Manager conveyed little, either in his person or his manner,
of the brisk precision that his message seemed to promise. The name of
Carrados struck him as being somewhat familiar--something a little
removed from the routine of his business and a matter therefore that he
could unbend over. He continued to stand comfortably before his office
fire, making up by a tolerant benignity of his hard and bulbous eye for
the physical deprivation that his attitude entailed on his visitors.

"Paris, egad?" he grunted. "Something in your line that France can take
from us since the days of--what's-his-name--Vidocq, eh? Clever fellow,
that, what? Wasn't it about him and the Purloined Letter?"

Carrados smiled discreetly.

"Capital, wasn't it?" he replied. "But there is something else that
Paris can learn from London, more in your way, sir. Often when I drop in
to see the principal of one of their chief houses or the head of a
Government department, we fall into an entertaining discussion of this
or that subject that may be on the tapis. 'Ah, monsieur,' I say, after
perhaps half-an-hour's conversation, 'it is very amiable of you and
sometimes I regret our insular methods, but it is not thus that great
businesses are formed. At home, if I call upon one of our princes of
industry--a railway director, a merchant, or the head of one of our
leading insurance companies--nothing will tempt him for a moment from
the stern outline of the business in hand. You are too complaisant; the
merest gossip takes advantage of you.'"

"That's quite true," admitted the General Manager, occupying the
revolving chair at his desk and assuming a serious and very determined
expression. "Slackers, I call them. Now, Mr Carlyle, where are we in
this business?"

"I have your letter of yesterday. We should naturally like all the
particulars you can give us."

The Manager threw open a formidable-looking volume with an immense
display of energy, sharply flattened some typewritten pages that had
ventured to raise their heads, and lifted an impressive finger.

"We start here, the 27th of January. On that day Karsfeld, the Princess
Street jeweller, y'know, who acted as our jewellery assessor, forwards a
proposal of the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite to insure a pearl necklace against
theft. Says that he has had an opportunity of examining it and passes it
at five thousand pounds. That business goes through in the ordinary way;
the premium is paid and the policy taken out.

"A couple of months later Karsfeld has a little unpleasantness with us
and resigns. Resignation accepted. We have nothing against him, you
understand. At the same time there is an impression among the directors
that he has been perhaps a little too easy in his ways, a little
too--let us say, expansive, in some of his valuations and too
accommodating to his own clients in recommending to us business of
a--well--speculative basis; business that we do not care about and which
we now feel is foreign to our traditions as a firm. However"--the
General Manager threw apart his stubby hands as though he would shatter
any fabric of criminal intention that he might be supposed to be
insidiously constructing--"that is the extent of our animadversion
against Karsfeld. There are no irregularities and you may take it from
me that the man is all right."

"You would propose accepting the fact that a five-thousand-pound
necklace was submitted to him?" suggested Mr Carlyle.

"I should," acquiesced the Manager, with a weighty nod. "Still--this
brings us to April the third--this break, so to speak, occurring in our
routine, it seemed a good opportunity for us to assure ourselves on one
or two points. Mr Bellitzer--you know Bellitzer, of course; know _of_
him, I should say--was appointed _vice_ Karsfeld and we wrote to certain
of our clients, asking them--as our policies entitled us to do--as a
matter of form to allow Mr Bellitzer to confirm the assessment of his
predecessor. Wrapped it up in silver paper, of course; said it would
certify the present value and be a guarantee that would save them some
formalities in case of ensuing claim, and so on. Among others, wrote to
the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite to that effect--April fourth. Here is her
reply of three days later. Sorry to disappoint us, but the necklace has
just been sent to her bank for custody as she is on the point of leaving
town. Also scarcely sees that it is necessary in her case as the
insurance was only taken so recently."

"That is dated April the seventh?" inquired Mr Carlyle, busy with pencil
and pocket-book.

"April seventh," repeated the Manager, noting this conscientiousness
with an approving glance and then turning to regard questioningly the
indifferent attitude of his other visitor. "That put us on our
guard--naturally. Wrote by return regretting the necessity and
suggesting that a line to her bankers, authorizing them to show us the
necklace, would meet the case and save her any personal trouble.
Interval of a week. Her reply, April sixteenth. Thursday last.
Circumstances have altered her plans and she has returned to London
sooner than she expected. Her jewel-case has been returned from the
bank, and will we send our man round--'our man,' Mr Carlyle!--on
Saturday morning not later than twelve, please."

The Manager closed the record book, with a sweep of his hand cleared his
desk for revelations, and leaning forward in his chair fixed Mr Carlyle
with a pragmatic eye.

"On Saturday Mr Bellitzer goes to Luneburg Mansions and the Hon. Mrs
Straithwaite shows him the necklace. He examines it carefully, assesses
its insurable value up to five thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds,
and reports us to that effect. But he reports something else, Mr
Carlyle. It is not the necklace that the lady had insured."

"Not the necklace?" echoed Mr Carlyle.

"No. In spite of the number of pearls and a general similarity there are
certain technical differences, well known to experts, that made the fact
indisputable. The Hon. Mrs Straithwaite has been guilty of
misrepresentation. Possibly she has no fraudulent intention. We are
willing to pay to find out. That's your business."

Mr Carlyle made a final note and put away his book with an air of
decision that could not fail to inspire confidence.

"To-morrow," he said, "we shall perhaps be able to report something."

"Hope so," vouchsafed the Manager. "'Morning."

From his position near the window, Carrados appeared to wake up to the
fact that the interview was over.

"But so far," he remarked blandly, with his eyes towards the great man
in the chair, "you have told us nothing of the theft."

The Manager regarded the speaker dumbly for a moment and then turned to
Mr Carlyle.

"What does he mean?" he demanded pungently.

But for once Mr Carlyle's self-possession had forsaken him. He
recognized that somehow Carrados had been guilty of an appalling lapse,
by which his reputation for prescience was wrecked in that quarter for
ever, and at the catastrophe his very ears began to exude embarrassment.

In the awkward silence Carrados himself seemed to recognize that
something was amiss.

"We appear to be at cross-purposes," he observed. "I inferred that the
disappearance of the necklace would be the essence of our
investigation."

"Have I said a word about it disappearing?" demanded the Manager, with a
contempt-laden raucity that he made no pretence of softening. "You don't
seem to have grasped the simple facts about the case, Mr Carrados.
Really, I hardly think----Oh, come in!"

There had been a knock at the door, then another. A clerk now entered
with an open telegram.

"Mr Longworth wished you to see this at once, sir."

"We may as well go," whispered Mr Carlyle with polite depression to his
colleague.

"Here, wait a minute," said the Manager, who had been biting his
thumb-nail over the telegram. "No, not you"--to the lingering
clerk--"you clear." Much of the embarrassment that had troubled Mr
Carlyle a minute before seemed to have got into the Manager's system. "I
don't understand this," he confessed awkwardly. "It's from Bellitzer. He
wires: '_Have just heard alleged robbery Straithwaite pearls. Advise
strictest investigation._'"

Mr Carlyle suddenly found it necessary to turn to the wall and consult a
highly coloured lithographic inducement to insure. Mr Carrados alone
remained to meet the Manager's constrained glance.

"Still, _he_ tells us really nothing about the theft," he remarked
sociably.

"No," admitted the Manager, experiencing some little difficulty with his
breathing, "he does not."

"Well, we still hope to be able to report something to-morrow.
Good-bye."

It was with an effort that Mr Carlyle straightened himself sufficiently
to take leave of the Manager. Several times in the corridor he stopped
to wipe his eyes.

"Max, you unholy fraud," he said, when they were outside, "you knew all
the time."

"No; I told you that I knew nothing of it," replied Carrados frankly. "I
am absolutely sincere."

"Then all I can say is, that I see a good many things happen that I
don't believe in."

Carrados's reply was to hold out a coin to a passing newsboy and to hand
the purchase to his friend who was already in the car.

"There is a slang injunction to 'keep your eyes skinned.' That being out
of my power, I habitually 'keep my ears skinned.' You would be surprised
to know how very little you hear, Louis, and how much you miss. In the
last five minutes up there I have had three different newsboys' account
of this development."

"By Jupiter, she hasn't waited long!" exclaimed Mr Carlyle, referring
eagerly to the headlines. "'PEARL NECKLACE SENSATION. SOCIETY LADY'S
L5000 TRINKET DISAPPEARS.' Things are moving. Where next, Max?"

"It is now a quarter to one," replied Carrados, touching the fingers of
his watch. "We may as well lunch on the strength of this new turn.
Parkinson will have finished packing; I can telephone him to come to us
at Merrick's in case I require him. Buy all the papers, Louis, and we
will collate the points."

The undoubted facts that survived a comparison were few and meagre, for
in each case a conscientious journalist had touched up a few vague or
doubtful details according to his own ideas of probability. All agreed
that on Tuesday evening--it was now Thursday--Mrs Straithwaite had
formed one of a party that had occupied a box at the new Metropolitan
Opera House to witness the performance of _La Pucella_, and that she had
been robbed of a set of pearls valued in round figures at five thousand
pounds. There agreement ended. One version represented the theft as
taking place at the theatre. Another asserted that at the last moment
the lady had decided not to wear the necklace that evening and that its
abstraction had been cleverly effected from the flat during her absence.
Into a third account came an ambiguous reference to Markhams, the
well-known jewellers, and a conjecture that their loss would certainly
be covered by insurance.

Mr Carlyle, who had been picking out the salient points of the
narratives, threw down the last paper with an impatient shrug.

"Why in heaven's name have we Markhams coming into it now?" he demanded.
"What have they to lose by it, Max? What do you make of the thing?"

"There is the second genuine string--the one Bellitzer saw. That belongs
to someone."

"By gad, that's true--only five days ago, too. But what does our lady
stand to make by that being stolen?"

Carrados was staring into obscurity between an occasional moment of
attention to his cigarette or coffee.

"By this time the lady probably stands to wish she was well out of it,"
he replied thoughtfully. "Once you have set this sort of stone rolling
and it has got beyond you----" He shook his head.

"It has become more intricate than you expected?" suggested Carlyle, in
order to afford his friend an opportunity of withdrawing.

Carrados pierced the intention and smiled affectionately.

"My dear Louis," he said, "one-fifth of the mystery is already solved."

"One-fifth? How do you arrive at that?"

"Because it is one-twenty-five and we started at eleven-thirty."

He nodded to their waiter, who was standing three tables away, and paid
the bill. Then with perfect gravity he permitted Mr Carlyle to lead him
by the arm into the street, where their car was waiting, Parkinson
already there in attendance.

"Sure I can be of no further use?" asked Carlyle. Carrados had
previously indicated that after lunch he would go on alone, but, because
he was largely sceptical of the outcome, the professional man felt
guiltily that he was deserting. "Say the word?"

Carrados smiled and shook his head. Then he leaned across.

"I am going to the opera house now; then, possibly, to talk to Markham a
little. If I have time I must find a man who knows the Straithwaites,
and after that I may look up Inspector Beedel if he is at the Yard. That
is as far as I can see yet, until I call at Luneburg Mansions. Come
round on the third anyway."

"Dear old chap," murmured Mr Carlyle, as the car edged its way ahead
among the traffic. "Marvellous shots he makes!"

In the meanwhile, at Luneburg Mansions, Mrs Straithwaite had been
passing anything but a pleasant day. She had awakened with a headache
and an overnight feeling that there was some unpleasantness to be gone
on with. That it did not amount to actual fear was due to the enormous
self-importance and the incredible ignorance which ruled the butterfly
brain of the young society beauty--for in spite of three years'
experience of married life Stephanie Straithwaite was as yet on the
enviable side of two and twenty.

Anticipating an early visit from a particularly obnoxious sister-in-law,
she had remained in bed until after lunch in order to be able to deny
herself with the more conviction. Three journalists who would have
afforded her the mild excitement of being interviewed had called and
been in turn put off with polite regrets by her husband. The
objectionable sister-in-law postponed her visit until the afternoon and
for more than an hour Stephanie "suffered agonies." When the visitor had
left and the martyred hostess announced her intention of flying
immediately to the consoling society of her own bridge circle,
Straithwaite had advised her, with some significance, to wait for a
lead. The unhappy lady cast herself bodily down upon a couch and asked
whether she was to become a nun. Straithwaite merely shrugged his
shoulders and remembered a club engagement. Evidently there was no need
for him to become a monk: Stephanie followed him down the hall, arguing
and protesting. That was how they came jointly to encounter Carrados at
the door.

"I have come from the Direct Insurance in the hope of being able to see
Mrs Straithwaite," he explained, when the door opened rather suddenly
before he had knocked. "My name is Carrados--Max Carrados."

There was a moment of hesitation all round. Then Stephanie read
difficulties in the straightening lines of her husband's face and rose
joyfully to the occasion.

"Oh yes; come in, Mr Carrados," she exclaimed graciously. "We are not
quite strangers, you know. You found out something for Aunt Pigs; I
forget what, but she was most frantically impressed."

"Lady Poges," enlarged Straithwaite, who had stepped aside and was
watching the development with slow, calculating eyes. "But, I say, you
are blind, aren't you?"

Carrados's smiling admission turned the edge of Mrs Straithwaite's
impulsive, "Teddy!"

"But I get along all right," he added. "I left my man down in the car
and I found your door first shot, you see."

The references reminded the velvet-eyed little mercenary that the man
before her had the reputation of being quite desirably rich, his queer
taste merely an eccentric hobby. The consideration made her resolve to
be quite her nicest possible, as she led the way to the drawing-room.
Then Teddy, too, had been horrid beyond words and must be made to suffer
in the readiest way that offered.

"Teddy is just going out and I was to be left in solitary bereavement if
you had not appeared," she explained airily. "It wasn't very compy only
to come to see me on business by the way, Mr Carrados, but if those are
your only terms I must agree."

Straithwaite, however, did not seem to have the least intention of
going. He had left his hat and stick in the hall and he now threw his
yellow gloves down on a table and took up a negligent position on the
arm of an easy-chair.

"The thing is, where do we stand?" he remarked tentatively.

"That is the attitude of the insurance company, I imagine," replied
Carrados.

"I don't see that the company has any standing in the matter. We haven't
reported any loss to them and we are not making any claim, so far. That
ought to be enough."

"I assume that they act on general inference," explained Carrados. "A
limited liability company is not subtle, Mrs Straithwaite. This one
knows that you have insured a five-thousand-pound pearl necklace with
it, and when it becomes a matter of common knowledge that you have had
one answering to that description stolen, it jumps to the conclusion
that they are one and the same."

"But they aren't--worse luck," explained the hostess. "This was a string
that I let Markhams send me to see if I would keep."

"The one that Bellitzer saw last Saturday?"

"Yes," admitted Mrs Straithwaite quite simply.

Straithwaite glanced sharply at Carrados and then turned his eyes with
lazy indifference to his wife.

"My dear Stephanie, what are you thinking of?" he drawled. "Of course
those could not have been Markhams' pearls. Not knowing that you are
much too clever to do such a foolish thing, Mr Carrados will begin to
think that you have had fraudulent designs upon his company."

Whether the tone was designed to exasperate or merely fell upon a
fertile soil, Stephanie threw a hateful little glance in his direction.

"I don't care," she exclaimed recklessly; "I haven't the least little
objection in the world to Mr Carrados knowing exactly how it happened."

Carrados put in an instinctive word of warning, even raised an arresting
hand, but the lady was much too excited, too voluble, to be denied.

"It doesn't really matter in the least, Mr Carrados, because nothing
came of it," she explained. "There never were any real pearls to be
insured. It would have made no difference to the company, because I did
not regard this as an ordinary insurance from the first. It was to be a
loan."

"A loan?" repeated Carrados.

"Yes. I shall come into heaps and heaps of money in a few years' time
under Prin-Prin's will. Then I should pay back whatever had been
advanced."

"But would it not have been better--simpler--to have borrowed purely on
the anticipation?"

"We have," explained the lady eagerly. "We have borrowed from all sorts
of people, and both Teddy and I have signed heaps and heaps of papers,
until now no one will lend any more."

The thing was too tragically grotesque to be laughed at. Carrados turned
his face from one to the other and by ear, and by even finer
perceptions, he focussed them in his mind--the delicate, feather-headed
beauty, with the heart of a cat and the irresponsibility of a kitten,
eye and mouth already hardening under the stress of her frantic life,
and, across the room, her debonair consort, whose lank pose and
nonchalant attitude towards the situation Carrados had not yet
categorized.

Straithwaite's dry voice, with its habitual drawl, broke into his
reflection.

"I don't suppose for a moment that you either know or care what this
means, my dear girl, but I will proceed to enlighten you. It means the
extreme probability that unless you can persuade Mr Carrados to hold his
tongue, you, and--without prejudice--I also, will get two years' hard.
And yet, with unconscious but consummate artistry, it seems to me that
you have perhaps done the trick; for, unless I am mistaken, Mr Carrados
will find himself unable to take advantage of your guileless confidence,
whereas he would otherwise have quite easily found out all he wanted."

"That is the most utter nonsense, Teddy," cried Stephanie, with petulant
indignation. She turned to Carrados with the assurance of meeting
understanding. "We know Mr Justice Enderleigh very well indeed, and if
there was any bother I should not have the least difficulty in getting
him to take the case privately and in explaining everything to him. But
why should there be? Why indeed?" A brilliant little new idea possessed
her. "Do you know any of these insurance people at all intimately, Mr
Carrados?"

"The General Manager and I are on terms that almost justify us in
addressing each other as 'silly ass,'" admitted Carrados.

"There you see, Teddy, you needn't have been in a funk. Mr Carrados
would put everything right. Let me tell you exactly how I had arranged
it. I dare say you know that insurances are only too pleased to pay for
losses: it gives them an advertisement. Freddy Tantroy told me so, and
his father is a director of hundreds of companies. Only, of course, it
must be done quite regularly. Well, for months and months we had both
been most frightfully hard up, and, unfortunately, everyone else--at
least all our friends--seemed just as stony. I had been absolutely
racking my poor brain for an idea when I remembered papa's wedding
present. It was a string of pearls that he sent me from Vienna, only a
month before he died; not real, of course, because poor papa was always
quite utterly on the verge himself, but very good imitation and in
perfect taste. Otherwise I am sure papa would rather have sent a silver
penwiper, for although he had to live abroad because of what people
said, his taste was simply exquisite and he was most romantic in his
ideas. What do you say, Teddy?"

"Nothing, dear; it was only my throat ticking."

"I wore the pearls often and millions of people had seen them. Of course
our own people knew about them, but others took it for granted that
they were genuine for me to be wearing them. Teddy will tell you that I
was almost babbling in delirium, things were becoming so ghastly, when
an idea occurred. Tweety--she's a cousin of Teddy's, but quite an aged
person--has a whole coffer full of jewels that she never wears and I
knew that there was a necklace very like mine among them. She was going
almost immediately to Africa for some shooting, so I literally flew into
the wilds of Surrey and begged her on my knees to lend me her pearls for
the Lycester House dance. When I got back with them I stamped on the
clasp and took it at once to Karsfeld in Princess Street. I told him
they were only paste but I thought they were rather good and I wanted
them by the next day. And of course he looked at them, and then looked
again, and then asked me if I was certain they were imitation, and I
said, Well, we had never thought twice about it, because poor papa was
always rather chronic, only certainly he did occasionally have fabulous
streaks at the tables, and finally, like a great owl, Karsfeld said:

"'I am happy to be able to congratulate you, madam. They are undoubtedly
Bombay pearls of very fine orient. They are certainly worth five
thousand pounds.'"

From this point Mrs Straithwaite's narrative ran its slangy, obvious
course. The insurance effected--on the strict understanding of the lady
with herself that it was merely a novel form of loan, and after
satisfying her mind on Freddy Tantroy's authority that the Direct and
Intermediate could stand a temporary loss of five thousand pounds--the
genuine pearls were returned to the cousin in the wilds of Surrey and
Stephanie continued to wear the counterfeit. A decent interval was
allowed to intervene and the plot was on the point of maturity when the
company's request for a scrutiny fell like a thunderbolt. With many
touching appeals to Mr Carrados to picture her frantic distraction, with
appropriate little gestures of agony and despair, Stephanie described
her absolute prostration, her subsequent wild scramble through the jewel
stocks of London to find a substitute. The danger over, it became
increasingly necessary to act without delay, not only to anticipate
possible further curiosity on the part of the insurance, but in order to
secure the means with which to meet an impending obligation held over
them by an inflexibly obdurate Hebrew.

The evening of the previous Tuesday was to be the time; the opera house,
during the performance of _La Pucella_, the place. Straithwaite, who was
not interested in that precise form of drama, would not be expected to
be present, but with a false moustache and a few other touches which his
experience as an amateur placed within his easy reach, he was to occupy
a stall, an end stall somewhere beneath his wife's box. At an agreed
signal Stephanie would jerk open the catch of the necklace, and as she
leaned forward the ornament would trickle off her neck and disappear
into the arena beneath. Straithwaite, the only one prepared for
anything happening, would have no difficulty in securing it. He would
look up quickly as if to identify the box, and with the jewels in his
hand walk deliberately out into the passage. Before anyone had quite
realized what was happening he would have left the house.

Carrados turned his face from the woman to the man.

"This scheme commended itself to you, Mr Straithwaite?"

"Well, you see, Stephanie is so awfully clever that I took it for
granted that the thing would go all right."

"And three days before, Bellitzer had already reported misrepresentation
and that two necklaces had been used!"

"Yes," admitted Straithwaite, with an air of reluctant candour, "I had a
suspicion that Stephanie's native ingenuity rather fizzled there. You
know, Stephanie dear, there _is_ a difference, it seems, between Bombay
and Californian pearls."

"The wretch!" exclaimed the girl, grinding her little teeth vengefully.
"And we gave him champagne!"

"But nothing came of it; so it doesn't matter?" prompted Straithwaite.

"Except that now Markhams' pearls have gone and they are hinting at all
manner of diabolical things," she wrathfully reminded him.

"True," he confessed. "That is by way of a sequel, Mr Carrados. I will
endeavour to explain that part of the incident, for even yet Stephanie
seems unable to do me justice."

He detached himself from the arm of the chair and lounged across the
room to another chair, where he took up exactly the same position.

"On the fatal evening I duly made my way to the theatre--a little late,
so as to take my seat unobserved. After I had got the general hang I
glanced up occasionally until I caught Stephanie's eye, by which I knew
that she was there all right and concluded that everything was going
along quite jollily. According to arrangement, I was to cross the
theatre immediately the first curtain fell and standing opposite
Stephanie's box twist my watch chain until it was certain that she had
seen me. Then Stephanie was to fan herself three times with her
programme. Both, you will see, perfectly innocent operations, and yet
conveying to each other the intimation that all was well. Stephanie's
idea, of course. After that, I would return to my seat and Stephanie
would do her part at the first opportunity in Act II.

"However, we never reached that. Towards the end of the first act
something white and noiseless slipped down and fell at my feet. For the
moment I thought they were the pearls gone wrong. Then I saw that it was
a glove--a lady's glove. Intuition whispered that it was Stephanie's
before I touched it. I picked it up and quietly got out. Down among the
fingers was a scrap of paper--the corner torn off a programme. On it
were pencilled words to this effect:

     "'Something quite unexpected. Can do nothing to-night. Go back
     at once and wait. May return early. Frightfully worried.--S.'"

"You kept the paper, of course?"

"Yes. It is in my desk in the next room. Do you care to see it?"

"Please."

Straithwaite left the room and Stephanie flung herself into a charming
attitude of entreaty.

"Mr Carrados, you will get them back for us, won't you? It would not
really matter, only I seem to have signed something and now Markhams
threaten to bring an action against us for culpable negligence in
leaving them in an empty flat."

"You see," explained Straithwaite, coming back in time to catch the
drift of his wife's words, "except to a personal friend like yourself,
it is quite impossible to submit these clues. The first one alone would
raise embarrassing inquiries; the other is beyond explanation.
Consequently I have been obliged to concoct an imaginary burglary in our
absence and to drop the necklace case among the rhododendrons in the
garden at the back, for the police to find."

"Deeper and deeper," commented Carrados.

"Why, yes. Stephanie and I are finding that out, aren't we, dear?
However, here is the first note; also the glove. Of course I returned
immediately. It was Stephanie's strategy and I was under her orders. In
something less than half-an-hour I heard a motor car stop outside. Then
the bell here rang.

"I think I have said that I was alone. I went to the door and found a
man who might have been anything standing there. He merely said: 'Mr
Straithwaite?' and on my nodding handed me a letter. I tore it open in
the hall and read it. Then I went into my room and read it again. This
is it:

     "'DEAR T.,--Absolutely ghastly. We simply must put off
     to-night. Will explain that later. Now what do you think?
     Bellitzer is here in the stalls and young K. D. has asked him
     to join us at supper at the Savoy. It appears that the creature
     is Something and I suppose the D.'s want to borrow off him. I
     can't get out of it and I am literally quaking. Don't you see,
     he will spot something? Send me the M. string at once and I
     will change somehow before supper. I am scribbling this in the
     dark. I have got the Willoughby's man to take it. Don't, don't
     fail.--S.'"

"It is ridiculous, preposterous," snapped Stephanie. "I never wrote a
word of it--or the other. There was I, sitting the whole evening. And
Teddy--oh, it is maddening!"

"I took it into my room and looked at it closely," continued the
unruffled Straithwaite. "Even if I had any reason to doubt, the internal
evidence was convincing, but how could I doubt? It read like a
continuation of the previous message. The writing was reasonably like
Stephanie's under the circumstances, the envelope had obviously been
obtained from the box-office of the theatre and the paper itself was a
sheet of the programme. A corner was torn off; I put against it the
previous scrap and they exactly fitted." The gentleman shrugged his
shoulders, stretched his legs with deliberation and walked across the
room to look out of the window. "I made them up into a neat little
parcel and handed it over," he concluded.

Carrados put down the two pieces of paper which he had been minutely
examining with his finger-tips and still holding the glove addressed his
small audience collectively.

"The first and most obvious point is that whoever carried out the scheme
had more than a vague knowledge of your affairs, not only in general but
also relating to this--well, loan, Mrs Straithwaite."

"Just what I have insisted," agreed Straithwaite. "You hear that,
Stephanie?"

"But who is there?" pleaded Stephanie, with weary intonation.
"Absolutely no one in the wide world. Not a soul."

"So one is liable to think offhand. Let us go further, however, merely
accounting for those who are in a position to have information. There
are the officials of the insurance company who suspect something; there
is Bellitzer, who perhaps knows a little more. There is the lady in
Surrey from whom the pearls were borrowed, a Mr Tantroy who seems to
have been consulted, and, finally, your own servants. All these people
have friends, or underlings, or observers. Suppose Mr Bellitzer's
confidential clerk happens to be the sweetheart of your maid?"

"They would still know very little."

"The arc of a circle may be very little, but, given that, it is possible
to construct the entire figure. Now your servants, Mrs Straithwaite? We
are accusing no one, of course."

"There is the cook, Mullins. She displayed alarming influenza on Tuesday
morning, and although it was most frightfully inconvenient I packed her
off home without a moment's delay. I have a horror of the influ. Then
Fraser, the parlourmaid. She does my hair--I haven't really got a maid,
you know."

"Peter," prompted Straithwaite.

"Oh yes, Beta. She's a daily girl and helps in the kitchen. I have no
doubt she is capable of any villainy."

"And all were out on Tuesday evening?"

"Yes. Mullins gone home. Beta left early as there was no dinner, and I
told Fraser to take the evening after she had dressed me so that Teddy
could make up and get out without being seen."

Carrados turned to his other witness.

"The papers and the glove have been with you ever since?"

"Yes, in my desk."

"Locked?"

"Yes."

"And this glove, Mrs Straithwaite? There is no doubt that it is yours?"

"I suppose not," she replied. "I never thought. I know that when I came
to leave the theatre one had vanished and Teddy had it here."

"That was the first time you missed it?"

"Yes."

"But it might have gone earlier in the evening--mislaid or lost or
stolen?"

"I remember taking them off in the box. I sat in the corner farthest
from the stage--the front row, of course--and I placed them on the
support."

"Where anyone in the next box could abstract one without much difficulty
at a favourable moment."

"That is quite likely. But we didn't see anyone in the next box."

"I have half an idea that I caught sight of someone hanging back,"
volunteered Straithwaite.

"Thank you," said Carrados, turning towards him almost gratefully. "That
is most important--that you think you saw someone hanging back. Now the
other glove, Mrs Straithwaite; what became of that?"

"An odd glove is not very much good, is it?" said Stephanie. "Certainly
I wore it coming back. I think I threw it down somewhere in here.
Probably it is still about. We are in a frantic muddle and nothing is
being done."

The second glove was found on the floor in a corner. Carrados received
it and laid it with the other.

"You use a very faint and characteristic scent, I notice, Mrs
Straithwaite," he observed.

"Yes; it is rather sweet, isn't it? I don't know the name because it is
in Russian. A friend in the Embassy sent me some bottles from
Petersburg."

"But on Tuesday you supplemented it with something stronger," he
continued, raising the gloves delicately one after the other to his
face.

"Oh, eucalyptus; rather," she admitted. "I simply drenched my
handkerchief with it."

"You have other gloves of the same pattern?"

"Have I? Now let me think! Did you give them to me, Teddy?"

"No," replied Straithwaite from the other end of the room. He had
lounged across to the window and his attitude detached him from the
discussion. "Didn't Whitstable?" he added shortly.

"Of course. Then there are three pairs, Mr Carrados, because I never let
Bimbi lose more than that to me at once, poor boy."

"I think you are rather tiring yourself out, Stephanie," warned her
husband.

Carrados's attention seemed to leap to the voice; then he turned
courteously to his hostess.

"I appreciate that you have had a trying time lately, Mrs Straithwaite,"
he said. "Every moment I have been hoping to let you out of the
witness-box----"

"Perhaps to-morrow----" began Straithwaite, recrossing the room.

"Impossible; I leave town to-night," replied Carrados firmly. "You have
three pairs of these gloves, Mrs Straithwaite. Here is one. The other
two----?"

"One pair I have not worn yet. The other--good gracious, I haven't been
out since Tuesday! I suppose it is in my glove-box."

"I must see it, please."

Straithwaite opened his mouth, but as his wife obediently rose to her
feet to comply he turned sharply away with the word unspoken.

"These are they," she said, returning.

"Mr Carrados and I will finish our investigation in my room," interposed
Straithwaite, with quiet assertiveness. "I should advise you to lie down
for half-an-hour, Stephanie, if you don't want to be a nervous wreck
to-morrow."

"You must allow the culprit to endorse that good advice, Mrs
Straithwaite," added Carrados. He had been examining the second pair of
gloves as they spoke and he now handed them back again. "They are
undoubtedly of the same set," he admitted, with extinguished interest,
"and so our clue runs out."

"I hope you don't mind," apologized Straithwaite, as he led his guest to
his own smoking-room. "Stephanie," he confided, becoming more cordial as
two doors separated them from the lady, "is a creature of nerves and
indiscretions. She forgets. To-night she will not sleep. To-morrow she
will suffer." Carrados divined the grin. "So shall I!"

"On the contrary, pray accept my regrets," said the visitor. "Besides,"
he continued, "there is nothing more for me to do here, I suppose...."

"It is a mystery," admitted Straithwaite, with polite agreement. "Will
you try a cigarette?"

"Thanks. Can you see if my car is below?" They exchanged cigarettes and
stood at the window lighting them.

"There is one point, by the way, that may have some significance."
Carrados had begun to recross the room and stopped to pick up the two
fictitious messages. "You will have noticed that this is the outside
sheet of a programme. It is not the most suitable for the purpose; the
first inner sheet is more convenient to write on, but there the date
appears. You see the inference? The programme was obtained before----"

"Perhaps. Well----?" for Carrados had broken off abruptly and was
listening.

"You hear someone coming up the steps?"

"It is the general stairway."

"Mr Straithwaite, I don't know how far this has gone in other quarters.
We may only have a few seconds before we are interrupted."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the man who is now on the stairs is a policeman or has worn
the uniform. If he stops at your door----"

The heavy tread ceased. Then came the authoritative knock.

"Wait," muttered Carrados, laying his hand impressively on
Straithwaite's tremulous arm. "I may recognize the voice."

They heard the servant pass along the hall and the door unlatched; then
caught the jumble of a gruff inquiry.

"Inspector Beedel of Scotland Yard!" The servant repassed their door on
her way to the drawing-room. "It is no good disguising the fact from
you, Mr Straithwaite, that you may no longer be at liberty. But I am.
_Is there anything you wish done?_"

There was no time for deliberation. Straithwaite was indeed between the
unenviable alternatives of the familiar proverb, but, to do him justice,
his voice had lost scarcely a ripple of its usual sang-froid.

"Thanks," he replied, taking a small stamped and addressed parcel from
his pocket, "you might drop this into some obscure pillar-box, if you
will."

"The Markham necklace?"

"Exactly. I was going out to post it when you came."

"I am sure you were."

"And if you could spare five minutes later--if I am here----"

Carrados slid his cigarette-case under some papers on the desk.

"I will call for that," he assented. "Let us say about half-past eight."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I am still at large, you see, Mr Carrados; though after reflecting on
the studied formality of the inspector's business here, I imagine that
you will scarcely be surprised."

"I have made it a habit," admitted Carrados, "never to be surprised."

"However, I still want to cut a rather different figure in your eyes.
You regard me, Mr Carrados, either as a detected rogue or a repentant
ass?"

"Another excellent rule is never to form deductions from uncertainties."

Straithwaite made a gesture of mild impatience.

"You only give me ten minutes. If I am to put my case before you, Mr
Carrados, we cannot fence with phrases.... To-day you have had an
exceptional opportunity of penetrating into our mode of life. You will,
I do not doubt, have summed up our perpetual indebtedness and the easy
credit that our connexion procures; Stephanie's social ambitions and
expensive popularity; her utterly extravagant incapacity to see any
other possible existence; and my tacit acquiescence. You will, I know,
have correctly gauged her irresponsible, neurotic temperament, and
judged the result of it in conflict with my own. What possibly has
escaped you, for in society one has to disguise these things, is that I
still love my wife.

"When you dare not trust the soundness of your reins you do not try to
pull up a bolting horse. For three years I have endeavoured to guide
Stephanie round awkward comers with as little visible restraint as
possible. When we differ over any project upon which she has set her
heart Stephanie has one strong argument."

"That you no longer love her?"

"Well, perhaps; but more forcibly expressed. She rushes to the top of
the building--there are six floors, Mr Carrados, and we are on the
second--and climbing on to the banister she announces her intention of
throwing herself down into the basement. In the meanwhile I have
followed her and drag her back again. One day I shall stay where I am
and let her do as she intends."

"I hope not," said Carrados gravely.

"Oh, don't be concerned. She will then climb back herself. But it will
mark an epoch. It was by that threat that she obtained my acquiescence
to this scheme--that and the certainty that she would otherwise go on
without me. But I had no intention of allowing her to land herself--to
say nothing of us both--behind the bars of a prison if I could help it.
And, above all, I wished to cure her of her fatuous delusion that she is
clever, in the hope that she may then give up being foolish.

"To fail her on the occasion was merely to postpone the attempt. I
conceived the idea of seeming to cooperate and at the same time
involving us in what appeared to be a clever counter-fraud. The thought
of the real loss will perhaps have a good effect; the publicity will
certainly prevent her from daring a second 'theft.' A sordid story, Mr
Carrados," he concluded. "Do not forget your cigarette-case in reality."

The paternal shake of Carrados's head over the recital was neutralized
by his benevolent smile.

"Yes, yes," he said. "I think we can classify you, Mr Straithwaite. One
point--the glove?"

"That was an afterthought. I had arranged the whole story and the first
note was to be brought to me by an attendant. Then, on my way, in my
overcoat pocket I discovered a pair of Stephanie's gloves which she had
asked me to carry the day before. The suggestion flashed--how much more
convincing if I could arrange for her to seem to drop the writing in
that way. As she said, the next box _was_ empty; I merely took
possession of it for a few minutes and quietly drew across one of her
gloves. And that reminds me--of course there was nothing in it, but your
interest in them made me rather nervous."

Carrados laughed outright. Then he stood up and held out his hand.

"Good-night, Mr Straithwaite," he said, with real friendliness. "Let me
give you the quaker's advice: Don't attempt another conspiracy--but if
you do, don't produce a 'pair' of gloves of which one is still
suggestive of scent, and the other identifiable with eucalyptus!"

"Oh----!" said Straithwaite.

"Quite so. But at all hazard suppress a second pair that has the same
peculiarity. Think over what it must mean. Good-bye."

Twelve minutes later Mr Carlyle was called to the telephone.

"It is eight-fifty-five and I am at Charing Cross," said a voice he
knew. "If you want local colour contrive an excuse to be with Markham
when the first post arrives to-morrow." A few more words followed, and
an affectionate valediction.

"One moment, my dear Max, one moment. Do I understand you to say that
you will post me on the report of the case from Dover?"

"No, Louis," replied Carrados, with cryptic discrimination. "I only said
that I will post you on _a_ report of the case from Dover."




THE LAST EXPLOIT OF HARRY THE ACTOR


The one insignificant fact upon which turned the following incident in
the joint experiences of Mr Carlyle and Max Carrados was merely this:
that having called upon his friend just at the moment when the private
detective was on the point of leaving his office to go to the safe
deposit in Lucas Street, Piccadilly, the blind amateur accompanied him,
and for ten minutes amused himself by sitting quite quietly among the
palms in the centre of the circular hall while Mr Carlyle was occupied
with his deed-box in one of the little compartments provided for the
purpose.

The Lucas Street depository was then (it has since been converted into a
picture palace) generally accepted as being one of the strongest places
in London. The front of the building was constructed to represent a
gigantic safe door, and under the colloquial designation of "The Safe"
the place had passed into a synonym for all that was secure and
impregnable. Half of the marketable securities in the west of London
were popularly reported to have seen the inside of its coffers at one
time or another, together with the same generous proportion of family
jewels. However exaggerated an estimate this might be, the substratum of
truth was solid and auriferous enough to dazzle the imagination. When
ordinary safes were being carried bodily away with impunity or
ingeniously fused open by the scientifically equipped cracksman, nervous
bond-holders turned with relief to the attractions of an establishment
whose modest claim was summed up in its telegraphic address:
"Impregnable." To it went also the jewel-case between the lady's social
engagements, and when in due course "the family" journeyed north--or
south, east or west--whenever, in short, the London house was closed,
its capacious storerooms received the plate-chest as an established
custom. Not a few traders also--jewellers, financiers, dealers in
pictures, antiques and costly bijouterie, for instance--constantly used
its facilities for any stock that they did not requite immediately to
hand.

There was only one entrance to the place, an exaggerated keyhole, to
carry out the similitude of the safe-door alluded to. The ground floor
was occupied by the ordinary offices of the company; all the
strong-rooms and safes lay in the steel-cased basement. This was reached
both by a lift and by a flight of steps. In either case the visitor
found before him a grille of massive proportions. Behind its bars stood
a formidable commissionaire who never left his post, his sole duty being
to open and close the grille to arriving and departing clients. Beyond
this, a short passage led into the round central hall where Carrados was
waiting. From this part, other passages radiated off to the vaults and
strong-rooms, each one barred from the hall by a grille scarcely less
ponderous than the first one. The doors of the various private rooms put
at the disposal of the company's clients, and that of the manager's
office, filled the wall-space between the radiating passages. Everything
was very quiet, everything looked very bright, and everything seemed
hopelessly impregnable.

"But I wonder?" ran Carrados's dubious reflection; as he reached this
point.

"Sorry to have kept you so long, my dear Max," broke in Mr Carlyle's
crisp voice. He had emerged from his compartment and was crossing the
hall, deed-box in hand. "Another minute and I will be with you."

Carrados smiled and nodded and resumed his former expression, which was
merely that of an uninterested gentleman waiting patiently for another.
It is something of an attainment to watch closely without betraying
undue curiosity, but others of the senses--hearing and smelling, for
instance--can be keenly engaged while the observer possibly has the
appearance of falling asleep.

"Now," announced Mr Carlyle, returning briskly to his friend's chair,
and drawing on his grey suede gloves.

"You are in no particular hurry?"

"No," admitted the professional man, with the slowness of mild surprise.
"Not at all. What do you propose?"

"It is very pleasant here," replied Carrados tranquilly. "Very cool and
restful with this armoured steel between us and the dust and scurry of
the hot July afternoon above. I propose remaining here for a few
minutes longer."

"Certainly," agreed Mr Carlyle, taking the nearest chair and eyeing
Carrados as though he had a shrewd suspicion of something more than met
the ear. "I believe some very interesting people rent safes here. We may
encounter a bishop, or a winning jockey, or even a musical comedy
actress. Unfortunately it seems to be rather a slack time."

"Two men came down while you were in your cubicle," remarked Carrados
casually. "The first took the lift. I imagine that he was a middle-aged,
rather portly man. He carried a stick, wore a silk hat, and used
spectacles for close sight. The other came by the stairway. I infer that
he arrived at the top immediately after the lift had gone. He ran down
the steps, so that the two were admitted at the same time, but the
second man, though the more active of the pair, hung back for a moment
in the passage and the portly one was the first to go to his safe."

Mr Carlyle's knowing look expressed: "Go on, my friend; you are coming
to something." But he merely contributed an encouraging "Yes?"

"When you emerged just now our second man quietly opened the door of his
pen a fraction. Doubtless he looked out. Then he closed it as quietly
again. You were not his man, Louis."

"I am grateful," said Mr Carlyle expressively. "What next, Louis?"

"That is all; they are still closeted."

Both were silent for a moment. Mr Carlyle's feeling was one of
unconfessed perplexity. So far the incident was utterly trivial in his
eyes; but he knew that the trifles which appeared significant to Max had
a way of standing out like signposts when the time came to look back
over an episode. Carrados's sightless faculties seemed indeed to keep
him just a move ahead as the game progressed.

"Is there really anything in it, Max?" he asked at length.

"Who can say?" replied Carrados. "At least we may wait to see them go.
Those tin deed-boxes now. There is one to each safe, I think?"

"Yes, so I imagine. The practice is to carry the box to your private
lair and there unlock it and do your business. Then you lock it up again
and take it back to your safe."

"Steady! our first man," whispered Carrados hurriedly. "Here, look at
this with me." He opened a paper--a prospectus--which he pulled from his
pocket, and they affected to study its contents together.

"You were about right, my friend," muttered Mr Carlyle, pointing to a
paragraph of assumed interest. "Hat, stick and spectacles. He is a
clean-shaven, pink-faced old boy. I believe--yes, I know the man by
sight. He is a bookmaker in a large way, I am told."

"Here comes the other," whispered Carrados.

The bookmaker passed across the hall, joined on his way by the manager
whose duty it was to counterlock the safe, and disappeared along one of
the passages. The second man sauntered up and down, waiting his turn. Mr
Carlyle reported his movements in an undertone and described him. He was
a younger man than the other, of medium height, and passably well
dressed in a quiet lounge suit, green Alpine hat and brown shoes. By the
time the detective had reached his wavy chestnut hair, large and rather
ragged moustache, and sandy, freckled complexion, the first man had
completed his business and was leaving the place.

"It isn't an exchange lay, at all events," said Mr Carlyle. "His inner
case is only half the size of the other and couldn't possibly be
substituted."

"Come up now," said Carrados, rising. "There is nothing more to be
learned down here."

They requisitioned the lift and on the steps outside the gigantic
keyhole stood for a few minutes discussing an investment as a couple of
trustees or a lawyer and a client who were parting there might do. Fifty
yards away, a very large silk hat with a very curly brim marked the
progress of the bookmaker towards Piccadilly.

The lift in the hall behind them swirled up again and the gate clashed.
The second man walked leisurely out and sauntered away without a
backward glance.

"He has gone in the opposite direction," exclaimed Mr Carlyle, rather
blankly. "It isn't the 'lame goat' nor the 'follow-me-on,' nor even the
homely but efficacious sand-bag."

"What colour were his eyes?" asked Carrados.

"Upon my word, I never noticed," admitted the other.

"Parkinson would have noticed," was the severe comment.

"I am not Parkinson," retorted Mr Carlyle, with asperity, "and, strictly
as one dear friend to another, Max, permit me to add, that while
cherishing an unbounded admiration for your remarkable gifts, I have the
strongest suspicion that the whole incident is a ridiculous mare's nest,
bred in the fantastic imagination of an enthusiastic criminologist."

Mr Carrados received this outburst with the utmost benignity. "Come and
have a coffee, Louis," he suggested. "Mehmed's is only a street away."

Mehmed proved to be a cosmopolitan gentleman from Mocha whose shop
resembled a house from the outside and an Oriental divan when one was
within. A turbaned Arab placed cigarettes and cups of coffee spiced with
saffron before the customers, gave salaam and withdrew.

"You know, my dear chap," continued Mr Carlyle, sipping his black coffee
and wondering privately whether it was really very good or very bad,
"speaking quite seriously, the one fishy detail--our ginger friend's
watching for the other to leave--may be open to a dozen very innocent
explanations."

"So innocent that to-morrow I intend taking a safe myself."

"You think that everything is all right?"

"On the contrary, I am convinced that something is very wrong."

"Then why----?"

"I shall keep nothing there, but it will give me the _entree_. I should
advise you, Louis, in the first place to empty your safe with all
possible speed, and in the second to leave your business card on the
manager."

Mr Carlyle pushed his cup away, convinced now that the coffee was really
very bad.

"But, my dear Max, the place--'The Safe'--is impregnable!"

"When I was in the States, three years ago, the head porter at one hotel
took pains to impress on me that the building was absolutely fireproof.
I at once had my things taken off to another hotel. Two weeks later the
first place was burnt out. It _was_ fireproof, I believe, but of course
the furniture and the fittings were not and the walls gave way."

"Very ingenious," admitted Mr Carlyle, "but why did you really go? You
know you can't humbug me with your superhuman sixth sense, my friend."

Carrados smiled pleasantly, thereby encouraging the watchful attendant
to draw near and replenish their tiny cups.

"Perhaps," replied the blind man, "because so many careless people were
satisfied that it was fireproof."

"Ah-ha, there you are--the greater the confidence the greater the risk.
But only if your self-confidence results in carelessness. Now do you
know how this place is secured, Max?"

"I am told that they lock the door at night," replied Carrados, with
bland malice.

"And hide the key under the mat to be ready for the first arrival in the
morning," crowed Mr Carlyle, in the same playful spirit. "Dear old chap!
Well, let me tell you----"

"That force is out of the question. Quite so," admitted his friend.

"That simplifies the argument. Let us consider fraud. There again the
precautions are so rigid that many people pronounce the forms a
nuisance. I confess that I do not. I regard them as a means of
protecting my own property and I cheerfully sign my name and give my
password, which the manager compares with his record-book before he
releases the first lock of my safe. The signature is burned before my
eyes in a sort of crucible there, the password is of my own choosing and
is written only in a book that no one but the manager ever sees, and my
key is the sole one in existence."

"No duplicate or master-key?"

"Neither. If a key is lost it takes a skilful mechanic half-a-day to cut
his way in. Then you must remember that clients of a safe-deposit are
not multitudinous. All are known more or less by sight to the officials
there, and a stranger would receive close attention. Now, Max, by what
combination of circumstances is a rogue to know my password, to be able
to forge my signature, to possess himself of my key, and to resemble me
personally? And, finally, how is he possibly to determine beforehand
whether there is anything in my safe to repay so elaborate a plant?" Mr
Carlyle concluded in triumph and was so carried away by the strength of
his position that he drank off the contents of his second cup before he
realized what he was doing.

"At the hotel I just spoke of," replied Carrados, "there was an
attendant whose one duty in case of alarm was to secure three iron
doors. On the night of the fire he had a bad attack of toothache and
slipped away for just a quarter of an hour to have the thing out. There
was a most up-to-date system of automatic fire alarm; it had been tested
only the day before and the electrician, finding some part not
absolutely to his satisfaction, had taken it away and not had time to
replace it. The night watchman, it turned out, had received leave to
present himself a couple of hours later on that particular night, and
the hotel fireman, whose duties he took over, had missed being notified.
Lastly, there was a big riverside blaze at the same time and all the
engines were down at the other end of the city."

Mr Carlyle committed himself to a dubious monosyllable. Carrados leaned
forward a little.

"All these circumstances formed a coincidence of pure chance. Is it not
conceivable, Louis, that an even more remarkable series might be
brought about by design?"

"Our tawny friend?"

"Possibly. Only he was not really tawny." Mr Carlyle's easy attitude
suddenly stiffened into rigid attention. "He wore a false moustache."

"He wore a false moustache!" repeated the amazed gentleman. "And you
cannot see! No, really, Max, this is beyond the limit!"

"If only you would not trust your dear, blundering old eyes so
implicitly you would get nearer that limit yourself," retorted Carrados.
"The man carried a five-yard aura of spirit gum, emphasized by a warm,
perspiring skin. That inevitably suggested one thing. I looked for
further evidence of making-up and found it--these preparations all
smell. The hair you described was characteristically that of a wig--worn
long to hide the joining and made wavy to minimize the length. All these
things are trifles. As yet we have not gone beyond the initial stage of
suspicion. I will tell you another trifle. When this man retired to a
compartment with his deed-box, he never even opened it. Possibly it
contains a brick and a newspaper. He is only watching."

"Watching the bookmaker."

"True, but it may go far wider than that. Everything points to a plot of
careful elaboration. Still, if you are satisfied----"

"I am quite satisfied," replied Mr Carlyle gallantly. "I regard 'The
Safe' almost as a national institution, and as such I have an implicit
faith in its precautions against every kind of force or fraud." So far
Mr Carlyle's attitude had been suggestive of a rock, but at this point
he took out his watch, hummed a little to pass the time, consulted his
watch again, and continued: "I am afraid that there were one or two
papers which I overlooked. It would perhaps save me coming again
to-morrow if I went back now----"

"Quite so," acquiesced Carrados, with perfect gravity. "I will wait for
you."

For twenty minutes he sat there, drinking an occasional tiny cup of
boiled coffee and to all appearance placidly enjoying the quaint
atmosphere which Mr Mehmed had contrived to transplant from the shore of
the Persian Gulf.

At the end of that period Carlyle returned, politely effusive about the
time he had kept his friend waiting but otherwise bland and
unassailable. Anyone with eyes might have noticed that he carried a
parcel of about the same size and dimensions as the deed-box that fitted
his safe.

The next day Carrados presented himself at the safe-deposit as an
intending renter. The manager showed him over the vaults and
strong-rooms, explaining the various precautions taken to render the
guile or force of man impotent: the strength of the chilled-steel walls,
the casing of electricity-resisting concrete, the stupendous isolation
of the whole inner fabric on metal pillars so that the watchman, while
inside the building, could walk above, below, and all round the outer
walls of what was really--although it bore no actual relationship to the
advertising device of the front--a monstrous safe; and, finally, the
arrangement which would enable the basement to be flooded with steam
within three minutes of an alarm. These details were public property.
"The Safe" was a showplace and its directors held that no harm could
come of displaying a strong hand.

Accompanied by the observant eyes of Parkinson, Carrados gave an
adventurous but not a hopeful attention to these particulars. Submitting
the problem of the tawny man to his own ingenuity, he was constantly
putting before himself the question: How shall I set about robbing this
place? and he had already dismissed force as impracticable. Nor, when it
came t

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