Title: The Clue of the New Pin (1923)
Author: Edgar Wallace
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Language:  English
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Title: The Clue of the New Pin (1923)
Author: Edgar Wallace





CHAPTER 1.


THE establishment of Yeh Ling was just between the desert of Reed Street
and the sown of that great and glittering thoroughfare which is
theatreland. The desert graduated down from the respectable, if gloomy,
houses where innumerable milliners, modistes, and dentists had their
signs before the doors and their workrooms and clinics on divers
landings, to the howling wilderness of Bennet Street, and in this
particular case the description often applied so lightly is aptly and
faithfully affixed, for Bennet Street howled by day and howled in a
shriller key by night. Its roadway was a playground for the progeny of
this prolific neighbourhood, and a "ring" in which all manner of local
blood-feuds were settled by waist-bare men, whilst their slatternly women
squealed their encouragement or vocalized their apprehensions.

Yeh Ling's restaurant had begun at the respectable end of the street and
he had specialized in strange Chinese dishes.

Later it had crept nearer and nearer and nearer to The Lights, one house
after another having been acquired by the unhappy-looking Oriental, its
founder.

Then, with a rush, it arrived on the main street, acquired a rich but
sedate facia, a French chef, and a staff of Italian waiters under the
popular Signor Maciduino, most urbane of maitres d'hotel, and because of
gilded and visible tiles, became "The Golden Roof." Beneath those tiles
it was a place of rosewood panelling and soft shaded lights. There was a
gilded elevator to carry you to the first and second floors where the
private dining-rooms were--these had doors of plate-glass, curtained
diaphanously. Yeh Ling thought that this was carrying respectability a
little too far, but his patron was adamant on the matter.

Certain rooms had no plate-glass doors, but these were very discreetly
apportioned. One such was never under any circumstances hired to diners,
however important or impeccable they might be. It was the end room, No.
6, near the service doorway which led through a labyrinth of crooked and
cross passages to the old building in Reed Street. This remained almost
unchanged as it had been in the days of Yeh Ling's earlier struggles. Men
and women came here for Chinese dishes and were supplied by soft-footed
waiters from Han-Kow, which was Yeh Ling's native province.

The patrons of the old establishment lamented the arrival of Yeh Ling's
prosperity and sneered at his well-dressed customers. The well-dressed
customers being, for the most part, entirely ignorant that their humble
neighbours had existence, ate their expensive meals unmoved and at
certain hours danced sedately to the strains of The Old Original South
Carolina Syncopated Orchestra, which Yeh Ling had hired regardless of
expense.

He only visited the fashionable part of his property on one day of the
year, the Chinese New Year, a queer little figure in a swallow-tailed
coat, white-vested, white-gloved, and tightly, as well as whitely,
collared.

At other times he sat at ease midway between the desert and the sown in a
pokey little parlour hung about with vivid pictures which he had cut from
the covers of magazines. Here, in a black silk robe, he pulled at his
long-stemmed pipe. At half-past seven every night, except Sundays, he
went to a door which opened on to the street, and was the door of one of
those houses which linked the two restaurants, and here he would wait,
his hand upon the knob. Sometimes the girl came first, sometimes the old
man. Whichever it was, they usually passed in without a word and went up
to Room No. 6. With their arrival Yeh Ling went back to his parlour to
smoke and write letters of great length and beauty to his son at Han-Kow,
for Yeh Ling's son was a man of great learning and position, being both a
poet and a scholar. He had been admitted a member of the Forest of
Pencils, which is at least the equivalent of being elected an
Academician.

Sometimes Yeh Ling would devote himself to the matter of his new building
at Shanford and dream dreams of an Excellency who would be its honoured
master--for all things are possible in a land which makes education a
test of choice for Ambassadorial appointments.

He never saw the two guests depart. They found their way to the door
alone, and soon after eight the room was empty. No waiter served them;
their meals were placed in readiness on a small buffet, and as No. 6 was
veiled from the observations of the curious by a curtain which stretched
across the passage, only Yeh Ling knew them.

On the first Monday of every month, Yeh Ling went up to the room and
kow-towed to its solitary occupant. The old man was always alone on these
occasions. On such a Monday with a large lacquered cash-box in his hand
and a fat book under his arm, Yeh Ling entered the presence of the man in
No. 6, put down his impedimenta on the buffet, and did his reverence.

"Sit down," said Jesse Trasmere, and he spoke in the sibilant dialect of
the lower provinces. Yeh Ling obeyed, hiding his hands respectfully in
the full sleeves of his gown.

"Well?"

"The profits this week have fallen, excellency," said Yeh Ling, but
without apology. "The weather has been very fine and many of our clients
are out of town."

He exposed his hands to open the cash-box and bring out four packages of
paper money. These he divided into two, three of the packages to the
right and one to the left. The old man took the three packages, which
were nearest to him, and grunted.

"The police came last night and asked to be shown over the houses," Yeh
Ling went on impassively. "They desired to see the cellars, because they
think always that Chinamen have smoke-places in their cellars."

"Humph!" said Mr. Trasmere. He was thumbing the money in his hand. "This
is good, Yeh Ling."

He slipped the money into a black bag which was on the floor at his feet.
Yeh Ling shook his head, thereby indicating his agreement.

"Do you remember in Fi Sang a man who worked for me?"

"The Drinker?"

The old man agreed to the appellation.

"He is coming to this country," said Mr. Trasmere, chewing on a
tooth-pick. He was a hard-faced man between sixty and seventy. A rusty
black frock-coat ill fitted his spare form, his old-fashioned collar was
frayed at the edge, and the black shoe-string tie that encircled his lean
throat had been so long in use that it had lost whatever rigidity it had
ever possessed, and hung limp in two tangled bunches on either side of
the knot. His eyes were a hard granite blue, his face ridged and scaled
with callosities until it was lizard-like in its coarseness.

"Yes, he is coming to this country. He will come here as soon as he finds
his way about town, and that will be mighty soon, for Wellington Brown is
a traveller! Yeh Ling, this man is troublesome. I should be happy if he
were sleeping on the Terraces of the Night."

Again Yeh Ling shook his head.

"He cannot be killed--here," he said. "The illustrious knows that my
hands are clean--"

"Are you a man--or--wild-mind?" snarled the other. "Do I kill men or ask
that they should be killed? Even on the Amur, where life is cheap, I have
done no more than put a man to the torture because he stole my gold. No,
this Drinker must be made quiet. He smokes the pipe of the Pleasant
Experience. You have no pipe-room. I would not tolerate such a thing. But
you know places..."

"I know a hundred and a hundred," said Yeh Ling, cheerfully for him.

He accompanied his master to the door, and when it had closed upon him he
returned swiftly to his parlour and summoned a stunted man of his race.

"Go after the old man and see that no harm comes to him," he said.

It seemed from his tone almost as though this guardianship was novel, but
in exactly the same words the shuffling Chinaman had received identical
instructions every day for six years when the thud of the closing
street-door came to Yeh Ling's keen ears. Every day except Sunday.

He himself never went out after Jesse Trasmere. He had other duties,
which commenced at eleven and usually kept him busy until the early hours
of the morning.



CHAPTER 2.


MR. TRASMERE walked steadily and at one pace, keeping to the more
populous streets. Then at exactly 8.21; he turned into Peak Avenue, that
wide and pleasant thoroughfare where his house was situated. A man who
had been idling away a wasted half-hour saw him and crossed the road.

"Excuse me, Mr. Trasmere."

Jesse shot a scowling glance at the interrupter of his reveries. The
stranger was young and a head taller than the old man, well dressed,
remarkably confident.

"Eh?"

"You don't remember me--Holland? I called upon you about a year ago over
the trouble you had with the municipality."

Jesse's face cleared.

"The reporter? Yes, I remember you. You had an article in your rag that
was all wrong, sir--all wrong! You made me say that I had a respect for
municipal laws, and that's a lie! I have no respect for municipal laws or
lawyers. They're thieves and grafters!"

He thumped the ferrule of his umbrella on the ground to emphasize his
disapproval.

"I shouldn't be surprised," said the young man, with a cheerful smile;
"and if I made you toss around a few bouquets, that was faire bonne mine.
I'd forgotten anyway, but it is the job of an interviewer to make his
subject look good."

"Well, what do you want?"

"Our correspondent in Pekin has sent us the original proclamation of the
insurgent, General Wing Su--or Sing Wu, I'm not sure which. These Chinese
names get me rattled."

Tab Holland produced from his pocket a sheet of yellow paper covered with
strange characters.

"We can't get in touch with our interpreters, and knowing that you are a
whale--an authority on the language, the news-editor wondered if you
would be so kind."

Jesse took the sheet reluctantly, gripped his bag between his knees, and
put on his glasses.

"'Wing Su Shi, by the favour of heaven, humbly before his ancestors,
speaks to all men of the Middle Kingdom...'" he began.

Tab, note-book in hand, wrote rapidly as the old man translated.

"Thank you, sir," he said when the other had finished.

There was an odd smirk of satisfaction on the old man's face, a strange,
childlike pride in his accomplishment. "You have a remarkable knowledge
of the language," said Tab politely.

"Born there," replied Jesse Trasmere complacently: "born in a go-down on
the Amur River and could speak the three dialects before I was six. Beat
the whole lot of 'em at their own books when I was so high! That all,
mister?"

"That is all, and thank you," said Tab gravely, and lifted his hat.

He stood looking after the old man as he continued his walk. So that was
Rex Lander's miserly uncle? He did not look like a millionaire, and yet,
when he came to consider the matter, millionaires seldom looked their
wealth.

He had settled the matter of the Wing Su proclamation and was immersed in
a new Prison Report which had been published that day when he remembered
an item of news which had come his way, and duly reported.

"Sorry, Tab," said the night-editor, "the theatre man has 'flu. Won't you
go along and see the lady?"

Tab snorted, but went.

The dresser, hesitating, thought that Miss Ardfern was rather tired, and
wouldn't to-morrow do?

"I'm tired, too," said Tab Holland wearily; "and tell Miss Ardfern that I
haven't come to this darned theatre at eleven p.m. because I'm an
autograph hunter, or because I'm collecting pictures of actresses I'm
crazy about; I'm here in the sacred cause of publicity."

To the dresser, he was as a man who spoke a foreign language. Surveying
him dubiously she turned the handle of the stained yellow door, and
standing in the opening, talked to somebody invisible.

Tab had a glimpse of cretonne hangings, yawned, and scratched his head.
He was not without elegance, except in moments of utter tiredness.

"You can come in," said the dresser, and Tab passed into a room that
blazed with unshaded lights.

Ursula Ardfern had made her change and was ready to leave the theatre,
except that her jacket was still hung on the back of one chair and her
cloth cloak with the blue satin lining was draped over another. She had
in her hand a brooch which she was about to put into an open jewel-case.
Tab particularly noticed the brooch, A heart-shaped ruby was its centre
piece.

He saw her pin it to the soft lining of the lid and close the case.

"I'm extremely sorry to worry you at this hour of the night, Miss
Ardfern," he said apologetically, "and if you're annoyed with me, you
have my passionate sympathy. And if you're not mad at me, I'd be glad of
a little sympathy myself, for I've been in court all day following the
Lachmere fraud trial."

She had been a little annoyed. The set of her pretty face told him that
when he came in.

"And now you've come for another trial," she half-smiled. "What can I do
for you, Mr.--?"

"Holland--Somers Holland of The Megaphone. The theatre reporter is sick,
and we got a rumour to-night from two independent sources that you are to
be married."

"And you came to tell me! Now, isn't that kind of you!" she mocked. "No,
I am not going to be married. I don't think I ever shall marry; but you
needn't put that in the newspaper, or people will think I am posing as an
eccentric. Who is the lucky man, by the way?"

"That is the identical question that I have come to ask," Tab smiled.

"I am disappointed." Her lips twitched. "But I am not marrying. Don't say
that I am wedded to my art, because I'm not, and please don't say that
there is an old boy and girl courtship that will one day materialize,
because there isn't. I just know nobody that I ever wanted to marry, and
if I did I shouldn't marry him. Is that all?"

"That's about all, Miss Ardfern," said Tab. "I'm really sorry to have
troubled you. I always say that to people I trouble, but this time I mean
it."

"How did this information reach you?" she asked as she rose.

Tab's frown was involuntary.

"From a--a friend of mine," he said. "It is the first piece of news that
he has ever given to me, and it is wrong. Good night, Miss Ardfern." His
hand gripped hers, and she winced.

"I'm sorry!" He was all apologies and confusion.

"You're very strong!" she smiled, rubbing her hand, "and you aren't very
well acquainted with us fragile women--didn't you say your name is
Holland? Are you 'Tab' Holland?"

Tab coloured. It wasn't like Tab to feel, much less display,
embarrassment.

"Why 'Tab'?" she asked, her blue eyes dancing.

"It is an office nickname," he explained awkwardly; "the boys say that
I've a passion for making my exit on a good line...really, I believe it
is the line on which the curtain falls...you'll understand that, Miss
Ardfern, it is one of the conventions of the drama."

"A tab-line?" she said. "I have heard about you. I remember now. It was a
man who was in the company I played with--Milton Braid."

"He was a reporter before he fell--before he went on the stage," said
Tab.

He was not a theatre man and knew none of its disciples. This was the
second actress he had met in his twenty-six years of life, and she was
unexpectedly human. That she was also remarkably pretty he accepted
without surprise. Actresses ought to be beautiful, even Ursula Ardfern,
who was a great actress if he accepted the general verdict of the press
and the ecstatic and prejudiced opinion of Rex Lander. But she had a
sense of humour; a curious possession in an emotional actress, if he
could believe all that he had read on the subject. She had grace and
youth and naturalness. He would willingly have stayed, but she was
unmistakably ending the interview.

"Good night, Mr. Holland."

He took her hand again, this time more gingerly, and she laughed outright
at his caution.

On the dressing-table was the small brown jewel-case and a glimpse of it
reminded him: "If there is anything you'd like to go in The Megaphone,"
he floundered--"there was a paragraph in the paper about your having more
wonderful jewels than any other woman on the stage..."

He was being unaccountably gauche; he knew this and hated himself. It did
not need her quick smile to tell him that she did not wish for that kind
of publicity. And then the smile vanished, leaving her young face
strangely hard.

"No...I don't think that my jewels and their value are very interesting.
In the part I am playing now it is necessary to wear a great deal of
jewellery--I wish it weren't. Good night. I'm glad to upset the rumour."

"I'm sorry for the bridegroom," said Tab gallantly.

She watched him out of the room, and her mind was still intent upon this
broad-shouldered towering young man when her dresser came in.

"I do wish, miss, you hadn't to carry those diamonds about with you,"
said the sad-faced dresser. "Mr. Stark, the treasurer, said he would put
them in the theatre safe for you--and there's a night watchman."

"Mr. Stark told me that too," said the girl quietly, "but I prefer to
take them with me. Help me with my coat, Simmons."

A few minutes later she passed through the stage-door. A small and
handsome little car was drawn up opposite the door. It was closed and
empty. She passed through the little crowd that had gathered to see her
depart, stepped inside, placed the jewel-case on the floor at her feet,
and started the machine.

The door-man saw it glide round the corner and went back to his tiny
office.

Tab also saw the car depart. He grinned at himself for his whimsical and
freakish act. If anybody had told him that he would wait at a stage-door
for the pleasure of catching a glimpse of a popular actress, he would
have been rude. Yet here he was, a furtive and abashed man, so ashamed of
his weakness that he must look upon her from the darkest corner of the
street!

"Well, well," said Tab with a sigh, "we live and learn."

His flat was in Doughty Street, and stopping only to telephone the result
of the interview, he made his way home.

As he came into the sitting-room a man some two years his junior looked
up over the top of the armchair in which he was huddled.

"Well?" he asked eagerly.

Tab went over to a large tobacco jar and filled his polished briar before
he spoke.

"Is it true?" asked Rex Lander impatiently; "what a mysterious brute you
are!"

"Rex, you're related to the Canards of Duckville," said the other,
puffing solemnly. "You're a spreader of false tidings and a creator of
alarm and despondency amongst the stage-door lizards--whose ancient
fraternity I have this night joined, thanks to you."

Rex relaxed his strained body into a more easy and even less graceful
posture.

"Then she isn't going to be married?" he said with a sigh.

"You meant well," said Tab, flopping into a chair, "and I know of no
worse thing that you can say about a man than that he 'meant well!' But
it isn't true. She's not going to be married. Where did you get hold of
this story, Babe?"

"I heard it," said the other vaguely.

He was a boyish-looking young man with a pink-and-white complexion. His
face was so round and cherubic that the appellation of "Babe" had good
excuse, for he was plump of person and lazy of habit. They had been
school-fellows, and when Rex had come to town at the command of his one
relative, his uncle, the sour Mr. Jesse Trasmere, to take up a torturous
training as an architect, these two had gravitated together and now
shared Tab's small flat.

"What do you think of her?"

Tab thought before replying.

"She's certainly handicapped with good looks," he said cautiously. At
another time he would have added a word of disparagement or would have
spoken jokingly of Rex Lander's intense interest in the lady, but now,
for some reason, he treated the other's inquiry with more seriousness
than was his wont.

Ursula Ardfern stood for the one consistently successful woman management
in town. Despite her youth she had chosen and cast her own plays, and in
four seasons had not known the meaning of the word failure.

"She's quite...charming," Tab said. "Of course I felt a fool;
interviewing actresses is off my beat anyway. Who is the letter from?" He
glanced up at the envelope propped on the mantelpiece.

"From Uncle Jesse," said the other without looking up from his book. "I
wrote to him, asking him if he would lend me fifty."

"And he said?--I saw him to-day by the way."

"Read it," invited Rex Lander with a grin.

Tab took down the envelope and extracted a thick sheet of paper written
in a crabbed school-boy hand.

"DEAR REX" (he read). "Your quarterly allowance is not due until the
twenty-first. I regret, therefore, that I cannot agree to your request.
You must live more economically, remembering that when you inherit my
money you will be thankful for the experience which economical living has
given to you and which will enable you to employ the great wealth which
will be yours, in a more judicious, far-seeing manner."

"He's a miserable old skinflint," said Tab, tossing the letter back to
the mantelshelf. "Somebody was telling me the other day that he's worth a
million--where did he make it?"

Rex shook his head.

"In China, I think. He was born there, and started in quite a humble way
as a trader on the Amur River Goldfields. Then he bought property on
which gold was discovered. I don't know," he said, scratching his chin,
"that I ought to complain. After all, there may be a lot in all he says,
and he has been a good friend of mine."

"How often have you seen him?"

"I spent a week with him last year," said Rex, with a little grimace at
the memory. "Still," he hastened to add, "I owe him a lot. It may be if I
wasn't such a lazy slug and didn't like expensive things, I could live
within my income."

Tab pulled at his pipe in silence. Presently he said: "There are all
sorts of rumours about old Jesse Trasmere. A fellow told me the other day
that he is a known miser; keeps his money in the house, which of course
is a romantic lie."

"He hasn't a banking account," said the other surprisingly, "and I happen
to know that he does keep a very large sum of money at Mayfield. The
house is built like a prison, and it has an underground strong-room which
is the strongest room of its kind. I have never seen it, but I have seen
him go down to it. Whether or not he sits down and gloats over his pieces
of eight, I have never troubled to discover. But it is perfectly true,
Tab," he said earnestly, "he has no banking account. Everything is paid
out in cash. I suppose he does have transactions through banks, but I
have never heard of them. As to his being a miser"--he hesitated--"well,
he is not exactly generous. For example, six months ago he discovered
that the man and his wife who looked after Mayfield, which is a very
small house, were in the habit of giving the pieces of food left over to
one of their poorer relatives, and he fired them on the spot! When I was
there this year, he was shutting up all the rooms except his own bedroom
and his dining-room, which he uses also as a study."

"What does he do for servants?" asked Tab, and the other shook his head.

"He has his valet, Walters, and two women who come in every day, one to
cook and one to clean. But for the cook he has built a small kitchen away
from the house."

"He must be a cheerful companion," said Tab.

"He is not exactly exhilarating. He has a fresh cook every month. I met
Walters the other day and he told me that the new cook is the best
they've had," admitted the other, and there followed a silent interval of
nearly five minutes.

Then Tab got up and knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"She certainly is pretty," he said, and Rex Lander looked at him
suspiciously, for he knew that Tab was not talking about the cook.



CHAPTER 3.


MR. JESSE TRASMERE sat at the end of a long, and, except in his immediate
vicinity, bare table. At his end it was laid, and Mr. Trasmere was slowly
and deliberately enjoying a lean cutlet.

The room gave no suggestion of immense wealth and paid no silent tribute
either to his artistic taste or his acquaintance with China. The walls
were innocent of pictures, the furniture old, European, and shabby. Mr.
Trasmere had bought it second-hand and had never ceased to boast of the
bargain he had secured.

If there were no pictures, there were no books. Jesse Trasmere was not a
reader, even of newspapers.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and through the folds of his
dressing-gown the grey of his pyjama jacket showed open at his lean
throat, for Mr. Trasmere had only just got out of bed. Presently he would
dress in his rusty black suit and would be immensely wakeful until the
dawn of to-morrow. He never went to bed until the grey showed in the sky,
nor slept later than two o'clock in the afternoon.

At six-thirty, to the second, Walters, his valet, would assist him into
his overcoat, a light one if it was warm, a heavy fur-lined garment if it
was cold, and Mr. Trasmere would go for his walk and transact whatever
business he found to his hand.

But before he left the house there was a certain ceremonial--the locking
of doors, the banishment of the valet to his own quarters, and the
disappearance of Mr. Trasmere through the door which led from his
study-dining-room to the basement of the house. This done he would go
out. Walters had watched him from one of the upper windows scores of
times walking slowly down the street, an unfurled umbrella on one hand, a
black bag in another. At eight-thirty to the minute he was back in the
house. He invariably dined out. Walters would bring him a cup of black
coffee, and at ten o'clock would retire to his own room, which was
separated from the main building by a heavy door which Mr. Trasmere
invariably locked.

Once in the early days of his service, Walters had expostulated.

"Suppose there is a fire, sir," he complained.

"You can get through your bath-room window on to the kitchen, and if you
can't drop to the ground from there you deserve to be burnt to death,"
snarled the old man. "If you don't like the job, you needn't stay. Those
are the rules of my establishment, and there are no others."

So, night after night, Walters had gone to his room and Mr. Trasmere had
shuffled after him in his slippered feet, had banged and locked the door
upon him and had left Walters to solitude.

This procedure was only altered when the old man was taken ill one night
and was unable to reach the door. Thereafter a key was hung in a small
glass-fronted case, in very much the same way as fire-keys are hung. In
the event of his illness, or of any other unexpected happening, Walters
could secure the key and answer the bell above his bed-head. That
necessity had not arisen.

Every morning the valet found the door unlocked. At what hour old Jesse
came he could not discover, but he guessed that his employer stopped on
his way to bed in the morning to perform this service.

Walters was never allowed an evening off. Two days a week he was given
twenty-four hours' leave of absence, but he had to be in the house by
ten.

"And if you are a minute later, don't come back," said Jesse Trasmere.

As the old man's valet Walters had exceptional opportunities for
discovering something more about his master than Mr. Trasmere would care
to have known. He was for a very particular reason anxious to know what
the basement contained. Once he had met a man who had been engaged in the
building of the house, and learnt that there was a room below, built of
concrete; but though he had, with the greatest care and discretion,
searched for keys which might, during the daily absence of his employer,
reveal the secret of this underground room, he had never succeeded in
laying his hand upon them. Mr. Trasmere had apparently only one key, a
master-key, which he wore round his neck at night, and in the same
inaccessible position in his clothing during the daytime, and Walters'
search had been in vain, until one morning, when taking Mr. Trasmere his
shaving-water, the servant found him suffering from one of those fainting
fits which periodically overcame him. There was a cake of soap handy, and
Walters was a resourceful man...

Mr. Trasmere looked up from his plate and fixed his servant with his
grey-blue eyes.

"Has anybody called this morning?"

"No, sir."

"Have any letters come?"

"Only a few. They are on your desk, sir."

Mr. Trasmere grunted.

"Did you put the notice in the paper that I was leaving town for two or
three days?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said Walters.

Jesse Trasmere grunted again.

"A man is coming from China; I don't want to see him," he explained. He
was oddly communicative at moments to his servant, but Walters, who knew
his master extremely well, did not make the mistake of asking questions.
"No, I don't want to see him." The old man chewed a tooth-pick
reflectively, and his unattractive face bore an expression of distaste.
"He was a partner of mine, twenty, thirty years ago, a card-playing,
gambling, drinking man, who gave himself airs because--well, never mind
what he gave himself airs about," he said impatiently, as though he
anticipated a question which he should have known never would have been
put to him. "He was that kind of man."

He stared at the fireless grate with its red brick walls and its
microscopic radiator and clicked his lips.

"If he comes, he is not to be admitted. If he asks questions, you're not
to answer. You know nothing...about anybody. Why he's coming at
all...well, that doesn't matter. He's just trash, a soakin' dope. He had
his chance, got under it, and went to sleep. Phew! That fellow! He might
have been rich, but he sold all his shares. A soak! Rather drink than
sit in the Empress of China's council...she's dead. White
trash...nothing...h'm."

He glared up of a sudden and asked harshly:

"Why the hell are you listening?"

"Sorry, sir, I thought--"

"Get out!"

"Yes, sir," said Walters with alacrity.

For half an hour old Jesse Trasmere sat where the valet had left him, the
red end of his tooth-pick leaping up and down eccentrically. Then he got
up and, going to an old-fashioned bureau, opened the glass front.

He brought to the table a shallow bowl of white porcelain half filled
with Indian ink. His second visit to the secretaire produced a thick pad
of paper. It was unusually large, and its texture of a peculiar
character. From an open-work iron box he took a long-handled brush, and
sitting down again dipped the fine point into the ink.

Another long interval of inaction and he commenced to write, beginning at
the top right-hand corner and working down the page. The grotesque and
intricate Chinese characters appeared with magic rapidity. He finished
one column and commenced another, and so until the page was covered
except for two spaces beneath the last and the penultimate line.

Laying down the brush he felt, with the slow deliberation of age, in his
right-hand waistcoat pocket and pulled out an ivory cylinder as big round
as a large pencil. He slipped one end out and pressed it on the paper.
When he took the stamp away there appeared within a red circle two
Chinese characters. This was Jesse Trasmere's "hong," his sign manual; a
thousand merchants from Shanghai to Fi Chen would honour cheques which
bore that queer mark, and those for startling sums.

When the paper was dry he folded it into a small compass and getting up,
went to the empty fireplace. Outside on the stairs a deeply interested
Walters craned his neck to see what happened. From his position, and
through the fanlight above the door, he commanded a view of at least a
third of the room.

But now Jesse had passed out of sight, and although he stretched himself
perilously he could not see what was happening. Only, when the old man
reappeared the paper was no longer in his hand.

He touched a bell, and Walters came at once.

"Remember," he rasped, "I am not at home--to anybody!"

"Very good, sir," said Walters, a little impatiently.

Mr. Trasmere had gone out that afternoon when the visitor called.

It was unfortunate for the old man's scheme that the China mail had made
a record voyage and had arrived thirty-six hours ahead of her scheduled
time. Mr. Trasmere was not a reader of newspapers, or he would have
learnt the fact in that morning's paper.

Walters answered the bell after some delay, for he was busily engaged in
his own room on a matter that was entirely private to himself, and when
he did answer the tinkling summons it was to find a brown-faced stranger
standing on the broad step. He was dressed in an old suit which did not
fit him, his linen was stained, and his boots were patched, but his
manner would not have been out of place in Lorenzo the Magnificent.

With his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, his soiled soft hat on
the back of his head, he met the inquiring and deferential gaze of
Walters with a calm and insolent stare, for Mr. Brown was rather drunk.

"Well, well, my man," he said impatiently, "why the devil do you keep me
waiting on the doorstep of my friend Jesse's house, eh?" He removed one
of his hands from his pocket, possibly not the cleanest one, and tugged
at his short grey beard.

"Mr.--er--Mr. Trasmere is out," said Walters, "I will tell him you have
called. What name, sir?"

"Wellington Brown is my name, good fellow," said the stranger.
"Wellington Brown from Chei-feu. I will come in and wait."

But Walters barred the way.

"Mr. Trasmere has given me strict orders not to admit anybody unless he
is in the house," he said.

A wave of anger turned Wellington Brown's face to a deeper red.

"He has given orders!" he spluttered. "That I am not to be admitted--I,
Wellington Brown, who made his fortune, the swindling old thief! He knows
I am coming!"

"Are you from China, sir?" blurted Walters.

"I have told you, menial and boot-licking yellow-plush, that I am from
Chei-feu. If you are illiterate, as you appear to be, I will explain to
you that Chei-feu is in China."

"I don't care whether Chei-feu is in China or on the moon," said Walters
obstinately. "You can't come in, Mr. Brown! Mr. Trasmere is away--he'll
be away for a fortnight."

"Oh, won't I come in!"

The struggle was a brief one, for Walters was a man of powerful physique,
and Wellington Brown was a man nearer sixty than fifty. He was flung
against the stone wall of the porch and might, in his bemused condition,
have fallen had not Walters' quick hand grabbed him back.

The stranger breathed noisily.

"I've killed men for that," he said jerkily, "shot 'em down like dogs!
I'll remember this, flunkey!"

"I didn't want to hurt you," said Walters, aggrieved that any onus for
the unpleasantness should rest on him.

The stranger raised his hand haughtily.

"I will settle accounts with your master--remember that, lackey! He shall
pay, by God!"

With drunken dignity he walked unsteadily through the patch of garden
that separated the house from the road, leaving Walters a puzzled man.



CHAPTER 4


AT nine o'clock that night the bell of Tab Holland's flat rang long and
noisily.

"Who the dickens is that?" he growled.

He was in his shirt-sleeves, writing for dear life, and the table was
strewn with proofs of his industry.

Rex Lander came out of his bedroom.

"Your boy, I expect," he said; "I left the lower door open for him."

Tab shook his head. "The office is sending for the copy at eleven," he
said; "see who it is, Babe."

Mr. Lander grumbled. He always grumbled when he was called upon for
physical effort. He opened the door, and Tab, hearing a loud and
unfamiliar voice, joined him. On the landing without was a bearded,
swaying figure, and he was talking noisily.

"What is wrong?" asked Tab.

"Everything, sir," hiccupped the caller, "everything is...wrong. A man, a
gen'leman cannot be robbed with impunity or assaulted by me--menials
with--with," he considered a moment and added: "impunity."

"Bring him in, the poor soused herring," said Tab, and Mr. Wellington
Brown swaggered and staggered into the sitting-room. He was abominably
intoxicated.

"Wish of you young gen'lemen is Rex Lander?"

"That is my name," said the puzzled Rex.

"I'm...Wellington Brown of Chei-feu. A pensioner at the mercy of a dam'
ol' scoundrel! A pension'r! He pays me a pittance out of what he robbed
me. I can tell you some'n about ol' Trasmere..."

"Trasmere, my uncle?" asked the startled young man.

The other nodded gravely and sleepily.

"I can tell you some'n about him. I was his book...keeper 'n sec'tary. I
know! I'll tell you some'n about him!"

"You can save your breath," said Rex coldly. "Why have you come here?"

"Because you're's nephew. Thas why! He robbed me...robbed me!" he sobbed.
"Took bread out the mouth of innocent child...thas what! Took bread out
'f orphan's mouth and robbed me, swin'led me out of my share Mancurian
Trading Syn'cate, an' then gave me remittance 'n said, 'Drink yerself to
death'--thas what he said!"

"And did you?" asked Tab sardonically.

The stranger eyed him unfavourably.

"Who's this?" he demanded.

"This is a friend of mine," said Rex, "and you're in his flat. And if the
only business you have is to abuse my uncle you can get out just as soon
as you like."

Mr. Wellington Brown tapped the young man's chest with a grimy
forefinger.

"Your uncle is a rascal! Get that! A low thief!"

"Better write and tell him so," said Tab briskly; "just now I am engaged
in churning out two yards of journalese, and you're disturbing my
thoughts."

"Write to him!" roared Mr. Brown delightedly; "write to him! Thas
good...best thing I've heard for years! Why--!"

"Get out!"

Babe Lander threw open the door with a crash, and the visitor glared at
him.

"Like ungle, like nephew," he said, "like nephew, like lackey...I'm
goin'. And let me tell you--"

The door slammed in his face.

"Phew!" said Babe, wiping his brow. "Let's open the window and let in
some fresh air!"

"Who is he?"

"Search me," said Rex Lander. "I've no illusions about Uncle Jesse's
early friends. I gather that he's been a pensioner of the old boy's, and
there is probably some truth in his charge that he was robbed. I cannot
imagine uncle giving money away from charitable motives. Anyway, I'm
seeing him to-morrow, and I'll ask."

"You'll see nothing," said Tab. "Do you ever read the fashionable
intelligence or society news? Uncle is leaving town to-morrow."

Rex smiled.

"That is an old trick when he doesn't want to be seen--by Joab! It is the
Wellington who has put his name in the society column!"

Tab paused, pen in hand.

"Silence will now reign," he commanded, "whilst a great journalist deals
adequately with the Milligan Murder Appeal."

Rex looked at him admiringly.

"How you can stick your nose at the grindstone is a source of wonder to
me," he said. "I couldn't--"

"Shut up!" snapped Tab, and the desirable silence was his.

He finished the last page at eleven, sent off his copy by a punctual
messenger, then filling his pipe, stretched himself luxuriously in his
mission chair.

"Now I'm a free man until Monday afternoon--"

The hall telephone signalled at that moment, and he got up with a groan.

"Boast not!" he growled. "That is the office or I'm a saint!"

It was the office, as he had so intelligently foreseen. He snapped a few
words at the transmitter and came back to the room. And Tab was very
voluble.

A Polish gentleman concerned in certain frauds on insurance companies had
been arrested, escaped again, and having barricaded himself in his house,
was keeping the police at bay with the aid of boiling water and a large
axe.

"Jacko is enthusiastic about it," said the savage Tab, speaking thus
disrespectfully of his city editor; "says it is real drama--I told him to
send the dramatic critic. Gosh! I did his job the other night."

"Going out?" asked Rex with mild interest.

"Of course I'm going out, you thick-headed jibberer!" said the other
unkindly as he struggled into the collar he had discarded.

"I thought all that sort of stuff was invented in the office," said the
young architect monstrously. "Personally I never believe what I read in
newspapers..."

But Tab had gone.

At midnight he joined a little group of police officers that stood at
safe range from the besieged house, whose demented occupant had found a
shot-gun. Tab was with them until the door of the house was stormed and
the defender borne down and clubbed to a state of placidity.

At two o'clock in the morning, he and Carver, the chief of the detectives
engaged in the case, adjourned to the police mess and had supper. It was
half-past three and the streets were lit by the ghostly light of dawn
when he started to walk home.

Passing through Park Street, he heard the whir of wheels and a motor-car
flew past him. It had gone a hundred yards when there came to him the
explosion of a burst tyre. He saw the car swerve and stop. A woman
alighted and examined the damage. Apparently she was alone, for he saw
her open the tool-box on the running-board and take out a jack. He
hastened his footsteps and crossed to the middle of the road.

The only other person in sight was a cyclist down the road who had
dismounted and was examining his wheel.

"Can I be of service?" asked Tab. The woman started and turned. "Miss
Ardfern!" he said, in astonishment.

For a second she seemed uncomfortable, and then with a quick smile:

"It is...Mr. Tab! Please forgive the familiarity, I cannot remember your
other name."

"Don't try," he said, taking the jack from her hands; "but if you are
very anxious to remember, I am called Holland."

She said nothing whilst he was raising the car. When he was knocking the
torn wheel free, she said: "I was out rather late; I have been to a
party."

There was light enough for him to see that she was dressed very plainly
and that the shoes she wore were heavy and serviceable. He would have
gone farther and said that she was dressed poorly. Inside the car on the
seat by her side was a square black case, smaller but deeper than a
suit-case. Perhaps she had changed her clothes--but for all their
surprising agility in this direction, actresses do not change their
clothes to go home from a party.

"I have been to a party too," he said, jerking off the wheel and rolling
it to the front of the car: "a surprise party, with fireworks."

"A dance?"

Tab smiled to himself.

"I only danced once," he said "I saw the gentleman taking aim with the
shot-gun and danced right merrily, yo ho!"

He heard the quick intake of her breath.

"Oh yes...it was the Pole. We heard the shots and I knew that he had
taken refuge in his house before I left the theatre."

The wheel was replaced now, the tools returned, and the old wheel
strapped to the car.

"That is O.K.," said Tab, stepping back. "Oh no, it was nothing," he said
hastily as she began to thank him, "nothing at all."

She did not offer to drive him home. He rather hoped that she would;
indeed, her method of going was a little precipitate, and she was out of
sight before he realized that she was gone.

What on earth was she doing at that time in the morning, he wondered? A
party she had said, but again it occurred to him that fashionable
actresses did not go to parties in that kind of outfit.

Rex was awake when he reached home and came out to him. Strangely enough,
although they discussed the happenings of the night, Tab did not mention
his meeting with Ursula Ardfern.



CHAPTER 4a.


"URSULA ARDFERN." Tab woke with the words on his lips. The hour was
eleven, and Rex had been out and was back again.

"L'ami de mon oncle has been--did you hear him?" asked Rex, stopping his
towel-encompassed companion on his way to the bath-room.

"Who--Bonaparte?"

"Wellington is his name, I believe. Yes, he came rather subdued and
apologetic, but full of horrific threats toward Uncle Jesse. I turned him
out."

"Why did he come?"

Rex Lander shook his head.

"Heaven knows! Unless it was that he simply had to find somebody who knew
uncle well enough to be interested in hearing him curse the old man. I've
persuaded him to leave town until the end of next week. But I must say
that I was impressed by the brute's threats. He says he will kill Uncle
Jesse unless he makes reparation."

"Twiff!" said Tab contemptuously, and went to his tub.

Over his breakfast (Rex had had his two hours before) he returned to the
subject of Mr. Jesse Trasmere and his enemy.

"When a man soaks he's dangerous," he said. "There isn't any such thing
as a harmless drunkard, any more than there is a harmless lunatic. Carver
and I had a talk on the matter early this morning, and he agreed. That
man is certainly intelligent, which is more than you can say of the
majority of detectives, poor fellow; they are the victims of a system
which calls for a sixty-nine-inch brain."

"Eh?"

"A sixty-nine-inch brain," explained Tab, and there was really no excuse
for Babe Lander to be puzzled, for Tab was on his favourite topic, "is
the brain of a man who is chosen for the subtle business of criminal
investigation; not because he is clever or shrewd or has a knowledge of
the world, but because he stands sixty-nine inches in his stockings and
has a chest expansion to thirty-eight. Funny, isn't it? And yet
detectives are chosen that way. They have to strip hard, very hard, but
they need not think very hard. Do you ever realize that Napoleon and
Julius Caesar, to mention only two bright lads, could never have got into
the police force?"

"It hasn't struck me before," admitted Rex. "But I've never had any doubt
as to the size of your brain, Tab."

There were exactly seventy inches of Tab, though he did not look so tall,
having thickness and breadth to his shoulders. He had a habit of
stooping, which made him seem round-shouldered. This trick came from
pounding a typewriter or crouching over a desk which was just a little
too low for him.

He was fresh-coloured, but brown rather than pink. His face was finer
drawn than is usual in a man of his build, his eyes deep-set and
steadfastly grey. When he spoke he drawled a little. Those who knew him
very well indeed detected one imperfection of speech. He could not say
"very"--it was "vethy," but spoken so quickly that only the trained and
acquainted ear could detect the lisp.

He came to journalism from one of the Universities, bringing no
particular reputation for learning, but universally honoured as the best
three-quarter back of his time. Without being rich he was comfortably
placed, and as he was one of those fortunates who had innumerable
maiden-aunts he received on an average one legacy a year, though he had
studiously neglected them because of their possessions.

It would be more true to say that Tab leapt into journalism, and to that
peculiar department of journalism which he found most fascinating, when
he dived off the end of a river pier and rescued Jasper Dorgon, the
defaulting banker who had tried to commit suicide, and had extracted an
exclusive story from the banker whilst both sat in a state of nudity
before a night watchman's fire watching their clothes dry.

"Let it strike you now, Babe," he said. "The sixty-nine-inch brain, the
generally accepted theory that anything under the sixty-nine-inch level
is solid ivory, is the theory that keeps Lew Vann and old Joe Haspinell
and similar crook acquaintances of mine dining in the Grand Criterion
when they ought to be atoning for their sins in the Cold Stone Jug. But
Carver is a good man. He thinks, though it is against regulations."

"What does he think about Wellington?"

"Didn't tell him," said Tab. "You ought to warn your uncle."

"I'll see him to-day," nodded Rex.

They went out together before the lunch hour. Tab had a call to make at
the office and afterwards he was meeting Carver for lunch. Carver, a
lanky and slow-speaking man, was ordinarily no conversationalist. On some
subjects he was impressively interesting, and as Tab provided the
subject, two hours slipped away very quickly. Before they left the
restaurant, Tab told him of the drunken stranger and his threats against
Jesse Trasmere.

"I don't worry about threats," said Carver, "but a man with a grievance,
and especially a Number One grievance like this man has, is pretty
certain to cause trouble. Do you know old Trasmere?"

"I've seen him twice. I was once sent to his house to make an inquiry
about an action that the municipality started against him for building
without the town architect's permission. Rex Lander, who is a
kindergarten architect by the way, and rooms with me, is his nephew, and
I've heard a whole lot about him. He writes to Rex from time to time;
letters full of good advice about saving money."

"Lander is his heir?"

"Rex hopes so, fervently. But he says it is just as likely that Uncle
Jesse will leave his money to a Home for the Incurably Wealthy. Talking
of Trasmere, there goes his valet, and he seems in a hurry."

A cab dashed past them, its solitary passenger was Walters, a pinch-faced
man, bareheaded, and on his face a tense, haggard look that immediately
arrested the attention of the two men.

"Who did you say that was?" asked Carver quickly.

"Walters--old Trasmere's servant," replied Tab; "looks pretty scared to
me."

"Walters?" The detective stood stock still, thinking. "I know that man's
face...I've got him! Walter Felling!"

"Walter who?"

"Felling--he was through my hands ten years ago, and he has been
convicted since. Walters, as you call him, is an incorrigible thief! Old
Trasmere's servant, eh? That's his speciality. He takes service with rich
people, and one fine morning they wake up to find their loose jewellery
and money and plate gone. Did you notice the number of the cab?"

Tab shook his head.

"The question is," said the detective, "has he made a get-away in a
hurry, or is he on an urgent errand for his boss? Anyway we ought to see
Trasmere. Shall we take a cab or walk?"

"Walk," said Tab promptly. "Only the detectives of fiction take cabs,
Carver. The real people know that when they present their cab bills to
the head office a soulless clerk will question each item."

"Tab, you certainly know more about the interior economy of
thief-catching than an outsider ought to know," responded the detective
gloomily.

Between them and Trasmere's house was the better part of a mile.
Mayfield, the dwelling-place of old Jesse, was the one ugly building in a
road which was famous for the elegance of its houses. Built of hideously
yellow brick, without any ornamentation, it stood squat and square in the
middle of a cemented "garden." Three microscopic circles of earth had
been left at the urgent request of the builder, wherein Mr. Jesse might,
if he so desired, win from the sickly earth such blooms and blossoms as
might delight his eye. To this he reluctantly agreed, but only after
there had been pointed out to him the fact that such an alteration to his
plans would save a little money.

"It isn't exactly the Palace of the Fairy Prince, is it?" said Tab, as he
pushed open the cast-iron gate.

"I've seen prettier houses," admitted Carver. "I wonder--"

So far he got when the front door was flung violently open and Rex Lander
rushed out. His face was the colour of chalk, his big baby eyes were
staring wildly. They fell upon the two men on the concrete walk, and his
mouth opened to speak, but no words came.

Tab ran to him.

"What is wrong?" he demanded, and that something was badly wrong one
glance at Babe Lander told him.

"My uncle..." he gasped. "Go...look..."

Carver rushed into the house and through the open door of the
dining-room. It was empty, but at the side of the fireplace was a
narrower door.

"Where is he?" asked the detective.

Rex could only point to the narrow aperture.

There was a flight of stone stairs which terminated in a narrow passage,
barred by yet another door, which was also open. The corridor was well
lighted by three globes set at intervals in the ceiling, and the acrid
smell of exploded cordite filled the confined space of the passage, which
was empty.

"There must be a room opening from here," said Carver.

"Whose are these?"

He stooped and picked up an old pair of gloves that lay on the floor and
pushed them into his pocket.

He looked round for Rex Lander. That young man was sitting on the top
step of the stairs, his face in his hands.

"There's no sense in questioning him," said Carver in an undertone,
"where is his uncle?"

Tab walked rapidly down the passage and came to a door on the left. It
was a narrow door, painted black and deeply recessed in the thick wall.
There was no handle, and only a tiny keyhole. Four inches from its top
was a steel plate pierced with small holes for the purpose of
ventilation. He pushed the door, but it was locked. Then he peered
through the ventilator.

He saw a vault which he guessed was about ten feet long by eight feet
wide. Fixed to the rough walls were a number of steel shelves, loaded up
with black iron boxes. A brilliant light came from a globe in the vaulted
roof, and he saw plainly.

At the farther end of the room was a plain table, but it was not at this
he was looking, but at the figure crouched against one of its legs. The
face was turned in his direction.

It was the face of Jesse Trasmere, and he was dead.



CHAPTER 5.


TAB gave way to the detective and waited whilst Carver looked.

"There's no sign of a weapon--but by the smell there has been some
shooting," he said. "What is that on the table?"

Tab peered through the ventilator.

"It looks like a key to me," he said.

They tried the door, but it resisted their combined weight.

"The door is much too thick and the lock too strong for us to force,"
said Carver at last. "I'll telephone headquarters, Tab. See what you can
get out of your friend."

"I don't think he'll tell me much for some time. Come along, Babe," said
Tab kindly, taking the other's arm. "Let's get out of this beastly
atmosphere."

Unresisting, Rex Lander allowed himself to be led back to the
dining-room, where he dropped into a chair.

Carver had finished his telephoning and had returned long before Rex had
recovered sufficiently to give a coherent narrative. His face was
blanched, he could not control his quivering lips, and it was a
considerable time before he could tell his patient hearers all that he
knew.

"I came to the house this afternoon by appointment," he said. "My uncle
had written to me asking me to see him about an application which I had
made to him for a loan. He had previously rejected my request, but, as
had often happened, he relented at the last moment, for he was not a bad
man at heart. As I was pressing the bell the door opened, and I saw
Walters--Walters is my uncle's valet."

The detective nodded.

"He looked terribly agitated, and he had a brown leather bag in his hand.
'I am just going out, Mr. Lander,' he said--"

"Did he seem surprised to see you?"

"He seemed alarmed," said Rex. "It struck me when I saw him that my uncle
must be ill, and I asked him if anything was the matter. He said that
uncle was well, but he had sent him on a very important errand. The
conversation did not last more them a minute, for Walters ran down the
steps into the road before I could recover from my amazement."

"He wore no hat?" asked Carver.

Rex shook his head.

"I stood in the hall for a moment, knowing that my uncle does not like
people to come in upon him unless they are properly announced. You see,
Mr. Carver, the situation was rather a delicate one for me. I had come
here in the role of a suppliant, and naturally I did not wish to
prejudice my chance of getting the fifty which my uncle had promised me.
I went to uncle's living-room, but he was not there; but the door which I
knew led to the strong-room was open and he could not be far away. I sat
down and waited. I must have been there ten minutes, and then I began to
smell something burning, as I thought, but which was, in fact, the smell
of gunpowder, or whatever they use in cartridges, and I was so thoroughly
alarmed that I went down the steps and after a little hesitation, knowing
how my uncle hated being overlooked, I went on to the door of the vault.
It was locked, and I rapped on the ventilator but had no reply. Then I
peeped through."

"It was horrible," he shuddered. "As fast as I could I ran up the stairs
into the street, intending to call a policeman, and I saw you."

"Whilst you were in the house you heard no sound to suggest that there
was anybody else present? Where are the servants?"

"There is only the cook," said Rex, and Carver went in search of her.

But the kitchen was closed and deserted. It was apparently the cook's day
off.

"I'll make a search of the house," said Carver. "Come along, Tab, you are
in this case now and you had better stay with it."

The search did not take a very long time. There were two rooms used by
Mr. Trasmere, the remainder were locked up and apparently unused. A
passage-way led to Walters' sleeping apartment, which had originally been
designed as a guest-room and was larger than servants' quarters usually
are. The room was meagrely furnished and there was evidence that Mr.
Walters had not anticipated so hurried a flight. Some of his clothing
hung on pegs behind the door, others were found in a wardrobe, whilst a
cup filled with coffee stood on the table. Carver dipped his little
finger into the liquid. It was still warm.

A cloth had been thrown hurriedly over some bulky object at one end of
the table, and this the detective removed. He whistled. Clamped to the
edge of the table was a small vice and scattered about were a number of
files and other tools.

Carver turned the screw of the vice and released the object in its grip.
It was a small key of peculiar shape, and the man must have been working
upon it recently, for steel filings covered the base of the tool.

"Then friend Walters was making a key," said Carver.

"Look at that plaster cast! That is an old dodge, of his. I suppose he
got an impression of the key on soap or wax and has been working at it
ever since." He looked at the thing in his palm, curiously. "This may
save us a great deal of trouble," he said, "for unless I am mistaken this
is the key of the strong-room."

A few minutes later the house was filled with detectives, police
photographers, and coroner's officers. They came on a useless errand, for
the door remained locked. Tab took advantage of their arrival to escort
his friend home.

Before he went Carver drew him aside.

"We shall have to keep in touch with Mr. Lander," he said. "He may be
able to throw a great deal of light upon this murder. In the meantime I
have sent out all station calls to pull in Felling--who is Wellington
Brown?"

"Wellington Brown? That is the man who has been threatening Trasmere--I
told you about him at lunch."

Carver pulled an old pair of gloves from his pocket.

"Mr. Wellington Brown was in that underground corridor," he said quietly,
"and was sufficiently indiscreet to leave his gloves behind--his name is
written inside!"

"You will charge him with the murder?" asked Tab, and Carver nodded.

"I think so. Either he or Walters. At any rate we shall hold them on
suspicion, but I cannot be more definite until we've got inside that
vault."

Tab escorted his friend to the flat, and leaving him, hurried back to
Mayfield, by which fanciful name Trasmere had called his grim house.

"We've found no weapon of any kind," said the detective, whom Tab found
sitting in Trasmere's dining-room with a plan of the house before him.
"Maybe it is in the vault, in which event it looks like a case of
suicide. I have been on the telephone with the boss of Mortimers’, the
builders. They say that there is only one key in existence for that
vault--I was speaking to Mr. Mortimer himself, and he knows. Trasmere
made a special point about the lock, and had twenty or thirty
manufactured by different locksmiths. Nobody knows which one he used, and
Mortimer says that the orders were so imperative that there should be no
duplicate key that it is unlikely--in fact, I think, impossible--that the
murderer could have entered the vault except by the aid of Trasmere's own
key. However, we shall soon know; I have the best workman in town working
at the unfinished key in Felling's room, and he says it is so far advanced
that he is in no doubt he will be able to open the vault to-night."

"Then it is useless in its present state?"

The other nodded.

"Quite useless; we have tried it, and the locksmith, who is an expert,
says that it wouldn't fit into the keyhole as it was when we found it."

"Then you suggest it is a case of suicide? That old man Trasmere went
into the vault, locked himself in and then shot himself?"

Carver shook his head.

"If the revolver is found in the vault, yours would be a very sound
theory, though why Trasmere should shoot himself is entirely beyond me."

At a quarter to eleven that night three men stood before the door of the
Trasmere vault, and the shirt-sleeved workman inserting the key, the lock
snapped back. He was pushing the door open when Carver caught his arm.

"Just leave it as it is," he said, and the locksmith, obviously
disappointed that he should be denied a full view of the tragedy which he
had only half glimpsed, went back to gather up his tools.

"Now," said Carver, drawing a long breath, and pulling a pair of white
gloves from his pocket he put them on.

Tab followed him into the chamber of death.

"I've telephoned for the doctor. He'll be here in a few seconds," said
Carver, looking down at the silent figure leaning against the table legs.
He pointed to the table. In the exact centre lay a key, but what brought
the exclamation to the detective's lips was the fact that the one half
was stained red. The fluid which had run from it had soaked into the
porous surface of the table.

"Blood," whispered the detective, and gingerly lifted the flat steel.

There was no doubt about it. Though the handle was clean, the lower wards
appeared as though they had been dipped in blood.

"This disposes of the suicide theory," said Carver.

His first search was for the pistol which had obviously slain the man.
There was no sign of any weapon. He passed his hand under the limp body,
and Tab shivered to see the head drop wearily to the shoulder.

"Nothing there...shot through the body too. Suicides seldom do it that
way."

His quick fingers searched the silent figure. There was nothing of any
value.

Carver straightened himself and stood, fist on hip, surveying the
dreadful sight.

"He was standing here when he was shot--he never knew what killed him. As
faked suicide it is inartistic--apart from the absence of weapon, the old
man was shot in the back."

If there were any doubts on the subject, they were set at rest when the
doctor made his brief examination.

"He was shot at the range of about two yards," he said. "No, Mr. Carver,
it is impossible that he should have committed suicide; there is no
burning whatever. Besides, the bullet has entered the back, just beneath
the left shoulder, and of course death must have been instantaneous. It
is impossible that the wound can have been self-inflicted."

Again came the police photographers, and after they had gone, leaving the
vault thick with the mist of exploded magnesium, the two men were left to
their search. The first boxes were, for the main part, filled with money.
There was very little gold, but a great deal of paper of various
nationalities. In one box Carver found five million francs in
thousand-franc notes, another was packed with English five-pound notes,
another was full of hundred-dollar bills fastened in packets of ten
thousand. Only two of these boxes were locked and only one that they
looked at that night contained anything in the nature of documents. For
the most part they were old leases, receipts painted on thin paper in
Chinese characters, and which they only knew were receipts because
somebody had written a translation on their backs. They were bracketed
neatly in folders, on each of which was described in a fine flowing hand,
the nature of its contents.

On one thick bundle fastened with rubber bands was an old label: "Trading
correspondence, 1899."

In his search Tab, who was looking through the box, found a folded
manuscript, which he brought out.

"Here is his will," he said, and Carver took it from him. It was written
in the crabbed boyish hand which Tab had come to know so well, and it was
very short. After the conventional preamble, it went on:

"I leave all my property and effects whatsoever, to my nephew, Rex
Percival Lander, the only son of my deceased sister, Mary Catherine
Lander nee Trasmere, and I appoint him sole executor of this my will."

It was witnessed by Mildred Green, who described herself as a cook, and
by Arthur Green, whose description of his profession was valet. Their
addresses were Mayfield.

"I think those are the two servants the old man discharged for pilfering
some six months ago. The will must have been executed a few weeks before
they left."

Tab's first feeling was one of pleasure that at last his friend was a
rich man. Poor Rex, little did he dream that he would come into his
inheritance in so tragic a fashion.

Carver put the document back into the box and continued the examination
of the door which Tab had interrupted.

"It isn't a spring lock, you notice," he said. "So, therefore, it
couldn't have been slammed by a murderer who first shot Trasmere and then
made his escape. It has to be locked either from the inside or the
outside. If there was any reasonable possibility of Trasmere having shot
himself, the solution would have been simple. But he did not shoot
himself. He was shot here, the door was locked upon him, and the key
returned to the table--how?" He took the key and tried one of the
air-holes of the ventilator. The point of the key scarcely entered.

"There must be some other entrance to the vault," he said.

The sun was up before they finished their examination of the room. The
walls were solid. There was neither window nor fireplace. The floor was
even more substantial than the walls.

In a last hopeless endeavour to solve the mystery Carver called in an
expert to inspect the ventilator. It was made of steel, a quarter of an
inch thick, and fastened into the door itself. There were no screws with
which it could have been taken out, and even if it had been removed, only
the tiniest of mortals could have crept through.

"Still," said Carver, "if we could suppose that the ventilator was
removable, we might have taken a leaf from Edgar Allan Poe and thought
seriously of a trained monkey being introduced."

"There is the theory of the duplicate key--"

"Which I dismiss," said Carver. "I am satisfied that no duplicate key was
used. If a duplicate key had been procurable, Felling, or Walters as you
call him, would have found his way to it. He is the cleverest man in that
business, and he has lived on duplicate keys all his life. He must have
known that it was impossible to gain admission by such a method or he
wouldn't have taken the trouble to make one. He is a specialist in that
line of business, probably the finest locksmith of the underworld."

"Then you suggest that this key was used?" Tab pointed to the table.

"I not only suggest it, but I would swear to it," said Carver quietly.
"Look!" He pulled the door open so that the light fell upon the outside
keyhole. "Do you see the little bloodspots?" he asked. "That key has not
only been used from the outside, where it has left unmistakable markings,
but the same has happened on the inside of the door."

He swung the door again and Tab saw the tell-tale stains.

"That door was unlocked from the inside after the old man was dead and
locked again upon him."

"But how did the key get back to the table?" asked the bewildered
reporter.

Mr. Carver shook his head.

"A medical student was once asked by a professor whether Adam was ever a
baby, and he replied: 'God knows'--that is my answer to you!" he said.
"We will leave the other boxes until to-morrow, Tab."

Carver led the way out of the vault, locked the door with the duplicate
key, and put it in his pocket.

"My brain is dead," said Tab.

And it was then that he saw the new pin.



CHAPTER 6.


FROM where he stood the light caught it and sent up a thread of silvery
reflection. He stooped mechanically and picked it up.

"What is that?" asked the detective curiously.

"It looks to me like a pin," said Tab.

It was a very ordinary pin, silvery bright and about an inch and a half
in length. In that sense it was of an unusual size, though it was the
kind that is commonly used by bankers, who delight in fastening large
documents together by this barbarous method. It was not straight, there
was a slight bend in it, but otherwise it had no remarkable features. Tab
looked at it stupidly.

"Give it to me," said Carver. He took it in his white-gloved hand and
walked to a position under one of the lights. "I don't suppose it has any
significance," he said, "but I'll keep it." He put the pin carefully away
in the match-box where he had put the key. "Now, Tab," he said more
briskly as they went out of the house together into the bright sunlight,
two unshaven, weary-looking men, "you have the story of your life, but go
easy on any clues we have found."

"I didn't know we had found any," said Tab, "unless the pin is a clue."

"Even that I should not mention," said Carver gravely.

When he got back to his flat Tab found the lights of the sitting-room
blazing and Rex Lander, fully dressed, asleep on the settee.

"I waited up till three," yawned Rex. "Have they caught Walters, or
whoever it was?"

"Not when I left Carver, which was ten minutes ago," replied Tab. "They
suspect that man Brown. His gloves were found in the passage."

"Brown, the man from China?...it was pretty awful, wasn't it?" asked Babe
in a hushed voice, as though the fearfulness of those moments through
which he had passed were only now appealing to him in their sheer terror.
"My God, what an awful thing! I've tried not to think about it all night;
that horrible memory persisted so that it nearly drove me mad."

"I have one bit of good news for you, Rex," said the other as he began to
prepare for bed. "We found your uncle's will. That is unofficial."

"You found the will, did you?" said the other listlessly. "I am afraid I
am not interested in his will just now. Who gets the money--the Dogs'
Home or the Cats' Creche?"

"It goes to a stout young architect," said Tab with a grin, "and I can
see our little home breaking up. Maybe I'll come and see you when you are
rich, Babe, if you'll know me."

Rex's impatient gesture silenced him.

"I'm not thinking about money--I'm thinking about other things," he said.

Tab slept for four hours, and woke to find that Rex had gone out.

When he came into the street the special editions of the Sunday newspaper
were selling, with stories of the murder.

The news-editor had not arrived when Tab reached the office, but he
turned in the rough narrative of the tragedy to guide the office in its
general search for Walters and Brown.

He went on to Mayfield, but Carver was not there, and the police-sergeant
in charge of the house was indisposed to admit him. Carver, being a
single man, lived in lodgings. Tab surprised him in the act of shaving.

"No, there is no news of Felling, and Brown, who is a much more difficult
proposition, has disappeared from view. Why is he more difficult? Because
he is unknown. In comparison tracing Walters is child's play. Yet we
haven't even found him," said the Inspector, wiping his face, "which is
rather surprising, considering that we know his usual haunts and
acquaintances. None of these say they have seen him. The cab-driver has
come forward in answer to our hurry-up call, and says he set down Felling
at the Central Station. They stopped on the way to buy a hat,
apparently."

Carver had not been to the station that morning, and even if he had he
could not have given the news which was to startle Tab later in the day.

"Have you formed any fresh theory, Carver?"

Carver looked out of the window and pulled his long nose thoughtfully.

He was a tall thin man, with a lean face that was all lines and furrows.
In repose it was melancholy in the extreme, and his gentle apologetic
tone seemed somehow in keeping with his appearance.

"There are several theories, all more or less fluid," he said.

"Has it occurred to you," asked Tab, "that the shot might have been fired
through one of the ventilator holes?"

Carver nodded several times before he answered.

"It occurred to me after I left you and I went back to make sure, but
there is no blackening of the grating such as there would be if a pistol
of sufficiently small calibre had been pressed against one of the holes
and fired, added to which there is this important fact: that the bullet
of the size the doctors found in Trasmere's body would not go through any
such hole." Carver shook his head. "No, the murder was committed actually
in the vault, either by Brown, by Walters, or by some third person."

Tab had a few independent inquiries to pursue, one of which related to
the cook. She had already been questioned by the police, he discovered,
when he reached her little suburban home. A quiet, motherly, and
unimaginative woman, there was little she could tell.

"It was my day off," she said. "Mr. Trasmere said he was going into the
country, though I don't suppose he was. He had said that before, but
Walters told me to take no notice. I have never seen Mr. Trasmere," she
said, to Tab's surprise.

"All my orders came through Mr. Walters, and practically I was never
inside the house except once, when the cleaning woman did not turn up in
the morning and I helped Walters to tidy the master's sitting-room. I
remember that morning because I found a little black lid--well it was
hardly a lid--I have got it here if you would like to see it. I have
often wondered what it was for."

"Lid," said Tab. "What kind of a lid?"

"It was like the lid of a small pill-box," explained the woman, "about
the size of a threepenny-piece. I picked it up and asked Mr. Walters what
it was for, and he said he didn't know. It was on the floor near the
table and I brought it home, meaning to ask my husband what it was."

She went out of the room and returned with the "lid," which proved on
examination to be a celluloid cap such as typists use to cover their
keys.

"Had Mr. Trasmere a typewriter?"

"No, sir," she answered, shaking her head, "not so far as I know. I have
never seen one. As I say, I have only been that once into the house. The
kitchen is built away from the living rooms, although it is connected;
Mr. Trasmere gave strict orders that I was to keep to my kitchen."

Tab looked at the little cap which he held between his finger and thumb.
It was undoubtedly part of a typist's equipment, and yet Mr. Trasmere had
never employed a typist. He always wrote to Rex in his own hand.

"Are you sure nobody came during the day to take your master's
correspondence?" he asked.

"No; I am perfectly sure Mr. Walters would have told me. He used to
complain how dull it was because nobody came to the house at all, and he
was rather partial to young women, so I am sure I should have heard. Have
they found Mr. Walters? I'm certain he didn't do it."

Tab satisfied her on that point.

"Do you remember the Greens?" he asked, remembering just as he was on the
point of leaving the house the witnesses to the old man's will.

"No, sir, not really," she said. "Mrs. Green was cook before me and I saw
her once, the day I came, and Mr. Green too. They were a very nice couple
and I don't think the master treated them very well."

"Where are they now?"

"I don't know, sir," she said. "I did hear that they had gone to
Australia. They were middle-aged people, but very strong and healthy, and
Mr. Green was always talking about going to Australia, where he was born,
and settling down there."

"Did Green or his wife have any hard feeling against Mr. Trasmere?"

She hesitated. "Well, they naturally felt sore because they had been
accused of thieving, and Mr. Green seemed to feel the disgrace terribly,
especially when the master had their boxes searched because he had lost
some valuable silver and a gold watch."

This was news to Tab. He had heard of the food pilfering, but he had not
heard of the other losses.

She could tell him very little more, except that Green had acted as a
sort of butler.

"Was Walters there at the time?" asked Tab.

"Yes, sir; he was Mr. Trasmere's valet. After Mr. Green went Mr. Walters
was butler and valet, too."

Tab went straight to the office to write the story up to date, but he
knew that it was a waste of labour, since some news was certain to come
in before nightfall.

The news-editor was at his desk when he pushed open the big swing doors
and came into the news-room to report.

"These front page crimes always come together in shoals," complained the
news-editor bitterly. "I have another very good story--"

"Well, give it to a good story writer," said Tab. "This case is going to
occupy not only my time, but the time of half a dozen men very fully
indeed."

"What is the new sensation?" he asked sarcastically.

"An actress has lost her jewels, which does not sound tremendously
exciting," said the news-editor, fishing for two slips of paper on which
he had made a rough note of the case, "but you needn't bother about that.
I'll put another man on the story as soon as I can get one."

"Who is the actress?"

"Ursula Ardfern," replied the editor, and Tab's jaw dropped.



CHAPTER 7.


"URSULA ARDFERN! She is not the kind of person who would mislay her
jewels for the sake of a few lines of advertising," he said. "Where did
she lose them?"

"It is rather a curious story," said the editor, leaning back in his
chair, his hands clasped behind his head. "She went into a post office on
Saturday morning on her way to the theatre for the matinee, bought some
stamps, putting the jewel-case down on the counter by her side. When she
looked round, the case was gone. It happened so suddenly and in such a
surprisingly short space of time that she could not believe her eyes, and
did not even complain to the post office officials.

"Her own story is, that she thought she must be suffering from some kind
of delusion and that she had not brought the jewel-case out at all. She
went back to her suite at the Central Hotel and searched every room. By
the time she was through, it was near the hour for her matinee, and she
hurried down to the theatre--anyway, to cut a long story short, she did
not report her loss to the police until this morning."

"She wouldn't," said Tab stoutly. "She's the kind of girl who would hate
the publicity of it and would do all she could to make sure there was not
a simple explanation of their loss before she put the matter in the hands
of the police."

"You know her, eh?"

"I know her in the sense that a reporter knows almost everybody, from the
Secretary of State to the hangman," said Tab, "but I'll take this story
if you like. There will be nothing doing on the Trasmere case before the
evening. She stays at the Central, does she?"

The other nodded.

"You will need to exercise a little ingenuity," he said, "especially if
what you say about her hating publicity is true. I'd like to get a
photograph of the actress who hated publicity and hang it up in this
office," he added.

At the Central Hotel, Tab found himself up against a blank wall.

"Miss Ardfern is not receiving callers," said the inquiry clerk. He was
not even certain that she was in.

"Will you send my card up?"

The clerk very emphatically said that he would not send up anybody's
card. Tab went straight to the supreme authority.

Fortunately he knew the hotel manager very well, but on this occasion
Crispi was not inclined to oblige him.

"Miss Ardfern is a very good customer of ours, Holland," he said, "and we
don't want to offend her. I will tell you, in the strictest confidence,
that Miss Ardfern is not in the hotel."

"Where is she?"

"She went away this morning in her car to her country cottage. She always
spends Sunday and Sunday night in the country, and I know that she does
not want to see any reporters, because she came back this morning
especially to tell me that the staff were to answer no inquiries relative
to herself."

"Where is this country cottage--come on, Crispi," wheedled Tab, "or the
next time you have a robbery in this hotel I'll make a front-page item of
it."

"That is blackmail," murmured Crispi, protestingly. "I am afraid I cannot
tell you, Holland. Maybe if you get a Hertford directory--"

In the office library he found the directory and turned its pages.
Against the name of "Ardfern, Ursula," was "Stone Cottage, near Blisville
Village."

The distance from town was some forty-five miles, and the route carried
him past an unfinished building which one day was to play its part in the
ending of many mysteries. Tab covered the ground on a fast motor-cycle in
just over an hour.

He leant his machine against a very trim hedge, opened the high garden
gate, and walked into the beautiful little garden that surrounded Stone
Cottage, which was not ill-named, though the stone which composed its
walls was completely hidden by purple-flowering creeper.

In the shade of a tree he saw a white figure stretched at her ease, a
figure which sat bolt upright in her deep garden chair at the click of
the gate-lock.

"This is too bad of you, Mr. Tab," said Ursula Ardfern reproachfully. "I
particularly asked Crispi not to tell anybody where I was."

"Crispi didn't tell. I found you in a directory," said Tab cheerfully.

The sunlight was very kind to Ursula, and it seemed to him that she
looked even more beautiful in these surroundings than she had in the
generous setting and the more merciful lighting of the theatre.

She was slimmer than he had thought, and conveyed an extraordinary
impression of hurt youth. Somewhere, some time, this girl had suffered,
he thought, yet there was no hint of old pain in her unlined face, no
suggestion of sorrow or remorse in her clear blue eyes.

"I suppose you have come to cross-examine me about my jewels," she said,
"and I will allow you, on one condition, to ask me any question you
wish."

"What is the condition?" he smiled.

"Bring up that chair." She pointed across the strip of lawn.

"Now sit down"; and when he had obeyed, "The condition is this: that you
will confine yourself to saying that I have no recollection of the jewels
being taken, but I shall be very glad to have them back and pay a
suitable reward; that they were not as expensive as most people thought
and that I am not insured against loss by theft."

"All of which I will faithfully record," said Tab. "I am an honest man
and keep my promises. I admit it."

"And now I will tell you, for your own private ear," she said, "that if I
never see those jewels again, I shall be a very happy woman."

He looked at her open-mouthed.

"You don't think I am posing, do you?" She looked round at him
suspiciously. "I see that you don't. I am not in the least worried that I
shall have to play the part with property jewels as I did last night."

"Why didn't you go to the police before?" he asked.

"Because I didn't," was her unsatisfactory but uncompromising reply. "You
may put whatever interpretation you like upon my slackness. You may say
that it was because of my humanity, my desire to save some person from
being accused, or coming under suspicion of having stolen the pieces,
when all the time they were snug in my bureau drawer, or you may think or
say that I did not want to make a fuss about them. In fact," she smiled,
"you can do or say what you wish."

"You don't remember who was standing by you--"

She stopped him with a gesture. "I remember nothing except that I bought
ten stamps."

"What was the jewellery worth?" he persisted.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I can't even tell you that," she said.

"Had they any history?"

She laughed.

"You are very persistent, Mr. Tab." Her eyes were smiling at him, though
her face was composed. "And now, since you have surprised me in my Abode
of Quiet, I must show you over my little domain."

She took him round the garden and through the tiny pine wood at the back
of the house, chatting all the time; and then after leaving him, as she
said, to ensure that her room was tidy, she beckoned him into a large and
pleasant sitting-room, tastefully, if not expensively furnished, a cool,
quiet haven of rest.

He had arrived at two o'clock and it was five o'clock before he
reluctantly took his leave. And all that afternoon they had talked of
books and of people, and since she had not mentioned or spoken of the
murder which had engrossed his thoughts until her soothing presence had
made Mayfield seem very remote and crime a thing of distaste, he did not
introduce so jarring a discordance into the lavender atmosphere of her
retreat.

"What kind of story do you call this?" snapped the news-editor when Tab
handed him two folios of copy.

"From a literary point of view," said Tab, "it is a classic."

"From a news point of view, it is rotten," said the editor. "The only new
fact you have discovered is that she loves Browning, and maybe even the
police know that!"

He grumbled, but accepted the copy, and with his blue pencil committed
certain acts of savage mutilation, during what time Tab was making his final
round-up of the Trasmere case.

Here again very little new matter was available. Walters and the man
Wellington Brown were still at liberty, and he had to confine himself to
a sketch of Trasmere's life, material for which had, from time to time,
been supplied to him by the Babe.

The new millionaire he had not seen all day. When he got home that night
he found Rex Lander in bed and asleep and did not disturb him. He was
tired to death and more anxious to make acquaintance with his hard pillow
than he was to discuss Ursula Ardfern. In truth, he was not prepared to
discuss Ursula at all with any third person.

"I just loafed around," said Rex the next morning, when asked to give an
account of his movements. "I had a very bad night and was up early. You
were sleeping like a pig when I looked in. I read your story in The
Megaphone--by the way you know that Miss Ardfern's jewellery has been
stolen?"

"I know that very well indeed," said Tab, "I saw her yesterday."

Rex was instant attention.

"Where?" he asked eagerly. "What is she like, Tab--I mean off the stage?
Is she as beautiful--what colour eyes has she?"

Tab pushed back his chair and frowned at the young man across the table.

"Your curiosity is indecent," he said severely; "really, Rex, I never
dreamt that you were so interested in the lady."

Rex did not meet his eyes.

"I think she is very beautiful," he said doggedly. "I'd give my head to
spend a day with her."

"Phew!" said Tab. "Why, you young devil, you are in love with her!"

Rex's babyish face went crimson.

"Stuff," he said loudly. "I am very fond of her. I have seen her a
hundred times, I suppose, though I have never spoken to her once. She is
my idea of the perfect woman. Beautiful of face, with the loveliest voice
I have ever heard. I am going to know her one day."

This revelation of Babe's secret passion was, for some reason, which Tab
could not define, an extremely disquieting one.

"My dear Babe," he said more mildly, "the young lady is not of the loving
or marrying sort--"

Suddenly he remembered.

"Why, you are a millionaire now, Babe! Jumping Moses!"

Rex blushed again, and then Tab whistled.

"Do you mean in all seriousness that you are truly fond of her?"

"I adore her," said Rex in a low voice. "I got so rattled when I heard a
fellow say she was going to be married that I had to send you to see
her."

Tab interrupted him with a roar of delighted laughter.

"So that was why I was sent on a fool's errand, eh?" he asked, his eyes
dancing. "You subtle dog! It was to bring balm to your bruised heart that
an eminent crime specialist must stand, hat in hand, in the dingy
purlieus of a playhouse, begging admission to the great actress's
dressing-room." He was serious in a moment. "I hope this isn't a very
violent attachment of yours, Rex," he said quietly. "In the first place
it struck me that Ursula Ardfern is not of the marrying kind, that even
your great possessions would not tempt her. In the second place--" he
stopped himself.

"Well?" asked Rex impatiently. "Whatever other just cause or impediment
do you see?"

"I don't know that it is any business of mine," said Tab, "and I
certainly am not in a position to give you fatherly advice."

"You mean that an actress is the worst kind of wife a man can have, I
suppose. I have heard all that rubbish before. Poor Uncle Jesse, when I
spoke about it--"

"You spoke to him of your--liking for Ursula Ardfern?" asked Tab in
surprise.

"Of course I didn't," said the other scornfully. "I approached it in a
roundabout sort of way. Uncle Jesse foamed at the mouth. It was then he
told me that he was going to leave all his money away from me. He said
horrible things about actresses."

Tab was silent, a little puzzled at himself. What did it matter to him,
anyway, that Rex Lander should be head over heels in love with the girl?
Yet, for some mysterious reason, he regarded Babe's passion as a personal
affront to himself.

It was ridiculous, childish in him, and he laughed softly.

"You think it is darned funny, I daresay," growled Rex, getting up from
the table in a huff.

"I was laughing at myself for daring to give advice," said Tab
truthfully.



CHAPTER 8.


TAB was in his own room when Carver called.

"I have had a talk with some of the High Ones," he said, "and put it up
to them that you might be of assistance to me. First of all they were
horrified at the idea of a newspaper reporter being allowed even to smell
inside information, but I persuaded them at last. I am on my way down to
the house now, and I thought I would pick you up. I am going through
those boxes that we didn't search on Saturday."

Tab heard with mingled feelings. To assist the police actively meant that
his newspaper stories would suffer. He would not be allowed to use any of
the information he secured except in the tamest, most colourless form. If
he remained outside, he was fairly certain to get a line to the crime,
which he might use without laying himself open to the charge of breaking
faith. There was no time to discover the mind of his chief on the
subject--he had to make an instant decision.

"I'll go," he said. "This means, of course, that I shall only be able to
write the punk stuff that the evening papers print, but I'll take a
chance."

He was surprised, when he came out into Doughty Street, to find that a
private car had been placed at Carver's disposal.

Knowing the parsimony of headquarters, he expressed his surprise.

"It is Mr. Trasmere's own. He has had it garaged for the past year, but
Mr. Lander gave us permission to get it out, and offered to pay the
running expenses."

"Good old Babe," said Tab, sinking back into the carriage seat. "He
didn't tell me anything about it."

Nearing the house, Carver broke the silence.

"I have something to show you later," he said. "Our men have been at the
post office all night, making inquiries as to Mr. Trasmere's
correspondence. It appears that he has had a whole lot during the past
year or two. We shall probably come across it in the boxes that remain
unsearched. But that wasn't the big thing we found. Most of the telegraph
staff were off duty yesterday. It was only this morning that we learnt a
telegram had been received at Mayfield about ten minutes before Walters
disappeared."

When they were in the sitting-room and the door was closed, Carver
produced the telegram from his pocket. It was handed in at the General
Post Office and ran:

"Remember 17th July, 1915. Newcastle police coming for you at three
o'clock."

It was unsigned.

"I have been searching the newspaper files this morning," said Carver,
"to discover the reference to that date. On the 17th July, 1913, I find
that Felling was sent down at Newcastle for seven years, and the judge
said that if he ever came before him again on a similar charge he would
send him down for life."

"Then the telegram was despatched by some friend of Walters?" suggested
Tab.

Carver nodded.

"It was delivered five minutes before he disappeared; that is to say,
exactly at five minutes to three. I have seen the lad who delivered the
telegram, and he says that Walters himself took in the message."

"Would that account for his disappearance?"

"In a sense it might, yet it does not necessarily follow that Walters is
innocent of the murder. The telegram may have come to him immediately
after the murder was committed and have decided him to get away. If he
was responsible for the murder, there would be even more reason why he
should leave in a hurry. The arrival of the police, who would find the
body, would, of course, have been fatal to him."

"Did anybody see Wellington Brown go into the house?" asked Tab. It was a
question he meant to have put before.

"Nobody," said the detective. "At what hour he arrived only Walters can
tell us."

He folded the telegram and put it away, then unlocking the door from the
study which led to the passage, he went down the steps and, stopping only
to switch on the lights, made his way into the vault. One by one the
boxes were taken down, emptied of their contents, and carefully examined.

Money was everywhere: bank-notes, treasury bills, money in the greasy
notes of a Chinese Government bank, money in the shape of Greek drachmas
and Italian lira. Sometimes a box would contain nothing but these
valuable squares of paper, sometimes a box held thick packets of
correspondence addressed to Trasmere, at queer-looking towns in Northern
China. All bore the same clerkly number, generally written in green ink,
and none of them threw any light whatever upon the tragedy they were
investigating.

In the last box of all the correspondence was more recent. It was mostly
typewritten copies of letters, evidently addressed by the dead man to
various corporations with whom he had dealings, and these they went
through letter by letter.

"Where were those typed?" said Carver. "And when? He doesn't seem to have
kept a secretary."

Until that moment Tab had forgotten the discovery of the
typewriter-key-cover. Now he referred to the find.

"But he used to go out every night at half-past six and remain away until
half-past eight," said Tab. "Probably he went to some typewriting
office--there are a few in the city which make a speciality of
after-hours work."

"That is possible," admitted Carver. "There is nothing here. I have sent
anything that looked important to the translators--I don't think it is
worth while sending the trading accounts of '89." He put the papers
carefully back into the box. "And that's the lot," he said.

Tab was standing with his back to the lower shelf to the right hand of
the door, and his fingers were idly touching the plain strip of steel
when he felt something underneath and, looking down, saw that the
obstruction which his fingers had found was one of two slides on which
hung a drawer. They had been pushed so far back that it was impossible to
see it from where they had stood.

The detective stooped and picked it out.

"Hullo," he said, "what are these?"

He brought out first a small box of Chinese workmanship.

It was exquisitely lacquered in pale green. Lifting off the lid he saw
that it was empty.

"Nothing there--some curio he was hoarding," said Carver.

Next he produced a small brown jewel-case from the drawer, and putting it
on the broad shelf, opened it.

Even before he saw the heart-shaped ruby brooch that was pinned to the
satin lining of the lid, Tab knew what it was.

"Those are Ursula Ardfern's jewels," he said, and they looked at one
another.

"The jewels that were stolen on Saturday morning?" asked the detective
incredulously.

Tab nodded, and the detective took out an emerald cross, turned it over,
looked at its face, then put it back again.

"On Saturday morning," he said slowly, "if I remember the facts aright,
and I only read them in the newspaper this morning. Miss Ursula Ardfern
went into a post office to buy some stamps. Whilst she was there she put
her jewel-case by her side, and looking round, discovered it was gone.
Thinking she had made some mistake, she went back to her hotel and
searched her room. She reported it to the police on Sunday morning."

"That is the case as I understand it," said Tab, who was as dumbfounded
as his companion.

"And three or four hours after Miss Ardfern lost her jewels, Trasmere was
murdered in this room. The jewels were here at that time, because
obviously nobody has been in or out of this room since Trasmere was
murdered, except possibly the murderer; in other words, in the space of
two hours the jewels were stolen and conveyed to Jesse Trasmere and
locked in his strong-room--why?" He stared at Tab.

Tab could only stare back. Carver scratched his head, massaged the back
of his neck irritably, rubbed his chin, and then: "In other circumstances
one would say that Trasmere was a receiver. I have known some very
unlikely people who were receivers of stolen property and grew rich on
the proceeds, and I have known very unlikely folk to lend money, not only
to actresses, but very substantial people, on the security of their
jewels. Had we not Miss Ardfern's report of their loss, the obvious
explanation would have been that these had been pledged to Trasmere in
security for a loan."

"I am perfectly sure she doesn't know Trasmere. I happen to be--an--an
acquaintance of hers," said Tab quickly.

Again the detective was giving contortional evidence of his perplexity.
His long face was longer still, his down-turned mouth more melancholy.

"Anyway, there is no question of pledge. The only thing we have to decide
is, whether he was the kind of man who would receive stolen property." He
glanced round at the black boxes which filled the shelves and shook his
head. "The probability is all against that theory," he said. "Trasmere
was too rich a man to run the risk. Besides, we should have found other
property. It is not likely that he would act as receiver for one gang of
thieves, and for only one of their crimes."

He hoisted himself to the top of the table, pushed his hands in his
trousers pockets and, with his chin on his breast, considered.

"Now that beats me," he said at last. "I admit that I am thoroughly and
absolutely beaten. You are perfectly sure that these are Miss Ardfern's
jewels?"

"I am absolutely certain that it is her jewel-case. Probably at
headquarters they have a description of the jewels which are lost," said
Tab.

"Then we'll settle that little mystery at once."

He was telephoning for a quarter of an hour, taking notes all the time;
and when he hung up the receiver he turned to Tab.

"Without having carefully looked at the pieces in that box," he said. "I
think it is absolutely certain that those jewels are Miss Ardfern's. She
gave a fairly complete list to the police, but could not remember every
item. We will go along and check our inventory."

He had not been at work long before it was clear that the jewellery was
Ursula Ardfern's property.

"Go along and see her, Tab," said Carver. "Take the empty box with
you--we had better hold on to the jewellery a little longer--and ask her
to identify the case."



CHAPTER 9.


URSULA had only arrived a few minutes before Tab reached the Central
Hotel, and the ban against reporters must have been lifted, because
Ursula saw him immediately.

She took the case from his hand slowly, and with a face from whence all
expression had fled.

"Yes, this is mine," she said. She lifted the lid. "Where are the
jewels?" she asked quickly.

"The police have those."

"The police?"

"It was found in the strong-room of Jesse Trasmere, the old man who was
murdered on Saturday afternoon," said Tab. "Have you any idea how they
came into his possession?"

"None," she said emphatically. "I did not know Mr. Trasmere."

He told her about the murder, but apparently she had already read the
details and seemed loath to discuss the matter until he told her the part
that he himself was taking in the tracking of the murderer.

"Where did you find these?" she asked.

"In his strong-room. The curious thing is we turned out all the boxes,
ran over all the papers, and found nothing of importance. It was only by
accident that we discovered this case. It was in a little drawer pushed
far under one of the shelves."

"You went through all the papers," she repeated mechanically. "What sort
of papers--did he have--many?"

"Quite a number," said Tab, surprised that after definitely and decidedly
changing the subject she had returned to it voluntarily. "Old bills and
accounts, copies of letters, and that sort of thing. Nothing of any very
great importance. Why do you ask?"

"I had a friend once, a girl who was interested in Mr. Trasmere," she
answered. "She told me that he was keeping a number of documents
connected with her family. No, I don't remember her name. She was an
actress I met on tour."

"There was nothing in his papers except purely business records," said
Tab.

Tab was very sensitive to atmosphere. He could have sworn when he came
into the room that she had keyed herself up to meet him. There was no
reason why she should, except the reluctance to discuss the robbery, and
she maintained that tense attitude throughout the interview. Now he was
as certain that she was relieved, he sensed, rather than saw, a
relaxation of mind. Probably it was only his imagination, but imagination
had never played such a trick upon him before.

"When are the police going to give me my beautiful jewels?" she asked,
almost gaily.

"I am afraid they will retain those until after the court proceedings are
through. There must be an inquest, you know."

"Oh," she said, and seemed disappointed. Then again she returned to the
murder. "It seems all so dreadful and mysterious," she said quietly. "How
do you account for it, Mr. Holland? One of the newspapers says that it
was impossible that any other hand than Mr. Trasmere's could have locked
the door, and yet they are equally certain that he did not commit
suicide. And who is the man Brown for whom they are searching?"

"He is an adventurer from China who was at some time or other a sort of
secretary to old Trasmere."

"A secretary?" she said quickly. "A man--how do you know that?"

"Brown told me himself, I saw him the day before the murder. Apparently
Trasmere had treated him badly and had held him off for years by paying
him a sum of money."

She hit her lip in thought.

"Why did he come back?" she said, half to herself. "He might have lived
comfortably on the allowance. I suppose it was a good allowance?" she
added quickly. "That is all you want to see me about, Mr. Holland?"

"You may have to go to the police station to identify the jewellery,"
said Tab; "and they are pretty certain to ask you how the box came into
Mr. Trasmere's possession."

She did not answer this, and he left her with an odd feeling of
uneasiness.

Going to report the result of his interview to Carver, he found that
energetic man crawling about the vault on all fours. He looked over his
shoulder at the sound of Tab's footsteps.

"Was Saturday wet or fine?" he asked.

"It was a particularly fine day."

"Then this must be a blood impression." He pointed to the floor, and Tab
went on his knees at his side. There was a faint half-moon printed on the
edge of the concrete. "That is the edge of a heel, and a rubber heel,"
said Carver, "which proves beyond any doubt whatever that somebody came
into the vault after the old man was killed, probably went close to the
body to see the effect of the shot, and in doing so got a little of the
blood on a part of his heel. The rubber accounts for his coming on
Trasmere without the old man hearing him. There is no other impression
that I can find."

"Which brings us back to the question of the duplicate key."

"There was no duplicate key; you can cut that idea right out," said
Carver, getting up and dusting his knees. "I have been into the matter
very thoroughly with the manufacturers, and although they each claim to
have the best kind of lock and are naturally inclined to take an
uncharitable view of their rivals, they say that the maker of our
particular key is reliable, and he says that it was in the hands of his
most trustworthy man, and that no second key was ever made. Not only
that, but no drawing of the key was kept. In fact, the lock, just before
it was fitted, was altered by the manufacturer's expert here, on the
premises. I am seeing him to-morrow, but from what I learnt on the
telephone he says that we can dismiss from our minds the possibility of
there being a duplicate."

"But Walters was making--"

"Walters hadn't finished his job; and even if he had, he could not have
fashioned a key that would have unlocked this door, clever as he was. No;
the blood-stained key is the key that locked the door. What is more, it
is the key which the old man carried on a thin silver chain round his
neck. We found the broken ends of the chain in his clothing after the
body was searched. Then again, there are the bloodstains, both on the
inside and on the outside of the door. That is the most remarkable
feature of the case, that after the murder the door was locked both from
the inside and the outside. At one period, after the death of Trasmere,
the murderer must have been locked in this vault with him. If I did not
know it was an absolute impossibility I should say that it was locked
finally from the inside, the key was placed on the table, and the
murderer disappeared through some secret entrance, which we know very
well does not exist."

"Have you tested the roof?"

"I have tested everywhere--roof, walls, floor, and door," said Carver. "A
fact which may or may not be important, is that there is about an eighth
of an inch of space between the bottom of the door and the floor. If the
key had been found on the floor there would be no mystery about the
matter, because the murderer could have pushed it under and, with a flick
of his finger, sent it into the middle of the room. Here is the situation
in a nutshell." He ticked off the points on his fingers. "Trasmere is
murdered in a vault, the door of which is locked. The murderer is either
Brown, who has threatened him, or Walters, who has been robbing him.
Inside the locked vault is found the only key which could open or close
it. Note this particularly, that Trasmere was shot in the back."

"Why is that important?"

"As proving that at the moment of his murder Trasmere was in no fear. He
was not expecting either to be shot or hurt. And now we add to the
situation, which is sufficiently baffling, the discovery in the vault of
a jewel-case belonging to an eminent actress, from whom it has been
stolen on the very day of the murder. This is the case which I must take
to a coroner's jury. It doesn't look very good to me."

It did not "look very good" to the coroner's jury which contented itself
a week later with returning a verdict of wilful murder against some
person or persons unknown, and added a rider expressing its
dissatisfaction with the inefficiency of the police.

The day that verdict was returned, Ursula Ardfern fainted twice in the
course of her performance and was carried home to her hotel in a
condition of collapse.



CHAPTER 10.


A MURDER lends to the locality in which it is perpetrated a certain
left-handed fame which those of its inhabitants who appear most disgusted
most enjoy. Human nature being what it is, trouble and misery have a
larger sale-value to newspapers than have comfort and happiness. Nothing
makes a newspaper reader more conscious of the emptiness of his journal
than to learn that his insignificant neighbour has unexpectedly inherited
a fortune. Therefore it is only natural that when the average man or
woman finds himself or herself promoted from mere observer to
participant, however indirect, he or she experiences a queer satisfaction
that is no less satisfying because it is queer.

The woman of the house may shudder and make unusual efforts to "keep it
from the children," but she listens avidly to the cook's inside story of
the crime that was committed next door, and presses for further details.
The man may express his horror and indignation and talk of leaving his
house and finding another in a less notorious neighbourhood, but for
years he will point out to his visitors and guests the window of the room
where the fell deed was done.

Opposite to Mayfield was the home of John Fergusson Stott, who, in
addition to being a neighbour of the late Jesse Trasmere, was the
employer of his nephew. This gave him an especial title to speak as an
Authority. It supported him also in his determination to Say Nothing.

"It is bad enough, my dear, to be living in the street where this ghastly
crime has been committed. I cannot afford to be dragged into the matter."

He was a small, fat man, very bald, and he wore spectacles of great
magnifying power.

"Eline says--" began his buxom wife.

Mr. Stott held up a podgy hand and closed his eyes.

"Servants' gossip?" said he. "Let us keep out of this business. I cannot
afford to have my name in the papers. Why we should have the house full
of reporters in no time! And the police too. I had quite trouble enough
over the dog's licence, without wanting to see the police again."

He sat soberly in his place before the window, glaring out at the
darkening street. A light flitted to and fro in one of the upper windows
of Mayfield, came and went and came again.

The police were searching. He was interested. To-morrow, when he met the
men at Toby's, he would be able to say: "They are still searching old
Trasmere's house. I saw them last night--the house is just opposite to
mine."

Presently the light disappeared for good, and he turned to his wife.

"What did Eline say? Ring for her."

Eline was a parlour-maid, grown of a sudden from the merest cypher in the
great sum of parlour-maids to an isolated and important factor.

"I'm sure it gives me the shivers to talk about it, sir," she said.
"Little did I ever think I should be mixed up in a case like this. I'm
sure that I'd die if I was ever called into court to give evidence."

"You will not be called into court," said Mr. Stott decisively. "This
must go no farther, do you understand that, Eline?"

Eline said she did, but she seemed in no way pleased that she was to be
spared the painful publicity.

"I've had toothache for the past fortnight--"

"You should have it out," said Mr. Stott. An opportunity for advising
sufferers to have their teeth extracted is one which no normal man can
miss. "It is always best to deal drastically with a decaying tooth. Out
with it, my girl--well?"

"It comes on about half-past eleven and goes off at two. I could set the
clock by it."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Stott testily, his interest in Eline's misfortune
ended; "but what did you see at Mayfield?"

"I usually sit at the window until the pain has gone," said Eline, and
Mr. Stott resisted the temptation to tell her that that was the very last
place in the world where she ought to sit, "and naturally anything that
happens in the street I see. The first night I was sitting there, I saw a
little motor-car drive up to the front of the house. A lady got out--"

"A lady?"

"Well...she might have been a woman," admitted Eline. "But she got out,
opened the gates and drove into the garden. I thought that was funny,
because Mr. Trasmere hasn't a garage, and I knew there was nobody staying
with him."

"Where did the car go?"

"Just into the garden. There is plenty of room for it, because it is not
exactly a garden--more like a yard than anything, I think she took the car
near the house and put out all the lights. Then she went up the steps and
opened the door. There was a light in the passage the first night, and I
saw her taking the key out before she shut the door. She hadn't been in
the house a few minutes before I saw a man on a bicycle coming along the
road. He jumped down and propped the machine against the kerb. What
struck me about him was the funny way he walked. Sort of queer little
steps he took. He was smoking a cigar."

"Where did he go?" asked Mr. Stott.

"Only as far as the gate and leant on it, smoking. By and by he threw
away his cigar and lit another, and I saw his face--it was a Chinaman!"

"Good God!" said Mr. Stott. The mental picture she conjured of a Chinaman
lighting a cigar in the vicinity of Mr. Stott's stately home was a
particularly revolting one.

"Just before the policeman came along he went back to his bicycle and
rode away, but after the policeman had passed he came back again and
stood leaning on the gate until the front door of Mayfield opened. Then
he sort of slunk back to his bicycle and rode in the opposite
direction--I mean opposite to the way he had come. He had hardly got out
of sight before I saw the lady come down and open the gates. Soon after
she brought out the car, got down, closed the gates again, and drove
away. And then I saw the Chinaman riding behind and pedalling like mad,
as if he was trying to catch up the car."

"Extraordinary!" said Mr. Stott. "This happened once?"

"It happened every night--Friday was the last night," said Eline
impressively--"the lady in the car, the Chinaman, and everything. But on
Sunday night two Chinamen came, and one went into the garden and was
there for a long time. I knew the other one was a Chinaman because he
walked so curiously. But they didn't come on bicycles. They had a car,
which stopped at the far end of the street."

"Remarkable!" said Mr. Stott, and stroked his smooth face.

Eline had finished her story, but was reluctant to surrender her position
as news gleaner.

"The police have been taking things away from the house all day,"
reported the observer, "boxes and trunks. The girl at Pine Lodge told me
that they are leaving there to-night. They've been keeping guard on the
house ever since the murder."

"Very, very extraordinary; very remarkable," said Mr. Stott. "But I don't
think that it is any business of ours. No. Thank you, Eline. I should
certainly have that tooth out. You mustn't be a baby, and American
dentistry has reached such a high level of efficiency that--"

Eline listened respectfully but nervously, and went up to her room to
plug the aching molar with Dr. Billbery's Kure-Ake.

It seemed to Mr. Stott that his head had scarcely touched the pillow
before there came a knock upon the panel of his bedroom door.

"Yes?" he asked fiercely, in case it was a burglar who was in this polite
manner seeking admission to his chamber.

"It is Eline, sir...they're there!"

Mr. Stott shivered, and, conquering an almost irresistible desire to pull
the bed-clothes over his head and pretend that he had been talking in his
sleep, he got reluctantly out of bed and pulled on his dressing-gown. As
to Mrs. Stott, she never moved. She went to bed, as she had often said,
to sleep.

"What is it, Eline--waking me up at this time in the morning?" asked Mr.
Stott irritably.

"They are there--the Chinamen. I saw one getting through the window,"
said the girl, her teeth chattering, to the serious disturbance of Dr.
Billbery's Kure-Ake.

"Wait a moment until I get my stick."

Mr. Stott kept hanging to his bed-rail a heavily loaded cane. He had no
intention of going nearer to Mayfield than the safe side of his
dining-room window, but the holding of the stick gave him the
self-confidence of which he was in need.

Cautiously the girl let up the blind of the dining-room window and
unfastened the catch. The sash slid up noiselessly and gave them an
uninterrupted view of Mayfield.

"There's one!" whispered Eline.

Standing in the shadow was a figure. Mr. Stott saw it plainly. They
watched in silence for the greater part of half an hour. Mr. Stott had an
idea that he ought to telephone for the police, but refrained. In the
case of ordinary burglars he would not have hesitated. But these were
Chinese, notoriously clannish and vengeful. He had read stories, in which
Chinamen had inflicted diabolical injuries upon men who had betrayed
them.

At the end of the half-hour's vigil, the door of Mayfield opened and a man
came out and joined the other. Together they walked up the road, and that
was the last Mr. Stott saw of them.

"Very remarkable!" said Mr. Stott profoundly. "I'm glad you called me,
Eline. I wouldn't have missed this for the world. But you must say
nothing about this, Eline--nothing. The Chinese people are very
blood-thirsty. They would think no more of putting you into a barrel full
of sharp pointed nails and rolling you down a hill, than I should think
of--er--lacing my shoes."

So Maple Manor kept its grisly secret, and none knew of Yeh Ling's visit
to the house of death or his search for the tiny lacquer box wherein
Jesse Trasmere kept a folded sheet of thin paper elegantly inscribed in
Chinese characters by Yeh Ling, in his own hand.



CHAPTER 11.


"URSULA ARDFERN is leaving the stage and is going to live in the
country."

Tab made the announcement one evening when he came home from the office.

Rex scarcely seemed interested.

"Oh?" said Rex.

That was all he said. He seemed as disinclined as Tab to discuss the
lady.

It was his last night at the Doughty Street flat. He was still suffering
from shock, and his doctor had advised a trip abroad.

He had suggested that at the end of his vacation he would return to
Doughty Street, but on this point Tab was firm. "You have a lot of money,
Babe," he said seriously, "and a man who has a lot of money has also a
whole lot of responsibilities. There are about a hundred and forty-five
reasons why our little menage should be broken up, and the most important
from my point of view is, that I will not be demoralized by living cheek
by jowl with a man of millions. You have a certain place to take in
society, certain duties to perform, and you can't keep up the position
that you are entitled to keep in a half-flat in Doughty Street. I don't
suppose you ever want to go to Mayfield to live."

Rex shuddered.

"I don't," he said, with great earnestness. "I shall shut the place up
and let it stand for a few years, until the memory of the crime is
forgotten, and then perhaps somebody will buy it. I am pretty comfortable
here, Tab."

"I am not thinking so much about your comfort as my own," replied Tab
calmly. "It isn't going to do me a lot of good in any way. Consider
yourself ejected."

Rex grinned.

He sailed for Naples the next afternoon, and Tab went down to the boat to
see him off. No mention of Ursula Ardfern was made until the landing bell
was ringing.

"I am holding you to your promise, Tab, to introduce me to Miss Ardfern,"
he said, and frowned as though at some unhappy recollection. "I wish to
heaven she hadn't been mixed up in the business at all. How on earth do
you account for her jewel-case being in poor Uncle Jesse's vault? By the
way, the key of that devil room is in my trunk if the police want it. I
don't suppose they will, for they have the other key now."

He had asked this question about Ursula's jewels so many times before
that Tab could not keep count of them. Therefore, he did not attempt to
supply a satisfactory solution.

Standing on the pier he watched the big ship gliding down the river, and
on the whole was glad that the companionship had broken up. He liked Rex
and Rex liked him, and they had shared happily the mild vicissitudes
which came to young men with large ambitions and limited incomes. Of the
two, Tab had been the richer in the old days, and had often helped the
other through the morasses which grip the ankles of men who
systematically live beyond their means. And now Babe was in calm waters:
for evermore superior to the favours of crabbed uncles and businesslike
employers; no more would he start at every knock the postman rapped, or
scowl at the letters which arrived, knowing that more than half of them
were bills he could not hope to satisfy.

Nearly a month had passed since the inquest, and all that Tab had heard
about Ursula was that she had been very ill and was now in the country,
presumably at the Stone Cottage.

He had some idea of going down to see her, but thought better of it.

Meanwhile he had made respectful inquiries about the girl who had so
impressed him.

Ursula Ardfern's story was a curious one. She had appeared first in a
road company, playing small parts and playing them well. Then, without
any warning, she blossomed forth into management, took a lease of the
Athenaeum, and appeared playing a secondary role in an adaptation of
Tosca--the lead being in the capable hands of Mary Farrelli. The dramatic
critics were mollified by her modesty and pleased with her acting; said
they would like to see her in a more important part, and hoped that her
season would be prosperous. They asked, amongst themselves, who was the
man behind the show, and found no satisfactory answer. Then Tosca came
off, after a run of three months; she staged The Tremendous Jones, which
played for a year, and this time she was the leading actress. She had
gone from success to success, was on the very threshold of a great
career. The simple announcement that she had retired from the stage for
ever was not very seriously believed. Yet it was true. Ursula Ardfern had
appeared for the last time before the footlights.

The day that Rex sailed she saved Tab any further cogitation by writing
to him. He found the letter at the office.

"DEAR MR. HOLLAND.--I wonder if you would come to the Stone Cottage to
see me? I promise you rather a sensational 'story,' though I realize that
it will lose much of its importance because I will not have my name
mentioned in connection."

Tab would have liked to have gone then and there. He was up the next
morning at six, and chafed because he could not in decency arrive at the
house much before lunch.

It was a glorious June day, warm, with a gentle westerly wind: such a day
as every doctor with a convalescent patient in his charge hails with joy
and thankfulness.

She was reclining where he had seen her on his first visit to Hertford,
but this time she did not rise, but held out a thin white hand, which he
took with such exaggerated care that she laughed. She was paler, thinner
of face, older looking in some indefinite way.

"You won't break it," she said. "Sit down, Mr. Tab."

"I like Mr. Tab very much better than I like Mr. Holland," said Tab. "It
is glorious here. Why do we swelter in the towns?"

"Because the towns pay us our salaries," she said dryly. "Mr. Holland,
will you do something for me?"

He longed to tell her that if she asked him to stand on his head, or lie
down whilst she wiped her feet upon him, she would be gladly obeyed.
Instead: "Why, of course," he said.

"Will you sell some jewels for me? They are those which were found--in
poor Mr. Trasmere's vault."

"Sell your jewels," he said in amazement, "why? Are you--" he checked
himself.

"I am not very poor," she said quietly. "I have enough money to live
without working again--my last play was a very great success, and happily
the profits--" She stopped dead. "At any rate, I am not poor."

"Then why sell your jewellery? Are you going to buy others?" he blurted
out.

She shook her head, and a smile dawned in her eyes.

"No, my plan is this: I am going to sell the jewellery for what it is
worth, and then I want you to distribute the money to such charities as
you think best."

He was too astonished to answer, and she went on:

"I know very little about charities and their values. I know in some
cases all the money subscribed is swallowed up in officials' salaries.
But you will know these."

"Are you serious?" he at last found his voice to ask.

"Quite," she nodded gravely. "I think they are worth from twelve to
twenty thousand. I am not sure. They are mine," she went on a little
defiantly, and unnecessarily so, thought Tab, "and I may do as I wish
with them. I want them to be sold and the money distributed."

"But, my dear Miss Ardfern--" he began.

"My dear Mr. Holland!" she mocked him, "you must do as I tell you if you
are going to help me at all."

"I'll certainly carry out your wishes," he said; "but it is a weighty lot
of money to give away."

"It is a weightier lot of money to keep," she said quietly. "There is
another favour I ask--you must not write that I am the donor. You can
describe me as a society woman, a retired tradeswoman, or as anything you
like; except as an actress; and of course my name must not even be
hinted. Will you do this?"

He nodded.

"I have them here," she said. "I kept them at the hotel and had them sent
down to me by special messenger yesterday. And now that that business is
over, come inside and lunch."

It was very dear to have her leaning on his arm; her dependence thrilled
him. He wanted to take her up in his arms and carry her through that
sweet-smelling place, slowly and with dignity, as nurses carry sleeping
babies. He wondered what she would think and say if she guessed his
thoughts. It made him hot to consider the possibility for a second.

She did not go direct to the house, but took him through a sunken patch
hidden by low bushes, and he stopped and admired, for here a master hand
had laid out a Chinese garden with tiny bridges and dwarf trees and great
clumps of waxen rock flowers that harboured a faint and delicate scent, a
hint of which came up to him.

"You were thinking of carrying me," she said, a propos of nothing.

Tab went a fiery red.

"But for the proprieties, I should like it. Do you like babies, Mr. Tab?"

"I love 'em," said he, glad to reach a less embarrassing topic.

"So do I--I have seen so many when I was a child. They are wonderful. It
seems to me that they are so near to the source of life, they bring with
them the very fragrance of God."

He was silent, impr