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Title: Max Carrados Mysteries - Another Athology
Author: Ernest Bramah
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eBook No.: 0701161.txt
Language:  English
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Title: Max Carrados Mysteries - Another Athology
Author: Ernest Bramah





CONTENTS

The Secret of Headlam Height
The Mystery of the Vanished Petition Crown
The Holloway Flat Tragedy
The Curious Circumstances of the Two Left Shoes
The Ingenious Mind of Mr Rigby Lacksome
The Crime at the House in Culver Street
The Strange Case of Cyril Bycourt
The Missing Witness Sensation


* * * * *


The Secret of Headlam Height


Parkinson, the unquenchable stickler for decorum, paused after receiving
the general instructions for the day just long enough to create a sense
of hesitation. Mr Carrados, merely concerned with an after-breakfast
cigarette, divined the position with his usual unerring instinct.

'Yes, Parkinson,' he remarked encouragingly; 'is there anything going
on?'

A clumsily-folded newspaper enabled the punctilious attendant to salve
his conscience as he returned slowly to the table. He shook out the
printed sheets into a more orderly arrangement by way of covering the
irregularity.

'I understand, sir,' he replied in the perfectly controlled respectful
voice that accorded with his deliberate actions 'I understand that this
morning's foreign intelligence is of a disquieting nature.'

The blind man's hand went unfalteringly to an open copy of The Times
lying by him and there a single deft finger touched off the headlines
with easy certainty.

'"On the Brink of War." "Threatened German Mobilization",' he read
aloud. '"The Duty of Great Britain." Yes, I don't think that
"disquieting" over-states the position.'

'No, sir. So I gathered from what I had already heard. That is why I
thought it better to speak to you about a trifling incident that has
come under my notice, sir.'

'Quite right,' assented Mr Carrados. 'Well?'

'It was at the Museum here, sir--a very instructive establishment in
Market Square. I had gone there in order to settle a small matter in
dispute between Herbert and myself affecting the distinction between
shrimps and prawns. I had always been under the impression that prawns
were unusually well-grown shrimps, but I find that I was mistaken. I was
directed to the cases of preserved fish by a gentleman with a cut across
his cheek. Subsequently I learned from the hall-keeper, to whom I spoke
about the weather, that the gentleman was the assistant curator and was
called Vangoor, being a native of Holland.'

'Vangoor,' mused Mr Carrados. 'I have never heard the name before.'

'No, sir. When I saw the gentleman last we were at Kiel, and he was then
a Lieutenant von Groot. I thought perhaps I had better mention it, sir.'

Carrados's half-smiling expression did not change in its placid tone and
he continued to smoke with leisurely enjoyment. His mind turned back to
the details of the Kiel visit of a few years previously as one might
turn to a well-kept diary.

'The man you mean called on me once with a complimentary message from
the Admiralty department there. I was not in the hotel at the time and
he left his card with a few words of explanation in perfect English. We
never met and I cannot suppose that he has ever seen me.'

'No, sir,' acquiesced Parkinson. 'You sent me the next day to the
Dockyard with a reply. That is the only time I have ever seen the
gentleman before today.'

'Have you any reason to think that he may have remembered you again?'

'I formed a contrary opinion, sir. On the other occasion, although it
was necessary for us to hold some slight conversation together,
Lieutenant von Groot did not seem to be aware of my presence, if I may
so define it, sir. I received the impression that the gentleman imagined
he was talking to someone taller than I am, sir; and I doubt if he
really saw me at all.'

'You are sure of him, though?'

'I was then making a study of detailed observation under your
instruction, sir, and I have no misgiving on the point.'

'Very well. It was quite right of you to tell me of this; it may be
really important. We are only five miles from a vital naval port, we
must remember. Don't say anything to anyone else and I will consider it
meanwhile.'

'Thank you, sir,' replied Parkinson, modestly elated.

In the past, whenever the subject of the English Secret Service came up
it was patriotically assumed on all hands that nothing much was to be
expected from that quarter, and we were bidden to lift our admiring eyes
to German and other continental models. As a matter of history, when the
test came the despised organization proved itself signally efficient. In
a small way there was evidence of this that same July day, for within a
couple of hours of sending a curiously-worded telegram to an official
whose name never appeared in any official list Mr Carrados received an
equally mysterious reply from which, after a process of disintegration,
he extracted the following information:

Ref. Fff. C/M.107.

GROOT, Karl von. Born Friedeberg (Prussia) about 1880. Mother English.
Educated Heidelberg and (?) Kiel. Entered navy. Torpedo-lieutenant
(staff) 1907. Resigned in doubtful circumstances 1910. Drawn into
espionage system under Bluthmel in connexion with resignation. Expelled
Holland 1912. Visited Russia 1913. Recognized in Cork, June, 1913.
Speaks German, French, Dutch, Russian, English (excellent). Blonde,
tall, grey eyes, diagonal sword-cut left cheek. Description ends. Please
report anything known further.

Carrados read the decoded message twice, and then thoughtfully crushing
the thin paper into a loose ball he dropped it upon an ash-tray and
applied a match.

'A telegram form, Parkinson.'

With his uncanny prescience the blind man selected a pencil from the
rack before him, adjusted the paper to a more convenient angle and, not
deviating the fraction of an inch beyond the indicated space, wrote his
brief reply:

Ref. Fff. C/M.107.

Information received. Regret have nothing further to report. M.C.

'We will investigate Mr Vangoor for ourselves a little first,' he
remarked, passing across the slip. 'London will have its hands pretty
full for the next few days and we are on the spot.'

'Very well, sir,' replied Parkinson with the same trustful equanimity
with which he would have received an order to close a window. 'Shall I
dispatch this now, sir?'

'Yes--from the head office: head offices are generally too busy to be
inquisitive. Read it over first in case of an inquiry....Yes, quite
right. Something of a feather if we can circumvent a German spy off our
own bats, eh, Parkinson?'

'Yes, sir.'

'At all events we will open the innings without delay.'

'I quite appreciate the necessity of expedition, sir,' replied
Parkinson, with his devastating air of profound wisdom.

It is doubtful if anyone had yet plumbed the exact limits of the worthy
fellow's real capacity. There were moments when he looked more sagacious
than any mortal man has any hope of ever being, and there were times
when his comment on affairs seemed to reveal a greater depth of mental
vacuity than was humanly credible. Carrados found him wholly
satisfactory, and Parkinson on his side had ignored a score of hints of
betterment.

'Pack a couple of bags with necessaries,' was the instruction he
received on his return from the post office. 'Von Groot may likely
enough remember my name, and I can't very well change it while staying
at a public hotel. We will keep on our rooms here and go into apartments
at the other end of the town for a time. There my name will be Munroe
and yours can be--say Paxton. I will tell the office here all that is
necessary.'

'Very good, sir,' assented Parkinson. 'I did not think the woodcock
toast sent up for your breakfast entirely satisfactory, sir.'

In years to come generations now unborn will doubtless speculate how
people lived in those early days of August, 1914. The simple truth, of
course, is that to the vast majority external life went on almost
precisely as before. It is as exacting for the moving machine to stop as
for the quiescent one to start, and 'Business as usual' was one of the
earliest clichés coined. The details of the situation that most
impressed the citizen of 1914 are not the details to which the inquirer
of 2014 will give a second thought. Individually, it was doubtless very
intriguing to have to obtain change for a five-pound note by purchasing
postal orders to that amount and immediately cashing them singly
again....

Mr Carrados found the Castlemouth Museum open as usual when his
leisurely footsteps turned that way on the following morning, and, as
usual, the day being fine, deserted. Before they had--Parkinson
describing as they went--made the circuit of the first room they were
approached by a sociable official--the curator it soon appeared--drawn
from his den by the welcome sight of two authentic visitors.

'There are a certain number of specimens that we have to store away for
want of space,' he remarked hopefully. 'If there is any particular
subject that you are interested in I should be very pleased--'

This suited Mr Carrados's purpose well enough, but before committing
himself he not unnaturally preferred to know what the curator's
particular subject was. An enthusiast is always vulnerable through his
enthusiasm and no man becomes curator of an obscure museum in order to
amass a fortune.

'I understand,' he replied tentatively, 'that you are rather strong here
in--' An impatient gesture with the expressive fingers conveyed the
speaker's loss. 'Dear me--'

'Palaeontology?' suggested the curator. 'My predecessor was a great
collector and our series of local fossils is unsurpassed. If you--'

'Ah,' replied Mr Carrados; 'very instructive no doubt.' His alert ear
recognized the absence of the enthusiast's note. 'But somehow there
always seems to me about fossils a--'

'Yes, yes,' supplied the curator readily; 'I know. No human touch. I
feel just the same myself about them. Now flints! There's romance, if
you like.'

'That is the real thing, isn't it?' exclaimed Mr Carrados with
unqualified conviction. 'There's more interest to my mind in a neolithic
scraper than in a whole show-case-full of ammonites and belemnites.'

The curator's eyes sparkled; it was not often that he came across
another.

'Brings you face to face with the primeval, doesn't it?' he said. 'I
once picked up a spearhead, beautifully finished except the very last
chippings of the point. Not broken off, you understand--just incomplete.
Why? Well, one might risk a dozen likely guesses. But there it was, just
as it had dropped from the fingers of my prehistoric forefather ten
thousand years before--no other hand had touched it between his and
mine.'

'I should very much like to see what you have here,' remarked the
affable visitor. 'Or, rather, in my case, for I am practically blind, I
should ask to be allowed to handle.' There were occasions when Mr
Carrados found it prudent to qualify his affliction, for more than once
astonished strangers had finally concluded that he must be wholly
shamming. In his character as an American tourist of leisure--a Mr
Daniel Munroe of Connecticut, as he duly introduced himself--the last
thing he desired was that ex-Lieutenant von Groot or any of that
gentleman's associates should suspect him of playing a part.

For the next half-hour Mr Lidmarsh--his name marked the progress of
their acquaintanceship--threw open cabinets and show-cases in his
hospitable desire to entertain the passing stranger. Carrados knew quite
enough of flint implements--as indeed he seemed to know enough of any
subject beneath the sun--to be able to talk on level terms with an
expert, and he was quite equal to meeting a reference to Evans or to
Nadaillac with another.

'I'm afraid that's all,' said the official at length, '--all that's
worth showing you, at any rate. We are so handicapped for means, you
see--the old story with this sort of institution. Practically everything
we have has been given us at one time or another--it has to be, for
there is simply no fund to apply to purchasing.'

'Surprising,' declared Carrados. 'One would have thought--'

'We arrange lectures in the winter and try to arouse interest in that
way, but the response is small--distressingly small. A great pity.
Theatres, cinemas, dancing halls, all crowded--anything for excitement.
If we get nine adults we call it a good meeting--free, of course, and
Mrs Lidmarsh has tried providing coffee. Now in Holland, my assistant
tells me--'

It was the first mention of the absent Karl, for Carrados was too
patient and wily a tracker to risk the obliquest reference to his man
until he knew the ground he stood on. He listened to a commonplace on
the unsophisticated pleasures of the Dutch.

'But surely you have more help for a place like this than a single
assistant, Mr Lidmarsh? Why, in the States--'

'It has to be done; it's as much as our endowment and the ha'penny rate
will run to,' replied the curator, accepting his visitor's surprise in
the sense--as, indeed, it was intended--of a delicate compliment to his
own industry. 'Vangoor, myself, and Byles, the caretaker, carry
everything upon our shoulders. I count myself very fortunate in having a
helper who makes light of work as Mr Vangoor does. Englishmen,
unfortunately, seem mostly concerned in seeing that they don't put in
half an hour more than they're paid for, Mr Munroe. At least that's my
experience. Then he just happens to be keen on the subjects that I'm
most interested in.'

'That's always nice,' admitted Mr Carrados, unblushingly.

'Well, it all helps to give an added interest, doesn't it? Not that any
department of the work here is neglected or cold-shouldered, I hope--no,
I am sure it isn't. For instance, neither of us really cares for natural
history, but we recognize that others will think differently, so natural
history in all its branches receives due attention. As a seaside town,
of course, we give prominence to marine zoology, and our local fishermen
and sailors are encouraged to bring in any curious or unusual specimen
that they may light upon.'

'Do they much?' inquired the visitor.

'I am afraid not. Lack of public spirit and the suspicion that something
is being got out of them for nothing, I suppose. Why, I have even found
Vangoor rewarding them out of his own slender pocket to encourage them
to come.'

'Fine,' was Mr Carrados's simple comment.

'Yes--when you consider that the poor fellow is none too well paid at
the best and that he sends a little every week to his old people away in
Holland--all that he can save, in fact--and he lives in a tiny,
out-of-the-way old cottage quite by himself so as to do it as cheaply as
possible.'

'Vangoor,' considered the blind man thoughtfully; 'Vangoor--there was a
fellow of that name I used to meet at times up to six months ago. Now I
wonder--'

'In America, you mean?'

'Yes. We have a good sprinkling of Dutch of the old stock, you know. Now
what was my man's front name--'

'Then it couldn't have been this one, for he has been here just a year
now. I wish he was about so that I could introduce him to you, but he
won't be back yet.'

'Well, as to that, I've been thinking,' remarked Mr Carrados. 'I've had
a real interesting time here, and in return I'd like to show you a few
good things in the flint line that I've picked up on my tour. Could you
come around to dinner tomorrow--Sunday?'

'That's very kind indeed.' Mr Lidmarsh was a little surprised at the
attention, but not unflattered. 'Sure it won't be--'

'Not a shred,' declared the new acquaintance. 'Bring Vangoor along as
well, of course.'

'I'll certainly give him your invitation,' promised the curator; 'but
what his arrangements are, naturally I cannot say.'

'Seven o'clock tomorrow then,' confirmed Mr Carrados, referring to the
fingers of his own rather noticeable watch as he spoke.'"Abbotsford", in
your Prospect Avenue here, is the place. So long.'

At the slightest of gestures Parkinson broke off his profound meditation
among Egyptian mummy-cloth and took his master in charge. Together they
passed down the flight of stairs and reached the entrance hall again.

'Let them know at the house that I expect two guests to dinner
tomorrow,' said Mr Carrados as they crossed the hall. 'Mr Lidmarsh will
be coming, and very likely Mr Vangoor as well.'

'I don't think you'll find the last-named gentleman will favour you, Mr
Carrados,' said a discreetly lowered and slightly husky voice quite
close to them. 'Not much I don't.'

Parkinson started at the untimely recognition, but Carrados merely
stopped.

'Ah, William,' he said, without turning, 'and pray why not?'

Mr William Byles, caretaker, doorkeeper, and general factotum of the
Castlemouth Museum, disclosed himself from behind an antique coffer
smiling broadly.

'So you knew me, sir, after all?' he remarked, with easy familiarity. 'I
thought to surprise you, but it's the other way about, it seems.'

'Your voice has much the same rich quality as when you looked after my
cellar, a dozen years ago, William,' replied Mr Carrados. 'Making due
allowance for a slight--erosion. One expects that with the strong sea
air.'

'I wondered what you was up to, sir, when I hear you pitch it to the
governor you were Mr Munroe from America. Made me laugh. Now that you're
inviting Mr Dutch Vangoor to dinner I can give a straightish guess. You
needn't trouble, sir. I'm keeping an observant eye on that identical
piece of goods myself.'

'Come to the door and point out the way somewhere,' directed Mr
Carrados, moving on from the dangerous vicinity of the stairs. 'What do
you know about Vangoor?'

'Not as much yet as I'd like to,' admitted Mr Byles, 'but I can put two
and two together, Mr Carrados, as well as most.'

'Yes,' mused the blind man reminiscently, 'I always had an idea that you
were good at that, William. So you don't exactly love him?'

''Ate isn't the word for it,' replied the caretaker frankly. 'Too much
of the bleeding Crown Prince about Jan Van for my vocabulary. Ready to
lick his superior's boots three times a day if requisite, but he's done
the double dirty on me more than once. And I don't forget it neither.'

'But why do you think he won't come tomorrow?'

'Well, if it's going to be war in a day or two, as most people say,
depend on it, sir, Jan Van knows already and it stands to reason that
he's busy now. And so shall I be busy, and when he least expects it
too.'

'Then I can safely leave him in your hands, William,' said Mr Carrados
pleasantly. 'By the way, how do you like it here?' and he indicated the
somnolent institution they were leaving.

'Like?' repeated Mr Byles, swallowing with difficulty. 'Like it! Me
that's been butler in superior West End families the best part of my
life to finish up as "general" in what's nothing more or less than a
sort of mouldy peep-show? Oh, Mr Carrados!'

The blind man laughed and a substantial coin found its billet in the
caretaker's never-reluctant palm.

'Not "Mr Carrados" here, William, remember. Please preserve my alias or
you'll be doing Mr Vangoor a kindness. And whatever you are at, don't
let him guess you're on his track.'

Mr Byles's only reply was to place a knowing forefinger against an
undeniably tell-tale nose and to close one eye significantly--a form of
communication that was presumably lost on the one for whom it was
intended though it shocked Parkinson not a little. But the tone and
spirit of the whole incident had been a source of pain to that excellent
servitor all through.

Another member of Mr Carrados's household--though in point of miles a
distant one--was also adversely affected by his employer's visit to the
Castlemouth Museum. Less than an hour after Mr Byles's parting gesture a
telegram addressed 'Secretary' was delivered at 'The Turrets' and threw
Annesley Greatorex, who was contemplating a bright week-end, into a mild
revolt.

'My hat, Auntie! just listen to this,' exclaimed Mr Greatorex,
addressing the lady whose benevolent rule as Mr Carrados's housekeeper
had led to the mercurial youth conferring this degree of honorary
relationship upon her. 'Here you have M.C.'s latest:

Borrow few dozen flint implements any period but interesting and
dispatch fully insured post or rail to reach me first tomorrow. Try
Vicars, Bousset, Leicester (Oxford Street), Graham, etc. Wire advice;
then stand by.

Stand by! That means ta-ta to mirth and melody by moonlit streams, until
our lord returns, forsooth.'

'And not a bad thing either, Mr Greatorex,' declared the lady, without
pausing in her work. 'If there's going to be a war any minute and that
German family in Canterbury Road who've got an airship hidden away in
their coachhouse fly out and start dropping bombs about, you're much
better here safe in bed than gallivanting up and down the open river.'

'Then what about Mr Carrados right on the coast and near a naval
harbour?'

'I'm no' troubling about Mr Carrados,' replied the housekeeper
decisively. 'If the Germans come they'll come by night. So long as it's
in the dark Mr Carrados won't be the first one to need the ambulance, ma
lad.'

Carrados duly received his few dozen flints and smiled as he handled
them and removed the labels. Promptly on the stroke of seven the curator
arrived, but he came alone; whatever the true cause might be, William
Byles was right.

'I'm sorry about Vangoor,' apologized Mr Lidmarsh as they greeted. 'He
quite intended to come and then at the last found that he had an
appointment. I'm sorry, because I should like you to have met him, and
he isn't having the pleasantest of times just now.'

'Oh! How is that?'

'Foolish prejudice, of course. People are excited and regard every
neutral as an enemy _in esse_ or _in posse_. And the irony of it is that
Vangoor hears positively that Holland will be in on our side within a
month.'

They fell to talking of the war-cloud, as everybody did that day. It was
known from the special issues that Germany had formally declared war on
Russia, and had launched an ultimatum against France; that here and
there fighting had actually begun. The extent of our own implication was
not yet disclosed, but few doubted that the die was irrevocably cast.

'Will it make any difference to you up at the Museum?' inquired the
host. Enlisting had suddenly become a current topic.

'I don't see how it can,' replied Mr Lidmarsh, with regret expressed
very largely in his tone. 'At my age--I've turned thirty-nine, though
you mightn't think it--I'm afraid there would be no earthly chance of
being accepted even if the war lasted a year.'

'A year,' repeated the blind man thoughtfully.

'Well, of course, that's an absurdly outside limit. Mrs Lidmarsh comes
of a military family, and she has it privately from an aunt, whose
daughter is engaged to the nephew of a staff officer, that the Russian
commander-in-chief has sent a map of Germany to Lord Kitchener with the
words "Christmas Day" written across Berlin. Naturally everyone at the
War Office can guess what that means!'

Carrados nodded politically. Every second person whom he had met that
day had a string leading direct to Whitehall.

'Vangoor would go like a shot if they'd raise a Foreign Legion. But of
course--Then there's only old Byles--So I'm afraid that we shall have to
carry on as usual. And, after all, I don't know that it isn't the most
patriotic thing to do. People will want distraction more than ever--not
hectic gaiety: no one would dream of that, but simple, rational
amusement. Soldiers on leave will need entertainment and somewhere to
pass their time. A museum--'

Mr Carrados got out his flints and the curator brightened up, but
something was plainly on his mind. He hemmed and hawed his intention to
confide half a dozen times before the plunge was taken.

There's one thing I should like to tell you about, Mr Munroe, although
in a sense I'm--well, I won't say bound to secrecy, but confidentially
placed.'

'Of course anything that you might say--' encouraged his auditor,
discreetly occupied with the cigars.

'Yes, yes; I'm sure of that. And you have been so extremely kind
and--er--reciprocal and would, I know, be deeply interested in the find
that--well, I feel that if you went away without my saying anything and
you afterwards--perhaps when you are back in America--read of what we
had been doing, you would think that in the circumstances I had not been
quite--eh? Certainly, I know that I should in your place.'

'A find,' commented Mr Carrados, with no very great hope in that
direction--'a find is always exciting, isn't it?'

'Well, perhaps I spoke prematurely in the fullest sense--though
something we undoubtedly shall find--Did you ever hear of the golden
coffin of Epiovanus?'

'I'm afraid,' admitted the other, 'that I never even heard of Epiovanus
himself. Stay though--doesn't Roger of Wimborne mention something of the
sort in his _Chronicle_?'

'The tradition of an early British chief or king being buried in a gold
coffin seems to have been curiously persistent, and that would go to
give it a certain degree of credibility. Personally, I take it _cum
grano_, I am quite prepared for a gold-mounted coffin or a coffin
containing certain priceless gold adornments or treasure of gold coin. I
question if the richest tribe could at that time disclose sufficient
gold to fashion a solid case of the size required.'

'There was fairly extensive gold coinage at that period, and then the
metal practically disappears from the mints for the next thousand
years,' suggested Carrados.

'It having gone into the manufacture of royal coffins? I should like to
think so, for we believe that we are in fact on the track of something
of the kind.'

'You are?' exclaimed the sympathetic listener. 'That would be
great--real unique, I suppose. But I don't quite take it home, you
know.' Actually he was only bridging conversation out of politeness to a
guest. All the treasure of the Indies was of less interest than
Vangoor's moves just then.

'Perhaps it sounds too good to be true, but Vangoor is thoroughly
convinced, and he is exceptionally well up on the subject and has a
veritable craze for digging.'

'Go on,' said Carrados mechnically. For one concentrated moment he even
forget his American citizenship in the blinding inspiration that cleft
without warning, shapeless but at the same time essentially complete,
into his mind. 'I'm tremendously intrigued.'

'Nothing is known of Epiovanus beyond the existence of a unique copper
coin reading EPIOV. REX. But among the country-people back in the
valleys here--the peasants and labourers in whose names you can trace a
Saxon ancestry--you will often get a shamefaced admission that they have
"heard tell" from their grandfathers of a golden coffin containing the
bones of a great chief. But where? That was the difficulty, Mr Munroe.
But, to cut short a long story--nearly two thousand years long, in
fact--I may say that we have at last linked up the golden coffin legend
with Epiovanus, Epiovanus with this part of the land, and now, finally,
Vangoor has established that the solitary mound on Headlam Height is
undoubtedly an early British sepulchural barrow of very unusual size and
importance.'

'Headlam Height?'

'It is a small, rugged promontory a mile or two along the coast here.
The barrow is almost on the edge of the land, for the cliff has been
falling away for ages--indeed, in another fifty years or less the
tumulus would have gone over and whatever it contains been dumped into
the sea.'

'And you have opened it?'

'We have made a start. There was considerable difficulty in fixing up a
reasonable arrangement at first. You would think it a simple and
harmless enough undertaking, but there was the lord of the manor to be
approached, the landlord to be got round, and the farmer--well, he had
to be bought over, and I am sorry to say that Vangoor in his scientific
zeal has in the end promised him the greater part of his own share.'

'Of the golden coffin?' remarked Mr Carrados. 'A very weighty argument.'

'Well, of course, we should hope to retain the best things for the
Museum, but there would have to be some pecuniary adjustment. If it
turns out at all as we anticipate, the find would create a stir beyond
anything of the kind before--at least, it would have done if it hadn't
been for this wretched war.'

'It opens dazzling possibilities,' admitted the blind man. 'Have you
found anything yet?'

'Nothing important but plenty of encouraging trifles--burnt bones and
other remains of a funeral feast, fragments of pottery, and so on. We
have only been at work a fortnight, and partly from motives of economy,
but more because of the extreme care that must be taken, Vangoor has
done nearly all the work himself.'

'Driving a tunnel from the shore side?' suggested Mr Carrados.

'Why, yes,' admitted the curator, looking rather surprised, 'but surely
you haven't heard it spoken of?'

'Not at all,' Carrados hastened to assure him. 'Merely an interested
guess.'

'I hoped it wasn't getting about generally or we shall have all sorts of
prying busybodies up there. As it is, we have railed off the part and
placarded it "Dangerous"--which it really is. But it struck me as
curious you saying that, because at first we thought of making a
sectional cutting right down. Then it was only after trials that Vangoor
found the seaward side the safest to tunnel in.'

When Carrados decided that there was nothing more of value to be
learned--a few aimless remarks elicited this--the conversation
imperceptibly slid off to other and less personal themes. The wary
investigator had no wish to stir the suggestion that he was curious
about Vangoor, and, indeed, the impression that Mr Lidmarsh took away
with him was that his host's real hobby in life was the promulgation of
phonetic reform.

But what had before been merely a general precautionary suspicion on the
blind man's part had now fined down to a very definite conviction, and
from whichever side he approached the problem the road led to Headlam
Height His first impulse was to investigate that secluded spot at once,
but a moment's reflection suggested that the chance of encountering
Vangoor there was too substantial to be risked at that stage of the
quest. Mr Byles's rather burlesque intervention now began to wear
another and a more important face. Was it possible that the disgruntled
caretaker knew anything definite of what was going on at Headlam Height?

'This is your affair, Parkinson, and you ought to know all that I do,'
said Mr Carrados five minutes later, as he retold Lidmarsh's disclosure.
'On the one hand we have a harmless Dutch scientist, wholly taken up
with investigating a lonely burial mound; on the other a dangerous
German spy, constructing to some hostile end a retreat that directly
overlooks the Channel while it is itself cunningly hidden from every
point of land. What do you think about it?'

'I apprehend that we ought to be prepared for the latter eventuality,
sir,' replied Parkinson sagely.

'I quite agree with you,' assented his master, with all the air of
receiving a valuable suggestion. 'We will stroll round by the Market
Square, as any casual visitors might before turning in. If we encounter
Mr Byles it may lead to something further. If not, another time will
do.'

They made their leisurely perambulation, but nothing came of it. Not
only did they fail to encounter Mr Byles but the small curtained upper
windows that inevitably suggested his modest suite of rooms displayed no
light. The two outstanding hypotheses had to be dismissed, for William
had never been an early sleeper in the past, while the public-houses had
now been closed some time. Plainly there was nothing left but to retrace
their steps.

'Tomorrow morning we will come again,' arranged Mr Carrados.
'Fortunately the Museum will be open as usual, so that William cannot
very well elude us. Afterwards ... I expect it will be Headlam Height.'

'Tomorrow' was the last day of peace--Monday, the 3rd of August, and
thereby a bank holiday. 'Five Nations at War', 'Invasion of France', and
'British Naval Reserves Mobilized', ran the burden of the morning
papers. It was no longer a question of peace trembling in the balance:
it was merely the detail of when it would kick the beam.

But 'Business as usual' was now held to be the thing; and Castlemouth's
business being largely that of providing amusement for its visitors,
there was very little indication of stress or crisis on its joyous sands
or along its glittering front that day. At the railway station perhaps
the outward trains were crowded and the inward ones were light, while in
every chatting group a single word prevailed, but so far Castlemouth was
resolved to take war peacefully.

'I believe, sir,' reported Parkinson, as they crossed the Market
Square--'I believe that the place is closed.'

'The Museum, you mean?'

'Yes, sir. The outer doors are certainly shut.'

'Curious. I made a point of asking about today. Mr Lidmarsh was
explicit.'

'There is Mr Lidmarsh, sir. He has just come up. He is fastening a paper
to the door.'

Carrados's heart gave a thud, but his pace did not alter, and the
curator, looking up, judged the meeting accidental.

'Oh, Mr Munroe,' he exclaimed, 'this is a shocking business. Have you
heard?'

'Not a solitary word,' replied the blind man. 'What is it?'

'Poor Byles. He was found dead on the shore this morning.'

'Where?' dropped from Mr Carrados's lips. A good deal might depend on
that.

'Just below Headlam Height, I understand. "_De mortuis_", and all that,
you know, but the man certainly had himself largely to blame, I fear. He
wasn't supposed to know anything about our work up there, but he had
evidently got wind of something. He was a curious, secretive old fellow,
and, as I read it, he went up there in the dark last night, and, prying
about, he either slid on the slippery grass or did not see the edge. And
late at night Byles was sometimes just a little--you understand?
However, we have closed the Museum today as a mark of respect. But of
course if you want to go in--'

'Thank you,' replied Mr Carrados, 'but I guess not. I was thinking....
Where have they put him?'

'In the mortuary close by. He's fearfully knocked about. He had a couple
of rooms up there'--indicating the windows Parkinson had observed the
night before--'but he has no wife or people; and in any case the
mortuary is the proper place. There'll have to be an inquest, of course;
I've sent Vangoor to make inquiries now.'

'I was thinking'--he had undoubtedly been thinking, but he had not yet
had time to review every possibility--'this Byles did me a service as we
left the Museum on Saturday--saved me perhaps from what might have been
a nasty fall--and a few friendly words passed afterwards. And now....
Dear me; how sad! ... Well, I'm not up in the customs of your
sarcophagi, but if a trifling bouquet--Why, I've a notion that I'd like
to.'

This impressed Mr Lidmarsh with the sentimentality of masculine
America--an attribute he had frequently heard it credited with.

'Why, of course,' he replied, 'there could be no difficulty about that
if you wish it. But did you mean--right now?' The last two words were in
the nature of a spontaneous tribute to the visitor's nationality.

'Sure. You see, I might have moved on tomorrow or the day after. There
seems to be a flower store open that we passed just back--'

Even as he purchased the sheaf of lilies to lay on William Byles's
shroud, Carrados was not altogether free from an illusion of sharing a
rather exquisite joke with that mordant individual. How would William
have regarded the touching act on the part of his old employer? By
whatever means it reached his insight the blind man's mind immediately
envisioned the flashlight of a tight-closed humid eye and a nose and
finger placed in close conjunction. But, in truth, Carrados had felt the
necessity of investigating further, and no other excuse occurred to him
at once. He could hardly affect that he wished to see the doorkeeper
once more.... The sudden intuition that Parkinson was tentatively
regarding a wreath of white moss-roses hastened their departure.

'One curious feature is the time this must have happened,' remarked Mr
Lidmarsh as they walked on. 'He was found by the merest chance early
this morning--almost as soon as it was light, in fact--and his clothing
was not wet. That shows that he could not have fallen down before
midnight at any rate. Now, whatever possessed the man to be there at
that hour when nothing could be seen? He had the whole of Sunday on his
hands if he wished to look about.'

'Singular, isn't it?' assented Carrados. 'No one saw him up there, I
take it?'

'Oh, no--at least we have heard of no one. Who would be likely to be
there? Even Vangoor doesn't dig on Sunday--he wouldn't think it right.'

The mortuary proved to be quite near--a corner of the market hall in
fact. Mr Lidmarsh procured the key from the police station, with no more
formality than a neighbourly greeting on either side, and Carrados was
free to perform his thoughtful office.

The body lay, outlined beneath a single covering, on one of the two
stone benches that the place contained. On the other were arranged the
dead man's clothes, with the few trumpery belongings that his pockets
had yielded set out beside them.

'They told me that his watch, purse, and keys were taken for safety to
the station,' remarked their guide, as Carrados's understanding hands
moved lightly to and fro. 'The rest is of no consequence.'

'String, pipe, tobacco-box, matches, small folding measure, odd
cuff-link, silver mariner's compass, handkerchief,' checked off the
leisurely fingers. 'How stereotyped we he-things are: my own pockets
would show almost the same collection--in a liberal sense, of course.'

'It is rather odd about the book,' volunteered the curator, pointing to
a worn volume of pocket size. It was lying a little apart, and
apparently the gesture was for Carrados's eyes to follow--and strangely
enough they did seem to follow, for he picked up the book unfalteringly.
'It was still tightly held in Byles's hand when he was found. Now, why
should the man be holding a book in his hand--one that would obviously
go into his pocket--on a dark night? If there was any mystery about the
case I suppose this ought to be one of the clues that those wonderful
detectives we read about, but never meet in real life, would unravel the
secret by.'

Mr Carrados laughed appreciatively as he turned the pages of the book.

'_Stories from the Studios of Paris_,' he read aloud. 'At all events
this throws some light on the literary calibre of our departed
friend.... The only thing that would seem to be missing from the average
pocket is a pen-knife.'

'Pen-knife?' repeated Mr Lidmarsh looking about. 'To be sure he had a
knife generally; I've seen it often enough. Well, I don't suppose it
matters--a shilling at the outside.'

Everything had been seen--everything except the chief 'exhibit' lying
beneath the merciful coverlet. The curator understood that his new
friend relied chiefly on a highly-trained sense of touch--he had
marvelled more than once during this short intercourse at what it
told--but he was hardly prepared to see Mr Carrados raise the sheet and
begin to pass his hand over the--his own eyes perforce went
elsewhere--over the dreadful thing which the day before had been William
Byles's face.

'I think,' said the blind man, turning away suddenly, 'that this is
rather too much--' His left hand came into contact with his attendant's
sleeve and Parkinson felt himself detained by a robust grasp. 'Is there
anywhere, Mr Lidmarsh, where ... a glass of water?'

'Yes, yes.' Almost with a feeling of self-reproach that he had allowed
the mishap Mr Lidmarsh was off to the nearest house. He ought to have
warned....

'The book, Parkinson,' said Carrados in his usual easy tone, and before
Parkinson (who would carry his own blend of simplicity and shrewdness to
the grave) quite knew what was happening, _Stories from the Studios of
Paris_ had disappeared into his master's coat pocket.

'I don't think that there is anything more to detain us here,' remarked
the strategist dispassionately. 'We may as well await our friend
outside.' He closed the door, locked it, and took out the key in
readiness. When Mr Lidmarsh returned with the water he found Carrados
seated on a market truck.

'I am glad you came away from the ghastly place,' he declared. 'I ought
to have thought of that.' Still accusing himself of some remission, he
insisted on accompanying the two half-way through the town and hoped
that they might meet again.

As they stood there, exchanging these amiable formalities, an
acquaintance of the curator's passed along on the other side of the road
and could not forbear to give the news.

'The Germans have invaded Belgium,' he called across. 'They've just got
it at the post office. I bet that means we're in the soup!'

                                 *

'What happened, Parkinson, is as clear as day,' explained Mr Carrados.
'The important thing now is to decide what to do ourselves.'

They were seated in the private sitting-room at 'Abbotsford,' a table
between them and on the table, with Mr Carrados's eerie fingers never
long away from it, the copy of _Stories from the Studios of Paris_.

'We know from Byles's own lips that he only had a general suspicion of
Vangoor's business here. Doubtless last night he watched the secluded
cottage, and when Jan crept out about midnight he followed him to
Headlam Height. Or, of course, he may have gone there earlier and
waited. Evidently he did not know what he was going to see or he would
have gone better prepared. As it was he had no pencil and he had no
proper paper.... We are overdue at Headlam Height, Parkinson.'

'Yes, sir,' acquiesced the model confederate.

'Obviously there is some ground from which Vangoor's signals can be
seen, carefully as he has planned his burrow. Byles saw something, and
recognizing the importance of what he saw he tried to take it down.
These cuts and pricks made with a pocket-knife (which we shall doubtless
find up there) on the covers of this book represent quite intelligently
a rendering of morse. What that meant he did not know; what this means
we do not know, but Byles has done his bit and passed on the
responsibility to us.'

'I think I appreciate the obligation, sir. Mr Vangoor should not be
allowed to remain at large.'

'That is the difficulty. We can have a spy snapped up and possibly
hanged for murder, or, what would be simpler, he might slip on Headlam
Height--in the same way that William Byles did. But we must not lose
sight of the fact that the man has been signalling out to sea. That
definitely suggests a submarine--a submarine lying off Pentland Harbour,
full of battleships. What has he signalled, and, if we give him rope,
_what will he signal next_?' The blind man came to his feet and strode
to the window, where before him lay the broad waters of the Channel
still carrying their wealth of shipping--the panorama he would never see
again. Seldom before had Parkinson known his master so visibly concerned
as he stood there in the hot sunlight, moodily beating his palm with the
thin edge of the book. 'Here in my hand are the very words he
flashed--the key to every other message he may send--and we cannot read
a letter of it. The system is capable of a thousand changes and ten
thousand shifts of code. And the time is slipping by. It's maddening,
maddening....Suggest something, Parkinson, there's a good fellow.'

Parkinson might be conscious of a complete mental destitution at that
moment, but he had never yet failed to comply with an order reasonably
given.

'I recollect, sir, reading about a Bristol baker who murdered his wife
because she had been communicating with a young gentleman by means of
secret marks on the rolls delivered at the house. He discovered--'

'Enough!' exclaimed Mr Carrados, making for the writing-table with his
indecision vanished. 'That's it. You were inspired, Parkinson. Clifton
Baker, of course!'

'Thank you, sir,' replied Parkinson, much gratified.

In those days the name of Clifton Baker appeared on the frosted glass of
the outer door belonging to a small top-floor office in Chancery Lane.
There was nothing more to indicate who Clifton Baker was or the nature
of the business carried on there. Few callers appeared at the dingy
office, but those who did almost invariably left instructions to
proceed, and as each order meant a substantial cheque eventually,
Clifton might be assumed to be not so unsuccessful after all.

In almost every case the new client experienced a mild shock on opening
his business. Generally he had been sent there by a firm of responsible
solicitors, and the matter on which he required assistance was
confidential, extremely technical, and beyond the capacity of any other
specialist. He expected to see--well, at all events he did not expect a
slight, sallow-complexioned, glad-eyed, deep-browed young woman who
dressed rather skittishly and struck him as being more than a shade
rattle-pated. He might have left the commission somewhat dubiously, but
he did leave it, and it was duly carried out: done to time, done as
required, and done perfectly.

At the age of fifteen Clifton Baker had made up her mind--a considerable
achievement of itself in that era. At twenty-five she spoke all the most
useful living languages and wrote the four most important dead ones.
Eight letters (which she never by any chance used) after her
hermaphroditic name were some evidence of a scientific grounding, while
the recital of her attainments in the higher planes of mathematics made
elderly professors who were opposed to the movement ooze profusely in
the region of the collar. Then chance, in the shape of a baffling
testamentary puzzle, threw destiny across her path, and on the
assumption that there was room for one professional lady cryptologer in
the world Clifton took an office and passed the word round among her
friends.

Up to that time the girl had never really done her hair, and she
regarded boots merely as things to protect the feet. Suddenly it dawned
on her that she was considered plain and that she diffused an atmosphere
of intellectual frost. A morbid terror of being thought learned seemed
from that moment to possess Clifton, and to make up for her neglected
youth she began to outflap the veriest flapper in a stern resolve not to
be taken seriously. Had she been less brilliantly efficient it might
have ruined her business; had she been less impossibly absurd it would
have spoiled her pleasure, but the two things simply antidoted one
another. Everybody smiled indulgently and said how typical a product of
the age Miss Baker was, and how hopeless it would be, except in this
London of nineteen-dash, to look for such another.

Thus it came about that Mr Greatorex, dutifully 'standing by' on Monday
afternoon, was startled to receive a duplicated telegram as follows:

Find Clifton Baker and get her here on any terms by
breakfast-time tomorrow. Report progress. Carrados.

'Whew!' ejaculated Annesley, who was not altogether ignorant of the
lady's personality, 'that puts the top-knot on the pan-lid with a
vengeance! Bank holiday, too, ecog!' He went through the various rooms
of the almost empty house vainly bleating for suggestions. 'Where on
earth am I to find Clifton Baker, on this of all days, Auntie?'

The housekeeper looked up over the top of her reading glasses a trifle
dourly. She had a niece at school somewhere near Dinant....

'What should you want Miss Baker for?' she asked.

'I don't want her; I fear and shun her. But Mr Carrados does. He's just
wired.'

'Oh, that will be all right then. Well, my laddie, I can't tell you
where Miss Baker is, but I can tell you this; if she's not verra hard at
work somewhere she's somewhere verra hard at play.'

It was at breakfast-time that Greatorex delivered her. Mr Carrados was
standing in the loggia of the Hotel Beverley when a not unfamiliar sound
claimed his attention. It announced to him the arrival of his own
touring car, and the next moment a squeal of maidenly delight indicated
that Miss Baker had espied him.

'You monster!' she exclaimed vivaciously, while a dozen yards away. 'To
inveigle me into travelling all night with that delightfully
wicked-looking young secretary of yours! I declare I don't know what
people will say when I get back.'

'I thought it better to bring her down by car, sir,' explained Annesley
in an aside of moody resignation. 'I only dug her out at something past
eleven last night, and all the trains are at sixes and sevens just now.'

'Quite right,' assented Carrados. 'I suppose you can be ready for
breakfast in about ten minutes, Miss Baker?'

Clifton drooped one eyelid thoughtfully as she considered this--a device
she had lately taken up.

'Do I really require breakfast?' she confided to the hotel front
generally. 'Mr Greatorex was most attentive all the way. He insisted on
stopping at a charmingly romantic cabman's shelter somewhere, at five
o'clock this morning, and we had a surfeit of hot cocoa and currant
buns. I simply can't imagine why he should take such enormous care of
small me.'

'I think I'll go up and wash, sir,' announced Mr Greatorex abruptly, 'if
you don't require me just now.'

'Not until after breakfast,' said Carrados. 'In the meanwhile Miss Baker
and I will talk business.'

Breakfast at a little table in the Fountain Court provided an
opportunity (the discovery of filleted sole _à la Normande_ restored
Clifton's appetite), for the hotel was no longer full....

'Yes, I see,' nodded the girl at intervals, forgetting to be coy, and
Carrados deployed the facts. When he had finished she held out her hand
for the transcript of the message that he had already made.

'H'm. It looks rather hopeless, doesn't it, Mr Carrados?' she remarked
professionally. 'When do you want it by?'

'Three o'clock if possible,' he replied brazenly. 'Six o'clock in any
case.'

Clifton gave a little shriek of young-ladylike dismay.

'Mercy! Today?' she exclaimed. 'Why, you dear creature, do you know--'

'I know what you can do when you like,' he got in.

'And I know that perhaps it can't be done at all, sir.'

'And I know that Edgar Allan Poe said--'

'He said nothing about doing it in six hours.' Miss Baker had had that
celebrated dictum quoted to her quite often enough to be able to
dispense with it. 'Are you sure that you have even got this morse the
right way up?'

'Yes, I can guarantee you that. But the message certainly begins
incomplete and it probably ends so.'

'In German, we assume? Oh, yes; I think it must be. Well--'

'I knew you would. My sitting-room here is at your disposal. You'll find
most things you may require already there. Anything else--'

'By the way, was there no later message sent? What was the man doing
last night?

'No. I have him watched now, of course. Last night after leaving the
Museum he was at Pentland until quite late, and returning he went home
and stayed there.'

'Then I should like a full list of the warships in Pentland Harbour,
recent sailings, and those expected, please. The "Navy List" I suppose
you have here?'

'Good girl!' smiled Carrados approvingly. 'You shall have it if it's
humanly possible. If I am caught in the act and my motives doubted I
shall certainly be shot at dawn--and you will be transported.... Will
they insist on blindfolding me, I wonder? Probably.... Regulations, you
know, Miss Baker. Nothing else?'

'No, thank you.' Clifton still wriggled about the open door of the
private room. 'Well--please keep Mr Greatorex away while I am busy,
won't you? He will be sure to want to bring me ices and things like
that; he's so absurd, poor boy!'

So much for that particular Clifton Baker. About three o'clock Carrados
tapped lightly on his own door and a very faint voice bade him enter.
Clifton was lying prostrate on the couch, a napkin round her head, and
the reek of eau-de-Cologne filling the room. A single written sheet of
paper was on the table near her--but there were more than a hundred
others, torn across, littering the floor. Without a word she picked up
the single sheet and, rattling it slightly to call his attention, held
it towards him.

'You have?' he exclaimed, scarcely daring to believe it. 'You are really
a wonderful woman, Clifton. This is splendid.' Neatly set out on the
paper were three separate details--the alphabet in morse code as she had
finally resolved it; the message William Byles had intercepted
(including three textual errors to be discounted), as it was sent in
German; and the same rendered into English.

'"-- -- -- instruction. Your presence not yet suspected. _Virulent,
Delhi,_ and _Telemachus_ left today for unknown. _Westmorland_ for
repairs expected tonight. Supply arrangements stand, VJ.372 will be
trawling -- -- --"' he read aloud. 'Yes; we have it now. Mr Vangoor's
bulletin tonight should be more interesting still.'

'I think you really are a wonderful man, Mr Carrados,' retorted Clifton,
watching his shifting fingers as he touched her firm, bold handwriting
word after word without a pause. 'I suppose you always get your way? I
wonder what you are going to do with me now?'

'I am going to prescribe a cup of tea at once, an early dinner, and
twelve hours' good solid sleep after all this excitement. Tomorrow I
shall pack you off back to town by the car again, with Mr Greatorex to
beguile the way.'

'Oh, please, please, please, Mr Max!' wailed Clifton in appealing tones.
'Can't you leave Mr Greatorex here and come instead? I should feel ever
so much safer with you in these dreadful times!' But Mr Max laughed
indulgently and shook his head. He had heard Miss Baker at work before.

'Not yet, I'm afraid,' he said. 'I am here for another fish, only
Vangoor came along. And while I remember'--he took a slip of tinted
paper from his wallet and held it out--'I hope that will be all right.'

'Oh, Mr Carrados,' she tittered. 'Ought I to, really? It doesn't seem at
all like business with _you_! I hope no one will think--'

'I should like you to--it's certainly well earned,' he said. 'But, of
course,' he added maliciously, 'if you prefer the satisfaction of
serving your country for nothing you can always burn the cheque.'

'Burn it!' shrieked Clifton, scrambling the paper into her handbag. 'And
my visit to the Cosmo-Croxtons in Scotland only ten days off! Why, you
delightfully opportune being, this means four new frocks to me!'

'Well, make the most of them,' he advised, a trifle grimly. 'There won't
be any country-house parties next year.'

'Why ever not?'

'When you wake up tomorrow you will find that we are at war. Before long
most of your fair friends will be wearing white caps and aprons--or
black dresses.'

                                  *

Carrados had quite intended to climb up to Headlam Height on Monday
afternoon, he had fully determined to do so on Tuesday morning, but each
time the more important post lay elsewhere. When, therefore, taking
Parkinson with him, he turned his inquiring footsteps in that direction
after leaving Miss Baker, it was his first reconnaissance.

'Admirably chosen, Parkinson,' he remarked as they made the circuit of
the acre or so of grass and heather that comprised the Height. 'No path
or roadway near; cut off from Castlemouth's view by cliffs, and not a
house or habitation in sight anywhere.... And this thing may really be
an early British grave for all that we can say.'

'Yes, sir,' agreed Parkinson. 'I have always understood that the early
natives of these parts were peculiar in their habits. But if I may
mention it, sir, the ground here is very broken and there is little
beyond a crevice, almost a yard wide, between us and the edge.'

'Quite right,' assented the other, turning back; 'we must be careful.
The British Empire doesn't exactly hang on us today, but a British
ironclad may. I suppose that crevice was the unfortunate William's
retreat--there seems no other cover that would serve up here. We have a
better arrangement for tonight. Now for the excavation.'

A couple of rough balks of timber across the entrance were the only
barrier. The tumulus itself rose to nearly thirty feet, and the cutting
was sufficiently roomy for a tall man to stand in.

'Are we to imagine that our enthusiastic friend contemplated driving an
unpropped tunnel clean through?' reflected Mr Carrados, touching the
loose earth sides. 'What does the view seaward give us, Parkinson?'

'There is a flat-topped rock visible a little way out at sea, and,
farther away, the extremity of Pentland Rump--as I understand it is
designated, sir.' Privately, Parkinson thought the name lacking in
delicacy, and he wished to make it clear that the expression was none of
his.

'Aye. And the extremity of Pentland Rump and the flat-topped rock line
this point of course. Ah, what have we here?'

Evidently the excavator's tools, piled at the far end of the tunnel and
covered with tarpaulin: a spade, a pick, a riddle, a wheelbarrow, rope,
and the usual odds and ends--that was all; no, there remained a wooden
tripod, such as may serve a score of uses, lying with the rest--a tripod
with rough, substantial wooden legs but a nicely-finished metal top.
Smooth metal is rather pleasant to the touch, and the blind man's hand
lingered on its construction thoughtfully.

'We must put all these back just as they were,' he observed, busying
himself. 'Parkinson!'

There was no answer for a moment; then Parkinson appeared at the
entrance to the tunnel.

'I was looking out beyond the mound, sir. I felt apprehensive.... There
is someone coming.'

Carrados replaced the last tool and rearranged the covering.

'Von Groot?' he asked quietly.

'Yes, sir.'

The two timbers fell into their proper places; everything was as they
had found it. They stood, hidden from the land side by the mass of earth
rising above them.

'How far off is he?' said Carrados.

'Nearly half a mile, sir. I saw him with the glasses on the skyline of
the hill we had to cross. That means ten minutes yet.'

'He may have seen you also.'

'I was careful to keep in the shadow of the mound. I don't think you
need entertain that, sir.'

'It doesn't matter.' For once the blind man's voice had lost its wonted
suaveness. 'I've made a hash of it this time, Parkinson. I took it for
granted that he'd not venture on anything before it was night again. We
were prepared to deal with that, but he's going to steal a march on us.
He isn't waiting for the dark--he's going to heliograph. We can stop
him, of course,' he went on, sensing the unspoken question; 'we shall
have to stop him. But we lose the message and whatever hangs upon it. No
matter how plausibly we put him off it now, after finding us up here he
won't risk it again--not on the top of William Byles's affair.'

'Excuse me, sir,' volunteered Parkinson, 'but I see no reason why we
should not attempt to obtain the message still.'

'We--how?' demanded Carrados sharply.

'I understand, sir, that the system is merely a succession of long and
short flashes of a mirror, and that one may commit it to paper without
any understanding of the meaning.'

'Quite so--as William doubtless did. But where are you going to see it
from?'

Parkinson's backward nod indicated the crevice on the very edge of the
sheer precipice. 'I think it might succeed, sir.'

'No, no,' exclaimed Carrados, with a sharp pang of misgiving in his
voice; 'it would be madness in broad daylight. Besides, here am I--'

'There are suitable clumps of gorse a little way back, sir. I anticipate
that you would be quite safe there, or I would not suggest it, sir. And
lying in the crevice I could watch through the grass and heather.'

'I can't allow it,' insisted Carrados, moved by the horror of what he
saw impending. 'The man discovered Byles there ever in the dark, and we
know how that encounter ended. No, Parkinson, I won't have you
sacrificed in the forlorn hope of patching up my bungle.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Parkinson, without a hair's deviation
from his invariable tone of dignified respect, 'but I was not thinking
of you--or of myself. I understand that we are on the point of war, sir,
and that if we lose this message it may involve a misfortune to our
arms. And I must remind you, sir, that yesterday you described this
affair as mine.'

'By heaven, you have me there!' exclaimed his master, in an access of
fine emotion. 'Go if you must--and God go with you!'

'The gorse, sir.' Parkinson took his arm and began to hurry him across
the slope that led from the Height to the rolling land behind. 'I must
be satisfied that you are safe there first.'

'Not so fast.' Carrados checked his pace to the deliberate walk at which
he tried the unfamiliar. 'I may need to know this ground again.' His
hand went to a pocket and came out with something in it. 'You are the
one to have this now.'

'I would rather not, sir', if I may say so,' declared Parkinson with
naive reluctance. 'I have never discharged a firearm in my life and the
consequences might be unpropitious.' So Carrados retained the weapon,
and a moment later he was lying in a natural bower of undergrowth,
listening to the swish and crackle of Parkinson's diminishing footsteps.

It was perhaps three minutes before any sound other than the cheeping of
a linnet or the rasping of a dead leaf on its bough reached the
straining ears. Then, away on the left, Carrados heard the approaching
beat of a heavy foot. There was little chance of reading any of the
subtler indications on that luxuriant carpet, but the blind listener
interpreted haste and the strain of an alert caution. The intruder
passed within ten yards of the unsuspected lair--within easy
pistol-shot, and the steady hand went again to the pocket, but this time
it came out empty.

From the direction of the mound no sound came through; the day was
drowsy, with occasional puffs of warm air and the smell of honey, and
time began to hang like lead.

'He must get on, from every point of view,' argued Carrados to pass the
seconds. 'Five minutes to fix the rig, ten more to send his message,
five to pack up. Heavens! it seems an hour already.' He touched the
fingers of his watch and found that barely twelve minutes had gone. 'But
that's only if the submarine is here. He may have to wait.... At any
rate, he hasn't spotted Parkinson at the outset or I should have heard
something.'

And then, as if his action had been a continuation of the unspoken
words, Carrados was on his feet and racing across the glacis. He had
heard 'something,' and that sound the echo of his worst forebodings, for
the sharp crack of a pistol had whipped the flagging afternoon--and that
could mean one thing only. It was with this return in view that the
blind man had marked his way, and he covered the ground with confidence,
making directly for the barrow. When the difference of the air against
his face told him that he was by it he dropped into a walk and moved
with caution. Beyond it he was in full view, and the sheer drop hardly
twenty yards away. Everything was now poised on the edge of chance.

'Damn!' came the low murmur to his ear. '_Ein anderer!_'

It was not the time to ask for explanations. Carrados--conscious even
then of the irony of the phrase--had to take the risk. As he once
stopped to explain to Monsieur Dompierre, upon an occasion less hurried
but quite as tense, he aimed by sound and practised round a watch. He
fired now into the centre of the 'Damn!' and on the overhanging lip of
the cliff there was a little scurry of movement among the loose stones
and earth. He did not fire again. He waited, listening....

'Parkinson!' he called, without moving from the spot. 'Parkinson, are
you--'

There was no response. The disturbed sea-gulls wheeled overhead, raising
a plaintive clamour at the violation of their homes; a string of swift
shorebirds cleft a zigzag course right out to sea; at his feet the
untroubled bees continued in their humble toil.

'Gone!' whispered the blind man to himself. 'Gone, and I'm left alone.
The best fellow--Good heavens!'

From the bowels of the earth, apparently, a wild echoing sound had come
with startling suddenness--a sound so truculent and formless that it
baffled perception. The next moment it revealed itself: a human being
had sneezed with appalling vigour.

'Parkinson!' exclaimed Carrados, dropping on hands and knees and
crawling to the crevice. 'Where the devil are you?'

'I'm down here, sir,' replied the welcome voice from somewhere below. 'I
was unable to reply when you called before as I was on the point of
sneezing. The dust, sir--'

'Wait; don't try to get out,' directed his master. 'I'll get that rope.'

It was the rope that Mr Vangoor had thoughtfully provided to give an air
of conviction to his labours. By its aid Parkinson was soon hauled to
safety. Once there he looked apprehensively around.

'Has anything happened to Mr Vangoor, sir?' 'Yes,' replied Carrados. 'He
was too talkative. If you do not see anything of him about we must
conclude that he has gone down the same way William Byles went.... What
happened to _you?_'

'Unfortunately, when he had finished his message the gentleman seemed to
be looking my way. I endeavoured to obliterate myself more thoroughly
and evidently attracted his attention. I infer that he was rather
nervous, sir, for he shot at me without saying a word.'

'If only he'd had the sense to do that in my case we might both be in
Kingdom Come now.'

'Yes, sir? I may say that I didn't like it, sir, and as he fired I made
a considerable effort to get down still lower. I imagine that something
must have given, for the next moment I found myself wedged in some
twenty feet down. I believe that the gentleman was much concerned what
to do next as he could not discover me.... What is that?'

'Back!' cried Carrados. 'The cliff is going!'

The cliff, as Mr Lidmarsh had remarked, had been going for
centuries--going by inches, by feet, or by yards. Possibly William
Byles's activity had started a movement that Parkinson's struggles had
consummated; perhaps, even, the pistol-shots had vibrated a responsive
tremor. Now the cliff face--all the ground beyond the fissure--began to
fall rigidly away from Headlam Height, as a ladder falls; then, as its
base gave way, to change and to collapse, in hundreds of tons of
shattered rock, upon the beach. In Castlemouth it was thought that the
war had begun.

'Excellent,' remarked Carrados, when voices could be heard again. 'That
should save much inconvenient inquiry about Mr Vangoor's unfortunate
end. I suppose, Parkinson, that any notes you made are down there also?'

'No, sir. I managed to get the notebook back into my pocket. I trust
that my efforts will have been adequate.'

'That is easily proved. If you really have got the message, Parkinson,
you will deserve a knighthood.'

'Thank you, sir, but I hope you won't mention it to anyone. It would be
very uncongenial to me to become notorious in any way.'

Carrados laughed as he took the notebook. Then he sat down at the base
of the mound, and with Miss Baker's key before him he began to test the
notation.

'Yes,' he reported presently, 'you seem to have hit it off all right,
"_Kriegserklärung_" this begins.'

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

'It's in German of course--"War declaration". I'll give you the whole
thing in a few minutes.'

'You left your hat in the gorse, sir,' said Parkinson thoughtfully. 'I
will get it while you are engaged.'

'Thank you--do,' murmured Mr Carrados, again deep in the code. 'Now
what--oh, "_hafen_", of course.'

When Parkinson returned--he had taken the opportunity to wisp himself
down--Carrados was already on his feet and impatient to get away.

'We don't want to be here when the town comes out to find what the row
was about,' he explained. 'We are not going to appear in this,
Parkinson. We will make a wide detour--in fact, we may as well make
Pentland direct while we are about it.'

'Very well, sir.'

'The message--you only got two letters wrong, which was better than
William and less important, of course, as we have the code now. Well,
here it is:

Declaration of war midnight. _Inexorable_ leaves western harbour
one a.m. by Viking Channel and from Gnome Lightship will proceed S.S.W.
Rendezvous as arranged.

The _Inexorable_ it was to have been, Parkinson.'

'Yes, sir. What had we better do now, sir?'

'Nothing, practically. We have done. At Pentland I shall hand this over
to the naval authorities with so much explanation as they may desire. It
will then rest with them to do the doing. I venture to predict that
_Inexorable_ will not leave the western harbour at one a.m. by the
Viking Channel. At the same time I think that a rendezvous will be kept.
But so far as we are concerned it is _Finis_. You, Parkinson, have
already done your bit.'

'Thank you, sir,' replied Parkinson, entirely satisfied.





The Mystery of The Vanished Petition Crown


Max Carrados always seemed inclined to laugh quietly if anyone happened
to mention the curious disappearance of the Willington Petition Crown.
Why he should have been amused rarely came out at such times, perhaps
because it is not expedient for one private collector openly to accuse
another private collector of barefaced theft (whatever misgivings the
majority may secretly admit of one another's morals), but the extent of
his knowledge in the affair will emerge from the following pages.

As a specialist in Greek tetradrachms Carrados would naturally only have
a condescending interest in any of the non-classical branches of
numismatics, but it was an interest that drew him to every word of coin
news that appeared. As his delicate fingertips skimmed the morning paper
headings at breakfast one day they 'read' for him a line that promised
some entertainment, and the item was duly blue-pencilled for
consideration later. It was no effort for the blind man to pick out all
the essentials of the newspaper's contents in this way; he could even,
though not with the same facility, read the ordinary smaller type, but
where there was no special reason for this it was his custom to mark off
such paragraphs for his secretary's subsequent attention. This was in
the nature of their ordinary daily routine, and an hour later Greatorex
noticed and read aloud the following extract from the _Daily Record_:

'RARE COIN DISAPPEARS

'AUCTION ROOM SENSATION

'Collectors and dealers who forgathered at Messrs Lang & Leng's
well-known sale-rooms yesterday in the hope of bidding for an
exceptionally fine specimen of the celebrated Petition Crown of Charles
II were doomed to disappointment. When the lot in question was reached
and the coin was displayed at the tables it was discovered that
something was wrong. The Petition Crown, which had previously been on
view for several days and up to the hour of the sale, had disappeared
and a comparatively valueless coin of a somewhat similar type occupied
its numbered receptacle.

'Immediate search among the other lots, both sold and unsold, failed to
reveal any trace of the missing rarity and the whole affair is so far
shrouded in mystery.

'Piquancy is added to the incident by the fact that the last person to
see and handle the coin was a well-known lady journalist, who, however,
disclaims any numismatic cravings. After inspecting the coin merely as a
rare and valuable curiosity the lady in question returned the tray
containing it to the attendant in charge, who at once replaced it in the
cabinet. As already stated, when it was next required the crown had
vanished.

'The Petition Crown holds the auction record among English coins, an
example having realized £500 some years ago. It is generally stated that
only fifteen specimens of this excessively rare coin were ever struck,
and all but two or three are now in public collections and therefore out
of the reach of enthusiasts. The crown owes its name to the interesting
circumstances of its origin. The English engraver, Thomas Simon, having
been supplanted in Charles II's favour by his Dutch rival, Roettier, the
former put all his skill and genius into the creating of a super-coin,
which took the form of a crown piece, with the following quaint
inscription neatly engraved around the edge:

Thomas Simon most humbly prays your Majesty to compare this his tryall
piece with the Dutch, and if more truly drawn and embossd, more
gracefully ordered, and more accurately engraven, to relieve him.

'Sad to relate, although Simon's work is admittedly superior to that of
"the Dutch", his petition was in vain. Still worse, the royal patron of
the arts allowed his "most humble's" salary and working expenses for
several years to remain unpaid, so that after the engraver's death his
widow had also to "petition"--for £2,164 long overdue.'

'That's rather like another plant where a string of pearls was changed
some years ago,' volunteered Greatorex, laying aside the paper in favour
of his own reminiscences. He was a cheerful, mercurial youth who
conceived that the more important part of his duty was to regale Mr
Carrados with his personal views on life and affairs, nor, strange to
say, did his employer very often undeceive him. 'Do you remember the one
I mean, sir?'

'Yes; they mulled that by not copying the sale label closely enough, and
the attendant noticed it when the necklace was laid down again. There
was a woman in that business also. But the two cases have nothing in
common really.'

'How do you mean? Both were at auction sales; both--'

'True,' interrupted Carrados, 'but those things are only superficial.
The essential motives fall into two quite different classes. Good pearls
are always readily saleable, and it is simply a matter of rearranging
them and making them up in a different form. But what is a man going to
do with a Petition Crown? Wear it on his watch-chain? As a marketable
piece of loot he might as well carry off a Turner from the National
Gallery, or, indeed, one of the lions from Trafalgar Square. Its trade
value is about one and ninepence for the melting-pot.

'Oh, come, sir,' protested Greatorex. 'This account speaks of a few
other specimens knocking about. Surely in a year or two's time this one
couldn't be positively identified as stolen?'

Max Carrados turned to pull open a drawer of his desk and took out the
top pamphlet of a number it contained.

'Here is Lang's catalogue of this sale,' he said, passing it across. 'I
haven't gone into it, but very likely that crown will be illustrated
among the plates at the end. Just see.'

'Quite right, sir. It is Lot 64, and it is reproduced in one of those
photographic process types here on Plate 2.'

'Take a glass and look into it. It is described as exceptionally fine,
but you will almost certainly find a number of small cuts and dents here
and there on the surface.'

'Yes; I see what you mean. They don't show ordinarily.'

'All the same they label the specimen as definitely as if it was a
numbered bank-note. The simplest way out of that would be to carry it
loose in your pocket for a few years. That would reduce its cabinet
value to one-half, but it would effectually wipe out its identity. The
trouble would be that whenever you started to dispose of it you would be
pointedly asked for the pedigree. What collection had it come from last?
All these little details are on record and easily available. No, it's
amateur work, whoever it may be, Greatorex.'

'I was rather hoping that perhaps someone would bring it round here to
offer sooner or later,' remarked the adventurous Greatorex, still
examining the plate. 'I'll bet I could spot it by that scratch over his
majesty's eye.'

'Then you will certainly be disappointed,' was the unpromising reply.
'If the coin really has been stolen--and that's a palpable "if" so
far--ten to one its immediate destination is the private drawer of some
collector who will be content to handle and gloat over it in secret for
the remaining days of his life.'

'And then I suppose it all comes out when he goes off?'

'It may. But I have heard a curious story of an old fellow who had a few
pieces in his collection that he never showed. When he thought that he
only had a short time left he took a coal hammer and in five minutes the
rarities were effectually put beyond any fear of identification.'

'My Sunday hat!' exclaimed Mr Greatorex, compelled to a generous
admiration. 'Some collectors are hot stuff!'

With that decorous epitaph the subject was laid to rest, with no
indication that it would ever be raised again. But--just as one may meet
three piebald horses in the course of one short walk--the Petition Crown
was fated to persist, and before lunch-time a telephone call from Mr
Carlyle had resurrected it. The period of interment had been just short
of three hours.

'Busy, Max?' chirruped the familiar voice of his friend the inquiry
agent--incurably brisk and debonair even after its ten miles' journey
along the wire. 'Not to me? Dear old chap! Well, I dare say you've read
all about the disappearance of Lord Willington's--er--Petition Crown in
the paper this morning? I thought you might be interested as it's
something in your line.'

'Greatorex is, at all events,' replied Mr Carrados. 'He was half
expecting that someone might bring it here in the course of the day. Do
you--strictly between ourselves, of course--do you happen to have it for
disposal, Louis?'

'Do I happen to have it for disposal?' repeated Mr Carlyle in a slightly
mystified tone. 'I thought you would have read that the coin has been
stolen. However, Max, in my office at this moment there is a young lady
who is very much concerned at being implicated in the affair. Frankly,
as the auctioneers are naturally doing all that can be done to solve the
riddle, I did not see how I could be of any real service to her, and I
told her so. But she seemed so disappointed that as a--er--well--'

'As a sort of forlorn hope?' suggested the listener maliciously.

'Not at all; most certainly not!' protested Mr Carlyle indignantly. 'I
explained that as you were both a keen coin collector yourself and an
enthusiast in certain branches of criminal research, if--if, mind you,
Max--you cared to hear what she had to say, you would be in an
exceptional position to give her a word of advice. And that is really
the long and the short of the whole matter, my mordacious friend.'

'Very likely, my ingenious sleuth, but I imagine that there is a small
piece missing somewhere. You were not wont to turn young and beautiful
suppliants from your office door. What is the real reason of this
professional reluctance on your part?'

'Max,' came along Mr Carlyle's cautiously-restrained voice--the listener
could divine how near the moving lips were to the mouthpiece--'I will
speak to you as one gentleman to another when there is no danger of
being overheard. Miss Frensham is young, but she is not beautiful, and
to put it in that way is to pay her a noticeable compliment. She is
also, I gather, regrettably hard up. Now, as I never conceal from my
clients, my business is conducted on a purely financial basis, whereas
you amuse yourself for--the other thing. Doubtless I could earn a few
honest but ill-spared guineas at this young lady's expense, but I cannot
satisfy myself that she would be any the wiser for the outlay. And so--'

'All right, you old humbug,' said Carrados amiably; 'send her along. So
far as the portents go I am with you in not seeing that there is much to
be done for her, but if she finds any satisfaction in talking about it
you can tell her that I shall be here for the next few hours.'

Miss Frensham evidently did foresee some satisfaction in talking about
it, for she came at once. In view of her circumstances, Carrados could
not but deem her rather extravagant, for nothing but a taxi from door to
door could explain the promptness of her arrival. Mr Carlyle had not
maligned her looks: plain she undoubtedly was, not in any sense
describably ugly but with a sort of pug-dog grotesquery. Her dress made
no attempt to counteract physical deficiences, but when she spoke
Carrados's unemotional face instantly lit up with pleasure, for,
unexpected in such a setting, her voice had the rare quality of gracious
music.

'How good of you to let me come in this way, Mr Carrados!' she exclaimed
as they shook hands. 'I don't know which I have to thank the more--you
or Mr Carlyle.'

'I think I shall claim the major share,' said the blind man lightly.
'Not for any particular merit, but because I am so very pleased to hear
you.'

'To hear--Oh, yes; of course he told me or I really should not have
guessed. You know what it's all about?'

'I infer that you are the lady of the paragraph,' and the lifted hand
indicated the open sheet of the _Record_ lying nearby.

'Yes, in a sense I am.' Miss Frensham seemed troubled for a moment. 'But
I am not really a "well-known lady journalist", Mr Carrados. I am only a
very obscure one--hardly a real journalist at all. That was just swank,
and also because I felt sure that under that description no one who knew
would ever think of _me_.'

'Oh,' said Mr Carrados with an amused and deepening interest, 'so in
addition to being the heroine of the adventure you wrote it up?'

'Yes, ultimately I did. At first I was too upset to think about that.
But I had gone to the place yesterday to see if there wasn't a
"news-story" in this Petition Crown--nothing but "news-stories" are
worthwhile, you know--and it seemed rather a pity to miss it when it
turned out to be a very much better "news-story" than I had ever
expected. And then I knew that if I got my "copy" taken I could keep my
own name out. I had particular reasons for wishing that.'

Carrados nodded without showing any curiosity about the reasons. 'What
is it exactly that you want to do now?' he asked.

'Well, I feel that I am really under suspicion of having taken the
coin--I don't see how they can think anything else in the
circumstances--and the only way of clearing myself is to find out who
did take it. Knowing that I didn't, I naturally think that it must be
the attendant there, because he seems to have been the only other person
who could have done.'

'Reverse the argument, and the attendant, knowing that he didn't,
naturally thinks that it must be you, because you seem to be the only
other person who could have done. And so both sides get into
difficulties along that obvious line. Suppose we ignore the two palpable
suspects--yourself and the attendant. Now who else might it have been?'

'That is the difficulty, Mr Carrados; it could have been no one else. I
returned the coin to the attendant; he put it back in the case and
remained on duty there until he displayed it on the tray to show round.
Then it was discovered to have been taken.'

'I suppose,' said Carrados tentatively, 'you really were the last to
inspect the coin? Sitting there you would probably have noticed if
anyone else had asked for it?'

'I only know what they said, but no one seemed to have any doubt about
it. I went out to--to get some lunch and when I got back the sale was
going on.'

'Ah,' said the blind man thoughtfully. 'Of course you would have to.
Suppose you tell me the--the "news-story" all through.'

'I hoped that you would let me,' replied the girl. 'But I was afraid of
taking up too much of your time. Well, I have been living by journalism
for some time now. Rather suddenly I had to support myself by some kind
of work, and there was nothing else that I seemed able to do. I have
always been fond of writing, and I had quite a lot of stories and
articles and poems that I had been told by friends were quite good
enough to print. I brought them to London with me, but somehow they
didn't seem so much thought of here. I got to know one or two other
girls who wrote, and they told me that my sort of stuff would be all
right when I got into the peerage or became a leading lady, but if I
wanted to live meanwhile it was absolutely necessary to cultivate a
"news-nose". I soon saw what they meant: it wasn't absolutely necessary
that it should be news you wrote, but it had to give the impression that
it was.'

'Miss Frensham, I have been a practical journalist myself,' remarked
Carrados. 'You had grasped the sacred torch.'

'At all events, I could just keep the domestic pot boiling after that.
It was rather a near thing sometimes, but there was someone--he is a
sub-editor on the _Daily Record_ actually--who helped me more than I can
ever say. He told me of this sale. "There's a coin to be sold that's
expected to break the record," he said; and he explained to me which it
was. "There ought to be a 'news-story' in it if it does--say two hundred
words in the ordinary way, four hundred if you can make it kick. I'll
try and put it through." I thought that I had made it kick, so I went to
four hundred.'

'Yes,' agreed her auditor, 'I certainly think you can claim that amount
of movement.'

'I didn't know anything about a coin auction, of course, but I looked up
Simon in the biographical dictionary at the B.M. reading-room and then
went on to the place. That was yesterday--the morning of the sale. There
were two or three others--men--looking at the coins--nothing to what I
had expected--and one attendant who gave out the drawers in which they
were arranged as they were asked for.

'I expected some sort of formality before they let me see the crown--so
valuable--but there was really nothing at all. I just said, "Can I see
No. 64, please?" and he simply pulled one of the shallow drawers out of
its case and put it down before me on the table. There were about a
dozen other lots in the drawer, each in its separate little box. Then he
turned his back on me to attend to something else. I believe that I
could have picked up the coin and walked out of the place with it.'

'We are a trustful people both in war and peace,' conceded Mr Carrados.
'But I think you would have found that you couldn't quite do that.'

'Well, I didn't try--though it certainly did occur to me that there
might be a stunt of some sort in it: you look out for them when one
means a week's good keep. I made a few notes that I thought I could work
in and then found that it was just one o'clock--the sale was to begin at
a quarter past. As the attendant took the coins away I asked him how
fast they sold them.

'"If you only want to see that lot sold, miss, a quarter to two will be
in plenty of time. If you reckon a hundred lots to the hour you'll be
well on the safe side."

'I thanked him and went out. That was really all I had to do with the
coin. I never saw it again. When I got back to the sale room the auction
was going on. Even then there were only about twelve or fifteen people
there. They sat at the tables--I suppose you know how they are arranged,
as a sort of hollow oblong, with the auctioneer at one end and the
attendant showing the coins up and down in the middle?--and a few
sitting here and there about the room. I didn't sit down; I stood
between the table and the door waiting for the price of Lot 64, which
was the only thing I wanted.

'When he got to it there was a slight stir of interest, though a more
lethargic set of enthusiasts I never saw. I always imagined that
collectors were a most excitable race who lost their heads at bidding
and went on and on madly. These might have been buying arrowroot for all
the emotion they showed.'

'Half of them would be dealers who had long ago got over all human
enthusiasms; the remainder would be collectors, too afraid lest the
others should think that they were keen on something. And then?'

'The attendant was carrying the coin round on a little tray when one man
picked it up and looked at it. "Hullo!" he said and passed it to the
next. "This is the wrong lot," said that one, and then the auctioneer
leaned over and called to the attendant, "Come, come, my lad--No. 64,"
and the attendant said, "This is No. 64," in an aggrieved way and showed
him the numbered box. Then the attendant and those near that end began
to look among the unsold lots, and after that they all turned out the
sold lots--they had mostly been put into little envelopes--and when they
came to the end of these everyone looked at everyone else and said
nothing. Then I think they began it all over again--the hunting, I
mean--when the auctioneer hit on his desk.

'"This is an important lot. Very sorry, but we can't go on with the
selling until we know more where we are. I suppose someone did see the
Petition Crown this morning?"

'Two or three men said that they had, and the attendant, looking round,
recognized me.

'"That lady was the last to see the lot before the sale, sir," I heard
him say. "Better ask her."

'"Did you--" began the auctioneer, and then, I suppose, recognizing that
I mightn't like to carry on a shouting conversation across the room, he
added, "Do you mind coming round here?"

'I went round the tables to where he was sitting, and he continued:

'"Did you see this lot before the sale? Our man thinks that you were the
last to have it out."

'"Yes," I admitted. "I saw it, and it was there when I returned the
drawer. Of course I don't know that I was the last, but it was about one
o'clock."

'"No one had it out later, Muir?"

'"No, sir. I've been on this spot ever since, and that tray hasn't been
asked for."

'The auctioneer seemed to consider, and everyone else looked first at
one and then the other of us. I began to feel very uncomfortable.

'"I suppose it really was the Petition Crown you saw at one o'clock?" he
asked after a bit.

'"I suppose it must have been," I replied. "I copied the 'Petition' from
the edge into this notebook."

'"Well, that fixes it all right. You see how awkward it is for us,
Miss--Miss--"

'I gave him my name.

'"Miss Frensham. We have to do the best we can in the circumstances. I
can't say at the moment on whom the loss will fall--if the coin really
proves to have disappeared--but the figure is considerable. Now everyone
else in the room is known to us by sight; we have the names and
addresses of them all"

'"You have my name," I said, "and I am living at the Allied Arts Hostel
in Lower Gower Street."

'"Thank you," he replied, writing it down. "But of course that means
very little to us. Is there anyone convenient who knows you personally
to whom we can refer? You must understand that this does not imply any
sort of suspicion of your _bona fides_: it is only putting you on equal
terms with the rest of the company."

'I thought for a moment. I saw a great many unpleasant possibilities.
Most of all I knew that I wanted to keep this from my people.

'"The editor of the _Daily Record_ knows me slightly," I replied; "but I
don't see that he can say anything beyond that. And as to suspicion, I
am afraid that you already have some. If you have any ladies on your
staff I am quite willing to turn out everything I have before them"--I
thought that perhaps this would settle the matter off-hand, and I
couldn't help adding rather viciously: "and after that I dare say the
rest of the company will do the same before you."

'"Yes," he considered, "but you've been out for half an hour, so that
would really prove nothing. At lunch, I suppose?"

'I began to see that things were fitting in rather unpleasantly for me.

'"Yes," I said.

'"Perhaps I had better note where you went. We don't know where this may
land us, and in the end it may be to your interest to have a waitress or
someone who can identify you over that time."

'"I'm afraid I can't do that," I had to say. "There was no one who
noticed me."

'"Surely--Well, anyhow, the place?"

'I shook my head. He looked at me for a moment and then wrote something
down.... You think that was very suspicious, Mr Carrados?'

'Your advocate never thinks that anything you do is suspicious,' replied
the suave listener. 'Probably they would.'

'They seemed to. Well, Mr Carrados, I don't mind telling you, but
somehow I couldn't say it before that--I felt--unfriendly battery
eyes.... My lunch consisted of three very unladylike thick slices of
bread-and-butter, and I ate them as I walked slowly up and down the
stairs at a tube station. So, you see, there could be no corroboration.'

'Perhaps we shall do better--not even require it,' he replied quietly.
'What happened next?'

'I don't think that there was much more. They gave up looking for the
coin. The auctioneer said that he had telephoned to someone--his
solicitor or Scotland Yard, I imagined, but I didn't hear which--to know
what ought to be done, and he hoped that everyone would remain until
they knew. The the sale began again. I went across and sat down on a
chair away from the table. I had no interest in the sale--in fact I
hated it--and after a time I took out my pad and tried to write the
paragraph. Very soon the sale came to an end and the men began to go--I
suppose they had been told to. I waited, for I wasn't going to seem in a
hurry, until I was the only person left. After a bit the man who had
been selling came in and seemed rather surprised to see me still there.
He said he hoped I didn't think that I was being detained, and I said,
"Oh, no, I was just finishing something." He said that that was all
right, only they were going to lock up the room then and have it
thoroughly looked over today--it was just possible that something might
turn up, though he was rather afraid that it would remain a mystery to
the end. He was quite nice about it, and told me several curious things
that had happened in connexion with sales in the past. Then I left and
he locked the door after us and, I believe, took the key.'

Carrados laughed appreciatively.

'Yes, it was rather like the proverb about the stolen horse, wasn't it?'
said the girl. 'But I suppose they felt that even the unlikeliest chance
must be taken. Anyway, they have certainly sent inquiries both to my
Hostel and to the Record office. That's chiefly why I want to have my
poor character restored. Everyone says, "Of course, Miss Frensham,
nobody would think for a moment--" But what else are they to think
privately? The thing has gone and I am branded as the last to handle
it.'

'Yes, yes,' said Carrados, beginning to walk about the room and to touch
one familiar object after another in his curiously unhesitating way.
'That unfortunate "last" has obsessed you and all the others until it
has shut out every real consideration. Your account of the whole
business--quite clear so far as it goes--is entirely based on the fact
that you were the last, and the attendant knew you were the last, and
the auctioneer was told you were the last, and all the others grasped
it, and you all proceeded to revolve round that centre. There stands the
man we want, as plain as a pikestaff for us, only you and your lastness
get between so persistently that we cannot see him.'

'I'm very sorry,' faltered Miss Frensham, rather taken aback.

'That's all right, my dear young lady,' said an entirely benevolent
Carrados. 'We are getting on very nicely on the whole, and soon you will
begin to tell me the things I really want to know.'

'Indeed I will tell you anything,' she protested.

'Of course you will--as soon as I have the gumption to ask. In the
meantime what do you really think of the celebrated Petition Crown now
that you've seen it?'

This light conversational opening struck Miss Frensham as rather an
unpropitious way of grappling with the problem of the theft, but she had
just professed her general willingness.

'Well,' she replied with conscientious effort, 'it chiefly struck me as
rather absurd that people should be willing to pay so much for this one
when other coins, apparently almost like it, could be had for a few
shillings.'

'Yes; very true.' The blind man appeared to consider this nai've
expression deeply. 'As a collector myself of course that goes home. You
are not a collector, in any sense, Miss Frensham?'

'No, indeed.'

'I was wondering,' speculated Carrados in the same idle vein, 'how you
happened to know that.'

'Oh, very simply. There were about a dozen other lots in the drawer the
man put before me. One of them consisted of quite a number of crown
pieces, and they struck me as being so like the Petition Crown at a
glance that out of curiosity I compared them. When it came to the sale
they made only a few pounds for the lot.'

'You compared them--side by side?'

'Yes. I--I--' As she spoke Miss Frensham suddenly went very white, half
rose from her chair, and sat down again. The charming voice trailed off
into a gasp.

'You remember something now? You--possibly--changed them somehow?'

'_I did!_ I see it all. I remember exactly how it went. What a dreadful
thing!'

'Tell me what happened.'

'I was waiting for the attendant to turn so that I could tell him I had
finished. It was then that I took up these two coins--the Petition Crown
and one from another box--to compare. There was a man near me who had
seemed to be watching--at least I thought so--and just then I looked up
and caught his eyes on me. I suppose it made me nervous; anyway I
dropped one of the crowns back into the drawer. It made a great clatter
as it fell among the others and I felt that it would be almost a crime
there to knock a coin like that. I just slipped the other into its place
and pushed the drawer away as the attendant turned. And now I see as
clearly as can be that I returned them wrong.'

'That is our real starting-point.' said Carrados happily. 'Now we can
proceed.'

'But it must have been found out. All the sold lots were looked over
again.'

'Oh, yes; it must have been found out. But exactly when? The man who was
observing you--did you hear his name?'

'No.'

'Where did he sit during the sale?'

'He sat--yes, that's rather curious. You remember that after talking to
the auctioneer I went and sat down away from the table? Well, when the
selling was going on again this man kept hovering round. Presently he
bent down to me and said, "Excuse me, but you have taken my seat." "What
on earth do you mean?" I retorted, for it was just at the time that I
was feeling exasperated. "There was nothing on the chair, and there are
a dozen others there," and I pointed to the whole empty row. Then he
said, "Oh, I beg your pardon," and went and sat down on another.'

'Isn't it splendid!' exclaimed Carrados in one of his rare bursts of
enthusiasm. 'No sooner have we got rid of you and the attendant as the
only possible culprits than we find the real man absolutely fighting to
make himself known--doing everything he can to attract our
attention--struggling like a chicken emerging from its shell. Soon you
will tell me that you found his hand on the back of your chair.'

'Oh!' cried Miss Frensham in sharp surprise. 'How can you possibly know
that?'

'I did not; but it was worth while suggesting to you.'

'It's absolutely true. I certainly shouldn't have thought it worth while
mentioning, but just at the end of the sale, when everyone got up, he
passed behind me, and stopping, he put his hand--rather gratuitously it
seemed--on my chair and asked me if I had heard what the last lot made.
I said that I wasn't taking the least notice, and he went away. What
does it mean?'

'At the moment it means that we must telephone to Lang's to keep the
stable door locked--don't put your trust in proverbs, Miss Frensham. And
there are a few questions I want them to have settled before I call
there.'

'I dare say I'm an idiot,' said the lady frankly, 'but I'm beginning to
get rather excited. Isn't there anything that I can do to help?'

'Why, yes,' he smiled with friendly understanding. 'Make out the list
for me. We need the catalogue--it's over there. Now which was the lot of
crowns you compared with?'

'This one--No. 56,' she replied, after studying the pages. '"Charles II,
Crowns, various dates, in fine condition generally, 7."'

'That's sufficient. You have your pad? Now write:

Confidential. Please ascertain
    (1) Who bought Lot 56?
    (2) What man, if any, left the sale-room about one o'clock and
        returned before Lot 56 was sold?
    (3) What man, if any, returned after the sale for something he had
        left in the room?

'Of course,' he seemed to apologize, 'that gives away the whole show to
you.'

'Ye--es,' replied Miss Frensham dutifully.

Mr Carrados insisted on his visitor remaining to lunch. He even arranged
that no one else should be present on the occasion, and the guest,
justly annoyed at this characteristic masculine act of delicacy, repaid
him by discovering the appetite of the proverbial fairy. The ghosts of
three slabs of bread-and-butter stood between her and that generous
table; and, reflecting on that, the whimsical maiden sought her own
means to dispel the spectre.

'It is really my fault that the coin has gone,' she found occasion to
remark. 'Almost as much as though I had taken it. If it never turns up
again I can't be satisfied until I have made it good.'

Carrados was naturally horrified. Was she mad? Had she forgotten its
record?

'My dear young lady, don't be romantic. The coin is insured, or ought to
be. Why, it would cripple you for years--for ever.'

'Oh, no,' she retorted airily. 'We all expect to make our fortunes. And
I really have some money that I don't use.'

'Yes?' he smiled, and in the character of her intimate adviser the words
slipped out: 'How much?'

'Well,' she considered with deliberate effect, 'I think it varies....
But'--with devastating clearness--'it is somewhere about three thousand
pounds a year.'

'I beg your pardon?' stammered Carrados. 'No, no; don't say it again. I
heard perfectly. I see. I understand. You ran away from it?'

'I ran away--if you call it running away--from several things. If you
could see me, Mr Carrados, you would understand that I am endowed with
an almost supernatural plainness. It is too obvious even for the glass
to conceal from me. At school, where politeness is not one of the
compulsory subjects, I was "Pup", "Puggy", "Ki-ki", "Balcombe Beauty",
"Snarleywow", and other shafts of endearment. I was not petted. Even my
mother found it a little trying.... And yet as I grew up I learned that
I could be astonishingly popular with most men. The things I said were
witty, the things I did were clever, my taste was exquisite, and they
were all prepared to marry me.... But when I happened to wander into the
society of strange men who had missed hearing of my pecuniary worth, my
word! No one noticed that I hadn't a seat, no one thought of asking me
to dance, to sing, to skate. They didn't see me. And if I opened my
mouth they very rarely even heard me. And then if a really pretty girl
happened to come into the circle! What an instant preening up of the
fishy-eyed old men and a strutting round of the bored-to-death young
ones! They didn't even take the trouble to hide anything from me: I
might have been a man too. I could watch them licking their lips and
arranging their attractions. Oh--h! do you wonder that I went sick among
it all? There was a man my father wanted me to marry; well, at all
events a decent sort of male, it seemed. I was beginning to think that I
might as well when that came out. No, it doesn't really matter what. My
father thought it needn't make any difference! Mother assured me that it
was nicer not to notice these things! When I said that it made all the
difference and that I had already noticed a great many things and that I
was going away out into the world to see if it was the same everywhere
and meant to begin by earning my own living of course I raised a
tremendous storm. Then--if I must go--they wanted to arrange things for
me, so that everything should be quite nice. But they'd been arranging
for me all my life and that was just what I wanted to disarrange. In the
end I got my way--you see, I was in rather a strong position--subject to
certain conditions. Father stipulated that I didn't get into any "damned
mess", or back I should have to go. Mother hoped that her girlie would
remain unspotted from the world. So here I am. And that's the whole
story, Mr Carrados, and the reason why I'm so anxious to keep out of
what I am sure my father would call a--ahem--mess.'

'Poor Louis!' thought his friend. Then aloud, 'And is human nature
entirely transformed by the five-mile radius, Miss Frensham?'

'No,' she admitted seriously. 'But at least I know exactly where I am.
There is no competition to carry my parcel or to run my errands--I hope
I haven't given the impression that I want it?--but if anything I do
does happen to get praised I can believe it honest; if I make a friend I
can really feel that it is for myself.... I am no longer, as I heard of
one "admirer" dubbing me, "The Girl with the Golden Mug".'

Both laughed. Then he grew almost pensive.

'After laughing at that let me say something,' he ventured at length.
'When you needn't fear having to meet a man's eyes ever he may be
privileged to an unusual frankness.... Think as little of looks as you
do of lucre, Miss Frensham. I can know nothing of the features you so
dispraise: to me you would always be the girl with the golden voice. I
am sure that someone else will see you--as you think you are--as little
as I do, and to him you will always be the girl with the golden heart.'

'You kind man!' she responded. 'Well...perhaps there is!'

                                  *

When Carrados got down to Lang & Leng's a few hours later he found that
the seller on the previous day had been Mr Travis, a gentleman to whom
he was by no means a stranger.

'Very glad to have your suggestions, of course, Carrados,' remarked Mr
Travis graciously. 'Are you looking into it on Lord Willington's behalf?
Miss Frensham's! You don't say so!'

'I have a weakness for being on the winning side,' remarked the blind
man.

'Well, as to that, I don't know that it's exactly a case of a winning
side or a losing side. Unless you call us the losing side, egad! This is
the room. You want to look--to go round it?'

'I should like to. One never knows.'

'Oh, we've been thoroughly over it this morning. Heaven knows what we
could expect, but it seemed the natural thing to do. Yes, it's still
being kept locked, since you asked.'

'Anyone wanting to go in for anything?'

'No--only Mr Marrabel, who called for his gloves after the sale; they'd
been taken to the office though.'

'Marrabel!' thought the patient worker in the dark. 'Yes, of
course--Marrabel the dilettante.'

'And, by the way, that reminds me,' continued Mr Travis. 'Oh yes, sit
anywhere you like. That list you sent through. You're not going to
suspect Marrabel of any connexion? Because, strangely enough, his name
is the answer to each of your inquiries.'

'I should scarcely describe it as a case for suspicion,' replied
Carrados. 'Still, one thinks of everyone.'

'We can eliminate Mr Marrabel at all events, I think. He did not look at
any of the lots yesterday. He only bought No. 56, and both Muir and I
noticed that he did not touch the coins when he got them-just put them
on an empty chair by his side until the hue and cry was raised, and then
he passed the box over to the table for someone to verify--all there and
the correct number.'

'Very convincing,' assented Carrados.

'I mean it rather shows that there isn't much to be gained by looking
for so-called "clues" at this end, don't you think? Marrabel as a case
in point. Of course we shall be delighted to put any information or
facilities that we may have at your disposal, Carrados, both out of
consideration for yourself and as due to your client. But what _we_
chiefly want is to get the coin back. And the people we have put on to
it seem to be extending themselves in that direction. By tomorrow every
curio-dealer, pawn-broker, and leading collector will be on the look
out, America will be notified, for they think that the coin may be quite
likely offered there. A reward is being offered to make it worth
anybody's while. In the next number of the _Bric-à-brac Collector_ there
will be an ingenuous advertisement from a wealthy colonial anxious to
buy rare milled silver coins; don't be deceived by it.'

'I won't,' promised Mr Carrados. 'But all this must come rather
expensive.'

'Doubtless it is. But the fact is, since the thing has gone,
Willington's people are persuading themselves that it might have made a
fantastic price. That is why we are only anxious to get it back again.'

'Oh!' Polite unconcern was Carrados's note. He seldom denied himself
these rare moments when, perhaps, a week's patient labour ran down to a
needle-point. 'Of course I'm more interested in my client. But as the
coin is all you want--why, here it is!'

'What--what's--that?' articulated Mr Travis.

'The Petition Crown,' replied the arch-humbug, continuing to hold out
his hand. 'Delighted to be the means of restoring it to you, Travis.'

'It is the Petition Crown,' murmured Travis. 'Good God! You brought it?'

'On the contrary, I found it here.'

'Found it? Where?'

'Beneath the seat of this chair.'

'You knew that it was there? Do you mean that Miss Frensham told you?'

'I knew that it should be here, and Miss Frensham certainly told me.'

'She hid it there?'

'Not at all. She did not know that it was here. She told me where it
was, but she did not know that she was telling me.'

'Then I'm hanged if I understand,' complained Mr Travis. 'Can't you be
human once in a way, Carrados? Damn it all, man, we went to school
together!'

'Sit down,' said Carrados, 'and I'll be as human as you like.... Did you
ever commit a crime, Travis?'

'Not really,' confessed the auctioneer with admirable sang-froid. 'I
robbed an orchard when I was ten, but that--'

'Robbing orchards at ten scarcely counts, does it? Well, I have the
advantage because there is no form of villainy that I haven't gone
through in all its phases. Theoretically, of course, but so far as
working out the details is concerned and preparing for emergencies,
efficiently and with craftsmanlike pride. Whenever I fail to get to
sleep at night--rather frequently, I'm sorry to say--I commit a murder,
forgery, a robbery or what not, with all its ramifications. It's much
more soothing than counting sheep and it never fails to get me off. The
point is, that the criminal mind is rarely original, and I find that in
nine cases out of ten that sort of crime is committed exactly as I have
already done it. Being a collector myself, of course, I've robbed coin
auctions frequently. I know precisely how it should be done and what is
to be avoided. Marrabel did the correct things, but he overlooked the
contingency of someone else also thinking of them.'

'But Marrabel, my dear fellow! He must be almost in Debrett. Think!'

'Oh, yes. But he makes a speciality of getting choice things for
nothing, provided there is no risk.'

'And is there no risk here?'

'None at all; practically none if he's content to take his loss. But is
he? We shall see. However, this is what has happened so far:

'Miss Frenshaw started the business by mixing Lots 56 and 64 without
knowing it at the time. She had come to get a newspaper par out of the
sale if she could, and was taking an intelligent interest in the subject
when she happened to catch Marrabel overlooking her. Well, being nervy
and rather touchy she dropped the Petition Crown on to the other crowns
in Lot 56 and put the one from that lot into box No. 64.

'Marrabel evidently grasped that. It might prove a golden opportunity.
Doubtless he took five minutes to consider the position. Then he hied
him off to his Mayfair flat and returned with an appropriate coin in his
pocket, well in time to purchase Lot 56. What did it cost him?'

'Three-fifteen,' said Mr Travis.

'You know well enough, Travis, that although a single-coin lot is
generally taken up by someone as it goes round the table, half a dozen
coins, like Lot 56, are seldom touched. At the most they are glanced at.
When Muir turned them out on to his tray, what had been at the top
naturally got hidden. When he returned them to the box, to hand over to
the buyer, the Petition Crown perhaps came to the top again. Marrabel,
seated in an unusually retiring position, doubtless received his booty
with an appropriate gesture of unconcern and laid it carelessly on the
next chair. Good. No risk so far.

'He had at least four minutes in which to act. You and Muir thought he
paid no attention to the purchase because he didn't hold the box and
examine the contents. Quite natural; but of course you weren't actually
watching him and he was out to mask his-movements. All in good time the
exchange was made. But now the element of risk came in: he had the thing
in his possession.

'Your amateur is always self-conscious. Marrabel could have walked off
then, but that would certainly have put him in an equivocal position.
Yet supposing it came to being searched? And Miss Frensham, you may
remember, did throw out the suggestion. Whether he had reconnoitred in
advance we need not speculate; but here beneath his chair, without
moving, Marrabel found an ideal crevice for his loot: tight, hidden,
accessible.

'He could now move away from the dangerous spot, and he did when the
chase began, putting his purchase on the table with a fine indifference
for someone else to verify. He stayed away from this chair so long that
a curious thing occurred. Miss Frensham took it.

'In one way Marrabel was now on velvet. The leading suspect had drawn a
red herring across his tracks, for if by any chance the crown should
come to light here Miss Frensham was hopelessly involved. Then presently
the situation eased; the sale was coming to an end and there was no
suggestion now of search or of anyone being detained. His only desire
was to recover the coin and get away. But the lady seemed set here, and
Marrabel, ignorant of her intentions, made his first bad move. He
claimed the chair, fully expecting to be given it at once.

'As it happened Miss Frensham didn't budge. She is far from being an
ordinary meek young person, and the immediate events hadn't gone to
soothe her. She was sitting there quietly writing, and, taken on the
surface, it was sheerly an impertinence on the man's part. She had had
occasion to notice Marrabel already. In strictly feminine terms she told
him to go to the devil, and Marrabel, now beginning to feel jerky,
veered off.

'The sale comes to an end. Everyone begins to go. Is Marrabel to hang
about aimlessly until this chair is vacant and then deliberately come
and sit here for no obvious reason? The man's tightened nerves won't
hear of it. Act naturally and there is no risk at all. Return
later--tomorrow, next week, it doesn't matter, the coin is snugly
waiting. And then, good heavens! the thing flashes on him. The chairs
are all alike! Next week, tomorrow, even after the sale they may be
rearranged, moved, taken to another room, and he will have to go sitting
on one after another, an object for all to marvel at. What's to be done?
Why, plainly to mark the chair before it is too late, and here, Travis,
under my fingers, is the cross that our man broke his pencil on.'

'Very ingenious,' admitted Mr Travis, 'and in the face of this
evidence'--delicately balancing the recovered crown upon a
finger-tip--'it would be mean to argue. But, you know, Carrados, Miss
Frensham _did_ sit here last.'

'Inflexible man!' replied Carrados. 'Well, when is your next sale?'

'Friday--enamels. On view for one day only.'

'So much the better. You can have it in here? Keep it closed till then
and I will be here early. And just make sure that Marrabel is sent his
catalogue, won't you?'

                                  *

There was nothing at all unusal to be noticed about the sale-rooms on
Thursday morning, and Mr Marrabel strolled round in perfect composure.
With praiseworthy restraint he had not hastened there, and the group of
conspirators in the private office had to amuse themselves as best they
could for at least two hours.

Marrabel was interested in enamels, as he was in all precious things,
and he wandered from point to point consulting his catalogue, examining
a piece and marking a price as he had done a score of times before--as
everyone else was doing then. Finally he sat down to review his list:
nothing could be more natural. Satisfied, he rose to go.

Outside the room an attendant came across to speak to him: the signal
had been passed.

'Do you mind stepping into Mr Travis's office, sir? I think he wants to
see you about something.'

The message was polite and not wholly unusual, but Marrabel's throat
went dry.

'Not now,' he said, quickening his step. 'I have an important--. Back in
half an hour, tell him.'

It was too late for that easy manoeuvre to carry. Across the hall there
was another form between him and the outer door. Nor did the first one
obligingly retire.

'Beg pardon, sir, but I understand it's rather particular, sir.'

Then Marrabel must have known that something had miscarried.

'Oh, curse it, all right,' he snapped and, watched at every step, he
went.

'It's about the Petition Crown that disappeared at the last coin sale.'
The urbane Travis never had a less relished job. 'We have received
certain information and we may have to take proceedings. Do you wish to
make any statement?'

Marrabel had dimly foreseen this possibility and he had given some
thought to a satisfactory explanation, but in the end he had left it to
be decided by the circumstances of the moment, because there was no
perfectly satisfactory explanation to be thought of.

'Well,' he said, affecting a light laugh, 'that's an unnecessarily
brutal way of putting it, because, as a matter of fact, I was bringing
the crown to return to you, and I have it in my pocket at the moment. It
was only this morning I discovered it when I came to look into that lot
I bought. How it got there and how it came to be missed by the dolts who
looked I can't say. Personally I didn't examine one of the coins until
today.'

'I see,' remarked Mr Travis. 'But I understand that you were leaving the
place just now?'

'You understand quite right. I intended handing you the crown, but when
I got here and realized how cursed unpleasant it might be I funked it. I
decided to send the damned thing back by post without a word.'

'At all events you have it for us now?'

'Yes, here it is,' and Marrabel took a coin from his pocket with
alacrity, and laying it on the desk turned hopefully to go.

'Thanks, but--one moment--what is this?'

The unhappy man looked at the coin he had just produced and turned paler
than before.

'I must have picked up the wrong one,' he muttered, beginning to
recognize the hopeless morass he was floundering into.

'Look again,' said a quiet voice as Mr Carrados appeared on the scene.
'Look closer at the coin you brought from your room this morning!'

'You blind devil!' Lightly scratched on the surface of the silver he
found the signature 'Max Carrados' and the date of that very day. 'This
is your doing all through!'

'If it is it is only to show up a scoundrel. You didn't stick at getting
two innocent people suspected by your scheme. Let them see you now.'

As if worked by machinery an inner door fell open and Miss Frensham and
Muir walked in and stood silently regarding him.

'At the sale,' continued Carrados pitilessly, 'you were both publicly
put in a position of some suspicion by the disappearance of a coin. It
is right that you should now know that it was deliberately stolen by Mr
Marrabel here. He is the thief and your perfect innocence is
established.'

'Well, curse it all, it wasn't entirely my fault,' snarled Marrabel. 'I
only accepted what was given me.'

'That will be for a judge and jury to assess. You'll give him in charge
now, Travis?'

At this prospect Marrabel's last vestige of pretence broke down. All the
poltroonery in the man came to the surface with a rush.

'For God's sake don't do that, Travis,' he cried, clutching him by the
sleeve. I'll do anything you wish--confess anything you like--only don't
have me sent to prison. I'll put all sorts of things your way, and I
know crowds of people. Heavens! man, consider what it would mean to
me--one of your own class.'

'What shall we do, Carrados? We never like to prosecute.'

'I know you don't, replied the blind man. 'I've already drawn up his
confession. Read this and then sign it, Mr Marrabel, and we will all be
witnesses of the spontaneous act of reparation on your part.'

'What are you going to do with it?' asked the unfortunate wretch.

'Keep it as a guarantee of future good behaviour, and to vindicate these
others if the necessity occurs. And you needn't think of having me
knifed to get it back again, because I shan't carry it in my
pocketbook.'

Marrabel slowly signed and then stabbed the polished desk with the pen
he held in a gust of passion that left his fingers pierced and bleeding.

'I'd go willingly to hell if I could first see you skinned alive,
Carrados,' he said as he turned to leave.

'I am sure you would,' retorted Max Carrados pleasantly. 'But I don't
think that anything to do with me need affect your destination. Now go.'


This did not happen last year nor yet the year before. Miss Frensham
married her sub-editor, and their children--now old enough to go to
school--frequently take prizes at quite important beauty competitions.
Mr Marrabel almost immediately left these inhospitable shores, and after
a seemly interval appeared in flourishing conditions in New York. Not
that American connoisseurs know less than English ones do, but they know
less of Mr Marrabel.





The Holloway Flat Tragedy


A good many years ago, when chance brought Max Carrados and Louis
Carlyle together again and they renewed the friendship of their youth,
the blind man's first inquiry had been a jesting, 'Do you unearth many
murders, Louis?' and the private detective's reply a wholly serious,
'No; our business lies mostly on the conventional lines among
defalcation and divorce.' Since that day Carlyle's business had
increased beyond the fondest dreams of its creator, but 'defalcation and
divorce' still constituted the bulwarks of his prosperity. Yet from time
to time a more sensational happening or a more romantic course raised a
case above the commonplace, but none, it is safe to say, ever rivalled
in public interest the remarkable crime which was destined to become
labelled in the current Press as 'The Holloway Flat Tragedy.'

It was Mr Carlyle's rule to see all callers who sought his aid, for the
very nature of their business precluded clients from willingly
unbosoming themselves to members of his office staff. Afterwards, they
might accept the discreet attention of tactful subordinates, but for the
first impression Carlyle well knew the value of his sympathetic
handshake, his crisply reassuring voice, his--if need be--humanly
condoning eye, and his impeccably prosperous person and surroundings.
Men and women, guilty and innocent alike, pouring out their stories felt
that at last they were really 'understood', and, to give Louis Carlyle
his due, the deduction was generally fully justified.

To the quiet Bampton Street establishment one September afternoon there
came a new client who gave the name of Poleash and wished to see Mr
Carlyle in person. There was, as usual, no difficulty about that, and,
looking up from his desk, Louis registered the impression of an
inconspicuous man, somewhere in the thirties. He used spectacles, wore a
moustache, and his clothes were a lounge suit of dark material, cut on
the simple lines affected by the prudent man who reflects that he may be
wearing that selfsame garment two or three seasons hence. There was a
slight air of untidiness--or rather, perhaps, an absence of spruceness
in any detail--about his general appearance, and the experienced
observer put him down as a middle-class worker in any of the clerical,
lower professional, or non-manual walks of life.

'Now, Mr Poleash, sit down and tell me what I can do for you,' said
Carlyle when they had shaken hands--a rite to which the astute gentleman
attached no slight importance and invariably offered. 'Some trouble or
little difficulty, I suppose, umph? But first let me get you name right
and have your address for reference. You can rely on this, Mr
Poleash'--the inclination of Mr Carlyle's head and the arrest of his
lifted pen were undeniably impressive--'every word you utter is strictly
confidential.'

'Oh, that'll be all right, I'm sure,' said the visitor carelessly. 'It
is rather out-of-the-way all the same, and at first--'

'The name?' insinuated Mr Carlyle persuasively.

'Albert Henry Poleash: P-o-l-e-a-s-h--twelve Meridon House, Sturgrove
Road, Holloway.'

'Thank you. Now, if you will.'

'Of course I could tell you in a dozen words, but I expect you'd need to
know the circumstances, so perhaps I may as well begin where I think
you'll understand it best from.'

'By all means,' assented Mr Carlyle heartily; 'by all means. In your own
words and exactly as it occurs to you. I'm entirely at your service, so
don't feel hurried. Do you care--' The production of a plain gold case
completed the inquiry.

'To begin with,' said Mr Poleash, after contributing a match to their
common purpose, 'I may say that I'm a married man, living with my wife
at that address--a smallish flat which suits us very well as we have no
children. Neither of us has any near relations either, and we keep
ourselves pretty much to ourselves. Our only servant is a daily woman,
who seems able to do everything that we require.'

'One moment, if you please,' interposed Mr Carlyle briskly. 'I don't
want you to do anything but tell your story in your own way, Mr Poleash,
but if you would indicate by a single word the nature of the event that
concerns us it would enable me to judge which points are likely to be
most vital to our purpose. Theft--divorce--blackmail--'

'No--murder,' replied Mr Poleash with literal directness.

'Murder!' exclaimed the startled professional. 'Do you mean that a
murder has been committed?'

'No, not yet. I am coming to that. For ordinary purposes I generally
describe myself as a rent-collector, but that is because official
Jacks-in-office seem to have a morbid suspicion of anyone who is
obviously not a millionaire calling himself independent. As a matter of
fact, I have quite enough private income to serve my purpose. Most of it
comes from small house property scattered about London. I see to the
management of this myself and personally collect the rents. It takes a
few days a week, gives me an interest, keeps me in exercise, and pays as
well as anything else I could be doing in the tune.'

'Quite so,' encouraged the listener.

'That's always there,' went on Mr Poleash, continuing his leisurely
narrative with no indication of needing any encouragement, 'but now and
then I take up other work if it suits me--certain kinds of special
canvassing; sometimes research. I don't want to slave making more money
than we have the need of, and I don't want ever to find that we haven't
enough money for anything we may require.'

'Ideal,' contributed Mr Carlyle. 'You are a true philosopher.'

'My wife also has no need to be dependent on anyone either,' continued
Mr Poleash, without paying the least attention to the suave compliment.
'As a costume designer and fashion artist she is fully qualified to earn
her living, and in fact up to a couple of years ago she did work of that
kind regularly. Then she had a long illness that made a great change in
her. This brings me to one of the considerations that affect whatever I
may wish to do: the illness left her a nervous wreck--jumpy, excitable,
not altogether reasonable.'

'Neurasthenia,' was Mr Carlyle's seasonable comment. 'The sympton of the
age.'

'Very likely. It doesn't affect me--at least it doesn't affect me
directly. Living in the same house with Mrs Poleash, it's bound to
affect me, because I have to consider how every blessed thing I do will
affect her. And just lately something very lively indeed has come along.

'There is a girl in a shop that I got friendly with--no, I don't want
you to put her name down yet. It began a year or eighteen months.... But
I don't suppose that matters. The only thing I really think that I'm to
blame about is that I never told her I was married. At first there was
no reason why I should; afterwards--well, there was a certain amount of
reason why I shouldn't. Anyhow, I suppose that it was bound to come out
sooner or later, and it did, a few weeks ago. She said, quite nicely,
that she thought we ought to get married as things were, and then, of
course, I had to explain that we couldn't.

'I really hadn't the ghost of an idea that she'd take it so terribly to
heart as she did. There's nothing of the Don Juan about me, as you can
see at a glance. The thing had simply come about--one step leading to
another. But she faulted clean away, and when she came to again she was
like a solid block of ice to everything I said. And then to cap matters
who should appear at that moment but a fellow she'd been half engaged to
before I came along. She'd freq