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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11252 ***
+
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+
+By
+Arthur Morrison
+
+
+1894
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+I. THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES
+
+II. THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT
+
+III. THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT
+
+IV. THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO
+
+V. THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR
+
+VI. THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY
+
+VII. THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES.
+
+Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty
+years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary will
+case, "Bartley _v_. Bartley and others," which occupied the Probate Court
+for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public interest rarely
+accorded to any but the cases considered in the other division of the same
+court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity of remarkable and
+unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff's side--evidence that took the
+other party completely by surprise, and overthrew their case like a house
+of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be more readily recalled as the
+occasion of the sudden rise to eminence in their profession of Messrs.
+Crellan, Hunt & Crellan, solicitors for the plaintiff--a result due
+entirely to the wonderful ability shown in this case of building up,
+apparently out of nothing, a smashing weight of irresistible evidence.
+That the firm has since maintained--indeed enhanced--the position it then
+won for itself need scarcely be said here; its name is familiar to
+everybody. But there are not many of the outside public who know that the
+credit of the whole performance was primarily due to a young clerk in the
+employ of Messrs. Crellan, who had been given charge of the seemingly
+desperate task of collecting evidence in the case.
+
+This Mr. Martin Hewitt had, however, full credit and reward for his
+exploit from his firm and from their client, and more than one other firm
+of lawyers engaged in contentious work made good offers to entice Hewitt
+to change his employers. Instead of this, however, he determined to work
+independently for the future, having conceived the idea of making a
+regular business of doing, on behalf of such clients as might retain him,
+similar work to that he had just done with such conspicuous success for
+Messrs. Crellan, Hunt & Crellan. This was the beginning of the private
+detective business of Martin Hewitt, and his action at that time has been
+completely justified by the brilliant professional successes he has since
+achieved.
+
+His business has always been conducted in the most private manner, and he
+has always declined the help of professional assistants, preferring to
+carry out himself such of the many investigations offered him as he could
+manage. He has always maintained that he has never lost by this policy,
+since the chance of his refusing a case begets competition for his
+services, and his fees rise by a natural process. At the same time, no man
+could know better how to employ casual assistance at the right time.
+
+Some curiosity has been expressed as to Mr. Martin Hewitt's system, and,
+as he himself always consistently maintains that he has no system beyond a
+judicious use of ordinary faculties, I intend setting forth in detail a
+few of the more interesting of his cases in order that the public may
+judge for itself if I am right in estimating Mr. Hewitt's "ordinary
+faculties" as faculties very extraordinary indeed. He is not a man who has
+made many friendships (this, probably, for professional reasons),
+notwithstanding his genial and companionable manners. I myself first made
+his acquaintance as a result of an accident resulting in a fire at the old
+house in which Hewitt's office was situated, and in an upper floor of
+which I occupied bachelor chambers. I was able to help in saving a
+quantity of extremely important papers relating to his business, and,
+while repairs were being made, allowed him to lock them in an old
+wall-safe in one of my rooms which the fire had scarcely damaged.
+
+The acquaintance thus begun has lasted many years, and has become a rather
+close friendship. I have even accompanied Hewitt on some of his
+expeditions, and, in a humble way, helped him. Such of the cases, however,
+as I personally saw nothing of I have put into narrative form from the
+particulars given me.
+
+"I consider you, Brett," he said, addressing me, "the most remarkable
+journalist alive. Not because you're particularly clever, you know,
+because, between ourselves, I hope you'll admit you're not; but because
+you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and have
+never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business secrets you
+may have become acquainted with. I'm afraid you're not so enterprising a
+journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you shall write
+something--if you think it worth while."
+
+This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing good-nature
+that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger who thought of him
+only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets and crimes. Indeed,
+the man had always as little of the aspect of the conventional detective
+as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less observant in
+manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of the
+eye--which might, after all, only be the twinkle of good humor.
+
+I _did_ think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt's
+investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an
+ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty
+ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word
+"Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters,
+"Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in the
+ground-floor offices had barely hung up their hats, a short, well-dressed
+young man, wearing spectacles, hastening to open the dusty door, ran into
+the arms of another man who suddenly issued from it.
+
+"I beg pardon," the first said. "Is this Hewitt's Detective Agency
+Office?"
+
+"Yes, I believe you will find it so," the other replied. He was a
+stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round
+countenance. "You'd better speak to the clerk."
+
+In the little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with inky
+fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The printed slip
+having been filled with the visitor's name and present business, and
+conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with an invitation to
+the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat the stoutish man
+himself, who had only just advised an appeal to the clerk.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Lloyd--Mr. Vernon Lloyd," he said, affably, looking
+again at the slip. "You'll excuse my care to start even with my
+visitors--I must, you know. You come from Sir James Norris, I see."
+
+"Yes; I am his secretary. I have only to ask you to go straight to Lenton
+Croft at once, if you can, on very important business. Sir James would
+have wired, but had not your precise address. Can you go by the next
+train? Eleven-thirty is the first available from Paddington."
+
+"Quite possibly. Do you know any thing of the business?"
+
+"It is a case of a robbery in the house, or, rather, I fancy, of several
+robberies. Jewelry has been stolen from rooms occupied by visitors to the
+Croft. The first case occurred some months ago--nearly a year ago, in
+fact. Last night there was another. But I think you had better get the
+details on the spot. Sir James has told me to telegraph if you are coming,
+so that he may meet you himself at the station; and I must hurry, as his
+drive to the station will be rather a long one. Then I take it you will
+go, Mr. Hewitt? Twyford is the station."
+
+"Yes, I shall come, and by the 11.30. Are you going by that train
+yourself?"
+
+"No, I have several things to attend to now I am in town. Good-morning; I
+shall wire at once."
+
+Mr. Martin Hewitt locked the drawer of his table and sent his clerk for a
+cab.
+
+At Twyford Station Sir James Norris was waiting with a dog-cart. Sir James
+was a tall, florid man of fifty or thereabout, known away from home as
+something of a county historian, and nearer his own parts as a great
+supporter of the hunt, and a gentleman much troubled with poachers. As
+soon as he and Hewitt had found one another the baronet hurried the
+detective into his dog-cart. "We've something over seven miles to drive,"
+he said, "and I can tell you all about this wretched business as we go.
+That is why I came for you myself, and alone."
+
+Hewitt nodded.
+
+"I have sent for you, as Lloyd probably told you, because of a robbery at
+my place last evening. It appears, as far as I can guess, to be one of
+three by the same hand, or by the same gang. Late yesterday afternoon----"
+
+"Pardon me, Sir James," Hewitt interrupted, "but I think I must ask you to
+begin at the first robbery and tell me the whole tale in proper order. It
+makes things clearer, and sets them in their proper shape."
+
+"Very well! Eleven months ago, or thereabout, I had rather a large party
+of visitors, and among them Colonel Heath and Mrs. Heath--the lady being a
+relative of my own late wife. Colonel Heath has not been long retired, you
+know--used to be political resident in an Indian native state. Mrs. Heath
+had rather a good stock of jewelry of one sort and another, about the most
+valuable piece being a bracelet set with a particularly fine pearl--quite
+an exceptional pearl, in fact--that had been one of a heap of presents
+from the maharajah of his state when Heath left India.
+
+"It was a very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere
+feather-weight piece of native filigree work--almost too fragile to trust
+on the wrist--and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality
+not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening, and
+after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by
+themselves--shooting, I think--my daughter, my sister (who is very often
+down here), and Mrs. Heath took it into their heads to go
+walking--fern-hunting, and so on. My sister was rather long dressing, and,
+while they waited, my daughter went into Mrs. Heath's room, where Mrs.
+Heath turned over all her treasures to show her, as women do, you know.
+When my sister was at last ready, they came straight away, leaving the
+things littering about the room rather than stay longer to pack them up.
+The bracelet, with other things, was on the dressing-table then."
+
+"One moment. As to the door?"
+
+"They locked it. As they came away my daughter suggested turning the key,
+as we had one or two new servants about."
+
+"And the window?"
+
+"That they left open, as I was going to tell you. Well, they went on their
+walk and came back, with Lloyd (whom they had met somewhere) carrying
+their ferns for them. It was dusk and almost dinner-time. Mrs. Heath went
+straight to her room, and--the bracelet was gone."
+
+"Was the room disturbed?"
+
+"Not a bit. Everything was precisely where it had been left, except the
+bracelet. The door hadn't been tampered with, but of course the window was
+open, as I have told you."
+
+"You called the police, of course?"
+
+"Yes, and had a man from Scotland Yard down in the morning. He seemed a
+pretty smart fellow, and the first thing he noticed on the dressing-table,
+within an inch or two of where the bracelet had been, was a match, which
+had been lit and thrown down. Now nobody about the house had had occasion
+to use a match in that room that day, and, if they had, certainly wouldn't
+have thrown it on the cover of the dressing-table. So that, presuming the
+thief to have used that match, the robbery must have been committed when
+the room was getting dark--immediately before Mrs. Heath returned, in
+fact. The thief had evidently struck the match, passed it hurriedly over
+the various trinkets lying about, and taken the most valuable."
+
+"Nothing else was even moved?"
+
+"Nothing at all. Then the thief must have escaped by the window, although
+it was not quite clear how. The walking party approached the house with a
+full view of the window, but saw nothing, although the robbery must have
+been actually taking place a moment or two before they turned up.
+
+"There was no water-pipe within any practicable distance of the window,
+but a ladder usually kept in the stable-yard was found lying along the
+edge of the lawn. The gardener explained, however, that he had put the
+ladder there after using it himself early in the afternoon."
+
+"Of course it might easily have been used again after that and put back."
+
+"Just what the Scotland Yard man said. He was pretty sharp, too, on the
+gardener, but very soon decided that he knew nothing of it. No stranger
+had been seen in the neighborhood, nor had passed the lodge gates.
+Besides, as the detective said, it scarcely seemed the work of a stranger.
+A stranger could scarcely have known enough to go straight to the room
+where a lady--only arrived the day before--had left a valuable jewel, and
+away again without being seen. So all the people about the house were
+suspected in turn. The servants offered, in a body, to have their boxes
+searched, and this was done; everything was turned over, from the butler's
+to the new kitchen-maid's. I don't know that I should have had this
+carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but it was my guest,
+and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's little more to be
+said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it all, and the thing's as
+great a mystery now as ever. I believe the Scotland Yard man got as far as
+suspecting _me_ before he gave it up altogether, but give it up he did in
+the end. I think that's all I know about the first robbery. Is it clear?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
+the place, but they can wait. What next?"
+
+"Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair, that I
+should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been for one
+circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of the
+same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's disaster--in
+February of this year, in fact--Mrs. Armitage, a young widow, who had been
+a school-fellow of my daughter's, stayed with us for a week or so. The
+girls don't trouble about the London season, you know, and I have no town
+house, so they were glad to have their old friend here for a little in the
+dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active young lady, and was scarcely in
+the house half an hour before she arranged a drive in a pony-cart with
+Eva--my daughter--to look up old people in the village that she used to
+know before she was married. So they set off in the afternoon, and made
+such a round of it that they were late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a
+small plain gold brooch--not at all valuable, you know; two or three
+pounds, I suppose--which she used to pin up a cloak or anything of that
+sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the pin-cushion on her
+dressing-table, and left a ring--rather a good one, I believe--lying close
+by."
+
+"This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had occupied, I
+take it?"
+
+"No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
+went--taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when Mrs.
+Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a little
+tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the curious
+thing was that the ring--worth a dozen of the brooch--was left where it
+had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or not she had locked
+the door herself, although she found it locked when she returned; but my
+niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it once--because she
+remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the landing near by--and found
+it safely locked. The gas-fitter, whom we didn't know at the time, but who
+since seems to be quite an honest fellow, was ready to swear that nobody
+but my niece had been to the door while he was in sight of it--which was
+almost all the time. As to the window, the sash-line had broken that very
+morning, and Mrs. Armitage had propped open the bottom half about eight or
+ten inches with a brush; and, when she returned, that brush, sash, and all
+were exactly as she had left them. Now I scarcely need tell _you_ what an
+awkward job it must have been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that
+unsupported window; and how unlikely he would have been to replace it,
+with the brush, exactly as he found it."
+
+"Just so. I suppose the brooch, was really gone? I mean, there was no
+chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?"
+
+"Oh, none at all! There was a most careful search."
+
+"Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?"
+
+"Well, yes," Sir James replied; "yes, perhaps it would. It was a
+first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the
+billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself--built it out from a
+smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at the
+window from the billiard-room roof. But, then," he added, "that couldn't
+have been the way. Somebody or other was in the billiard-room the whole
+time, and nobody could have got over the roof (which is nearly all
+skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there myself for an hour or
+two, taking a little practice."
+
+"Well, was anything done?"
+
+"Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing came
+of it. It was such a small matter that Mrs. Armitage wouldn't hear of my
+calling in the police or anything of that sort, although I felt pretty
+certain that there must be a dishonest servant about somewhere. A servant
+might take a plain brooch, you know, who would feel afraid of a valuable
+ring, the loss of which would be made a greater matter of."
+
+"Well, yes, perhaps so, in the case of an inexperienced thief, who also
+would be likely to snatch up whatever she took in a hurry. But I'm
+doubtful. What made you connect these two robberies together?"
+
+"Nothing whatever--for some months. They seemed quite of a different sort.
+But scarcely more than a month ago I met Mrs. Armitage at Brighton, and we
+talked, among other things, of the previous robbery--that of Mrs. Heath's
+bracelet. I described the circumstances pretty minutely, and, when I
+mentioned the match found on the table, she said: 'How strange! Why, _my_
+thief left a match on the dressing-table when he took my poor little
+brooch!'"
+
+Hewitt nodded. "Yes," he said. "A spent match, of course?"
+
+"Yes, of course, a spent match. She noticed it lying close by the
+pin-cushion, but threw it away without mentioning the circumstance. Still,
+it seemed rather curious to me that a match should be lit and dropped, in
+each case, on the dressing-cover an inch from where the article was taken.
+I mentioned it to Lloyd when I got back, and he agreed that it seemed
+significant."
+
+"Scarcely," said Hewitt, shaking his head. "Scarcely, so far, to be called
+significant, although worth following up. Everybody uses matches in the
+dark, you know."
+
+"Well, at any rate, the coincidence appealed to me so far that it struck
+me it might be worth while to describe the brooch to the police in order
+that they could trace it if it had been pawned. They had tried that, of
+course, over the bracelet without any result, but I fancied the shot might
+be worth making, and might possibly lead us on the track of the more
+serious robbery."
+
+"Quite so. It was the right thing to do. Well?"
+
+"Well, they found it. A woman had pawned it in London--at a shop in
+Chelsea. But that was some time before, and the pawnbroker had clean
+forgotten all about the woman's appearance. The name and address she gave
+were false. So that was the end of that business."
+
+"Had any of the servants left you between the time the brooch was lost and
+the date of the pawn ticket?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Were all your servants at home on the day the brooch was pawned?"
+
+"Oh, yes! I made that inquiry myself."
+
+"Very good! What next?"
+
+"Yesterday--and this is what made me send for you. My late wife's sister
+came here last Tuesday, and we gave her the room from which Mrs. Heath
+lost her bracelet. She had with her a very old-fashioned brooch,
+containing a miniature of her father, and set in front with three very
+fine brilliants and a few smaller stones. Here we are, though, at the
+Croft. I'll tell you the rest indoors."
+
+Hewitt laid his hand on the baronet's arm. "Don't pull up, Sir James," he
+said. "Drive a little farther. I should like to have a general idea of the
+whole case before we go in."
+
+"Very good!" Sir James Norris straightened the horse's head again and went
+on. "Late yesterday afternoon, as my sister-in-law was changing her dress,
+she left her room for a moment to speak to my daughter in her room, almost
+adjoining. She was gone no more than three minutes, or five at most, but
+on her return the brooch, which had been left on the table, had gone. Now
+the window was shut fast, and had not been tampered with. Of course the
+door was open, but so was my daughter's, and anybody walking near must
+have been heard. But the strangest circumstance, and one that almost makes
+me wonder whether I have been awake to-day or not, was that there lay _a
+used match_ on the very spot, as nearly as possible, where the brooch had
+been--and it was broad daylight!"
+
+Hewitt rubbed his nose and looked thoughtfully before him. "Um--curious,
+certainly," he said, "Anything else?"
+
+"Nothing more than you shall see for yourself. I have had the room locked
+and watched till you could examine it. My sister-in-law had heard of your
+name, and suggested that you should be called in; so, of course, I did
+exactly as she wanted. That she should have lost that brooch, of all
+things, in my house is most unfortunate; you see, there was some small
+difference about the thing between my late wife and her sister when their
+mother died and left it. It's almost worse than the Heaths' bracelet
+business, and altogether I'm not pleased with things, I can assure you.
+See what a position it is for me! Here are three ladies, in the space of
+one year, robbed one after another in this mysterious fashion in my house,
+and I can't find the thief! It's horrible! People will be afraid to come
+near the place. And I can do nothing!"
+
+"Ah, well, we'll see. Perhaps we had better turn back now. By-the-by, were
+you thinking of having any alterations or additions made to your house?"
+
+"No. What makes you ask?"
+
+"I think you might at least consider the question of painting and
+decorating, Sir James--or, say, putting up another coach-house, or
+something. Because I should like to be (to the servants) the architect--or
+the builder, if you please--come to look around. You haven't told any of
+them about this business?"
+
+"Not a word. Nobody knows but my relatives and Lloyd. I took every
+precaution myself, at once. As to your little disguise, be the architect
+by all means, and do as you please. If you can only find this thief and
+put an end to this horrible state of affairs, you'll do me the greatest
+service I've ever asked for--and as to your fee, I'll gladly make it
+whatever is usual, and three hundred in addition."
+
+Martin Hewitt bowed. "You're very generous, Sir James, and you may be sure
+I'll do what I can. As a professional man, of course, a good fee always
+stimulates my interest, although this case of yours certainly seems
+interesting enough by itself."
+
+"Most extraordinary! Don't you think so? Here are three persons, all
+ladies, all in my house, two even in the same room, each successively
+robbed of a piece of jewelry, each from a dressing-table, and a used match
+left behind in every case. All in the most difficult--one would say
+impossible--circumstances for a thief, and yet there is no clue!"
+
+"Well, we won't say that just yet, Sir James; we must see. And we must
+guard against any undue predisposition to consider the robberies in a
+lump. Here we are at the lodge gate again. Is that your gardener--the man
+who left the ladder by the lawn on the first occasion you spoke of?"
+
+Mr. Hewitt nodded in the direction of a man who was clipping a box border.
+
+"Yes; will you ask him anything?"
+
+"No, no; at any rate, not now. Remember the building alterations. I think,
+if there is no objection, I will look first at the room that the
+lady--Mrs.----" Hewitt looked up, inquiringly.
+
+"My sister-in-law? Mrs. Cazenove. Oh, yes! you shall come to her room at
+once."
+
+"Thank you. And I think Mrs. Cazenove had better be there."
+
+They alighted, and a boy from the lodge led the horse and dog-cart away.
+
+Mrs. Cazenove was a thin and faded, but quick and energetic, lady of
+middle age. She bent her head very slightly on learning Martin Hewitt's
+name, and said: "I must thank you, Mr. Hewitt, for your very prompt
+attention. I need scarcely say that any help you can afford in tracing the
+thief who has my property--whoever it may be--will make me most grateful.
+My room is quite ready for you to examine."
+
+The room was on the second floor--the top floor at that part of the
+building. Some slight confusion of small articles of dress was observable
+in parts of the room.
+
+"This, I take it," inquired Hewitt, "is exactly as it was at the time the
+brooch was missed?"
+
+"Precisely," Mrs. Cazenove answered. "I have used another room, and put
+myself to some other inconveniences, to avoid any disturbance."
+
+Hewitt stood before the dressing-table. "Then this is the used match," he
+observed, "exactly where it was found?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where was the brooch?"
+
+"I should say almost on the very same spot. Certainly no more than a very
+few inches away."
+
+Hewitt examined the match closely. "It is burned very little," he
+remarked. "It would appear to have gone out at once. Could you hear it
+struck?"
+
+"I heard nothing whatever; absolutely nothing."
+
+"If you will step into Miss Norris' room now for a moment," Hewitt
+suggested, "we will try an experiment. Tell me if you hear matches struck,
+and how many. Where is the match-stand?"
+
+The match-stand proved to be empty, but matches were found in Miss Norris'
+room, and the test was made. Each striking could be heard distinctly, even
+with one of the doors pushed to.
+
+"Both your own door and Miss Norris' were open, I understand; the window
+shut and fastened inside as it is now, and nothing but the brooch was
+disturbed?"
+
+"Yes, that was so."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Cazenove. I don't think I need trouble you any further
+just at present. I think, Sir James," Hewitt added, turning to the
+baronet, who was standing by the door----"I think we will see the other
+room and take a walk outside the house, if you please. I suppose, by the
+by, that there is no getting at the matches left behind on the first and
+second occasions?"
+
+"No," Sir James answered. "Certainly not here. The Scotland Yard man may
+have kept his."
+
+The room that Mrs. Armitage had occupied presented no peculiar feature. A
+few feet below the window the roof of the billiard-room was visible,
+consisting largely of skylight. Hewitt glanced casually about the walls,
+ascertained that the furniture and hangings had not been materially
+changed since the second robbery, and expressed his desire to see the
+windows from the outside. Before leaving the room, however, he wished to
+know the names of any persons who were known to have been about the house
+on the occasions of all three robberies.
+
+"Just carry your mind back, Sir James," he said. "Begin with yourself, for
+instance. Where were you at these times?"
+
+"When Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet, I was in Tagley Wood all the
+afternoon. When Mrs. Armitage was robbed, I believe I was somewhere about
+the place most of the time she was out. Yesterday I was down at the farm."
+Sir James' face broadened. "I don't know whether you call those suspicious
+movements," he added, and laughed.
+
+"Not at all; I only asked you so that, remembering your own movements, you
+might the better recall those of the rest of the household. Was anybody,
+to your knowledge--_anybody_, mind--in the house on all three occasions?"
+
+"Well, you know, it's quite impossible to answer for all the servants.
+You'll only get that by direct questioning--I can't possibly remember
+things of that sort. As to the family and visitors--why, you don't suspect
+any of them, do you?"
+
+"I don't suspect a soul, Sir James," Hewitt answered, beaming genially,
+"not a soul. You see, I can't suspect people till I know something about
+where they were. It's quite possible there will be independent evidence
+enough as it is, but you must help me if you can. The visitors, now. Was
+there any visitor here each time--or even on the first and last occasions
+only?"
+
+"No, not one. And my own sister, perhaps you will be pleased to know, was
+only there at the time of the first robbery."
+
+"Just so! And your daughter, as I have gathered, was clearly absent from
+the spot each time--indeed, was in company with the party robbed. Your
+niece, now?"
+
+"Why hang it all, Mr. Hewitt, I can't talk of my niece as a suspected
+criminal! The poor girl's under my protection, and I really can't
+allow----"
+
+Hewitt raised his hand, and shook his head deprecatingly.
+
+"My dear sir, haven't I said that I don't suspect a soul? _Do_ let me know
+how the people were distributed, as nearly as possible. Let me see. It was
+your, niece, I think, who found that Mrs. Armitage's door was locked--this
+door, in fact--on the day she lost her brooch?"
+
+"Yes, it was."
+
+"Just so--at the time when Mrs. Armitage herself had forgotten whether she
+locked it or not. And yesterday--was she out then?"
+
+"No, I think not. Indeed, she goes out very little--her health is usually
+bad. She was indoors, too, at the time of the Heath robbery, since you
+ask. But come, now, I don't like this. It's ridiculous to suppose that
+_she_ knows anything of it."
+
+"I don't suppose it, as I have said. I am only asking for information.
+That is all your resident family, I take it, and you know nothing of
+anybody else's movements--except, perhaps, Mr. Lloyd's?"
+
+"Lloyd? Well, you know yourself that he was out with the ladies when the
+first robbery took place. As to the others, I don't remember. Yesterday he
+was probably in his room, writing. I think that acquits _him_, eh?" Sir
+James looked quizzically into the broad face of the affable detective, who
+smiled and replied:
+
+"Oh, of course nobody can be in two places at once, else what would become
+of the _alibi_ as an institution? But, as I have said, I am only setting
+my facts in order. Now, you see, we get down to the servants--unless some
+stranger is the party wanted. Shall we go outside now?"
+
+Lenton Croft was a large, desultory sort of house, nowhere more than three
+floors high, and mostly only two. It had been added to bit by bit, till it
+zigzagged about its site, as Sir James Norris expressed it, "like a game
+of dominoes." Hewitt scrutinized its external features carefully as they
+strolled around, and stopped some little while before the windows of the
+two bed-rooms he had just seen from the inside. Presently they approached
+the stables and coach-house, where a groom was washing the wheels of the
+dog-cart.
+
+"Do you mind my smoking?" Hewitt asked Sir James. "Perhaps you will take a
+cigar yourself--they are not so bad, I think. I will ask your man for a
+light."
+
+Sir James felt for his own match-box, but Hewitt had gone, and was
+lighting his cigar with a match from a box handed him by the groom. A
+smart little terrier was trotting about by the coach-house, and Hewitt
+stooped to rub its head. Then he made some observation about the dog,
+which enlisted the groom's interest, and was soon absorbed in a chat with
+the man. Sir James, waiting a little way off, tapped the stones rather
+impatiently with his foot, and presently moved away.
+
+For full a quarter of an hour Hewitt chatted with the groom, and, when at
+last he came away and overtook Sir James, that gentleman was about
+re-entering the house.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir James," Hewitt said, "for leaving you in that
+unceremonious fashion to talk to your groom, but a dog, Sir James--a good
+dog--will draw me anywhere."
+
+"Oh!" replied Sir James, shortly.
+
+"There is one other thing," Hewitt went on, disregarding the other's
+curtness, "that I should like to know: There are two windows directly
+below that of the room occupied yesterday by Mrs. Cazenove--one on each
+floor. What rooms do they light?"
+
+"That on the ground floor is the morning-room; the other is Mr.
+Lloyd's--my secretary. A sort of study or sitting-room."
+
+"Now you will see at once, Sir James," Hewitt pursued, with an affable
+determination to win the baronet back to good-humor--"you will see at once
+that, if a ladder had been used in Mrs. Heath's case, anybody looking from
+either of these rooms would have seen it."
+
+"Of course! The Scotland Yard man questioned everybody as to that, but
+nobody seemed to have been in either of the rooms when the thing occurred;
+at any rate, nobody saw anything."
+
+"Still, I think I should like to look out of those windows myself; it
+will, at least, give me an idea of what _was_ in view and what was not, if
+anybody had been there."
+
+Sir James Norris led the way to the morning-room. As they reached the door
+a young lady, carrying a book and walking very languidly, came out. Hewitt
+stepped aside to let her pass, and afterward said interrogatively: "Miss
+Norris, your daughter, Sir James?"
+
+"No, my niece. Do you want to ask her anything? Dora, my dear," Sir James
+added, following her in the corridor, "this is Mr. Hewitt, who is
+investigating these wretched robberies for me. I think he would like to
+hear if you remember anything happening at any of the three times."
+
+The lady bowed slightly, and said in a plaintive drawl: "I, uncle? Really,
+I don't remember anything; nothing at all."
+
+"You found Mrs. Armitage's door locked, I believe," asked Hewitt, "when
+you tried it, on the afternoon when she lost her brooch?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I believe it was locked. Yes, it was."
+
+"Had the key been left in?"
+
+"The key? Oh, no! I think not; no."
+
+"Do you remember anything out of the common happening--anything whatever,
+no matter how trivial--on the day Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet?"
+
+"No, really, I don't. I can't remember at all."
+
+"Nor yesterday?"
+
+"No, nothing. I don't remember anything."
+
+"Thank you," said Hewitt, hastily; "thank you. Now the morning-room, Sir
+James."
+
+In the morning-room Hewitt stayed but a few seconds, doing little more
+than casually glance out of the windows. In the room above he took a
+little longer time. It was a comfortable room, but with rather effeminate
+indications about its contents. Little pieces of draped silk-work hung
+about the furniture, and Japanese silk fans decorated the mantel-piece.
+Near the window was a cage containing a gray parrot, and the writing-table
+was decorated with two vases of flowers.
+
+"Lloyd makes himself pretty comfortable, eh?" Sir James observed. "But it
+isn't likely anybody would be here while he was out, at the time that
+bracelet went."
+
+"No," replied Hewitt, meditatively. "No, I suppose not."
+
+He stared thoughtfully out of the window, and then, still deep in thought,
+rattled at the wires of the cage with a quill toothpick and played a
+moment with the parrot. Then, looking up at the window again, he said:
+"That is Mr. Lloyd, isn't it, coming back in a fly?"
+
+"Yes, I think so. Is there anything else you would care to see here?"
+
+"No, thank you," Hewitt replied; "I don't think there is."
+
+They went down to the smoking-room, and Sir James went away to speak to
+his secretary. When he returned, Hewitt said quietly: "I think, Sir
+James--I _think_ that I shall be able to give you your thief presently."
+
+"What! Have you a clue? Who do you think? I began to believe you were
+hopelessly stumped."
+
+"Well, yes. I have rather a good clue, although I can't tell you much
+about it just yet. But it is so good a clue that I should like to know now
+whether you are determined to prosecute when you have the criminal?"
+
+"Why, bless me, of course," Sir James replied, with surprise. "It doesn't
+rest with me, you know--the property belongs to my friends. And even if
+they were disposed to let the thing slide, I shouldn't allow it--I
+couldn't, after they had been robbed in my house."
+
+"Of course, of course! Then, if I can, I should like to send a message to
+Twyford by somebody perfectly trustworthy--not a servant. Could anybody
+go?"
+
+"Well, there's Lloyd, although he's only just back from his journey. But,
+if it's important, he'll go."
+
+"It is important. The fact is we must have a policeman or two here this
+evening, and I'd like Mr. Lloyd to fetch them without telling anybody
+else."
+
+Sir James rang, and, in response to his message, Mr. Lloyd appeared. While
+Sir James gave his secretary his instructions, Hewitt strolled to the door
+of the smoking-room, and intercepted the latter as he came out.
+
+"I'm sorry to give you this trouble, Mr. Lloyd," he said, "but I must stay
+here myself for a little, and somebody who can be trusted must go. Will
+you just bring back a police-constable with you? or rather two--two would
+be better. That is all that is wanted. You won't let the servants know,
+will you? Of course there will be a female searcher at the Twyford
+police-station? Ah--of course. Well, you needn't bring her, you know. That
+sort of thing is done at the station." And, chatting thus confidentially,
+Martin Hewitt saw him off.
+
+When Hewitt returned to the smoking-room, Sir James said, suddenly: "Why,
+bless my soul, Mr. Hewitt, we haven't fed you! I'm awfully sorry. We came
+in rather late for lunch, you know, and this business has bothered me so I
+clean forgot everything else. There's no dinner till seven, so you'd
+better let me give you something now. I'm really sorry. Come along."
+
+"Thank you, Sir James," Hewitt replied; "I won't take much. A few
+biscuits, perhaps, or something of that sort. And, by the by, if you don't
+mind, I rather think I should like to take it alone. The fact is I want to
+go over this case thoroughly by myself. Can you put me in a room?"
+
+"Any room you like. Where will you go? The dining-room's rather large, but
+there's my study, that's pretty snug, or----"
+
+"Perhaps I can go into Mr. Lloyd's room for half an hour or so; I don't
+think he'll mind, and it's pretty comfortable."
+
+"Certainly, if you'd like. I'll tell them to send you whatever they've
+got."
+
+"Thank you very much. Perhaps they'll also send me a lump of sugar and a
+walnut; it's--it's a little fad of mine."
+
+"A--what? A lump of sugar and a walnut?" Sir James stopped for a moment,
+with his hand on the bell-rope. "Oh, certainly, if you'd like it;
+certainly," he added, and stared after this detective with curious tastes
+as he left the room.
+
+When the vehicle, bringing back the secretary and the policeman, drew up
+on the drive, Martin Hewitt left the room on the first floor and proceeded
+down-stairs. On the landing he met Sir James Norris and Mrs. Cazenove, who
+stared with astonishment on perceiving that the detective carried in his
+hand the parrot-cage.
+
+"I think our business is about brought to a head now," Hewitt remarked, on
+the stairs. "Here are the police officers from Twyford." The men were
+standing in the hall with Mr. Lloyd, who, on catching sight of the cage in
+Hewitt's hand, paled suddenly.
+
+"This is the person who will be charged, I think," Hewitt pursued,
+addressing the officers, and indicating Lloyd with his finger.
+
+"What, Lloyd?" gasped Sir James, aghast. "No--not Lloyd--nonsense!"
+
+"He doesn't seem to think it nonsense himself, does he?" Hewitt placidly
+observed. Lloyd had sank on a chair, and, gray of face, was staring
+blindly at the man he had run against at the office door that morning. His
+lips moved in spasms, but there was no sound. The wilted flower fell from
+his button-hole to the floor, but he did not move.
+
+"This is his accomplice," Hewitt went on, placing the parrot and cage on
+the hall table, "though I doubt whether there will be any use in charging
+_him_. Eh, Polly?"
+
+The parrot put his head aside and chuckled. "Hullo, Polly!" it quietly
+gurgled. "Come along!"
+
+Sir James Norris was hopelessly bewildered. "Lloyd--Lloyd," he said, under
+his breath. "Lloyd--and that!"
+
+"This was his little messenger, his useful Mercury," Hewitt explained,
+tapping the cage complacently; "in fact, the actual lifter. Hold him up!"
+
+The last remark referred to the wretched Lloyd, who had fallen forward
+with something between a sob and a loud sigh. The policemen took him by
+the arms and propped him in his chair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"System?" said Hewitt, with a shrug of the shoulders, an hour or two after
+in Sir James' study. "I can't say I have a system. I call it nothing but
+common-sense and a sharp pair of eyes. Nobody using these could help
+taking the right road in this case. I began at the match, just as the
+Scotland Yard man did, but I had the advantage of taking a line through
+three cases. To begin with, it was plain that that match, being left there
+in daylight, in Mrs. Cazenove's room, could not have been used to light
+the table-top, in the full glare of the window; therefore it had been used
+for some other purpose--_what_ purpose I could not, at the moment, guess.
+Habitual thieves, you know, often have curious superstitions, and some
+will never take anything without leaving something behind--a pebble or a
+piece of coal, or something like that--in the premises they have been
+robbing. It seemed at first extremely likely that this was a case of that
+kind. The match had clearly been _brought in_--because, when I asked for
+matches, there were none in the stand, not even an empty box, and the room
+had not been disturbed. Also the match probably had not been struck there,
+nothing having been heard, although, of course, a mistake in this matter
+was just possible. This match, then, it was fair to assume, had been lit
+somewhere else and blown out immediately--I remarked at the time that it
+was very little burned. Plainly it could not have been treated thus for
+nothing, and the only possible object would have been to prevent it
+igniting accidentally. Following on this, it became obvious that the match
+was used, for whatever purpose, not _as_ a match, but merely as a
+convenient splinter of wood.
+
+"So far so good. But on examining the match very closely I observed, as
+you can see for yourself, certain rather sharp indentations in the wood.
+They are very small, you see, and scarcely visible, except upon narrow
+inspection; but there they are, and their positions are regular. See,
+there are two on each side, each opposite the corresponding mark of the
+other pair. The match, in fact, would seem to have been gripped in some
+fairly sharp instrument, holding it at two points above and two below--an
+instrument, as it may at once strike you, not unlike the beak of a bird.
+
+"Now here was an idea. What living creature but a bird could possibly have
+entered Mrs. Heath's window without a ladder--supposing no ladder to have
+been used--or could have got into Mrs. Armitage's window without lifting
+the sash higher than the eight or ten inches it was already open? Plainly,
+nothing. Further, it is significant that only _one_ article was stolen at
+a time, although others were about. A human being could have carried any
+reasonable number, but a bird could only take one at a time. But why
+should a bird carry a match in its beak? Certainly it must have been
+trained to do that for a purpose, and a little consideration made that
+purpose pretty clear. A noisy, chattering bird would probably betray
+itself at once. Therefore it must be trained to keep quiet both while
+going for and coming away with its plunder. What readier or more probably
+effectual way than, while teaching it to carry without dropping, to teach
+it also to keep quiet while carrying? The one thing would practically
+cover the other.
+
+"I thought at once, of course, of a jackdaw or a magpie--these birds'
+thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match
+were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I
+conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived
+near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity of a little chat with your
+groom on the subject of dogs and pets in general, and ascertained that
+there was no tame raven in the place. I also, incidentally, by getting a
+light from the coach-house box of matches, ascertained that the match
+found was of the sort generally used about the establishment--the large,
+thick, red-topped English match. But I further found that Mr. Lloyd had a
+parrot which was a most intelligent pet, and had been trained into
+comparative quietness--for a parrot. Also, I learned that more than once
+the groom had met Mr. Lloyd carrying his parrot under his coat, it having,
+as its owner explained, learned the trick of opening its cage-door and
+escaping.
+
+"I said nothing, of course, to you of all this, because I had as yet
+nothing but a train of argument and no results. I got to Lloyd's room as
+soon as possible. My chief object in going there was achieved when I
+played with the parrot, and induced it to bite a quill toothpick.
+
+"When you left me in the smoking-room, I compared the quill and the match
+very carefully, and found that the marks corresponded exactly. After this
+I felt very little doubt indeed. The fact of Lloyd having met the ladies
+walking before dark on the day of the first robbery proved nothing,
+because, since it was clear that the match had _not_ been used to procure
+a light, the robbery might as easily have taken place in daylight as
+not--must have so taken place, in fact, if my conjectures were right. That
+they were right I felt no doubt. There could be no other explanation.
+
+"When Mrs. Heath left her window open and her door shut, anybody climbing
+upon the open sash of Lloyd's high window could have put the bird upon the
+sill above. The match placed in the bird's beak for the purpose I have
+indicated, and struck first, in case by accident it should ignite by
+rubbing against something and startle the bird--this match would, of
+course, be dropped just where the object to be removed was taken up; as
+you know, in every case the match was found almost upon the spot where the
+missing article had been left--scarcely a likely triple coincidence had
+the match been used by a human thief. This would have been done as soon
+after the ladies had left as possible, and there would then have been
+plenty of time for Lloyd to hurry out and meet them before
+dark--especially plenty of time to meet them _coming back_, as they must
+have been, since they were carrying their ferns. The match was an article
+well chosen for its purpose, as being a not altogether unlikely thing to
+find on a dressing-table, and, if noticed, likely to lead to the wrong
+conclusions adopted by the official detective.
+
+"In Mrs. Armitage's case the taking of an inferior brooch and the leaving
+of a more valuable ring pointed clearly either to the operator being a
+fool or unable to distinguish values, and certainly, from other
+indications, the thief seemed no fool. The door was locked, and the
+gas-fitter, so to speak, on guard, and the window was only eight or ten
+inches open and propped with a brush. A human thief entering the window
+would have disturbed this arrangement, and would scarcely risk discovery
+by attempting to replace it, especially a thief in so great a hurry as to
+snatch the brooch up without unfastening the pin. The bird could pass
+through the opening as it was, and _would have_ to tear the pin-cushion to
+pull the brooch off, probably holding the cushion down with its claw the
+while.
+
+"Now in yesterday's case we had an alteration of conditions. The window
+was shut and fastened, but the door was open--but only left for a few
+minutes, during which time no sound was heard either of coming or going.
+Was it not possible, then, that the thief was _already_ in the room, in
+hiding, while Mrs. Cazenove was there, and seized its first opportunity on
+her temporary absence? The room is full of draperies, hangings, and what
+not, allowing of plenty of concealment for a bird, and a bird could leave
+the place noiselessly and quickly. That the whole scheme was strange
+mattered not at all. Robberies presenting such unaccountable features must
+have been effected by strange means of one sort or another. There was no
+improbability. Consider how many hundreds of examples of infinitely higher
+degrees of bird-training are exhibited in the London streets every week
+for coppers.
+
+"So that, on the whole, I felt pretty sure of my ground. But before taking
+any definite steps I resolved to see if Polly could not be persuaded to
+exhibit his accomplishments to an indulgent stranger. For that purpose I
+contrived to send Lloyd away again and have a quiet hour alone with his
+bird. A piece of sugar, as everybody knows, is a good parrot bribe; but a
+walnut, split in half, is a better--especially if the bird be used to it;
+so I got you to furnish me with both. Polly was shy at first, but I
+generally get along very well with pets, and a little perseverance soon
+led to a complete private performance for my benefit. Polly would take the
+match, mute as wax, jump on the table, pick up the brightest thing he
+could see, in a great hurry, leave the match behind, and scuttle away
+round the room; but at first wouldn't give up the plunder to _me_. It was
+enough. I also took the liberty, as you know, of a general look round, and
+discovered that little collection of Brummagem rings and trinkets that you
+have just seen--used in Polly's education, no doubt. When we sent Lloyd
+away, it struck me that he might as well be usefully employed as not, so I
+got him to fetch the police, deluding him a little, I fear, by talking
+about the servants and a female searcher. There will be no trouble about
+evidence; he'll confess. Of that I'm sure. I know the sort of man. But I
+doubt if you'll get Mrs. Cazenove's brooch back. You see, he has been to
+London to-day, and by this time the swag is probably broken up."
+
+Sir James listened to Hewitt's explanation with many expressions of assent
+and some of surprise. When it was over, he smoked a few whiffs and then
+said: "But Mrs. Armitage's brooch was pawned, and by a woman."
+
+"Exactly. I expect our friend Lloyd was rather disgusted at his small
+luck--probably gave the brooch to some female connection in London, and
+she realized on it. Such persons don't always trouble to give a correct
+address."
+
+The two smoked in silence for a few minutes, and then Hewitt continued: "I
+don't expect our friend has had an easy job altogether with that bird. His
+successes at most have only been three, and I suspect he had many failures
+and not a few anxious moments that we know nothing of. I should judge as
+much merely from what the groom told me of frequently meeting Lloyd with
+his parrot. But the plan was not a bad one--not at all. Even if the bird
+had been caught in the act, it would only have been 'That mischievous
+parrot!' you see. And his master would only have been looking for him."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT.
+
+It was, of course, always a part of Martin Hewitt's business to be
+thoroughly at home among any and every class of people, and to be able to
+interest himself intelligently, or to appear to do so, in their various
+pursuits. In one of the most important cases ever placed in his hands he
+could have gone but a short way toward success had he not displayed some
+knowledge of the more sordid aspects of professional sport, and a great
+interest in the undertakings of a certain dealer therein.
+
+The great case itself had nothing to do with sport, and, indeed, from a
+narrative point of view, was somewhat uninteresting, but the man who alone
+held the one piece of information wanted was a keeper, backer, or "gaffer"
+of professional pedestrians, and it was through the medium of his
+pecuniary interest in such matters that Hewitt was enabled to strike a
+bargain with him.
+
+The man was a publican on the outskirts of Padfield, a northern town,
+pretty famous for its sporting tastes, and to Padfield, therefore, Hewitt
+betook himself, and, arrayed in a way to indicate some inclination of his
+own toward sport, he began to frequent the bar of the Hare and Hounds.
+Kentish, the landlord, was a stout, bull-necked man, of no great
+communicativeness at first; but after a little acquaintance he opened out
+wonderfully, became quite a jolly (and rather intelligent) companion, and
+came out with innumerable anecdotes of his sporting adventures. He could
+put a very decent dinner on the table, too, at the Hare and Hounds, and
+Hewitt's frequent invitation to him to join therein and divide a bottle of
+the best in the cellar soon put the two on the very best of terms. Good
+terms with Mr. Kentish was Hewitt's great desire, for the information he
+wanted was of a sort that could never be extracted by casual questioning,
+but must be a matter of open communication by the publican, extracted in
+what way it might be.
+
+"Look here," said Kentish one day, "I'll put you on to a good thing, my
+boy--a real good thing. Of course you know all about the Padfield 135
+Yards Handicap being run off now?"
+
+"Well, I haven't looked into it much," Hewitt replied. "Ran the first
+round of heats last Saturday and Monday, didn't they?"
+
+"They did. Well"--Kentish spoke in a stage whisper as he leaned over and
+rapped the table--"I've got the final winner in this house." He nodded his
+head, took a puff at his cigar, and added, in his ordinary voice. "Don't
+say nothing."
+
+"No, of course not. Got something on, of course?"
+
+"Rather! What do you think? Got any price I liked. Been saving him up for
+this. Why, he's got twenty-one yards, and he can do even time all the way!
+Fact! Why, he could win runnin' back'ards. He won his heat on Monday
+like--like--like that!" The gaffer snapped his fingers, in default of a
+better illustration, and went on. "He might ha' took it a little easier,
+_I_ think; it's shortened his price, of course, him jumpin' in by two
+yards. But you can get decent odds now, if you go about it right. You take
+my tip--back him for his heat next Saturday, in the second round, and for
+the final. You'll get a good price for the final, if you pop it down at
+once. But don't go makin' a song of it, will you, now? I'm givin' you a
+tip I wouldn't give anybody else."
+
+"Thanks, very much; it's awfully good of you. I'll do what you advise. But
+isn't there a dark horse anywhere else?"
+
+"Not dark to me, my boy, not dark to me. I know every man runnin' like a
+book. Old Taylor--him over at the Cop--he's got a very good lad at
+eighteen yards, a very good lad indeed; and he's a tryer this time, I
+know. But, bless you, my lad could give him ten, instead o' taking three,
+and beat him then! When I'm runnin' a real tryer, I'm generally runnin'
+something very near a winner, you bet; and this time, mind _this_ time,
+I'm runnin' the certainest winner I _ever_ run--and I don't often make a
+mistake. You back him."
+
+"I shall, if you're as sure as that. But who is he?"
+
+"Oh, Crockett's his name--Sammy Crockett. He's quite a new lad. I've got
+young Steggles looking after him--sticks to him like wax. Takes his little
+breathers in my bit o' ground at the back here. I've got a cinder-sprint
+path there, over behind the trees. I don't let him out o' sight much, I
+can tell you. He's a straight lad, and he knows it'll be worth his while
+to stick to me; but there's some 'ud poison him, if they thought he'd
+spoil their books."
+
+Soon afterward the two strolled toward the taproom. "I expect Sammy'll be
+there," the landlord said, "with Steggles. I don't hide him too
+much--they'd think I'd got something extra on if I did."
+
+In the tap-room sat a lean, wire-drawn-looking youth, with sloping
+shoulders and a thin face, and by his side was a rather short, thick-set
+man, who had an odd air, no matter what he did, of proprietorship and
+surveillance of the lean youth. Several other men sat about, and there was
+loud laughter, under which the lean youth looked sheepishly angry.
+
+"'Tarn't no good, Sammy, lad," some one was saying, "you a-makin' after
+Nancy Webb--she'll ha' nowt to do with 'ee."
+
+"Don' like 'em so thread-papery," added another. "No, Sammy, you aren't
+the lad for she. I see her----"
+
+"What about Nancy Webb?" asked Kentish, pushing open the door. "Sammy's
+all right, any way. You keep fit, my lad, an' go on improving, and some
+day you'll have as good a house as me. Never mind the lasses. Had his
+glass o' beer, has he?" This to Raggy Steggles, who, answering in the
+affirmative, viewed his charge as though he were a post, and the beer a
+recent coat of paint.
+
+"Has two glasses of mild a day," the landlord said to Hewitt. "Never puts
+on flesh, so he can stand it. Come out now." He nodded to Steggles, who
+rose and marched Sammy Crockett away for exercise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following afternoon (it was Thursday), as Hewitt and Kentish
+chatted in the landlord's own snuggery, Steggles burst into the room in a
+great state of agitation and spluttered out: "He--he's bolted; gone away!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sammy--gone! Hooked it! _I_ can't find him."
+
+The landlord stared blankly at the trainer, who stood with a sweater
+dangling from his hand and stared blankly back. "What d'ye mean?" Kentish
+said, at last. "Don't be a fool! He's in the place somewhere. Find him!"
+
+But this Steggles defied anybody to do. He had looked already. He had left
+Crockett at the cinder-path behind the trees in his running-gear, with the
+addition of the long overcoat and cap he used in going between the path
+and the house to guard against chill. "I was goin' to give him a bust or
+two with the pistol," the trainer explained, "but, when we got over
+t'other side, 'Raggy,' ses he, 'it's blawin' a bit chilly. I think I'll
+ha' a sweater. There's one on my box, ain't there?' So in I coomes for the
+sweater, and it weren't on his box, and, when I found it and got back--he
+weren't there. They'd seen nowt o' him in t' house, and he weren't
+nowhere."
+
+Hewitt and the landlord, now thoroughly startled, searched everywhere, but
+to no purpose. "What should he go off the place for?" asked Kentish, in a
+sweat of apprehension. "'Tain't chilly a bit--it's warm. He didn't want no
+sweater; never wore one before. It was a piece of kid to be able to clear
+out. Nice thing, this is. I stand to win two years' takings over him.
+Here--you'll have to find him."
+
+"Ah, but how?" exclaimed the disconcerted trainer, dancing about
+distractedly. "I've got all I could scrape on him myself. Where can I
+look?"
+
+Here was Hewitt's opportunity. He took Kentish aside and whispered. What
+he said startled the landlord considerably. "Yes, I'll tell you all about
+that," he said, "if that's all you want. It's no good or harm to me
+whether I tell or no. But can you find him?"
+
+"That I can't promise, of course. But you know who I am now, and what I'm
+here for. If you like to give me the information I want, I'll go into the
+case for you, and, of course, I shan't charge any fee. I may have luck,
+you know, but I can't promise, of course."
+
+The landlord looked in Hewitt's face for a moment. Then he said: "Done!
+It's a deal."
+
+"Very good," Hewitt replied; "get together the one or two papers you have,
+and we'll go into my business in the evening. As to Crockett, don't say a
+word to anybody. I'm afraid it must get out, since they all know about it
+in the house, but there's no use in making any unnecessary noise. Don't
+make hedging bets or do anything that will attract notice. Now we'll go
+over to the back and look at this cinder-path of yours."
+
+Here Steggles, who was still standing near, was struck with an idea. "How
+about old Taylor, at the Cop, guv'nor, eh?" he said, meaningly. "His lad's
+good enough to win with Sammy out, and Taylor is backing him plenty. Think
+he knows any thing o' this?"
+
+"That's likely," Hewitt observed, before Kentish could reply. "Yes. Look
+here--suppose Steggles goes and keeps his eye on the Cop for an hour or
+two, in case there's anything to be heard of? Don't show yourself, of
+course."
+
+Kentish agreed, and the trainer went. When Hewitt and Kentish arrived at
+the path behind the trees, Hewitt at once began examining the ground. One
+or two rather large holes in the cinders were made, as the publican
+explained, by Crockett, in practicing getting off his mark. Behind these
+were several fresh tracks of spiked shoes. The tracks led up to within a
+couple of yards of the high fence bounding the ground, and there stopped
+abruptly and entirely. In the fence, a little to the right of where the
+tracks stopped, there was a stout door. This Hewitt tried, and found ajar.
+
+"That's always kept bolted," Kentish said. "He's gone out that way--he
+couldn't have gone any other without comin' through the house."
+
+"But he isn't in the habit of making a step three yards long, is he?"
+Hewitt asked, pointing at the last footmark and then at the door, which
+was quite that distance away from it. "Besides," he added, opening the
+door, "there's no footprint here nor outside."
+
+The door opened on a lane, with another fence and a thick plantation of
+trees at the other side. Kentish looked at the footmarks, then at the
+door, then down the lane, and finally back toward the house. "That's a
+licker!" he said.
+
+"This is a quiet sort of lane," was Hewitt's next remark. "No houses in
+sight. Where does it lead?"
+
+"That way it goes to the Old Kilns--disused. This way down to a turning
+off the Padfield and Catton road."
+
+Hewitt returned to the cinder-path again, and once more examined the
+footmarks. He traced them back over the grass toward the house.
+"Certainly," he said, "he hasn't gone back to the house. Here is the
+double line of tracks, side by side, from the house--Steggles' ordinary
+boots with iron tips, and Crockett's running pumps; thus they came out.
+Here is Steggles' track in the opposite direction alone, made when he went
+back for the sweater. Crockett remained; you see various prints in those
+loose cinders at the end of the path where he moved this way and that, and
+then two or three paces toward the fence--not directly toward the door,
+you notice--and there they stop dead, and there are no more, either back
+or forward. Now, if he had wings, I should be tempted to the opinion that
+he flew straight away in the air from that spot--unless the earth
+swallowed him and closed again without leaving a wrinkle on its face."
+
+Kentish stared gloomily at the tracks and said nothing.
+
+"However," Hewitt resumed, "I think I'll take a little walk now and think
+over it. You go into the house and show yourself at the bar. If anybody
+wants to know how Crockett is, he's pretty well, thank you. By the by, can
+I get to the Cop--this place of Taylor's--by this back lane?"
+
+"Yes, down to the end leading to the Catton road, turn to the left and
+then first on the right. Any one'll show you the Cop," and Kentish shut
+the door behind the detective, who straightway walked--toward the Old
+Kilns.
+
+In little more than an hour he was back. It was now becoming dusk, and the
+landlord looked out papers from a box near the side window of his
+snuggery, for the sake of the extra light. "I've got these papers together
+for you," he said, as Hewitt entered. "Any news?"
+
+"Nothing very great. Here's a bit of handwriting I want you to recognize,
+if you can. Get a light."
+
+Kentish lit a lamp, and Hewitt laid upon the table half a dozen small
+pieces of torn paper, evidently fragments of a letter which had been torn
+up, here reproduced in fac-simile:
+
+[Illustration: six scraps of paper: mmy, throw them ou, right away, left
+hi, hate his, lane wr]
+
+The landlord turned the scraps over, regarding them dubiously. "These
+aren't much to recognize, anyhow. _I_ don't know the writing. Where did
+you find 'em?"
+
+"They were lying in the lane at the back, a little way down. Plainly they
+are pieces of a note addressed to some one called Sammy or something very
+like it. See the first piece, with its 'mmy'? That is clearly from the
+beginning of the note, because there is no line between it and the smooth,
+straight edge of the paper above; also, nothing follows on the same line.
+Some one writes to Crockett--presuming it to be a letter addressed to him,
+as I do for other reasons--as Sammy. It is a pity that there is no more of
+the letter to be found than these pieces. I expect the person who tore it
+up put the rest in his pocket and dropped these by accident."
+
+Kentish, who had been picking up and examining each piece in turn, now
+dolorously broke out:
+
+"Oh, it's plain he's sold us--bolted and done us; me as took him out o'
+the gutter, too. Look here--'throw them over'; that's plain enough--can't
+mean anything else. Means throw _me_ over, and my friends--me, after what
+I've done for him! Then 'right away'--go right away, I s'pose, as he has
+done. Then"--he was fiddling with the scraps and finally fitted two
+together--"why, look here, this one with 'lane' on it fits over the one
+about throwing over, and it says 'poor f' where its torn; that means 'poor
+fool,' I s'pose--_me_, or 'fathead,' or something like that. That's nice.
+Why, I'd twist his neck if I could get hold of him; and I will!"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "Perhaps it's not quite so uncomplimentary, after all," he
+said. "If you can't recognize the writing, never mind. But, if he's gone
+away to sell you, it isn't much use finding him, is it? He won't win if he
+doesn't want to."
+
+"Why, he wouldn't dare to rope under my very eyes. I'd--I'd----"
+
+"Well, well; perhaps we'll get him to run, after all, and as well as he
+can. One thing is certain--he left this place of his own will. Further, I
+think he is in Padfield now; he went toward the town, I believe. And I
+don't think he means to sell you."
+
+"Well, he shouldn't. I've made it worth his while to stick to me. I've put
+a fifty on for him out of my own pocket, and told him so; and, if he won,
+that would bring him a lump more than he'd probably get by going crooked,
+besides the prize money and anything I might give him over. But it seems
+to me he's putting me in the cart altogether."
+
+"That we shall see. Meantime, don't mention anything I've told you to any
+one--not even to Steggles. He can't help us, and he might blurt things out
+inadvertently. Don't say anything about these pieces of paper, which I
+shall keep myself. By-the-by, Steggles is indoors, isn't he? Very well,
+keep him in. Don't let him be seen hunting about this evening. I'll stay
+here to-night and we'll proceed with Crockett's business in the morning.
+And now we'll settle _my_ business, please."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning Hewitt took his breakfast in the snuggery, carefully
+listening to any conversation that might take place at the bar. Soon after
+nine o'clock a fast dog-cart stopped outside, and a red-faced, loud-voiced
+man swaggered in, greeting Kentish with boisterous cordiality. He had a
+drink with the landlord, and said: "How's things? Fancy any of 'em for the
+sprint handicap? Got a lad o' your own in, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Kentish replied. "Crockett. Only a young un not got to his
+proper mark yet, I reckon. I think old Taylor's got No. 1 this time."
+
+"Capital lad," the other replied, with a confidential nod. "Shouldn't
+wonder at all. Want to do anything yourself over it?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. I'm not on at present. Might have a little flutter
+on the grounds just for fun; nothing else."
+
+There were a few more casual remarks, and then the red-faced man drove
+away.
+
+"Who was that?" asked Hewitt, who had watched the visitor through the
+snuggery window.
+
+"That's Danby--bookmaker. Cute chap. He's been told Crockett's missing,
+I'll bet anything, and come here to pump me. No good, though. As a matter
+of fact, I've worked Sammy Crockett into his books for about half I'm in
+for altogether--through third parties, of course."
+
+Hewitt reached for his hat. "I'm going out for half an hour now," he said.
+"If Steggles wants to go out before I come back, don't let him. Let him go
+and smooth over all those tracks on the cinder-path, very carefully. And,
+by the by, could you manage to have your son about the place to-day, in
+case I happen to want a little help out of doors?"
+
+"Certainly; I'll get him to stay in. But what do you want the cinders
+smoothed for?"
+
+Hewitt smiled, and patted his host's shoulder. "I'll explain all my tricks
+when the job's done," he said, and went out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lane from Padfield to Sedby village stood the Plough beer-house,
+wherein J. Webb was licensed to sell by retail beer to be consumed on the
+premises or off, as the thirsty list. Nancy Webb, with a very fine color,
+a very curly fringe, and a wide smiling mouth revealing a fine set of
+teeth, came to the bar at the summons of a stoutish old gentleman in
+spectacles who walked with a stick.
+
+The stoutish old gentleman had a glass of bitter beer, and then said in
+the peculiarly quiet voice of a very deaf man: "Can you tell me, if you
+please, the way into the main Catton road?"
+
+"Down the lane, turn to the right at the cross-roads, then first to the
+left."
+
+The old gentleman waited with his hand to his ear for some few seconds
+after she had finished speaking, and then resumed in his whispering voice:
+"I'm afraid I'm very deaf this morning." He fumbled in his pocket and
+produced a note-book and pencil. "May I trouble you to write it down? I'm
+so very deaf at times that I--Thank you."
+
+The girl wrote the direction, and the old gentleman bade her good-morning
+and left. All down the lane he walked slowly with his stick. At the
+cross-roads he turned, put the stick under his arm, thrust his spectacles
+into his pocket, and strode away in the ordinary guise of Martin Hewitt.
+He pulled out his note-book, examined Miss Webb's direction very
+carefully, and then went off another way altogether, toward the Hare and
+Hounds.
+
+Kentish lounged moodily in his bar. "Well, my boy," said Hewitt, "has
+Steggles wiped out the tracks?"
+
+"Not yet; I haven't told him. But he's somewhere about; I'll tell him
+now."
+
+"No, don't. I don't think we'll have that done, after all. I expect he'll
+want to go out soon--at any rate, some time during the day. Let him go
+whenever he likes. I'll sit upstairs a bit in the club-room."
+
+"Very well. But how do you know Steggles will be going out?"
+
+"Well, he's pretty restless after his lost _protégé_, isn't he? I don't
+suppose he'll be able to remain idle long."
+
+"And about Crockett. Do you give him up?"
+
+"Oh, no! Don't you be impatient. I can't say I'm quite confident yet of
+laying hold of him--the time is so short, you see--but I think I shall at
+least have news for you by the evening."
+
+Hewitt sat in the club-room until the afternoon, taking his lunch there.
+At length he saw, through the front window, Raggy Steggles walking down
+the road. In an instant Hewitt was down-stairs and at the door. The road
+bent eighty yards away, and as soon as Steggles passed the bend the
+detective hurried after him.
+
+All the way to Padfield town and more than half through it Hewitt dogged
+the trainer. In the end Steggles stopped at a corner and gave a note to a
+small boy who was playing near. The boy ran with the note to a bright,
+well-kept house at the opposite corner. Martin Hewitt was interested to
+observe the legend, "H. Danby, Contractor," on a board over a gate in the
+side wall of the garden behind this house. In five minutes a door in the
+side gate opened, and the head and shoulders of the red-faced man emerged.
+Steggles immediately hurried across and disappeared through the gate.
+
+This was both interesting and instructive. Hewitt took up a position in
+the side street and waited. In ten minutes the trainer reappeared and
+hurried off the way he had come, along the street Hewitt had considerately
+left clear for him. Then Hewitt strolled toward the smart house and took a
+good look at it. At one corner of the small piece of forecourt garden,
+near the railings, a small, baize-covered, glass-fronted notice-board
+stood on two posts. On its top edge appeared the words, "H. Danby. Houses
+to be Sold or Let." But the only notice pinned to the green baize within
+was an old and dusty one, inviting tenants for three shops, which were
+suitable for any business, and which would be fitted to suit tenants.
+Apply within.
+
+Hewitt pushed open the front gate and rang the door-bell. "There are some
+shops to let, I see," he said, when a maid appeared. "I should like to see
+them, if you will let me have the key."
+
+"Master's out, sir. You can't see the shops till Monday."
+
+"Dear me, that's unfortunate, I'm afraid I can't wait till Monday. Didn't
+Mr. Danby leave any instructions, in case anybody should inquire?"
+
+"Yes, sir--as I've told you. He said anybody who called about 'em must
+come again on Monday."
+
+"Oh, very well, then; I suppose I must try. One of the shops is in High
+Street, isn't it?"
+
+"No, sir; they're all in the new part--Granville Road."
+
+"Ah, I'm afraid that will scarcely do. But I'll see. Good-day."
+
+Martin Hewitt walked away a couple of streets' lengths before he inquired
+the way to Granville Road. When at last he found that thoroughfare, in a
+new and muddy suburb, crowded with brick-heaps and half-finished streets,
+he took a slow walk along its entire length. It was a melancholy example
+of baffled enterprise. A row of a dozen or more shops had been built
+before any population had arrived to demand goods. Would-be tradesmen had
+taken many of these shops, and failure and disappointment stared from the
+windows. Some were half covered by shutters, because the scanty stock
+scarce sufficed to fill the remaining half. Others were shut almost
+altogether, the inmates only keeping open the door for their own
+convenience, and, perhaps, keeping down a shutter for the sake of a little
+light. Others, again, had not yet fallen so low, but struggled bravely
+still to maintain a show of business and prosperity, with very little
+success. Opposite the shops there still remained a dusty, ill-treated
+hedge and a forlorn-looking field, which an old board offered on building
+leases. Altogether a most depressing spot.
+
+There was little difficulty in identifying the three shops offered for
+letting by Mr. H. Danby. They were all together near the middle of the
+row, and were the only ones that appeared not yet to have been occupied. A
+dusty "To Let" bill hung in each window, with written directions to
+inquire of Mr. H. Danby or at No. 7. Now No. 7 was a melancholy baker's
+shop, with a stock of three loaves and a plate of stale buns. The
+disappointed baker assured Hewitt that he usually kept the keys of the
+shops, but that the landlord, Mr. Danby, had taken them away the day
+before to see how the ceilings were standing, and had not returned them.
+"But if you was thinking of taking a shop here," the poor baker added,
+with some hesitation, "I--I--if you'll excuse my advising you--I shouldn't
+recommend it. I've had a sickener of it myself."
+
+Hewitt thanked the baker for his advice, wished him better luck in future,
+and left. To the Hare and Hounds his pace was brisk. "Come," he said, as
+he met Kentish's inquiring glance, "this has been a very good day, on the
+whole. I know where our man is now, and I think we can get him, by a
+little management."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Oh, down in Padfield. As a matter of fact, he's being kept there against
+his will, we shall find. I see that your friend Mr. Danby is a builder as
+well as a bookmaker."
+
+"Not a regular builder. He speculates in a street of new houses now and
+again, that's all. But is he in it?"
+
+"He's as deep in it as anybody, I think. Now, don't fly into a passion.
+There are a few others in it as well, but you'll do harm if you don't keep
+quiet."
+
+"But go and get the police; come and fetch him, if you know where they're
+keeping him. Why----"
+
+"So we will, if we can't do it without them. But it's quite possible we
+can, and without all the disturbance and, perhaps, delay that calling in
+the police would involve. Consider, now, in reference to your own
+arrangements. Wouldn't it pay you better to get him back quietly, without
+a soul knowing--perhaps not even Danby knowing--till the heat is run
+to-morrow?"
+
+"Well, yes, it would, of course."
+
+"Very good, then, so be it. Remember what I have told you about keeping
+your mouth shut; say nothing to Steggles or anybody. Is there a cab or
+brougham your son and I can have for the evening?"
+
+"There's an old hiring landau in the stables you can shut up into a cab,
+if that'll do."
+
+"Excellent. We'll run down to the town in it as soon as it's ready. But,
+first, a word about Crockett. What sort of a lad is he? Likely to give
+them trouble, show fight, and make a disturbance?"
+
+"No, I should say not. He's no plucked un, certainly; all his manhood's in
+his legs, I believe. You see, he ain't a big sort o' chap at best, and
+he'd be pretty easy put upon--at least, I guess so."
+
+"Very good, so much the better, for then he won't have been damaged, and
+they will probably only have one man to guard him. Now the carriage,
+please."
+
+Young Kentish was a six-foot sergeant of grenadiers home on furlough, and
+luxuriating in plain clothes. He and Hewitt walked a little way toward the
+town, allowing the landau to catch them up. They traveled in it to within
+a hundred yards of the empty shops and then alighted, bidding the driver
+wait.
+
+"I shall show you three empty shops," Hewitt said, as he and young Kentish
+walked down Granville Road. "I am pretty sure that Sammy Crockett is in
+one of them, and I am pretty sure that that is the middle one. Take a look
+as we go past."
+
+When the shops had been slowly passed, Hewitt resumed: "Now, did you see
+anything about those shops that told a tale of any sort?"
+
+"No," Sergeant Kentish replied. "I can't say I noticed anything beyond the
+fact that they were empty--and likely to stay so, I should think."
+
+"We'll stroll back, and look in at the windows, if nobody's watching us,"
+Hewitt said. "You see, it's reasonable to suppose they've put him in the
+middle one, because that would suit their purpose best. The shops at each
+side of the three are occupied, and, if the prisoner struggled, or
+shouted, or made an uproar, he might be heard if he were in one of the
+shops next those inhabited. So that the middle shop is the most likely.
+Now, see there," he went on, as they stopped before the window of the shop
+in question, "over at the back there's a staircase not yet partitioned
+off. It goes down below and up above. On the stairs and on the floor near
+them there are muddy footmarks. These must have been made to-day, else
+they would not be muddy, but dry and dusty, since there hasn't been a
+shower for a week till to-day. Move on again. Then you noticed that there
+were no other such marks in the shop. Consequently the man with the muddy
+feet did not come in by the front door, but by the back; otherwise he
+would have made a trail from the door. So we will go round to the back
+ourselves."
+
+It was now growing dusk. The small pieces of ground behind the shops were
+bounded by a low fence, containing a door for each house.
+
+"This door is bolted inside, of course," Hewitt said, "but there is no
+difficulty in climbing. I think we had better wait in the garden till
+dark. In the meantime, the jailer, whoever he is, may come out; in which
+case we shall pounce on him as soon as he opens the door. You have that
+few yards of cord in your pocket, I think? And my handkerchief, properly
+rolled, will make a very good gag. Now over."
+
+They climbed the fence and quietly approached the house, placing
+themselves in the angle of an outhouse out of sight from the windows.
+There was no sound, and no light appeared. Just above the ground about a
+foot of window was visible, with a grating over it, apparently lighting a
+basement. Suddenly Hewitt touched his companion's arm and pointed toward
+the window. A faint rustling sound was perceptible, and, as nearly as
+could be discerned in the darkness, some white blind or covering was
+placed over the glass from the inside. Then came the sound of a striking
+match, and at the side edge of the window there was a faint streak of
+light.
+
+"That's the place," Hewitt whispered. "Come, we'll make a push for it. You
+stand against the wall at one side of the door and I'll stand at the
+other, and we'll have him as he comes out. Quietly, now, and I'll startle
+them."
+
+He took a stone from among the rubbish littering the garden and flung it
+crashing through the window. There was a loud exclamation from within, the
+blind fell, and somebody rushed to the back door and flung it open.
+Instantly Kentish let fly a heavy right-hander, and the man went over like
+a skittle. In a moment Hewitt was upon him and the gag in his mouth.
+
+"Hold him," Hewitt whispered, hurriedly. "I'll see if there are others."
+
+He peered down through the low window. Within Sammy Crockett, his bare
+legs dangling from beneath his long overcoat, sat on a packing-box,
+leaning with his head on his hand and his back toward the window. A
+guttering candle stood on the mantel-piece, and the newspaper which had
+been stretched across the window lay in scattered sheets on the floor. No
+other person besides Sammy was visible.
+
+They led their prisoner indoors. Young Kentish recognized him as a
+public-house loafer and race-course ruffian, well known in the
+neighborhood.
+
+"So it's you, is it, Browdie?" he said. "I've caught you one hard clump,
+and I've half a mind to make it a score more. But you'll get it pretty
+warm one way or another before this job's forgotten."
+
+Sammy Crockett was overjoyed at his rescue. He had not been ill-treated,
+he explained, but had been thoroughly cowed by Browdie, who had from time
+to time threatened him savagely with an iron bar by way of persuading him
+to quietness and submission. He had been fed, and had taken no worse harm
+than a slight stiffness from his adventure, due to his light under-attire
+of jersey and knee-shorts.
+
+Sergeant Kentish tied Browdie's elbows firmly together behind, and carried
+the line round the ankles, bracing all up tight. Then he ran a knot from
+one wrist to the other over the back of the neck, and left the prisoner,
+trussed and helpless, on the heap of straw that had been Sammy's bed.
+
+"You won't be very jolly, I expect," Kentish said, "for some time. You
+can't shout and you can't walk, and I know you can't untie yourself.
+You'll get a bit hungry, too, perhaps, but that'll give you an appetite. I
+don't suppose you'll be disturbed till some time to-morrow, unless our
+friend Danby turns up in the meantime. But you can come along to jail
+instead, if you prefer it."
+
+They left him where he lay, and took Sammy to the old landau. Sammy walked
+in slippers, carrying his spiked shoes, hanging by the lace, in his hand.
+
+"Ah," said Hewitt, "I think I know the name of the young lady who gave you
+those slippers."
+
+Crockett looked ashamed and indignant. "Yes," he said, "they've done me
+nicely between 'em. But I'll pay her--I'll----"
+
+"Hush, hush!" Hewitt said; "you mustn't talk unkindly of a lady, you know.
+Get into this carriage, and we'll take you home. We'll see if I can tell
+you your adventures without making a mistake. First, you had a note from
+Miss Webb, telling you that you were mistaken in supposing she had
+slighted you, and that, as a matter of fact, she had quite done with
+somebody else--left him--of whom you were jealous. Isn't that so?"
+
+"Well, yes," young Crockett answered, blushing deeply under the
+carriage-lamp; "but I don't see how you come to know that."
+
+"Then she went on to ask you to get rid of Steggles on Thursday afternoon
+for a few minutes, and speak to her in the back lane. Now, your running
+pumps, with their thin soles, almost like paper, no heels and long spikes,
+hurt your feet horribly if you walk on hard ground, don't they?"
+
+"Ay, that they do--enough to cripple you. I'd never go on much hard ground
+with 'em."
+
+"They're not like cricket shoes, I see."
+
+"Not a bit. Cricket shoes you can walk anywhere in!"
+
+"Well, she knew this--I think I know who told her--and she promised to
+bring you a new pair of slippers, and to throw them over the fence for you
+to come out in."
+
+"I s'pose she's been tellin' you all this?" Crockett said, mournfully.
+"You couldn't ha' seen the letter; I saw her tear it up and put the bits
+in her pocket. She asked me for it in the lane, in case Steggles saw it."
+
+"Well, at any rate, you sent Steggles away, and the slippers did come
+over, and you went into the lane. You walked with her as far as the road
+at the end, and then you were seized and gagged, and put into a carriage."
+
+"That was Browdie did that," said Crockett, "and another chap I don't
+know. But--why, this is Padfield High Street?" He looked through the
+window and regarded the familiar shops with astonishment.
+
+"Of course it is. Where did you think it was?"
+
+"Why, where was that place you found me in?"
+
+"Granville Road, Padfield. I suppose they told you you were in another
+town?"
+
+"Told me it was Newstead Hatch. They drove for about three or four hours,
+and kept me down on the floor between the seats so as I couldn't see where
+we was going."
+
+"Done for two reasons," said Hewitt. "First, to mystify you, and prevent
+any discovery of the people directing the conspiracy; and second, to be
+able to put you indoors at night and unobserved. Well, I think I have told
+you all you know yourself now as far as the carriage.
+
+"But there is the Hare and Hounds just in front. We'll pull up here, and
+I'll get out and see if the coast is clear. I fancy Mr. Kentish would
+rather you came in unnoticed."
+
+In a few seconds Hewitt was back, and Crockett was conveyed indoors by a
+side entrance. Hewitt's instructions to the landlord were few, but
+emphatic. "Don't tell Steggles about it," he said; "make an excuse to get
+rid of him, and send him out of the house. Take Crockett into some other
+bedroom, not his own, and let your son look after him. Then come here, and
+I'll tell you all about it."
+
+Sammy Crockett was undergoing a heavy grooming with white embrocation at
+the hands of Sergeant Kentish when the landlord returned to Hewitt. "Does
+Danby know you've got him?" he asked. "How did you do it?"
+
+"Danby doesn't know yet, and with luck he won't know till he sees Crockett
+running to-morrow. The man who has sold you is Steggles."
+
+"Steggles?"
+
+"Steggles it is. At the very first, when Steggles rushed in to report
+Sammy Crockett missing, I suspected him. You didn't, I suppose?"
+
+"No. He's always been considered a straight man, and he looked as startled
+as anybody."
+
+"Yes, I must say he acted it very well. But there was something suspicious
+in his story. What did he say? Crockett had remarked a chilliness, and
+asked for a sweater, which Steggles went to fetch. Now, just think. You
+understand these things. Would any trainer who knew his business (as
+Steggles does) have gone to bring out a sweater for his man to change for
+his jersey in the open air, at the very time the man was complaining of
+chilliness? Of course not. He would have taken his man indoors again and
+let him change there under shelter. Then supposing Steggles had really
+been surprised at missing Crockett, wouldn't he have looked about, found
+the gate open, and _told_ you it was open when he first came in? He said
+nothing of that--we found the gate open for ourselves. So that from the
+beginning I had a certain opinion of Steggles."
+
+"What you say seems pretty plain now, although it didn't strike me at the
+time. But, if Steggles was selling us, why couldn't he have drugged the
+lad? That would have been a deal simpler."
+
+"Because Steggles is a good trainer, and has a certain reputation to keep
+up. It would have done him no good to have had a runner drugged while
+under his care; certainly it would have cooked his goose with _you_. It
+was much the safer thing to connive at kidnapping. That put all the active
+work into other hands, and left him safe, even if the trick failed. Now,
+you remember that we traced the prints of Crockett's spiked shoes to
+within a couple of yards from the fence, and that there they ceased
+suddenly?"
+
+"Yes. You said it looked as though he had flown up into the air; and so it
+did."
+
+"But I was sure that it was by that gate that Crockett had left, and by no
+other. He couldn't have got through the house without being seen, and
+there was no other way--let alone the evidence of the unbolted gate.
+Therefore, as the footprints ceased where they did, and were not repeated
+anywhere in the lane, I knew that he had taken his spiked shoes
+off--probably changed them for something else, because a runner anxious as
+to his chances would never risk walking on bare feet, with a chance of
+cutting them. Ordinary, broad, smooth-soled slippers would leave no
+impression on the coarse cinders bordering the track, and nothing short of
+spiked shoes would leave a mark on the hard path in the lane behind. The
+spike-tracks were leading, not directly toward the door, but in the
+direction of the fence, when they stopped; somebody had handed, or thrown,
+the slippers over the fence, and he had changed them on the spot. The
+enemy had calculated upon the spikes leaving a track in the lane that
+might lead us in our search, and had arranged accordingly.
+
+"So far so good. I could see no footprints near the gate in the lane. You
+will remember that I sent Steggles off to watch at the Cop before I went
+out to the back--merely, of course, to get him out of the way. I went out
+into the lane, leaving you behind, and walked its whole length, first
+toward the Old Kilns and then back toward the road. I found nothing to
+help me except these small pieces of paper--which are here in my
+pocket-book, by the by. Of course this 'mmy' might have meant 'Jimmy' or
+'Tommy' as possibly as 'Sammy,' but they were not to be rejected on that
+account. Certainly Crockett had been decoyed out of your ground, not taken
+by force, or there would have been marks of a scuffle in the cinders. And
+as his request for a sweater was probably an excuse--because it was not at
+all a cold afternoon--he must have previously designed going out.
+Inference, a letter received; and here were pieces of a letter. Now, in
+the light of what I have said, look at these pieces. First, there is the
+'mmy'--that I have dealt with. Then see this 'throw them ov'--clearly a
+part of 'throw them over'; exactly what had probably been done with the
+slippers. Then the 'poor f,' coming just on the line before, and seen, by
+joining up with this other piece, might easily be a reference to 'poor
+feet.' These coincidences, one on the other, went far to establish the
+identity of the letter, and to confirm my previous impressions. But then
+there is something else. Two other pieces evidently mean 'left him,' and
+'right away,' perhaps; but there is another, containing almost all of the
+words 'hate his,' with the word 'hate' underlined. Now, who writes 'hate'
+with the emphasis of underscoring--who but a woman? The writing is large
+and not very regular; it might easily be that of a half-educated woman.
+Here was something more--Sammy had been enticed away by a woman.
+
+"Now, I remembered that, when we went into the tap-room on Wednesday, some
+of his companions were chaffing Crockett about a certain Nancy Webb, and
+the chaff went home, as was plain to see. The woman, then, who could most
+easily entice Sammy Crockett away was Nancy Webb. I resolved to find who
+Nancy Webb was and learn more of her.
+
+"Meantime, I took a look at the road at the end of the lane. It was damper
+than the lane, being lower, and overhung by trees. There were many
+wheel-tracks, but only one set that turned in the road and went back the
+way it came, toward the town; and they were narrow wheels--carriage
+wheels. Crockett tells me now that they drove him about for a long time
+before shutting him up; probably the inconvenience of taking him straight
+to the hiding-place didn't strike them when they first drove off.
+
+"A few inquiries soon set me in the direction of the Plough and Miss Nancy
+Webb. I had the curiosity to look around the place as I approached, and
+there, in the garden behind the house, were Steggles and the young lady in
+earnest confabulation!
+
+"Every conjecture became a certainty. Steggles was the lover of whom
+Crockett was jealous, and he had employed the girl to bring Sammy out. I
+watched Steggles home, and gave you a hint to keep him there.
+
+"But the thing that remained was to find Steggles' employer in this
+business. I was glad to be in when Danby called. He came, of course, to
+hear if you would blurt out anything, and to learn, if possible, what
+steps you were taking. He failed. By way of making assurance doubly sure I
+took a short walk this morning in the character of a deaf gentleman, and
+got Miss Webb to write me a direction that comprised three of the words on
+these scraps of paper--'left,' 'right,' and 'lane'; see, they correspond,
+the peculiar 'f's,' 't's,' and all.
+
+"Now, I felt perfectly sure that Steggles would go for his pay to-day. In
+the first place, I knew that people mixed up with shady transactions in
+professional pedestrianism are not apt to trust one another far--they know
+better. Therefore Steggles wouldn't have had his bribe first. But he would
+take care to get it before the Saturday heats were run, because once they
+were over the thing was done, and the principal conspirator might have
+refused to pay up, and Steggles couldn't have helped himself. Again I
+hinted he should not go out till I could follow him, and this afternoon,
+when he went, follow him I did. I saw him go into Danby's house by the
+side way and come away again. Danby it was, then, who had arranged the
+business; and nobody was more likely, considering his large pecuniary
+stake against Crockett's winning this race.
+
+"But now how to find Crockett? I made up my mind he wouldn't be in Danby's
+own house. That would be a deal too risky, with servants about and so on.
+I saw that Danby was a builder, and had three shops to let--it was on a
+paper before his house. What more likely prison than an empty house? I
+knocked at Danby's door and asked for the keys of those shops. I couldn't
+have them. The servant told me Danby was out (a manifest lie, for I had
+just seen him), and that nobody could see the shops till Monday. But I got
+out of her the address of the shops, and that was all I wanted at the
+time.
+
+"Now, why was nobody to see those shops till Monday? The interval was
+suspicious--just enough to enable Crockett to be sent away again and cast
+loose after the Saturday racing, supposing him to be kept in one of the
+empty buildings. I went off at once and looked at the shops, forming my
+conclusions as to which would be the most likely for Danby's purpose. Here
+I had another confirmation of my ideas. A poor, half-bankrupt baker in one
+of the shops had, by the bills, the custody of a set of keys; but he, too,
+told me I couldn't have them; Danby had taken them away--and on Thursday,
+the very day--with some trivial excuse, and hadn't brought them back. That
+was all I wanted or could expect in the way of guidance. The whole thing
+was plain. The rest you know all about."
+
+"Well, you're certainly as smart as they give you credit for, I must say.
+But suppose Danby had taken down his 'To Let' notice, what would you have
+done, then?"
+
+"We had our course, even then. We should have gone to Danby, astounded him
+by telling him all about his little games, terrorized him with threats of
+the law, and made him throw up his hand and send Crockett back. But, as it
+is, you see, he doesn't know at this moment--probably won't know till
+to-morrow afternoon--that the lad is safe and sound here. You will
+probably use the interval to make him pay for losing the game--by some of
+the ingenious financial devices you are no doubt familiar with."
+
+"Ay, that I will. He'll give any price against Crockett now, so long as
+the bet don't come direct from me."
+
+"But about Crockett, now," Hewitt went on. "Won't this confinement be
+likely to have damaged his speed for a day or two?"
+
+"Ah, perhaps," the landlord replied; "but, bless ye, that won't matter.
+There's four more in his heat to-morrow. Two I know aren't tryers, and the
+other two I can hold in at a couple of quid apiece any day. The third
+round and final won't be till to-morrow week, and he'll be as fit as ever
+by then. It's as safe as ever it was. How much are you going to have on?
+I'll lump it on for you safe enough. This is a chance not to be missed;
+it's picking money up."
+
+"Thank you; I don't think I'll have anything to do with it. This
+professional pedestrian business doesn't seem a pretty one at all. I don't
+call myself a moralist, but, if you'll excuse my saying so, the thing is
+scarcely the game I care to pick tap money at in any way."
+
+"Oh, very well! if you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't think
+so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't quarrel;
+you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I
+aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you've
+got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll pay it
+like a lord, and feel a deal more pleased than if you made a favor of
+it--not that I'm above a favor, of course. But I'd prefer paying, and
+that's a fact."
+
+"My dear sir, you have paid," Hewitt said, with a smile. "You paid in
+advance. It was a bargain, wasn't it, that I should do your business if
+you would help me in mine? Very well; a bargain's a bargain, and we've
+both performed our parts. And you mustn't be offended at what I said just
+now."
+
+"That I won't! But as to that Raggy Steggles, once those heats are over
+to-morrow, I'll--well----"
+
+It was on the following Sunday week that Martin Hewitt, in his rooms in
+London, turned over his paper and read, under the head "Padfield Annual
+135 Yards Handicap," this announcement: "Final heat: Crockett, first;
+Willis, second; Trewby, third; Owen, 0; Howell, 0. A runaway win by nearly
+three yards."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT.
+
+Almost the only dogmatism that Martin Hewitt permitted himself in regard
+to his professional methods was one on the matter of accumulative
+probabilities. Often when I have remarked upon the apparently trivial
+nature of the clews by which he allowed himself to be guided--sometimes,
+to all seeming, in the very face of all likelihood--he has replied that
+two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became at once, by their
+mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important
+considerations. "If I were in search of a man," he would say, "of whom I
+knew nothing but that he squinted, bore a birthmark on his right hand, and
+limped, and I observed a man who answered to the first peculiarity, so far
+the clue would be trivial, because thousands of men squint. Now, if that
+man presently moved and exhibited a birthmark on his right hand, the
+value of that squint and that mark would increase at once a hundred or
+a thousand fold. Apart they are little; together much. The weight of
+evidence is not doubled merely; it would be only doubled if half the men
+who squinted had right-hand birthmarks; whereas the proportion, if it
+could be ascertained, would be, perhaps, more like one in ten thousand.
+The two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become very strong
+evidence. And, when the man is seen to walk with a limp, that limp
+(another triviality), re-enforcing the others, brings the matter to the
+rank of a practical certainty. The Bertillon system of identification--what
+is it but a summary of trivialities? Thousands of men are of the same
+height, thousands of the same length of foot, thousands of the same girth
+of head--thousands correspond in any separate measurement you may name. It
+is when the measurements are taken _together_ that you have your man
+identified forever. Just consider how few, if any, of your friends
+correspond exactly in any two personal peculiarities." Hewitt's dogma
+received its illustration unexpectedly close at home.
+
+The old house wherein my chambers and Hewitt's office were situated
+contained, besides my own, two or three more bachelors' dens, in addition
+to the offices on the ground and first and second floors. At the very top
+of all, at the back, a fat, middle-aged man, named Foggatt, occupied a set
+of four rooms. It was only after a long residence, by an accidental remark
+of the housekeeper's, that I learned the man's name, which was not painted
+on his door or displayed, with all the others, on the wall of the
+ground-floor porch.
+
+Mr. Foggatt appeared to have few friends, but lived in something as nearly
+approaching luxury as an old bachelor living in chambers can live. An
+ascending case of champagne was a common phenomenon of the staircase, and
+I have more than once seen a picture, destined for the top floor, of a
+sort that went far to awaken green covetousness in the heart of a poor
+journalist.
+
+The man himself was not altogether prepossessing. Fat as he was, he had a
+way of carrying his head forward on his extended neck and gazing widely
+about with a pair of the roundest and most prominent eyes I remember to
+have ever seen, except in a fish. On the whole, his appearance was rather
+vulgar, rather arrogant, and rather suspicious, without any very
+pronounced quality of any sort. But certainly he was not pretty. In the
+end, however, he was found shot dead in his sitting-room.
+
+It was in this way: Hewitt and I had dined together at my club, and late
+in the evening had returned to my rooms to smoke and discuss whatever came
+uppermost. I had made a bargain that day with two speculative odd lots at
+a book sale, each of which contained a hidden prize. We sat talking and
+turning over these books while time went unperceived, when suddenly we
+were startled by a loud report. Clearly it was in the building. We
+listened for a moment, but heard nothing else, and then Hewitt expressed
+his opinion that the report was that of a gunshot. Gunshots in residential
+chambers are not common things, wherefore I got up and went to the
+landing, looking up the stairs and down.
+
+At the top of the next flight I saw Mrs. Clayton, the housekeeper. She
+appeared to be frightened, and told me that the report came from Mr.
+Foggatt's room. She thought he might have had an accident with the pistol
+that usually lay on his mantel-piece. We went upstairs with her, and she
+knocked at Mr. Foggatt's door.
+
+There was no reply. Through the ventilating fanlight over the door it
+could be seen that there were lights within, a sign, Mrs. Clayton
+maintained, that Mr. Foggatt was not out. We knocked again, much more
+loudly, and called, but still ineffectually. The door was locked, and an
+application of the housekeeper's key proved that the tenant's key had been
+left in the lock inside. Mrs. Clayton's conviction that "something had
+happened" became distressing, and in the end Hewitt pried open the door
+with a small poker.
+
+Something _had_ happened. In the sitting-room Mr. Foggatt sat with his
+head bowed over the table, quiet and still. The head was ill to look at,
+and by it lay a large revolver, of the full-sized army pattern. Mrs.
+Clayton ran back toward the landing with faint screams.
+
+"Run, Brett!" said Hewitt; "a doctor and a policeman!"
+
+I bounced down the stairs half a flight at a time. "First," I thought, "a
+doctor. He may not be dead." I could think of no doctor in the immediate
+neighborhood, but ran up the street away from the Strand, as being the
+more likely direction for the doctor, although less so for the policeman.
+It took me a good five minutes to find the medico, after being led astray
+by a red lamp at a private hotel, and another five to get back, with a
+policeman.
+
+Foggatt was dead, without a doubt. Probably had shot himself, the doctor
+thought, from the powder-blackening and other circumstances. Certainly
+nobody could have left the room by the door, or he must have passed my
+landing, while the fact of the door being found locked from the inside
+made the thing impossible. There were two windows to the room, both of
+which were shut, one being fastened by the catch, while the catch of the
+other was broken--an old fracture. Below these windows was a sheer drop of
+fifty feet or more, without a foot or hand-hold near. The windows in the
+other rooms were shut and fastened. Certainly it seemed suicide--unless it
+were one of those accidents that will occur to people who fiddle
+ignorantly with firearms. Soon the rooms were in possession of the police,
+and we were turned out.
+
+We looked in at the housekeeper's kitchen, where her daughter was reviving
+and calming Mrs. Clayton with gin and water.
+
+"You mustn't upset yourself, Mrs. Clayton," Hewitt said, "or what will
+become of us all? The doctor thinks it was an accident."
+
+He took a small bottle of sewing-machine oil from his pocket and handed it
+to the daughter, thanking her for the loan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was little evidence at the inquest. The shot had been heard, the
+body had been found--that was the practical sum of the matter. No friends
+or relatives of the dead man came forward. The doctor gave his opinion as
+to the probability of suicide or an accident, and the police evidence
+tended in the same direction. Nothing had been found to indicate that any
+other person had been near the dead man's rooms on the night of the
+fatality. On the other hand, his papers, bankbook, etc., proved him to be
+a man of considerable substance, with no apparent motive for suicide. The
+police had been unable to trace any relatives, or, indeed, any nearer
+connections than casual acquaintances, fellow-clubmen, and so on. The jury
+found that Mr. Foggatt had died by accident.
+
+"Well, Brett," Hewitt asked me afterward, "what do you think of the
+verdict?"
+
+I said that it seemed to be the most reasonable one possible, and to
+square with the common-sense view of the case.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "perhaps it does. From the point of view of the jury,
+and on their information, their verdict was quite reasonable.
+Nevertheless, Mr. Foggatt did not shoot himself. He was shot by a rather
+tall, active young man, perhaps a sailor, but certainly a gymnast--a young
+man whom I think I could identify if I saw him."
+
+"But how do you know this?"
+
+"By the simplest possible inferences, which you may easily guess, if you
+will but think."
+
+"But, then, why didn't you say this at the inquest?"
+
+"My dear fellow, they don't want any inferences and conjectures at an
+inquest; they only want evidence. If I had traced the murderer, of course
+then I should have communicated with the police. As a matter of fact, it
+is quite possible that the police have observed and know as much as I
+do--or more. They don't give everything away at an inquest, you know. It
+wouldn't do."
+
+"But, if you are right, how did the man get away?"
+
+"Come, we are near home now. Let us take a look at the back of the house.
+He _couldn't_ have left by Foggatt's landing door, as we know; and as he
+_was_ there (I am certain of that), and as the chimney is out of the
+question--for there was a good fire in the grate--he must have gone out by
+the window. Only one window is possible--that with the broken catch--for
+all the others were fastened inside. Out of that window, then, he went."
+
+"But how? The window is fifty feet up."
+
+"Of course it is. But why _will_ you persist in assuming that the only way
+of escape by a window is downward? See, now, look up there. The window is
+at the top floor, and it has a very broad sill. Over the window is nothing
+but the flat face of the gable-end; but to the right, and a foot or two
+above the level of the top of the window, an iron gutter ends. Observe, it
+is not of lead composition, but a strong iron gutter, supported, just at
+its end, by an iron bracket. If a tall man stood on the end of the
+window-sill, steadying himself by the left hand and leaning to the right,
+he could just touch the end of this gutter with his right hand. The full
+stretch, toe to finger, is seven feet three inches. I have measured it. An
+active gymnast, or a sailor, could catch the gutter with a slight spring,
+and by it draw himself upon the roof. You will say he would have to be
+_very_ active, dexterous, and cool. So he would. And that very fact helps
+us, because it narrows the field of inquiry. We know the sort of man to
+look for. Because, being certain (as I am) that the man was in the room, I
+_know_ that he left in the way I am telling you. He must have left in some
+way, and, all the other ways being impossible, this alone remains,
+difficult as the feat may seem. The fact of his shutting the window behind
+him further proves his coolness and address at so great a height from the
+ground."
+
+All this was very plain, but the main point was still dark.
+
+"You say you _know_ that another man was in the room," I said; "how do you
+know that?"
+
+"As I said, by an obvious inference. Come, now, you shall guess how I
+arrived at that inference. You often speak of your interest in my work,
+and the attention with which you follow it. This shall be a simple
+exercise for you. You saw everything in the room as plainly as I myself.
+Bring the scene back to your memory, and think over the various small
+objects littering about, and how they would affect the case. Quick
+observation is the first essential for my work. Did you see a newspaper,
+for instance?"
+
+"Yes. There was an evening paper on the floor, but I didn't examine it."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"On the table there was a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand
+on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as
+though only one person were present."
+
+"So it did, perhaps, although the inference wouldn't be very strong. Go
+on!"
+
+"There was a fruit-stand on the sideboard, with a plate beside it
+containing a few nutshells, a piece of apple, a pair of nut-crackers, and,
+I think, some orange peel. There was, of course, all the ordinary
+furniture, but no chair pulled up to the table, except that used by
+Foggatt himself. That's all I noticed, I think. Stay--there was an
+ash-tray on the table, and a partly burned cigar near it--only one cigar,
+though."
+
+"Excellent--excellent, indeed, as far as memory and simple observation go.
+You saw everything plainly, and you remember everything. Surely _now_ you
+know how I found out that another man had just left?"
+
+"No, I don't; unless there were different kinds of ash in the ash-tray."
+
+"That is a fairly good suggestion, but there were not--there was only a
+single ash, corresponding in every way to that on the cigar. Don't you
+remember everything that I did as we went down-stairs?"
+
+"You returned a bottle of oil to the housekeeper's daughter, I think."
+
+"I did. Doesn't that give you a hint? Come, you surely have it now?"
+
+"I haven't."
+
+"Then I sha'n't tell you; you don't deserve it. Think, and don't mention
+the subject again till you have at least one guess to make. The thing
+stares you in the face; you see it, you remember it, and yet you _won't_
+see it. I won't encourage your slovenliness of thought, my boy, by telling
+you what you can know for yourself if you like. Good-by--I'm off now.
+There's a case in hand I can't neglect."
+
+"Don't you propose to go further into this, then?"
+
+Hewitt shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not a policeman," he said. "The case
+is in very good hands. Of course, if anybody comes to me to do it as a
+matter of business, I'll take it up. It's very interesting, but I can't
+neglect my regular work for it. Naturally, I shall keep my eyes open and
+my memory in order. Sometimes these things come into the hands by
+themselves, as it were; in that case, of course, I am a loyal citizen, and
+ready to help the law. _Au revoir_!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am a busy man myself, and thought little more of Hewitt's conundrum for
+some time; indeed, when I did think, I saw no way to the answer. A week
+after the inquest I took a holiday (I had written my nightly leaders
+regularly every day for the past five years), and saw no more of Hewitt
+for six weeks. After my return, with still a few days of leave to run, one
+evening we together turned into Luzatti's, off Coventry Street, for
+dinner.
+
+"I have been here several times lately," Hewitt said; "they feed you very
+well. No, not that table"--he seized my arm as I turned to an unoccupied
+corner--"I fancy it's draughty." He led the way to a longer table where a
+dark, lithe, and (as well as could be seen) tall young man already sat,
+and took chairs opposite him.
+
+We had scarcely seated ourselves before Hewitt broke into a torrent of
+conversation on the subject of bicycling. As our previous conversation had
+been of a literary sort, and as I had never known Hewitt at any other time
+to show the slightest interest in bicycling, this rather surprised me. I
+had, however, such a general outsider's grasp of the subject as is usual
+in a journalist-of-all-work, and managed to keep the talk going from my
+side. As we went on I could see the face of the young man opposite
+brighten with interest. He was a rather fine-looking fellow, with a dark,
+though very clear skin, but had a hard, angry look of eye, a prominence of
+cheek-bone, and a squareness of jaw that gave him a rather uninviting
+aspect. As Hewitt rattled on, however, our neighbor's expression became
+one of pleasant interest merely.
+
+"Of course," Hewitt said, "we've a number of very capital men just now,
+but I believe a deal in the forgotten riders of five, ten, and fifteen
+years back. Osmond, I believe, was better than any man riding now, and I
+think it would puzzle some of them to beat Furnivall as he was, at his
+best. But poor old Cortis--really, I believe he was as good as anybody.
+Nobody ever beat Cortis--except--let me see--I think somebody beat Cortis
+once--who was it now? I can't remember."
+
+"Liles," said the young man opposite, looking up quickly.
+
+"Ah, yes--Liles it was; Charley Liles. Wasn't it a championship?"
+
+"Mile championship, 1880; Cortis won the other three, though."
+
+"Yes, so he did. I saw Cortis when he first broke the old 2.46 mile
+record." And straightway Hewitt plunged into a whirl of talk of bicycles,
+tricycles, records, racing cyclists, Hillier, and Synyer and Noel Whiting,
+Taylerson and Appleyard--talk wherein the young man opposite bore an
+animated share, while I was left in the cold.
+
+Our new friend, it seems, had himself been a prominent racing bicyclist a
+few years back, and was presently, at Hewitt's request, exhibiting a neat
+gold medal that hung at his watch-guard. That was won, he explained, in
+the old tall bicycle days, the days of bad tracks, when every racing
+cyclist carried cinder scars on his face from numerous accidents. He
+pointed to a blue mark on his forehead, which, he told us, was a track
+scar, and described a bad fall that had cost him two teeth, and broken
+others. The gaps among his teeth were plain to see as he smiled.
+
+Presently the waiter brought dessert, and the young man opposite took an
+apple. Nut-crackers and a fruit-knife lay on our side of the stand, and
+Hewitt turned the stand to offer him the knife.
+
+"No, thanks," he said; "I only polish a good apple, never peel it. It's a
+mistake, except with thick-skinned foreign ones."
+
+And he began to munch the apple as only a boy or a healthy athlete can.
+Presently he turned his head to order coffee. The waiter's back was
+turned, and he had to be called twice. To my unutterable amazement Hewitt
+reached swiftly across the table, snatched the half-eaten apple from the
+young man's plate and pocketed it, gazing immediately, with an abstracted
+air, at a painted Cupid on the ceiling.
+
+Our neighbor turned again, looked doubtfully at his plate and the
+table-cloth about it, and then shot a keen glance in the direction of
+Hewitt. He said nothing, however, but took his coffee and his bill,
+deliberately drank the former, gazing quietly at Hewitt as he did it, paid
+the latter, and left.
+
+Immediately Hewitt was on his feet and, taking an umbrella, which stood
+near, followed. Just as he reached the door he met our late neighbor, who
+had turned suddenly back.
+
+"Your umbrella, I think?" Hewitt asked, offering it.
+
+"Yes, thanks." But the man's eye had more than its former hardness, and
+his jaw muscles tightened as I looked. He turned and went. Hewitt came
+back to me. "Pay the bill," he said, "and go back to your rooms; I will
+come on later. I must follow this man--it's the Foggatt case." As he went
+out I heard a cab rattle away, and immediately after it another.
+
+I paid the bill and went home. It was ten o'clock before Hewitt turned up,
+calling in at his office below on his way up to me.
+
+"Mr. Sidney Mason," he said, "is the gentleman the police will be wanting
+to-morrow, I expect, for the Foggatt murder. He is as smart a man as I
+remember ever meeting, and has done me rather neatly twice this evening."
+
+"You mean the man we sat opposite at Luzatti's, of course?"
+
+"Yes, I got his name, of course, from the reverse of that gold medal he
+was good enough to show me. But I fear he has bilked me over the address.
+He suspected me, that was plain, and left his umbrella by way of
+experiment to see if I were watching him sharply enough to notice the
+circumstance, and to avail myself of it to follow him. I was hasty and
+fell into the trap. He cabbed it away from Luzatti's, and I cabbed it
+after him. He has led me a pretty dance up and down London to-night, and
+two cabbies have made quite a stroke of business out of us. In the end he
+entered a house of which, of course, I have taken the address, but I
+expect he doesn't live there. He is too smart a man to lead me to his den;
+but the police can certainly find something of him at the house he went in
+at--and, I expect, left by the back way. By the way, you never guessed
+that simple little puzzle as to how I found that this _was_ a murder, did
+you? You see it now, of course?"
+
+"Something to do with that apple you stole, I suppose?"
+
+"Something to do with it? I should think so, you worthy innocent. Just
+ring your bell; we'll borrow Mrs. Clayton's sewing-machine oil again. On
+the night we broke into Foggatt's room you saw the nutshells and the
+bitten remains of an apple on the sideboard, and you remembered it; and
+yet you couldn't see that in that piece of apple possibly lay an important
+piece of evidence. Of course I never expected you to have arrived at any
+conclusion, as I had, because I had ten minutes in which to examine that
+apple, and to do what I did with it. But, at least, you should have seen
+the possibility of evidence in it.
+
+"First, now, the apple was white. A bitten apple, as you must have
+observed, turns of a reddish brown color if left to stand long. Different
+kinds of apples brown with different rapidities, and the browning always
+begins at the core. This is one of the twenty thousand tiny things that
+few people take the trouble to notice, but which it is useful for a man in
+my position to know. A russet will brown quite quickly. The apple on the
+sideboard was, as near as I could tell, a Newtown pippin or other apple of
+that kind, which will brown at the core in from twenty minutes to half an
+hour, and in other parts in a quarter of an hour more. When we saw it, it
+was white, with barely a tinge of brown about the exposed core. Inference,
+somebody had been eating it fifteen or twenty minutes before, perhaps a
+little longer--an inference supported by the fact that it was only partly
+eaten.
+
+"I examined that apple, and found it bore marks of very irregular teeth.
+While you were gone, I oiled it over, and, rushing down to my rooms, where
+I always have a little plaster of Paris handy for such work, took a mold
+of the part where the teeth had left the clearest marks. I then returned
+the apple to its place for the police to use if they thought fit. Looking
+at my mold, it was plain that the person who had bitten that apple had
+lost two teeth, one at top and one below, not exactly opposite, but nearly
+so. The other teeth, although they would appear to have been fairly sound,
+were irregular in size and line. Now, the dead man had, as I saw, a very
+excellent set of false teeth, regular and sharp, with none missing.
+Therefore it was plain that somebody _else_ had been eating that apple. Do
+I make myself clear?"
+
+"Quite! Go on!"
+
+"There were other inferences to be made--slighter, but all pointing the
+same way. For instance, a man of Foggatt's age does not, as a rule, munch
+an unpeeled apple like a school-boy. Inference, a young man, and healthy.
+Why I came to the conclusion that he was tall, active, a gymnast, and
+perhaps a sailor, I have already told you, when we examined the outside of
+Foggatt's window. It was also pretty clear that robbery was not the
+motive, since nothing was disturbed, and that a friendly conversation had
+preceded the murder--witness the drinking and the eating of the apple.
+Whether or not the police noticed these things I can't say. If they had
+had their best men on, they certainly would, I think; but the case, to a
+rough observer, looked so clearly one of accident or suicide that possibly
+they didn't.
+
+"As I said, after the inquest I was unable to devote any immediate time to
+the case, but I resolved to keep my eyes open. The man to look for was
+tall, young, strong and active, with a very irregular set of teeth, a
+tooth missing from the lower jaw just to the left of the center, and
+another from the upper jaw a little farther still toward the left. He
+might possibly be a person I had seen about the premises (I have a good
+memory for faces), or, of course, he possibly might not.
+
+"Just before you returned from your holiday I noticed a young man at
+Luzatti's whom I remembered to have seen somewhere about the offices in
+this building. He was tall, young, and so on, but I had a client with me,
+and was unable to examine him more narrowly; indeed, as I was not exactly
+engaged on the case, and as there are several tall young men about, I took
+little trouble. But to-day, finding the same young man with a vacant seat
+opposite him, I took the opportunity of making a closer acquaintance."
+
+"You certainly managed to draw him out."
+
+"Oh, yes; the easiest person in the world to draw out is a cyclist. The
+easiest cyclist to draw out is, of course, the novice, but the next
+easiest is the veteran. When you see a healthy, well-trained-looking man,
+who, nevertheless, has a slight stoop in the shoulders, and, maybe, a
+medal on his watch-guard, it is always a safe card to try him first with a
+little cycle-racing talk. I soon brought Mr. Mason out of his shell, read
+his name on his medal, and had a chance of observing his teeth--indeed, he
+spoke of them himself. Now, as I observed just now, there are several
+tall, athletic young men about, and also there are several men who have
+lost teeth. But now I saw that this tall and athletic young man had lost
+exactly _two_ teeth--one from the lower jaw, just to the left of the
+center, and another from the upper jaw, farther still toward the left!
+Trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became important
+considerations. More, his teeth were irregular throughout, and, as nearly
+as I could remember it, looked remarkably like this little plaster mold of
+mine."
+
+He produced from his pocket an irregular lump of plaster, about three
+inches long. On one side of this appeared in relief the likeness of two
+irregular rows of six or eight teeth, minus one in each row, where a deep
+gap was seen, in the position spoken of by my friend. He proceeded:
+
+"This was enough at least to set me after this young man. But he gave me
+the greatest chance of all when he turned and left his apple (eaten
+unpeeled, remember!--another important triviality) on his plate. I'm
+afraid I wasn't at all polite, and I ran the risk of arousing his
+suspicions, but I couldn't resist the temptation to steal it. I did, as
+you saw, and here it is."
+
+He brought the apple from his coat-pocket. One bitten side, placed against
+the upper half of the mold, fitted precisely, a projection of apple
+filling exactly the deep gap. The other side similarly fitted the lower
+half.
+
+"There's no getting behind that, you see," Hewitt remarked. "Merely
+observing the man's teeth was a guide, to some extent, but this is as
+plain as his signature or his thumb impression. You'll never find two men
+_bite_ exactly alike, no matter whether they leave distinct teeth-marks or
+not. Here, by the by, is Mrs. Clayton's oil. We'll take another mold from
+this apple, and compare _them_."
+
+He oiled the apple, heaped a little plaster in a newspaper, took my
+water-jug, and rapidly pulled off a hard mold. The parts corresponding to
+the merely broken places in the apple were, of course, dissimilar; but as
+to the teeth-marks, the impressions were identical.
+
+"That will do, I think," Hewitt said. "Tomorrow morning, Brett, I shall
+put up these things in a small parcel, and take them round to Bow Street."
+
+"But are they sufficient evidence?"
+
+"Quite sufficient for the police purpose. There is the man, and all the
+rest--his movements on the day and so forth--are simple matters of
+inquiry; at any rate, that is police business."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had scarcely sat down to my breakfast on the following morning when
+Hewitt came into the room and put a long letter before me.
+
+"From our friend of last night," he said; "read it."
+
+This letter began abruptly, and undated, and was as follows:
+
+
+"TO MARTIN HEWITT, ESQ.
+
+"SIR: I must compliment you on the adroitness you exhibited this evening
+in extracting from me my name. The address I was able to balk you of for
+the time being, although by the time you read this you will probably have
+found it through the _Law List_, as I am an admitted solicitor. That,
+however, will be of little use to you, for I am removing myself, I think,
+beyond the reach even of your abilities of search. I knew you well by
+sight, and was, perhaps, foolish to allow myself to be drawn as I did.
+Still, I had no idea that it would be dangerous, especially after seeing
+you, as a witness with very little to say, at the inquest upon the
+scoundrel I shot. Your somewhat discourteous seizure of my apple at first
+amazed me--indeed, I was a little doubtful as to whether you had really
+taken it--but it was my first warning that you might be playing a deep
+game against me, incomprehensible as the action was to my mind. I
+subsequently reflected that I had been eating an apple, instead of taking
+the drink he first offered me, in the dead wretch's rooms on the night he
+came to his merited end. From this I assume that your design was in some
+way to compare what remained of the two apples--although I do not presume
+to fathom the depths of your detective system. Still, I have heard of many
+of your cases, and profoundly admire the keenness you exhibit. I am
+thought to be a keen man myself, but, although I was able, to some extent,
+to hold my own to-night, I admit that your acumen in this case alone is
+something beyond me.
+
+"I do not know by whom you are commissioned to hunt me, nor to what extent
+you may be acquainted with my connection with the creature I killed. I
+have sufficient respect for you, however, to wish that you should not
+regard me as a vicious criminal, and a couple of hours to spare in which
+to offer you an explanation that will convince you that such is not
+altogether the case. A hasty and violent temper I admit possessing; but
+even now I can not forget the one crime it has led me into--for it is, I
+suppose, strictly speaking, a crime. For it was the man Foggatt who made a
+felon of my father before the eyes of the world, and killed him with
+shame. It was he who murdered my mother, and none the less murdered her
+because she died of a broken heart. That he was also a thief and a
+hypocrite might have concerned me little but for that.
+
+"Of my father I remember very little. He must, I fear, have been a weak
+and incapable man in many respects. He had no business abilities--in fact,
+was quite unable to understand the complicated business matters in which
+he largely dealt. Foggatt was a consummate master of all those arts of
+financial jugglery that make so many fortunes, and ruin so many others, in
+matters of company promoting, stocks, and shares. He was unable to
+exercise them, however, because of a great financial disaster in which he
+had been mixed up a few years before, and which made his name one to be
+avoided in future. In these circumstances he made a sort of secret and
+informal partnership with my father, who, ostensibly alone in the
+business, acted throughout on the directions of Foggatt, understanding as
+little what he did, poor, simple man, as a schoolboy would have done. The
+transactions carried on went from small to large, and, unhappily from
+honorable to dishonorable. My father relied on the superior abilities of
+Foggatt with an absolute trust, carrying out each day the directions given
+him privately the previous evening, buying, selling, printing
+prospectuses, signing whatever had to be signed, all with sole
+responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the scenes
+absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and foolish
+father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled
+all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible. At last
+three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible,
+came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all their history,
+and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was left to meet
+ruin, disgrace, and imprisonment. From beginning to end he, and he only,
+was responsible. There was no shred of evidence to connect Foggatt with
+the matter, and no means of escape from the net drawn about my father. He
+lived through three years of imprisonment, and then, entirely abandoned by
+the man who had made use of his simplicity, he died--of nothing but shame
+and a broken heart.
+
+"Of this I knew nothing at the time. Again and again, as a small boy, I
+remember asking of my mother why I had no father at home, as other boys
+had--unconscious of the stab I thus inflicted on her gentle heart. Of her
+my earliest, as well as my latest, memory is that of a pale, weeping
+woman, who grudged to let me out of her sight.
+
+"Little by little I learned the whole cause of my mother's grief, for she
+had no other confidant, and I fear my character developed early, for my
+first coherent remembrance of the matter is that of a childish design to
+take a table-knife and kill the bad man who had made my father die in
+prison and caused my mother to cry.
+
+"One thing, however, I never knew--the name of that bad man. Again and
+again, as I grew older, I demanded to know, but my mother always withheld
+it from me, with a gentle reminder that vengeance was for a greater hand
+than mine.
+
+"I was seventeen years of age when my mother died. I believe that nothing
+but her strong attachment to myself and her desire to see me safely
+started in life kept her alive so long. Then I found that through all
+those years of narrowed means she had contrived to scrape and save a
+little money--sufficient, as it afterward proved, to see me through the
+examinations for entrance to my profession, with the generous assistance
+of my father's old legal advisers, who gave me my articles, and who have
+all along treated me with extreme kindness.
+
+"For most of the succeeding years my life does not concern the matter in
+hand. I was a lawyer's clerk in my benefactors' service, and afterward a
+qualified man among their assistants. All through the firm were careful,
+in pursuance of my poor mother's wishes, that I should not learn the name
+or whereabouts of the man who had wrecked her life and my father's. I
+first met the man himself at the Clifton Club, where I had gone with an
+acquaintance who was a member. It was not till afterward that I understood
+his curious awkwardness on that occasion. A week later I called (as I had
+frequently done) at the building in which your office is situated, on
+business with a solicitor who has an office on the floor above your own.
+On the stairs I almost ran against Mr. Foggatt. He started and turned
+pale, exhibiting signs of alarm that I could not understand, and asked me
+if I wished to see him.
+
+"'No,' I replied, 'I didn't know you lived here. I am after somebody else
+just now. Aren't you well?'
+
+"He looked at me rather doubtfully, and said he was _not_ very well.
+
+"I met him twice or thrice after that, and on each occasion his manner
+grew more friendly, in a servile, flattering, and mean sort of way--a
+thing unpleasant enough in anybody, but doubly so in the intercourse of a
+man with another young enough to be his own son. Still, of course, I
+treated the man civilly enough. On one occasion he asked me into his rooms
+to look at a rather fine picture he had lately bought, and observed
+casually, lifting a large revolver from the mantel-piece:
+
+"'You see, I am prepared for any unwelcome visitors to my little den! He!
+He!' Conceiving him, of course, to refer to burglars, I could not help
+wondering at the forced and hollow character of his laugh. As we went down
+the stairs he said: 'I think we know one another pretty well now, Mr.
+Mason, eh? And if I could do anything to advance your professional
+prospects, I should be glad of the chance, of course. I understand the
+struggles of a young professional man--he! he!' It was the forced laugh
+again, and the man spoke nervously. 'I think,' he added, 'that if you will
+drop in to-morrow evening, perhaps I may have a little proposal to make.
+Will you?'
+
+"I assented, wondering what this proposal could be. Perhaps this eccentric
+old gentleman was a good fellow, after all, anxious to do me a good turn,
+and his awkwardness was nothing but a natural delicacy in breaking the
+ice. I was not so flush of good friends as to be willing to lose one. He
+might be desirous of putting business in my way.
+
+"I went, and was received with cordiality that even then seemed a little
+over-effusive. We sat and talked of one thing and another for a long
+while, and I began to wonder when Mr. Foggatt was coming to the point that
+most interested me. Several times he invited me to drink and smoke, but
+long usage to athletic training has given me a distaste for both
+practices, and I declined. At last he began to talk about myself. He was
+afraid that my professional prospects in this country were not great, but
+he had heard that in some of the colonies--South Africa, for
+example--young lawyers had brilliant opportunities.
+
+"'If you'd like to go there,' he said, 'I've no doubt, with a little
+capital, a clever man like you could get a grand practice together very
+soon. Or you might buy a share in some good established practice. I should
+be glad to let you have £500, or even a little more, if that wouldn't
+satisfy you, and----'
+
+"I stood aghast. Why should this man, almost a stranger, offer me £500, or
+even more, 'if that wouldn't satisfy' me? What claim had I on him? It was
+very generous of him, of course, but out of the question. I was, at least,
+a gentleman, and had a gentleman's self-respect. Meanwhile, he had gone
+maundering on, in a halting sort of way, and presently let slip a sentence
+that struck me like a blow between the eyes.
+
+"'I shouldn't like you to bear ill-will because of what has happened in
+the past,' he said. 'Your late--your late lamented mother--I'm afraid--she
+had unworthy suspicions--I'm sure--it was best for all parties--your
+father always appreciated----'
+
+"I set back my chair and stood erect before him. This groveling wretch,
+forcing the words through his dry lips, was the thief who had made another
+of my father and had brought to miserable ends the lives of both my
+parents! Everything was clear. The creature went in fear of me, never
+imagining that I did not know him, and sought to buy me off--to buy me
+from the remembrance of my dead mother's broken heart for £500--£500 that
+he had made my father steal for him! I said not a word. But the memory of
+all my mother's bitter years, and a savage sense of this crowning insult
+to myself, took a hold upon me, and I was a tiger. Even then I verily
+believe that one word of repentance, one tone of honest remorse, would
+have saved him. But he drooped his eyes, snuffled excuses, and stammered
+of 'unworthy suspicions' and 'no ill-will.' I let him stammer. Presently
+he looked up and saw my face; and fell back in his chair, sick with
+terror. I snatched the pistol from the mantel-piece, and, thrusting it in
+his face, shot him where he sat.
+
+"My subsequent coolness and quietness surprise me now. I took my hat and
+stepped toward the door. But there were voices on the stairs. The door was
+locked on the inside, and I left it so. I went back and quietly opened a
+window. Below was a clear drop into darkness, and above was plain wall;
+but away to one side, where the slope of the gable sprang from the roof,
+an iron gutter ended, supported by a strong bracket. It was the only way.
+I got upon the sill and carefully shut the window behind me, for people
+were already knocking at the lobby door. From the end of the sill, holding
+on by the reveal of the window with one hand, leaning and stretching my
+utmost, I caught the gutter, swung myself clear, and scrambled on the
+roof. I climbed over many roofs before I found, in an adjoining street, a
+ladder lashed perpendicularly against the front of a house in course of
+repair. This, to me, was an easy opportunity of descent, notwithstanding
+the boards fastened over the face of the ladder, and I availed myself of
+it.
+
+"I have taken some time and trouble in order that you (so far as I am
+aware the only human being beside myself who knows me to be the author of
+Foggatt's death) shall have at least the means of appraising my crime at
+its just value of culpability. How much you already know of what I have
+told you I can not guess. I am wrong, hardened, and flagitious, I make no
+doubt, but I speak of the facts as they are. You see the thing, of course,
+from your own point of view--I from mine. And I remember my mother!
+
+"Trusting that you will forgive the odd freak of a man--a criminal, let us
+say--who makes a confidant of the man set to hunt him down, I beg leave to
+be, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"SIDNEY MASON."
+
+I read the singular document through and handed it back to Hewitt.
+
+"How does it strike you?" Hewitt asked.
+
+"Mason would seem to be a man of very marked character," I said.
+"Certainly no fool. And, if his tale is true, Foggatt is no great loss to
+the world."
+
+"Just so--if the tale is true. Personally I am disposed to believe it is."
+
+"Where was the letter posted?"
+
+"It wasn't posted. It was handed in with the others from the front-door
+letter-box this morning in an unstamped envelope. He must have dropped it
+in himself during the night. Paper," Hewitt proceeded, holding it up to
+the light, "Turkey mill, ruled foolscap. Envelope, blue, official shape,
+Pirie's watermark. Both quite ordinary and no special marks."
+
+"Where do you suppose he's gone?"
+
+"Impossible to guess. Some might think he meant suicide by the expression
+'beyond the reach even of your abilities of search,' but I scarcely think
+he is the sort of man to do that. No, there is no telling. Something may
+be got by inquiring at his late address, of course; but, when such a man
+tells you he doesn't think you will find him, you may count upon its being
+a difficult job. His opinion is not to be despised."
+
+"What shall you do?"
+
+"Put the letter in the box with the casts for the police. _Fiat justitia_,
+you know, without any question of sentiment. As to the apple, I really
+think, if the police will let me, I'll make you a present of it. Keep it
+somewhere as a souvenir of your absolute deficiency in reflective
+observation in this case, and look at it whenever you feel yourself
+growing dangerously conceited. It should cure you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the history of the withered and almost petrified half apple that
+stands in my cabinet among a number of flint implements and one or two
+rather fine old Roman vessels. Of Mr. Sidney Mason we never heard another
+word. The police did their best, but he had left not a track behind him.
+His rooms were left almost undisturbed, and he had gone without anything
+in the way of elaborate preparation for his journey, and without leaving a
+trace of his intentions.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO.
+
+Hewitt was very apt, in conversation, to dwell upon the many curious
+chances and coincidences that he had observed, not only in connection with
+his own cases, but also in matters dealt with by the official police, with
+whom he was on terms of pretty regular, and, indeed, friendly,
+acquaintanceship. He has told me many an anecdote of singular happenings
+to Scotland Yard officials with whom he has exchanged experiences. Of
+Inspector Nettings, for instance, who spent many weary months in a search
+for a man wanted by the American Government, and in the end found, by the
+merest accident (a misdirected call), that the man had been lodging next
+door to himself the whole of the time; just as ignorant, of course, as was
+the inspector himself as to the enemy at the other side of the party-wall.
+Also of another inspector, whose name I can not recall, who, having been
+given rather meager and insufficient details of a man whom he anticipated
+having great difficulty in finding, went straight down the stairs of the
+office where he had received instructions, and actually _fell over_ the
+man near the door, where he had stooped down to tie his shoe-lace! There
+were cases, too, in which, when a great and notorious crime had been
+committed, and various persons had been arrested on suspicion, some were
+found among them who had long been badly wanted for some other crime
+altogether. Many criminals had met their deserts by venturing out of their
+own particular line of crime into another; often a man who got into
+trouble over something comparatively small found himself in for a
+startlingly larger trouble, the result of some previous misdeed that
+otherwise would have gone unpunished. The ruble note-forger Mirsky might
+never have been handed over to the Russian authorities had he confined his
+genius to forgery alone. It was generally supposed at the time of his
+extradition that he had communicated with the Russian Embassy, with a view
+to giving himself up--a foolish proceeding on his part, it would seem,
+since his whereabouts, indeed even his identity as the forger, had not
+been suspected. He _had_ communicated with the Russian Embassy, it is
+true, but for quite a different purpose, as Martin Hewitt well understood
+at the time. What that purpose was is now for the first time published.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The time was half-past one in the afternoon, and Hewitt sat in his inner
+office examining and comparing the handwriting of two letters by the aid
+of a large lens. He put down the lens and glanced at the clock on the
+mantel-piece with a premonition of lunch; and as he did so his clerk
+quietly entered the room with one of those printed slips which were kept
+for the announcement of unknown visitors. It was filled up in a hasty and
+almost illegible hand, thus:
+
+Name of visitor: _F. Graham Dixon_.
+
+Address: _Chancery Lane_.
+
+Business: _Private and urgent_.
+
+"Show Mr. Dixon in," said Martin Hewitt.
+
+Mr. Dixon was a gaunt, worn-looking man of fifty or so, well, although
+rather carelessly, dressed, and carrying in his strong, though drawn, face
+and dullish eyes the look that characterizes the life-long strenuous
+brain-worker. He leaned forward anxiously in the chair which Hewitt
+offered him, and told his story with a great deal of very natural
+agitation.
+
+"You may possibly have heard, Mr. Hewitt--I know there are rumors--of the
+new locomotive torpedo which the government is about adopting; it is, in
+fact, the Dixon torpedo, my own invention, and in every respect--not
+merely in my own opinion, but in that of the government experts--by far
+the most efficient and certain yet produced. It will travel at least four
+hundred yards farther than any torpedo now made, with perfect accuracy of
+aim (a very great desideratum, let me tell you), and will carry an
+unprecedentedly heavy charge. There are other advantages--speed, simple
+discharge, and so forth--that I needn't bother you about. The machine is
+the result of many years of work and disappointment, and its design has
+only been arrived at by a careful balancing of principles and means, which
+are expressed on the only four existing sets of drawings. The whole thing,
+I need hardly tell you, is a profound secret, and you may judge of my
+present state of mind when I tell you that one set of drawings has been
+stolen."
+
+"From your house?"
+
+"From my office, in Chancery Lane, this morning. The four sets of drawings
+were distributed thus: Two were at the Admiralty Office, one being a
+finished set on thick paper, and the other a set of tracings therefrom;
+and the other two were at my own office, one being a penciled set,
+uncolored--a sort of finished draft, you understand--and the other a set
+of tracings similar to those at the Admiralty. It is this last set that
+has gone. The two sets were kept together in one drawer in my room. Both
+were there at ten this morning; of that I am sure, for I had to go to that
+very drawer for something else when I first arrived. But at twelve the
+tracings had vanished."
+
+"You suspect somebody, probably?"
+
+"I can not. It is a most extraordinary thing. Nobody has left the office
+(except myself, and then only to come to you) since ten this morning, and
+there has been no visitor. And yet the drawings are gone!"
+
+"But have you searched the place?"
+
+"Of course I have! It was twelve o'clock when I first discovered my loss,
+and I have been turning the place upside down ever since--I and my
+assistants. Every drawer has been emptied, every desk and table turned
+over, the very carpet and linoleum have been taken up, but there is not a
+sign of the drawings. My men even insisted on turning all their pockets
+inside out, although I never for a moment suspected either of them, and it
+would take a pretty big pocket to hold the drawings, doubled up as small
+as they might be."
+
+"You say your men--there are two, I understand--had neither left the
+office?"
+
+"Neither; and they are both staying in now. Worsfold suggested that it
+would be more satisfactory if they did not leave till something was done
+toward clearing the mystery up, and, although, as I have said, I don't
+suspect either in the least, I acquiesced."
+
+"Just so. Now--I am assuming that you wish me to undertake the recovery of
+these drawings?"
+
+The engineer nodded hastily.
+
+"Very good; I will go round to your office. But first perhaps you can tell
+me something about your assistants--something it might be awkward to tell
+me in their presence, you know. Mr. Worsfold, for instance?"
+
+"He is my draughtsman--a very excellent and intelligent man, a very smart
+man, indeed, and, I feel sure, quite beyond suspicion. He has prepared
+many important drawings for me (he has been with me nearly ten years now),
+and I have always found him trustworthy. But, of course, the temptation in
+this case would be enormous. Still, I can not suspect Worsfold. Indeed,
+how can I suspect anybody in the circumstances?"
+
+"The other, now?"
+
+"His name's Ritter. He is merely a tracer, not a fully skilled
+draughtsman. He is quite a decent young fellow, and I have had him two
+years. I don't consider him particularly smart, or he would have learned a
+little more of his business by this time. But I don't see the least reason
+to suspect him. As I said before, I can't reasonably suspect anybody."
+
+"Very well; we will get to Chancery Lane now, if you please, and you can
+tell me more as we go."
+
+"I have a cab waiting. What else can I tell you?"
+
+"I understand the position to be succinctly this: The drawings were in the
+office when you arrived. Nobody came out, and nobody went in; and _yet_
+they vanished. Is that so?"
+
+"That is so. When I say that absolutely nobody came in, of course I except
+the postman. He brought a couple of letters during the morning. I mean
+that absolutely nobody came past the barrier in the outer office--the
+usual thing, you know, like a counter, with a frame of ground glass over
+it."
+
+"I quite understand that. But I think you said that the drawings were in a
+drawer in your _own_ room--not the outer office, where the draughtsmen
+are, I presume?"
+
+"That is the case. It is an inner room, or, rather, a room parallel with
+the other, and communicating with it; just as your own room is, which we
+have just left."
+
+"But, then, you say you never left your office, and yet the drawings
+vanished--apparently by some unseen agency--while you were there in the
+room?"
+
+"Let me explain more clearly." The cab was bowling smoothly along the
+Strand, and the engineer took out a pocket-book and pencil. "I fear," he
+proceeded, "that I am a little confused in my explanation--I am naturally
+rather agitated. As you will see presently, my offices consist of three
+rooms, two at one side of a corridor, and the other opposite--thus." He
+made a rapid pencil sketch.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"In the outer office my men usually work. In the inner office I work
+myself. These rooms communicate, as you see, by a door. Our ordinary way
+in and out of the place is by the door of the outer office leading into
+the corridor, and we first pass through the usual lifting flap in the
+barrier. The door leading from the _inner_ office to the corridor is
+always kept locked on the inside, and I don't suppose I unlock it once in
+three months. It has not been unlocked all the morning. The drawer in
+which the missing drawings were kept, and in which I saw them at ten
+o'clock this morning, is at the place marked D; it is a large chest of
+shallow drawers in which the plans lie flat."
+
+"I quite understand. Then there is the private room opposite. What of
+that?"
+
+"That is a sort of private sitting-room that I rarely use, except for
+business interviews of a very private nature. When I said I never left my
+office, I did not mean that I never stirred out of the inner office. I was
+about in one room and another, both the outer and the inner offices, and
+once I went into the private room for five minutes, but nobody came either
+in or out of any of the rooms at that time, for the door of the private
+room was wide open, and I was standing at the book-case (I had gone to
+consult a book), just inside the door, with a full view of the doors
+opposite. Indeed, Worsfold was at the door of the outer office most of the
+short time. He came to ask me a question."
+
+"Well," Hewitt replied, "it all comes to the simple first statement. You
+know that nobody left the place or arrived, except the postman, who
+couldn't get near the drawings, and yet the drawings went. Is this your
+office?"
+
+The cab had stopped before a large stone building. Mr. Dixon alighted and
+led the way to the first-floor. Hewitt took a casual glance round each of
+the three rooms. There was a sort of door in the frame of ground glass
+over the barrier to admit of speech with visitors. This door Hewitt pushed
+wide open, and left so.
+
+He and the engineer went into the inner office. "Would you like to ask
+Worsfold and Ritter any questions?" Mr. Dixon inquired.
+
+"Presently. Those are their coats, I take it, hanging just to the right of
+the outer office door, over the umbrella stand?"
+
+"Yes, those are all their things--coats, hats, stick, and umbrella."
+
+"And those coats were searched, you say?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And this is the drawer--thoroughly searched, of course?"
+
+"Oh, certainly; every drawer was taken out and turned over."
+
+"Well, of course I must assume you made no mistake in your hunt. Now tell
+me, did anybody know where these plans were, beyond yourself and your two
+men?"
+
+"As far as I can tell, not a soul."
+
+"You don't keep an office boy?"
+
+"No. There would be nothing for him to do except to post a letter now and
+again, which Ritter does quite well for."
+
+"As you are quite sure that the drawings were there at ten o'clock,
+perhaps the thing scarcely matters. But I may as well know if your men
+have keys of the office?"
+
+"Neither. I have patent locks to each door and I keep all the keys myself.
+If Worsfold or Ritter arrive before me in the morning they have to wait to
+be let in; and I am always present myself when the rooms are cleaned. I
+have not neglected precautions, you see."
+
+"No. I suppose the object of the theft--assuming it is a theft--is pretty
+plain: the thief would offer the drawings for sale to some foreign
+government?"
+
+"Of course. They would probably command a great sum. I have been looking,
+as I need hardly tell you, to that invention to secure me a very large
+fortune, and I shall be ruined, indeed, if the design is taken abroad. I
+am under the strictest engagements to secrecy with the Admiralty, and not
+only should I lose all my labor, but I should lose all the confidence
+reposed in me at headquarters; should, in fact, be subject to penalties
+for breach of contract, and my career stopped forever. I can not tell you
+what a serious business this is for me. If you can not help me, the
+consequences will be terrible. Bad for the service of the country, too, of
+course."
+
+"Of course. Now tell me this: It would, I take it, be necessary for the
+thief to _exhibit_ these drawings to anybody anxious to buy the secret--I
+mean, he couldn't describe the invention by word of mouth."
+
+"Oh, no, that would be impossible. The drawings are of the most
+complicated description, and full of figures upon which the whole thing
+depends. Indeed, one would have to be a skilled expert to properly
+appreciate the design at all. Various principles of hydrostatics,
+chemistry, electricity, and pneumatics are most delicately manipulated and
+adjusted, and the smallest error or omission in any part would upset the
+whole. No, the drawings are necessary to the thing, and they are gone."
+
+At this moment the door of the outer office was heard to open and somebody
+entered. The door between the two offices was ajar, and Hewitt could see
+right through to the glass door left open over the barrier and into the
+space beyond. A well-dressed, dark, bushy-bearded man stood there carrying
+a hand-bag, which he placed on the ledge before him. Hewitt raised his
+hand to enjoin silence. The man spoke in a rather high-pitched voice and
+with a slight accent. "Is Mr. Dixon now within?" he asked.
+
+"He is engaged," answered one of the draughtsmen; "very particularly
+engaged. I am afraid you won't be able to see him this afternoon. Can I
+give him any message?"
+
+"This is two--the second time I have come to-day. Not two hours ago Mr.
+Dixon himself tells me to call again. I have a very important--very
+excellent steam-packing to show him that is very cheap and the best of the
+market." The man tapped his bag. "I have just taken orders from the
+largest railway companies. Can not I see him, for one second only? I will
+not detain him."
+
+"Really, I'm sure you can't this afternoon; he isn't seeing anybody. But
+if you'll leave your name----"
+
+"My name is Hunter; but what the good of that? He ask me to call a little
+later, and I come, and now he is engaged. It is a very great pity." And
+the man snatched up his bag and walking-stick, and stalked off,
+indignantly.
+
+Hewitt stood still, gazing through the small aperture in the doorway.
+
+"You'd scarcely expect a man with such a name as Hunter to talk with that
+accent, would you?" he observed, musingly. "It isn't a French accent, nor
+a German; but it seems foreign. You don't happen to know him, I suppose?"
+
+"No, I don't. He called here about half-past twelve, just while we were in
+the middle of our search and I was frantic over the loss of the drawings.
+I was in the outer office myself, and told him to call later. I have lots
+of such agents here, anxious to sell all sorts of engineering appliances.
+But what will you do now? Shall you see my men?"
+
+"I think," said Hewitt, rising--"I think I'll get you to question them
+yourself."
+
+"Myself?"
+
+"Yes, I have a reason. Will you trust me with the 'key' of the private
+room opposite? I will go over there for a little, while you talk to your
+men in this room. Bring them in here and shut the door; I can look after
+the office from across the corridor, you know. Ask them each to detail his
+exact movements about the office this morning, and get them to recall each
+visitor who has been here from the beginning of the week. I'll let you
+know the reason of this later. Come across to me in a few minutes."
+
+Hewitt took the key and passed through the outer office into the corridor.
+
+Ten minutes later Mr. Dixon, having questioned his draughtsmen, followed
+him. He found Hewitt standing before the table in the private room, on
+which lay several drawings on tracing-paper.
+
+"See here, Mr. Dixon," said Hewitt, "I think these are the drawings you
+are anxious about?"
+
+The engineer sprang toward them with a cry of delight. "Why, yes, yes," he
+exclaimed, turning them over, "every one of them! But where--how--they
+must have been in the place after all, then? What a fool I have been!"
+
+Hewitt shook his head. "I'm afraid you're not quite so lucky as you think,
+Mr. Dixon," he said. "These drawings have most certainly been out of the
+house for a little while. Never mind how--we'll talk of that after. There
+is no time to lose. Tell me--how long would it take a good draughtsman to
+copy them?"
+
+"They couldn't possibly be traced over properly in less than two or two
+and a half long days of very hard work," Dixon replied with eagerness.
+
+"Ah! then it is as I feared. These tracings have been photographed, Mr.
+Dixon, and our task is one of every possible difficulty. If they had been
+copied in the ordinary way, one might hope to get hold of the copy. But
+photography upsets everything. Copies can be multiplied with such amazing
+facility that, once the thief gets a decent start, it is almost hopeless
+to checkmate him. The only chance is to get at the negatives before copies
+are taken. I must act at once; and I fear, between ourselves, it may be
+necessary for me to step very distinctly over the line of the law in the
+matter. You see, to get at those negatives may involve something very like
+house-breaking. There must be no delay, no waiting for legal procedure, or
+the mischief is done. Indeed, I very much question whether you have any
+legal remedy, strictly speaking."
+
+"Mr. Hewitt, I implore you, do what you can. I need not say that all I
+have is at your disposal. I will guarantee to hold you harmless for
+anything that may happen. But do, I entreat you, do everything possible.
+Think of what the consequences may be!"
+
+"Well, yes, so I do," Hewitt remarked, with a smile. "The consequences to
+me, if I were charged with house-breaking, might be something that no
+amount of guarantee could mitigate. However, I will do what I can, if only
+from patriotic motives. Now, I must see your tracer, Ritter. He is the
+traitor in the camp."
+
+"Ritter? But how?"
+
+"Never mind that now. You are upset and agitated, and had better not know
+more than is necessary for a little while, in case you say or do something
+unguarded. With Ritter I must take a deep course; what I don't know I must
+appear to know, and that will seem more likely to him if I disclaim
+acquaintance with what I do know. But first put these tracings safely away
+out of sight."
+
+Dixon slipped them behind his book-case.
+
+"Now," Hewitt pursued, "call Mr. Worsfold and give him something to do
+that will keep him in the inner office across the way, and tell him to
+send Ritter here."
+
+Mr. Dixon called his chief draughtsman and requested him to put in order
+the drawings in the drawers of the inner room that had been disarranged by
+the search, and to send Ritter, as Hewitt had suggested.
+
+Ritter walked into the private room with an air of respectful attention.
+He was a puffy-faced, unhealthy-looking young man, with very small eyes
+and a loose, mobile mouth.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Ritter," Hewitt said, in a stern voice. "Your recent
+transactions with your friend Mr. Hunter are well known both to Mr. Dixon
+and myself."
+
+Ritter, who had at first leaned easily back in his chair, started forward
+at this, and paled.
+
+"You are surprised, I observe; but you should be more careful in your
+movements out of doors if you do not wish your acquaintances to be known.
+Mr. Hunter, I believe, has the drawings which Mr. Dixon has lost, and, if
+so, I am certain that you have given them to him. That, you know, is
+theft, for which the law provides a severe penalty."
+
+Ritter broke down completely and turned appealingly to Mr. Dixon.
+
+"Oh, sir," he pleaded, "it isn't so bad, I assure you. I was tempted, I
+confess, and hid the drawings; but they are still in the office, and I can
+give them to you--really, I can."
+
+"Indeed?" Hewitt went on. "Then, in that case, perhaps you'd better get
+them at once. Just go and fetch them in; we won't trouble to observe your
+hiding-place. I'll only keep this door open, to be sure you don't lose
+your way, you know--down the stairs, for instance."
+
+The wretched Ritter, with hanging head, slunk into the office opposite.
+Presently he reappeared, looking, if possible, ghastlier than before. He
+looked irresolutely down the corridor, as if meditating a run for it, but
+Hewitt stepped toward him and motioned him back to the private room.
+
+"You mustn't try any more of that sort of humbug," Hewitt said with
+increased severity. "The drawings are gone, and you have stolen them; you
+know that well enough. Now attend to me. If you received your deserts, Mr.
+Dixon would send for a policeman this moment, and have you hauled off to
+the jail that is your proper place. But, unfortunately, your accomplice,
+who calls himself Hunter--but who has other names besides that--as I
+happen to know--has the drawings, and it is absolutely necessary that
+these should be recovered. I am afraid that it will be necessary,
+therefore, to come to some arrangement with this scoundrel--to square him,
+in fact. Now, just take that pen and paper, and write to your confederate
+as I dictate. You know the alternative if you cause any difficulty."
+
+Ritter reached tremblingly for the pen.
+
+"Address him in your usual way," Hewitt proceeded. "Say this: 'There has
+been an alteration in the plans.' Have you got that? 'There has been an
+alteration in the plans. I shall be alone here at six o'clock. Please
+come, without fail.' Have you got it? Very well; sign it, and address the
+envelope. He must come here, and then we may arrange matters. In the
+meantime, you will remain in the inner office opposite."
+
+The note was written, and Martin Hewitt, without glancing at the address,
+thrust it into his pocket. When Ritter was safely in the inner office,
+however, he drew it out and read the address. "I see," he observed, "he
+uses the same name, Hunter; 27 Little Carton Street, Westminster, is the
+address, and there I shall go at once with the note. If the man comes
+here, I think you had better lock him in with Ritter, and send for a
+policeman--it may at least frighten him. My object is, of course, to get
+the man away, and then, if possible, to invade his house, in some way or
+another, and steal or smash his negatives if they are there and to be
+found. Stay here, in any case, till I return. And don't forget to lock up
+those tracings."
+
+ *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about six o'clock when Hewitt returned, alone, but with a smiling
+face that told of good fortune at first sight.
+
+"First, Mr. Dixon," he said, as he dropped into an easy chair in the
+private room, "let me ease your mind by the information that I have been
+most extraordinarily lucky; in fact, I think you have no further cause for
+anxiety. Here are the negatives. They were not all quite dry when I--well,
+what?--stole them, I suppose I must say; so that they have stuck together
+a bit, and probably the films are damaged. But you don't mind that, I
+suppose?"
+
+He laid a small parcel, wrapped in a newspaper, on the table. The engineer
+hastily tore away the paper and took up five or six glass photographic
+negatives, of a half-plate size, which were damp, and stuck together by
+the gelatine films in couples. He held them, one after another, up to the
+light of the window, and glanced through them. Then, with a great sigh of
+relief, he placed them on the hearth and pounded them to dust and
+fragments with the poker.
+
+For a few seconds neither spoke. Then Dixon, flinging himself into a
+chair, said:
+
+"Mr. Hewitt, I can't express my obligation to you. What would have
+happened if you had failed, I prefer not to think of. But what shall we do
+with Ritter now? The other man hasn't been here yet, by the by."
+
+"No; the fact is I didn't deliver the letter. The worthy gentleman saved
+me a world of trouble by taking himself out of the way." Hewitt laughed.
+"I'm afraid he has rather got himself into a mess by trying two kinds of
+theft at once, and you may not be sorry to hear that his attempt on your
+torpedo plans is likely to bring him a dose of penal servitude for
+something else. I'll tell you what has happened.
+
+"Little Carton Street, Westminster, I found to be a seedy sort of
+place--one of those old streets that have seen much better days. A good
+many people seem to live in each house--they are fairly large houses, by
+the way--and there is quite a company of bell-handles on each doorpost,
+all down the side like organ-stops. A barber had possession of the ground
+floor front of No. 27 for trade purposes, so to him I went. 'Can you tell
+me,' I said, 'where in this house I can find Mr. Hunter?' He looked
+doubtful, so I went on: 'His friend will do, you know--I can't think of
+his name; foreign gentleman, dark, with a bushy beard.'
+
+"The barber understood at once. 'Oh, that's Mirsky, I expect,' he said.
+'Now, I come to think of it, he has had letters addressed to Hunter once
+or twice; I've took 'em in. Top floor back.'
+
+"This was good so far. I had got at 'Mr. Hunter's' other alias. So, by way
+of possessing him with the idea that I knew all about him, I determined to
+ask for him as Mirsky before handing over the letter addressed to him as
+Hunter. A little bluff of that sort is invaluable at the right time. At
+the top floor back I stopped at the door and tried to open it at once, but
+it was locked. I could hear somebody scuttling about within, as though
+carrying things about, and I knocked again. In a little while the door
+opened about a foot, and there stood Mr. Hunter--or Mirsky, as you
+like--the man who, in the character of a traveler in steam-packing, came
+here twice to-day. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and cuddled something
+under his arm, hastily covered with a spotted pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"'I have called to see M. Mirsky," I said, 'with a confidential
+letter----'
+
+"'Oh, yas, yas,' he answered hastily; 'I know--I know. Excuse me one
+minute.' And he rushed off down-stairs with his parcel.
+
+"Here was a noble chance. For a moment I thought of following him, in case
+there might be something interesting in the parcel. But I had to decide in
+a moment, and I decided on trying the room. I slipped inside the door,
+and, finding the key on the inside, locked it. It was a confused sort of
+room, with a little iron bedstead in one corner and a sort of rough
+boarded inclosure in another. This I rightly conjectured to be the
+photographic dark-room, and made for it at once.
+
+"There was plenty of light within when the door was left open, and I made
+at once for the drying-rack that was fastened over the sink. There were a
+number of negatives in it, and I began hastily examining them one after
+another. In the middle of this our friend Mirsky returned and tried the
+door. He rattled violently at the handle and pushed. Then he called.
+
+"At this moment I had come upon the first of the negatives you have just
+smashed. The fixing and washing had evidently only lately been completed,
+and the negative was drying on the rack. I seized it, of course, and the
+others which stood by it.
+
+"'Who are you, there, inside?' Mirsky shouted indignantly from the
+landing. 'Why for you go in my room like that? Open this door at once, or
+I call the police!'
+
+"I took no notice. I had got the full number of negatives, one for each
+drawing, but I was not by any means sure that he had not taken an extra
+set; so I went on hunting down the rack. There were no more, so I set to
+work to turn out all the undeveloped plates. It was quite possible, you
+see, that the other set, if it existed, had not yet been developed.
+
+"Mirsky changed his tune. After a little more banging and shouting I could
+hear him kneel down and try the key-hole. I had left the key there, so
+that he could see nothing. But he began talking softly and rapidly through
+the hole in a foreign language. I did not know it in the least, but I
+believe it was Russian. What had led him to believe I understood Russian I
+could not at the time imagine, though I have a notion now. I went on
+ruining his stock of plates. I found several boxes, apparently of new
+plates, but, as there was no means of telling whether they were really
+unused or were merely undeveloped, but with the chemical impress of your
+drawings on them, I dragged every one ruthlessly from its hiding-place and
+laid it out in the full glare of the sunlight--destroying it thereby, of
+course, whether it was unused or not.
+
+"Mirsky left off talking, and I heard him quietly sneaking off. Perhaps
+his conscience was not sufficiently clear to warrant an appeal to the
+police, but it seemed to me rather probable at the time that that was what
+he was going for. So I hurried on with my work. I found three dark
+slides--the parts that carried the plates in the back of the camera, you
+know--one of them fixed in the camera itself. These I opened, and exposed
+the plates to ruination as before. I suppose nobody ever did so much
+devastation in a photographic studio in ten minutes as I managed.
+
+"I had spoiled every plate I could find, and had the developed negatives
+safely in my pocket, when I happened to glance at a porcelain washing-well
+under the sink. There was one negative in that, and I took it up. It was
+_not_ a negative of a drawing of yours, but of a Russian twenty-ruble
+note!"
+
+This _was_ a discovery. The only possible reason any man could have for
+photographing a bank-note was the manufacture of an etched plate for the
+production of forged copies. I was almost as pleased as I had been at the
+discovery of _your_ negatives. He might bring the police now as soon as he
+liked; I could turn the tables on him completely. I began to hunt about
+for anything else relating to this negative.
+
+"I found an inking-roller, some old pieces of blanket (used in printing
+from plates), and in a corner on the floor, heaped over with newspapers
+and rubbish, a small copying-press. There was also a dish of acid, but not
+an etched plate or a printed note to be seen. I was looking at the press,
+with the negative in one hand and the inking-roller in the other, when I
+became conscious of a shadow across the window. I looked up quickly, and
+there was Mirsky hanging over from some ledge or projection to the side of
+the window, and staring straight at me, with a look of unmistakable terror
+and apprehension.
+
+"The face vanished immediately. I had to move a table to get at the
+window, and by the time I had opened it there was no sign or sound of the
+rightful tenant of the room. I had no doubt now of his reason for carrying
+a parcel down-stairs. He probably mistook me for another visitor he was
+expecting, and, knowing he must take this visitor into his room, threw the
+papers and rubbish over the press, and put up his plates and papers in a
+bundle and secreted them somewhere down-stairs, lest his occupation should
+be observed.
+
+"Plainly, my duty now was to communicate with the police. So, by the help
+of my friend the barber down-stairs, a messenger was found and a note sent
+over to Scotland Yard. I awaited, of course, for the arrival of the
+police, and occupied the interval in another look round--finding nothing
+important, however. When the official detective arrived, he recognized at
+once the importance of the case. A large number of forged Russian notes
+have been put into circulation on the Continent lately, it seems, and it
+was suspected that they came from London. The Russian Government have been
+sending urgent messages to the police here on the subject.
+
+"Of course I said nothing about your business; but, while I was talking
+with the Scotland Yard man, a letter was left by a messenger, addressed to
+Mirsky. The letter will be examined, of course, by the proper authorities,
+but I was not a little interested to perceive that the envelope bore the
+Russian imperial arms above the words 'Russian Embassy.' Now, why should
+Mirsky communicate with the Russian Embassy? Certainly not to let the
+officials know that he was carrying on a very extensive and lucrative
+business in the manufacture of spurious Russian notes. I think it is
+rather more than possible that he wrote--probably before he actually got
+your drawings--to say that he could sell information of the highest
+importance, and that this letter was a reply. Further, I think it quite
+possible that, when I asked for him by his Russian name and spoke of 'a
+confidential letter,' he at once concluded that _I_ had come from the
+embassy in answer to his letter. That would account for his addressing me
+in Russian through the key-hole; and, of course, an official from the
+Russian Embassy would be the very last person in the world whom he would
+like to observe any indications of his little etching experiments. But,
+anyhow, be that as it may," Hewitt concluded, "your drawings are safe now,
+and if once Mirsky is caught, and I think it likely, for a man in his
+shirt-sleeves, with scarcely any start, and, perhaps, no money about him,
+hasn't a great chance to get away--if he is caught, I say, he will
+probably get something handsome at St. Petersburg in the way of
+imprisonment, or Siberia, or what not; so that you will be amply avenged."
+
+"Yes, but I don't at all understand this business of the drawings even
+now. How in the world were they taken out of the place, and how in the
+world did you find it out?"
+
+"Nothing could be simpler; and yet the plan was rather ingenious. I'll
+tell you exactly how the thing revealed itself to me. From your original
+description of the case many people would consider that an impossibility
+had been performed. Nobody had gone out and nobody had come in, and yet
+the drawings had been taken away. But an impossibility is an
+impossibility, after all, and as drawings don't run away of themselves,
+plainly somebody had taken them, unaccountable as it might seem. Now, as
+they were in your inner office, the only people who could have got at them
+besides yourself were your assistants, so that it was pretty clear that
+one of them, at least, had something to do with the business. You told me
+that Worsfold was an excellent and intelligent draughtsman. Well, if such
+a man as that meditated treachery, he would probably be able to carry away
+the design in his head--at any rate, a little at a time--and would be
+under no necessity to run the risk of stealing a set of the drawings. But
+Ritter, you remarked, was an inferior sort of man. 'Not particularly
+smart,' I think, were your words--only a mechanical sort of tracer. _He_
+would be unlikely to be able to carry in his head the complicated details
+of such designs as yours, and, being in a subordinate position, and
+continually overlooked, he would find it impossible to make copies of the
+plans in the office. So that, to begin with, I thought I saw the most
+probable path to start on.
+
+"When I looked round the rooms, I pushed open the glass door of the
+barrier and left the door to the inner office ajar, in order to be able to
+see any thing that _might_ happen in any part of the place, without
+actually expecting any definite development. While we were talking, as it
+happened, our friend Mirsky (or Hunter--as you please) came into the outer
+office, and my attention was instantly called to him by the first thing he
+did. Did you notice anything peculiar yourself?"
+
+"No, really, I can't say I did. He seemed to behave much as any traveler
+or agent might."
+
+"Well, what I noticed was the fact that as soon as he entered the place he
+put his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand over there by the door,
+close by where he stood, a most unusual thing for a casual caller to do,
+before even knowing whether you were in. This made me watch him closely. I
+perceived with increased interest that the stick was exactly of the same
+kind and pattern as one already standing there, also a curious thing. I
+kept my eyes carefully on those sticks, and was all the more interested
+and edified to see, when he left, that he took the _other_ stick--not the
+one he came with--from the stand, and carried it away, leaving his own
+behind. I might have followed him, but I decided that more could be
+learned by staying, as, in fact, proved to be the case. This, by the by,
+is the stick he carried away with him. I took the liberty of fetching it
+back from Westminster, because I conceive it to be Ritier's property."
+
+Hewitt produced the stick. It was an ordinary, thick Malacca cane, with a
+buck-horn handle and a silver band. Hewitt bent it across his knee and
+laid it on the table.
+
+"Yes," Dixon answered, "that is Ritter's stick. I think I have often seen
+it in the stand. But what in the world----"
+
+"One moment; I'll just fetch the stick Mirsky left behind." And Hewitt
+stepped across the corridor.
+
+He returned with another stick, apparently an exact fac-simile of the
+other, and placed it by the side of the other.
+
+"When your assistants went into the inner room, I carried this stick off
+for a minute or two. I knew it was not Worsfold's, because there was an
+umbrella there with his initial on the handle. Look at this."
+
+Martin Hewitt gave the handle a twist and rapidly unscrewed it from the
+top. Then it was seen that the stick was a mere tube of very thin metal,
+painted to appear like a Malacca cane.
+
+"It was plain at once that this was no Malacca cane--it wouldn't bend.
+Inside it I found your tracings, rolled up tightly. You can get a
+marvelous quantity of thin tracing-paper into a small compass by tight
+rolling."
+
+"And this--this was the way they were brought back!" the engineer
+exclaimed. "I see that clearly. But how did they get away? That's as
+mysterious as ever."
+
+"Not a bit of it! See here. Mirsky gets hold of Ritter, and they agree to
+get your drawings and photograph them. Ritter is to let his confederate
+have the drawings, and Mirsky is to bring them back as soon as possible,
+so that they sha'n't be missed for a moment. Ritter habitually carries
+this Malacca cane, and the cunning of Mirsky at once suggests that this
+tube should be made in outward fac-simile. This morning Mirsky keeps the
+actual stick, and Ritter comes to the office with the tube. He seizes the
+first opportunity--probably when you were in this private room, and
+Worsfold was talking to you from the corridor--to get at the tracings,
+roll them up tightly, and put them in the tube, putting the tube back into
+the umbrella-stand. At half-past twelve, or whenever it was, Mirsky turns
+up for the first time with the actual stick and exchanges them, just as he
+afterward did when he brought the drawings back."
+
+"Yes, but Mirsky came half an hour after they were--Oh, yes, I see. What a
+fool I was! I was forgetting. Of course, when I first missed the tracings,
+they were in this walking-stick, safe enough, and I was tearing my hair
+out within arm's reach of them!"
+
+"Precisely. And Mirsky took them away before your very eyes. I expect
+Ritter was in a rare funk when he found that the drawings were missed. He
+calculated, no doubt, on your not wanting them for the hour or two they
+would be out of the office."
+
+"How lucky that it struck me to jot a pencil-note on one of them! I might
+easily have made my note somewhere else, and then I should never have
+known that they had been away."
+
+"Yes, they didn't give you any too much time to miss them. Well, I think
+the rest pretty clear. I brought the tracings in here, screwed up the sham
+stick and put it back. You identified the tracings and found none missing,
+and then my course was pretty clear, though it looked difficult. I knew
+you would be very naturally indignant with Ritter, so, as I wanted to
+manage him myself, I told you nothing of what he had actually done, for
+fear that, in your agitated state, you might burst out with something that
+would spoil my game. To Ritter I pretended to know nothing of the return
+of the drawings or _how_ they had been stolen--the only things I did know
+with certainty. But I _did_ pretend to know all about Mirsky--or
+Hunter--when, as a matter of fact, I knew nothing at all, except that he
+probably went under more than one name. That put Ritter into my hands
+completely. When he found the game was up, he began with a lying
+confession. Believing that the tracings were still in the stick and that
+we knew nothing of their return, he said that they had not been away, and
+that he would fetch them--as I had expected he would. I let him go for
+them alone, and, when he returned, utterly broken up by the discovery that
+they were not there, I had him altogether at my mercy. You see, if he had
+known that the drawings were all the time behind your book-case, he might
+have brazened it out, sworn that the drawings had been there all the time,
+and we could have done nothing with him. We couldn't have sufficiently
+frightened him by a threat of prosecution for theft, because there the
+things were in your possession, to his knowledge.
+
+"As it was he answered the helm capitally: gave us Mirsky's address on the
+envelope, and wrote the letter that was to have got him out of the way
+while I committed burglary, if that disgraceful expedient had not been
+rendered unnecessary. On the whole, the case has gone very well."
+
+"It has gone marvelously well, thanks to yourself. But what shall I do
+with Ritter?"
+
+"Here's his stick--knock him down-stairs with it, if you like. I should
+keep the tube, if I were you, as a memento. I don't suppose the
+respectable Mirsky will ever call to ask for it. But I should certainly
+kick Ritter out of doors--or out of window, if you like--without delay."
+
+Mirsky was caught, and, after two remands at the police-court, was
+extradited on the charge of forging Russian notes. It came out that he had
+written to the embassy, as Hewitt had surmised, stating that he had
+certain valuable information to offer, and the letter which Hewitt had
+seen delivered was an acknowledgment, and a request for more definite
+particulars. This was what gave rise to the impression that Mirsky had
+himself informed the Russian authorities of his forgeries. His real intent
+was very different, but was never guessed.
+
+ *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wonder," Hewitt has once or twice observed, "whether, after all, it
+would not have paid the Russian authorities better on the whole if I had
+never investigated Mirsky's little note factory. The Dixon torpedo was
+worth a good many twenty-ruble notes."
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR.
+
+It was comparatively rarely that Hewitt came into contact with members of
+the regular criminal class--those, I mean, who are thieves, of one sort or
+another, by exclusive profession. Still, nobody could have been better
+prepared than Hewitt for encountering this class when it became necessary.
+By some means, which I never quite understood, he managed to keep abreast
+of the very latest fashions in the ever-changing slang dialect of the
+fraternity, and he was a perfect master of the more modern and debased
+form of Romany. So much so that frequently a gypsy who began (as they
+always do) by pretending that he understood nothing, and never heard of a
+gypsy language, ended by confessing that Hewitt could _rokker_ better than
+most Romany _chals_ themselves.
+
+By this acquaintance with their habits and talk Hewitt was sometimes able
+to render efficient service in cases of especial importance. In the
+Quinton jewel affair Hewitt came into contact with a very accomplished
+thief.
+
+The case will probably be very well remembered. Sir Valentine Quinton,
+before he married, had been as poor as only a man of rank with an old
+country establishment to keep up can be. His marriage, however, with the
+daughter of a wealthy financier had changed all that, and now the Quinton
+establishment was carried on on as lavish a scale as might be; and,
+indeed, the extravagant habits of Lady Quinton herself rendered it an
+extremely lucky thing that she had brought a fortune with her.
+
+Among other things her jewels made quite a collection, and chief among
+them was the great ruby, one of the very few that were sent to this
+country to be sold (at an average price of somewhere about twenty thousand
+pounds apiece, I believe) by the Burmese king before the annexation of his
+country. Let but a ruby be of a great size and color, and no equally fine
+diamond can approach its value. Well, this great ruby (which was set in a
+pendant, by the by), together with a necklace, brooches, bracelets,
+ear-rings--indeed, the greater part of Lady Quinton's collection--were
+stolen. The robbery was effected at the usual time and in the usual way in
+cases of carefully planned jewelry robberies. The time was early
+evening--dinner-time, in fact--and an entrance had been made by the window
+to Lady Quinton's dressing-room, the door screwed up on the inside, and
+wires artfully stretched about the grounds below to overset anybody who
+might observe and pursue the thieves.
+
+On an investigation by London detectives, however, a feature of
+singularity was brought to light. There had plainly been only one thief at
+work at Radcot Hall, and no other had been inside the grounds. Alone he
+had planted the wires, opened the window, screwed the door, and picked the
+lock of the safe. Clearly this was a thief of the most accomplished
+description.
+
+Some few days passed, and, although the police had made various arrests,
+they appeared to be all mistakes, and the suspected persons were released
+one after another. I was talking of the robbery with Hewitt at lunch, and
+asked him if he had received any commission to hunt for the missing
+jewels.
+
+"No," Hewitt replied, "I haven't been commissioned. They are offering an
+immense reward however--a very pleasant sum, indeed. I have had a short
+note from Radcot Hall informing me of the amount, and that's all. Probably
+they fancy that I may take the case up as a speculation, but that is a
+great mistake. I'm not a beginner, and I must be commissioned in a regular
+manner, hit or miss, if I am to deal with the case. I've quite enough
+commissions going now, and no time to waste hunting for a problematical
+reward."
+
+But we were nearer a clue to the Quinton jewels than we then supposed.
+
+We talked of other things, and presently rose and left the restaurant,
+strolling quietly toward home. Some little distance from the Strand, and
+near our own door, we passed an excited Irishman--without doubt an
+Irishman by appearance and talk--who was pouring a torrent of angry
+complaints in the ears of a policeman. The policeman obviously thought
+little of the man's grievances, and with an amused smile appeared to be
+advising him to go home quietly and think no more about it. We passed on
+and mounted our stairs. Something interesting in our conversation made me
+stop for a little while at Hewitt's office door on my way up, and, while I
+stood there, the Irishman we had seen in the street mounted the stairs. He
+was a poorly dressed but sturdy-looking fellow, apparently a laborer, in a
+badly-worn best suit of clothes. His agitation still held him, and without
+a pause he immediately burst out:
+
+"Which of ye jintlemen will be Misther Hewitt, sor?"
+
+"This is Mr. Hewitt," I said. "Do you want him?"
+
+"It's protecshin I want, sor--protecshin! I spake to the polis, an' they
+laff at me, begob. Foive days have I lived in London, an' 'tis nothin' but
+battle, murdher, an' suddhen death for me here all day an' ivery day! An'
+the polis say I'm dhrunk!"
+
+He gesticulated wildly, and to me it seemed just possible that the police
+might be right.
+
+"They say I'm drunk, sor," he continued, "but, begob, I b'lieve they think
+I'm mad. An' me being thracked an' folleyed an' dogged an' waylaid an'
+poisoned an' blandandhered an' kidnapped an' murdhered, an' for why I do
+not know!"
+
+"And who's doing all this?'
+
+"Sthrangers, sor--sthrangers. 'Tis a sthranger here I am mesilf, an' fwy
+they do it bates me, onless I do be so like the Prince av Wales or other
+crowned head they thry to slaughter me. They're layin' for me in the
+sthreet now, I misdoubt not, and fwat they may thry next I can tell no
+more than the Lord Mayor. An' the polis won't listen to me!"
+
+This, I thought, must be one of the very common cases of mental
+hallucination which one hears of every day--the belief of the sufferer
+that he is surrounded by enemies and followed by spies. It is probably the
+most usual delusion of the harmless lunatic.
+
+"But what have these people done?" Hewitt asked, looking rather
+interested, although amused. "What actual assaults have they committed,
+and when? And who told you to come here?"
+
+"Who towld me, is ut? Who but the payler outside--in the street below! I
+explained to 'um, an' sez he: 'Ah, you go an' take a slape,' sez he; 'you
+go an' take a good slape, an' they'll be all gone whin ye wake up.' 'But
+they'll murdher me,' sez I. 'Oh, no!' sez he, smilin' behind av his ugly
+face. 'Oh, no, they won't; you take ut aisy, me frind, an' go home!' 'Take
+it aisy, is ut, an' go home!' sez I; 'why, that's just where they've been
+last, a-ruinationin' an' a-turnin' av the place upside down, an' me strook
+on the head onsensible a mile away. Take ut aisy, is ut, ye say, whin all
+the demons in this unholy place is jumpin' on me every minut in places
+promiscuous till I can't tell where to turn, descendin' an' vanishin'
+marvelious an' onaccountable? Take ut aisy, is ut?' sez I. 'Well, me
+frind,' sez he, 'I can't help ye; that's the marvelious an' onaccountable
+departmint up the stairs forninst ye. Misther Hewitt ut is,' sez he, 'that
+attinds to the onaccountable departmint, him as wint by a minut ago. You
+go an' bother him.' That's how I was towld, sor."
+
+Hewitt smiled.
+
+"Very good," he said; "and now what are these extraordinary troubles of
+yours? Don't declaim," he added, as the Irishman raised his hand and
+opened his mouth, preparatory to another torrent of complaint; "just say
+in ten words, if you can, what they've done to you."
+
+"I will, sor. Wan day had I been in London, sor--wan day only, an' a low
+scutt thried to poison me dhrink; next day some udther thief av sin shoved
+me off av a railway platform undher a train, malicious and purposeful;
+glory be, he didn't kill me! but the very docther that felt me bones
+thried to pick me pockut, I du b'lieve. Sunday night I was grabbed
+outrageous in a darrk turnin', rowled on the groun', half strangled, an'
+me pockuts nigh ripped out av me trousies. An' this very blessed mornin'
+av light I was strook onsensible an' left a livin' corpse, an' my lodgin's
+penethrated an' all the thruck mishandled an' bruk up behind me back. Is
+that a panjandhery for the polis to laff at, sor?"
+
+Had Hewitt not been there I think I should have done my best to quiet the
+poor fellow with a few soothing words and to persuade him to go home to
+his friends. His excited and rather confused manner, his fantastic story
+of a sort of general conspiracy to kill him, and the absurd reference to
+the doctor who tried to pick his pocket seemed to me plainly to confirm my
+first impression that he was insane. But Hewitt appeared strangely
+interested.
+
+"Did they steal anything?" he asked.
+
+"Divil a shtick but me door-key, an' that they tuk home an' lift in the
+door."
+
+Hewitt opened his office door.
+
+"Come in," he said, "and tell me all about this. You come, too, Brett."
+
+The Irishman and I followed him into the inner office, where, shutting the
+door, Hewitt suddenly turned on the Irishman and exclaimed sharply: "_Then
+you've still got it_?"
+
+He looked keenly in the man's eyes, but the only expression there was one
+of surprise.
+
+"Got ut?" said the Irishman. "Got fwhat, sor? Is ut you're thinkin' I've
+got the horrors, as well as the polis?"
+
+Hewitt's gaze relaxed. "Sit down, sit down!" he said. "You've still got
+your watch and money, I suppose, since you weren't robbed?"
+
+"Oh, that? Glory be, I have ut still! though for how long--or me own head,
+for that matter--in this state of besiegement, I can not say."
+
+"Now," said Hewitt, "I want a full, true, and particular account of
+yourself and your doings for the last week. First, your name?"
+
+"Leamy's my name, sor--Michael Leamy."
+
+"Lately from Ireland?"
+
+"Over from Dublin this last blessed Wednesday, and a crooil bad
+poundherin' tit was in the boat, too--shpakin'av that same."
+
+"Looking for work?"
+
+"That is my purshuit at prisint, sor."
+
+"Did anything noticeable happen before these troubles of yours
+began--anything here in London or on the journey?"
+
+"Sure," the Irishman smiled, "part av the way I thraveled first-class by
+favor av the gyard, an' I got a small job before I lift the train."
+
+"How was that? Why did you travel first-class part of the way?"
+
+"There was a station fwhere we shtopped afther a long run, an' I got down
+to take the cramp out av me joints, an' take a taste av dhrink. I
+over-shtayed somehow, an', whin I got to the train, begob, it was on the
+move. There was a first-class carr'ge door opin right forninst me, an'
+into that the gyard crams me holus-bolus. There was a juce of a foine
+jintleman sittin' there, an' he stares at me umbrageous, but I was not
+dishcommoded, bein' onbashful by natur'. We thravelled along a heap av
+miles more, till we came near London. Afther we had shtopped at a station
+where they tuk tickets we wint ahead again, an' prisintly, as we rips
+through some udther station, up jumps the jintleman opposite, swearin'
+hard undher his tongue, an' looks out at the windy. 'I thought this train
+shtopped here,' sez he."
+
+"Chalk Farm," observed Hewitt, with a nod.
+
+"The name I do not know, sor, but that's fwhat he said. Then he looks at
+me onaisy for a little, an' at last he sez: 'Wud ye loike a small job, me
+good man, well paid?'
+
+"'Faith,' sez I, ''tis that will suit me well.'
+
+"'Then, see here,' sez he, 'I should have got out at that station, havin'
+particular business; havin' missed, I must sen' a telegrammer from Euston.
+Now, here's a bag,' sez he, 'a bag full of imporrtant papers for my
+solicitor--imporrtant to me, ye ondershtand, not worth the shine av a
+brass farden to a sowl else--an' I want 'em tuk on to him. Take you this
+bag,' he sez, 'an' go you straight out wid it at Euston an' get a cab. I
+shall stay in the station a bit to see to the telegrammer. Dhrive out av
+the station, across the road outside, an' wait there five minuts by the
+clock. Ye ondershtand? Wait five minuts, an, maybe I'll come an' join ye.
+If I don't 'twill be bekase I'm detained onexpected, an' then ye'll dhrive
+to my solicitor straight. Here's his address, if ye can read writin',' an'
+he put ut on a piece av paper. He gave me half-a-crown for the cab, an' I
+tuk his bag."
+
+"One moment--have you the paper with the address now?"
+
+"I have not, sor. I missed ut afther the blayguards overset me yesterday;
+but the solicitor's name was Hollams, an' a liberal jintleman wid his
+money he was, too, by that same token."
+
+"What was his address?"
+
+"'Twas in Chelsea, and 'twas Gold or Golden something, which I know by the
+good token av fwhat he gave me; but the number I misremember."
+
+Hewitt turned to his directory. "Gold Street is the place, probably," he
+said, "and it seems to be a street chiefly of private houses. You would be
+able to point out the house if you were taken there, I suppose?"
+
+"I should that, sor; indade, I was thinkin' av goin' there an' tellin'
+Misther Hollams all my throubles, him havin' been so kind."
+
+"Now tell me exactly what instructions the man in the train gave you, and
+what happened?"
+
+"He sez: 'You ask for Misther Hollams, an' see nobody else. Tell him ye've
+brought the sparks from Misther W.'"
+
+I fancied I could see a sudden twinkle in Hewitt's eye, but he made no
+other sign, and the Irishman proceeded.
+
+"'Sparks?' sez I. 'Yes, sparks,' sez he. 'Misther Hollams will know; 'tis
+our jokin' word for 'em; sometimes papers is sparks when they set a
+lawsuit ablaze,' and he laffed. 'But be sure ye say the _sparks from
+Misther W._,' he sez again, 'bekase then he'll know ye're jinuine an'
+he'll pay ye han'some. Say Misther W. sez you're to have your reg'lars, if
+ye like. D'ye mind that?'
+
+"'Ay,' sez I, 'that I'm to have my reg'lars.'
+
+"Well, sor, I tuk the bag and wint out of the station, tuk the cab, an'
+did all as he towld me. I waited the foive minuts, but he niver came, so
+off I druv to Misther Hollams, and he threated me han'some, sor."
+
+"Yes, but tell me exactly all he did."
+
+"'Misther Hollams, sor?' sez I. 'Who are ye?' sez he. 'Mick Leamy, sor,'
+sez I, 'from Misther W. wid the sparks.' 'Oh,' sez he, 'thin come in.' I
+wint in. 'They're in here, are they?' sez he, takin' the bag. 'They are,
+sor,' sez I, 'an' Misther W. sez I'm to have me reg'lars.' 'You shall,'
+sez he. 'What shall we say, now--afinnip?' 'Fwhat's that, sor?' sez I.
+'Oh,' sez he, 'I s'pose ye're a new hand; five quid--ondershtand that?'"
+
+"Begob, I did ondershtand it, an' moighty plazed I was to have come to a
+place where they pay five-pun' notes for carryin' bags. So whin he asked
+me was I new to London an' shud I kape in the same line av business, I
+towld him I shud for certin, or any thin' else payin' like it. 'Right,'
+sez he; 'let me know whin ye've got any thin'--ye'll find me all right.'
+An' he winked frindly. 'Faith, that I know I shall, sor,' sez I, wid the
+money safe in me pockut; an' I winked him back, conjanial. 'I've a smart
+family about me,' sez he, 'an' I treat 'em all fair an' liberal.' An',
+saints, I thought it likely his family 'ud have all they wanted, seein' he
+was so free-handed wid a stranger. Thin he asked me where I was a livin'
+in London, and, when I towld him nowhere, he towld me av a room in Musson
+Street, here by Drury Lane, that was to let, in a house his fam'ly knew
+very well, an' I wint straight there an' tuk ut, an' there I do be stayin'
+still, sor."
+
+I hadn't understood at first why Hewitt took so much interest in the
+Irishman's narrative, but the latter part of it opened my eyes a little.
+It seemed likely that Leamy had, in his innocence, been made a conveyer of
+stolen property. I knew enough of thieves' slang to know that "sparks"
+meant diamonds or other jewels; that "regulars" was the term used for a
+payment made to a brother thief who gave assistance in some small way,
+such as carrying the booty; and that the "family" was the time-honored
+expression for a gang of thieves.
+
+"This was all on Wednesday, I understand," said Hewitt. "Now tell me what
+happened on Thursday--the poisoning, or drugging, you know?"
+
+"Well, sor, I was walking out, an' toward the evenin' I lost mesilf. Up
+comes a man, seemin'ly a sthranger, and shmacks me on the showldher. 'Why,
+Mick!' sez he; 'it's Mick Leamy, I du b'lieve!'
+
+"'I am that,' sez I, 'but you I do not know.'
+
+"'Not know me?' sez he. 'Why, I wint to school wid ye.' An' wid that he
+hauls me off to a bar, blarneyin' and minowdherin', an' orders dhrinks.
+
+"Can ye rache me a poipe-loight?' sez he, an' I turned to get ut, but,
+lookin' back suddent, there was that onblushin' thief av the warl' tippin'
+a paperful of phowder stuff into me glass."
+
+"What did you do?" Hewitt asked.
+
+"I knocked the dhirty face av him, sor, an' can ye blame me? A mane scutt,
+thryin' for to poison a well-manin' sthranger. I knocked the face av him,
+an' got away home."
+
+"Now the next misfortune?"
+
+"Faith, that was av a sort likely to turn out the last of all misfortunes.
+I wint that day to the Crystial Palace, bein' dishposed for a little
+sphort, seein' as I was new to London. Comin' home at night, there was a
+juce av a crowd on the station platform, consekins of a late thrain.
+Sthandin' by the edge av the platform at the fore end, just as thrain came
+in, some onvisible murdherer gives me a stupenjus drive in the back, and
+over I wint on the line, mid-betwixt the rails. The engine came up an'
+wint half over me widout givin' me a scratch, bekase av my centraleous
+situation, an' then the porther-men pulled me out, nigh sick wid fright,
+sor, as ye may guess. A jintleman in the crowd sings out: 'I'm a medical
+man!' an' they tuk me in the waitin'-room, an' he investigated me, havin'
+turned everybody else out av the room. There wuz no bones bruk, glory be!
+and the docthor-man he was tellin' me so, after feelin' me over, whin I
+felt his hand in me waistcoat pockut.
+
+"'An' fwhat's this, sor?' sez I. 'Do you be lookin' for your fee that
+thief's way?'
+
+"He laffed, and said: 'I want no fee from ye, me man, an' I did but feel
+your ribs,' though on me conscience he had done that undher me waistcoat
+already. An' so I came home."
+
+"What did they do to you on Saturday?"
+
+"Saturday, sor, they gave me a whole holiday, and I began to think less of
+things; but on Saturday night, in a dark place, two blayguards tuk me
+throat from behind, nigh choked me, flung me down, an' wint through all me
+pockuts in about a quarter av a minut."
+
+"And they took nothing, you say?"
+
+"Nothing, sor. But this mornin' I got my worst dose. I was trapesing along
+distreshful an' moighty sore, in a street just away off the Strand here,
+when I obsarved the docthor-man that was at the Crystial Palace station
+a-smilin' an' beckonin' at me from a door.
+
+"'How are ye now?' sez he. 'Well,' sez I, 'I'm moighty sore an' sad
+bruised,' sez I. 'Is that so?' sez he. 'Sthep in here.' So I sthepped in,
+an' before I could wink there dhropped a crack on the back av me head that
+sent me off as unknowledgable as a corrpse. I knew no more for a while,
+sor, whether half an hour or an hour, an' thin I got up in a room av the
+place, marked 'To Let.' 'Twas a house full av offices, by the same token,
+like this. There was a sore bad lump on me head--see ut, sor?--an' the
+whole warl' was shpinnin' roun' rampageous. The things out av me pockuts
+were lyin' on the flure by me--all barrin' the key av me room. So that the
+demons had been through me posseshins again, bad luck to 'em."
+
+"You are quite sure, are you, that everything was there except the key?"
+Hewitt asked.
+
+"Certin, sor? Well, I got along to me room, sick an' sorry enough, an'
+doubtsome whether I might get in wid no key. But there was the key in the
+open door, an', by this an' that, all the shtuff in the room--chair,
+table, bed, an' all--was shtandin' on their heads twisty-ways, an' the
+bedclothes an' every thin' else; such a disgraceful stramash av
+conglomerated thruck as ye niver dhreamt av. The chist av drawers was
+lyin' on uts face, wid all the dhrawers out an' emptied on the flure.
+'Twas as though an arrmy had been lootin', sor!"
+
+"But still nothing was gone?"
+
+"Nothin', so far as I investigated, sor. But I didn't shtay. I came out to
+spake to the polis, an' two av them laffed at me--wan afther another!"
+
+"It has certainly been no laughing matter for you. Now, tell me--have you
+anything in your possession--documents, or valuables, or anything--that
+any other person, to your knowledge, is anxious to get hold of!"
+
+"I have not, sor--divil a document! As to valuables, thim an' me is the
+cowldest av sthrangers."
+
+"Just call to mind, now, the face of the man who tried to put powder in
+your drink, and that of the doctor who attended to you in the railway
+station. Were they at all alike, or was either like anybody you have seen
+before?"
+
+Leamy puckered his forehead and thought.
+
+"Faith," he said presently, "they were a bit alike, though one had a beard
+an' the udther whiskers only."
+
+"Neither happened to look like Mr. Hollams, for instance?"
+
+Leamy started. "Begob, but they did! They'd ha' been mortal like him if
+they'd been shaved." Then, after a pause, he suddenly added: "Holy saints!
+is ut the fam'ly he talked av?"
+
+Hewitt laughed. "Perhaps it is," he said. "Now, as to the man who sent you
+with the bag. Was it an old bag?"
+
+"Bran' cracklin' new--a brown leather bag."
+
+"Locked?"
+
+"That I niver thried, sor. It was not my consarn."
+
+"True. Now, as to this Mr. W. himself." Hewitt had been rummaging for some
+few minutes in a portfolio, and finally produced a photograph, and held it
+before the Irishman's eye. "Is that like him?" he asked.
+
+"Shure it's the man himself! Is he a friend av yours, sor?"
+
+"No, he's not exactly a friend of mine," Hewitt answered, with a grim
+chuckle. "I fancy he's one of that very respectable _family_ you heard
+about at Mr. Hollams'. Come along with me now to Chelsea, and see if you
+can point out that house in Gold Street. I'll send for a cab."
+
+He made for the outer office, and I went with him.
+
+"What is all this, Hewitt?" I asked. "A gang of thieves with stolen
+property?"
+
+Hewitt looked in my face and replied: "_It's the Quinton ruby_!"
+
+"What! The ruby? Shall you take the case up, then?"
+
+"I shall. It is no longer a speculation."
+
+"Then do you expect to find it at Hollams' house in Chelsea?" I asked.
+
+"No, I don't, because it isn't there--else why are they trying to get it
+from this unlucky Irishman? There has been bad faith in Hollams' gang, I
+expect, and Hollams has missed the ruby and suspects Leamy of having taken
+it from the bag."
+
+"Then who is this Mr. W. whose portrait you have in your possession?"
+
+"See here!" Hewitt turned over a small pile of recent newspapers and
+selected one, pointing at a particular paragraph. "I kept that in my mind,
+because to me it seemed to be the most likely arrest of the lot," he said.
+
+It was an evening paper of the previous Thursday, and the paragraph was a
+very short one, thus:
+
+"The man Wilks, who was arrested at Euston Station yesterday, in
+connection with the robbery of Lady Quinton's jewels, has been released,
+nothing being found to incriminate him."
+
+"How does that strike you?" asked Hewitt. "Wilks is a man well known to
+the police--one of the most accomplished burglars in this country, in
+fact. I have had no dealings with him as yet, but I found means, some time
+ago, to add his portrait to my little collection, in case I might want it,
+and to-day it has been quite useful."
+
+The thing was plain now. Wilks must have been bringing his booty to town,
+and calculated on getting out at Chalk Farm and thus eluding the watch
+which he doubtless felt pretty sure would be kept (by telegraphic
+instruction) at Euston for suspicious characters arriving from the
+direction of Radcot. His transaction with Leamy was his only possible
+expedient to save himself from being hopelessly taken with the swag in his
+possession. The paragraph told me why Leamy had waited in vain for "Mr.
+W." in the cab.
+
+"What shall you do now?" I asked.
+
+"I shall go to the Gold Street house and find out what I can as soon as
+this cab turns up."
+
+There seemed a possibility of some excitement in the adventure, so I
+asked: "Will you want any help?"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "I _think_ I can get through it alone," he said.
+
+"Then may I come to look on?" I said. "Of course I don't want to be in
+your way, and the result of the business, whatever it is, will be to your
+credit alone. But I am curious."
+
+"Come, then, by all means. The cab will be a four-wheeler, and there will
+be plenty of room."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gold Street was a short street of private houses of very fair size and of
+a half-vanished pretension to gentility. We drove slowly through, and
+Leamy had no difficulty in pointing out the house wherein he had been paid
+five pounds for carrying a bag. At the end the cab turned the corner and
+stopped, while Hewitt wrote a short note to an official of Scotland Yard.
+
+"Take this note," he instructed Leamy, "to Scotland Yard in the cab, and
+then go home. I will pay the cabman now."
+
+"I will, sor. An' will I be protected?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Stay at home for the rest of the day, and I expect you'll be
+left alone in future. Perhaps I shall have something to tell you in a day
+or two; if I do, I'll send. Good-by."
+
+The cab rolled off, and Hewitt and I strolled back along Gold Street. "I
+think," Hewitt said, "we will drop in on Mr. Hollams for a few minutes
+while we can. In a few hours I expect the police will have him, and his
+house, too, if they attend promptly to my note."
+
+"Have you ever seen him?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge, though I may know him by some other name. Wilks I
+know by sight, though he doesn't know me."
+
+"What shall we say?"
+
+"That will depend on circumstances. I may not get my cue till the door
+opens, or even till later. At worst, I can easily apply for a reference as
+to Leamy, who, you remember, is looking for work."
+
+But we were destined not to make Mr. Hollams' acquaintance, after all. As
+we approached the house a great uproar was heard from the lower part
+giving on to the area, and suddenly a man, hatless, and with a sleeve of
+his coat nearly torn away burst through the door and up the area steps,
+pursued by two others. I had barely time to observe that one of the
+pursuers carried a revolver, and that both hesitated and retired on seeing
+that several people were about the street, when Hewitt, gripping my arm
+and exclaiming: "That's our man!" started at a run after the fugitive.
+
+We turned the next corner and saw the man thirty yards before us, walking,
+and pulling up his sleeve at the shoulder, so as to conceal the rent.
+Plainly he felt safe from further molestation.
+
+"That's Sim Wilks," Hewitt explained, as we followed, "the 'juce of a
+foine jintleman' who got Leamy to carry his bag, and the man who knows
+where the Quinton ruby is, unless I am more than usually mistaken. Don't
+stare after him, in case he looks round. Presently, when we get into the
+busier streets, I shall have a little chat with him."
+
+But for some time the man kept to the back streets. In time, however, he
+emerged into the Buckingham Palace Road, and we saw him stop and look at a
+hat-shop. But after a general look over the window and a glance in at the
+door he went on.
+
+"Good sign!" observed Hewitt; "got no money with him--makes it easier for
+us."
+
+In a little while Wilks approached a small crowd gathered about a woman
+fiddler. Hewitt touched my arm, and a few quick steps took us past our man
+and to the opposite side of the crowd. When Wilks emerged, he met us
+coming in the opposite direction.
+
+"What, Sim!" burst out Hewitt with apparent delight. "I haven't piped your
+mug[A] for a stretch;[B] I thought you'd fell.[C] Where's your cady?"[D]
+
+[Footnote A: Seen your face.]
+
+[Footnote B: A year.]
+
+[Footnote C: Been imprisoned.]
+
+[Footnote D: Hat.]
+
+Wilks looked astonished and suspicious. "I don't know you," he said.
+"You've made a mistake."
+
+Hewitt laughed. "I'm glad you don't know me," he said. "If you don't, I'm
+pretty sure the reelers[A] won't. I think I've faked my mug pretty well,
+and my clobber,[B] too. Look here: I'll stand you a new cady. Strange
+blokes don't do that, eh?"
+
+[Footnote A: Police.]
+
+[Footnote B: Clothes.]
+
+Wilks was still suspicious. "I don't know what you mean," he said. Then,
+after a pause, he added: "Who are you, then?"
+
+Hewitt winked and screwed his face genially aside. "Hooky!" he said. "I've
+had a lucky touch[A] and I'm Mr. Smith till I've melted the pieces.[B] You
+come and damp it."
+
+[Footnote A: Robbery.]
+
+[Footnote B: Spent the money.]
+
+"I'm off," Wilks replied. "Unless you're pal enough to lend me a quid," he
+added, laughing.
+
+"I am that," responded Hewitt, plunging his hand in his pocket. "I'm
+flush, my boy, flush, and I've been wetting it pretty well to-day. I feel
+pretty jolly now, and I shouldn't wonder if I went home cannon.[A] Only a
+quid? Have two, if you want 'em--or three; there's plenty more, and you'll
+do the same for me some day. Here y'are."
+
+[Footnote A: Drunk.]
+
+Hewitt had, of a sudden, assumed the whole appearance, manners, and
+bearing of a slightly elevated rowdy. Now he pulled his hand from his
+pocket and extended it, full of silver, with five or six sovereigns
+interspersed, toward Wilks.
+
+"I'll have three quid," Wilks said, with decision, taking the money; "but
+I'm blowed if I remember you. Who's your pal?"
+
+Hewitt jerked his hand in my direction, winked, and said, in a low voice:
+"He's all right. Having a rest. Can't stand Manchester," and winked again.
+
+Wilks laughed and nodded, and I understood from that that Hewitt had very
+flatteringly given me credit for being "wanted" by the Manchester police.
+
+We lurched into a public house, and drank a very little very bad whisky
+and water. Wilks still regarded us curiously, and I could see him again
+and again glancing doubtfully in Hewitt's face. But the loan of three
+pounds had largely reassured him. Presently Hewitt said:
+
+"How about our old pal down in Gold Street? Do anything with him now? Seen
+him lately?"
+
+Wilks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
+
+"That's a good job. It 'ud be awkward if you were about there to-day, I
+can tell you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Never mind, so long as you're not there. I know something, if I _have_
+been away. I'm glad I haven't had any truck with Gold Street lately,
+that's all."
+
+"D'you mean the reelers are on it?"
+
+Hewitt looked cautiously over his shoulder, leaned toward Wilks, and said:
+"Look here: this is the straight tip. I know this--I got it from the very
+nark[A] that's given the show away: By six o'clock No. 8 Gold Street will
+be turned inside out, like an old glove, and everyone in the place will
+be----" He finished the sentence by crossing his wrists like a handcuffed
+man. "What's more," he went on, "they know all about what's gone on there
+lately, and everybody that's been in or out for the last two moons[B] will
+be wanted particular--and will be found, I'm told." Hewitt concluded with
+a confidential frown, a nod, and a wink, and took another mouthful of
+whisky. Then he added, as an after-thought: "So I'm glad you haven't been
+there lately."
+
+[Footnote A: Police spy.]
+
+[Footnote B: Months.]
+
+Wilks looked in Hewitt's face and asked: "Is that straight?"
+
+"_Is_ it?" replied Hewitt with emphasis. "You go and have a look, if you
+ain't afraid of being smugged yourself. Only _I_ shan't go near No. 8 just
+yet--I know that."
+
+Wilks fidgeted, finished his drink, and expressed his intention of going.
+"Very well, if you _won't_ have another----" replied Hewitt. But he had
+gone.
+
+"Good!" said Hewitt, moving toward the door; "he has suddenly developed a
+hurry. I shall keep him in sight, but you had better take a cab and go
+straight to Euston. Take tickets to the nearest station to
+Radcot--Kedderby, I think it is--and look up the train arrangements. Don't
+show yourself too much, and keep an eye on the entrance. Unless I am
+mistaken, Wilks will be there pretty soon, and I shall be on his heels. If
+I _am_ wrong, then you won't see the end of the fun, that's all."
+
+Hewitt hurried after Wilks, and I took the cab and did as he wished. There
+was an hour and a few minutes, I found, to wait for the next train, and
+that time I occupied as best I might, keeping a sharp lookout across the
+quadrangle. Barely five minutes before the train was to leave, and just as
+I was beginning to think about the time of the next, a cab dashed up and
+Hewitt alighted. He hurried in, found me, and drew me aside into a recess,
+just as another cab arrived.
+
+"Here he is," Hewitt said. "I followed him as far as Euston Road and then
+got my cabby to spurt up and pass him. He had had his mustache shaved off,
+and I feared you mightn't recognize him, and so let him see you."
+
+From our retreat we could see Wilks hurry into the booking-office. We
+watched him through to the platform and followed. He wasted no time, but
+made the best of his way to a third-class carriage at the extreme fore end
+of the train.
+
+"We have three minutes," Hewitt said, "and everything depends on his not
+seeing us get into this train. Take this cap. Fortunately, we're both in
+tweed suits."
+
+He had bought a couple of tweed cricket caps, and these we assumed,
+sending our "bowler" hats to the cloak-room. Hewitt also put on a pair of
+blue spectacles, and then walked boldly up the platform and entered a
+first-class carriage. I followed close on his heels, in such a manner that
+a person looking from the fore end of the train would be able to see but
+very little of me.
+
+"So far so good," said Hewitt, when we were seated and the train began to
+move off. "I must keep a lookout at each station, in case our friend goes
+off unexpectedly."
+
+"I waited some time," I said; "where did you both go to?"
+
+"First he went and bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some
+distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets
+in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor's
+shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat
+mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way
+up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber's shop. I took a
+cautious peep at the window, saw two or three other customers also
+waiting, and took the opportunity to rush over to a 'notion' shop and buy
+these blue spectacles, and to a hatter's for these caps--of which I regret
+to observe that yours is too big. He was rather a long while in the
+barber's, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache. This was
+a good indication. It made it plainer than ever that he had believed my
+warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street and its
+frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was quite
+true. The rest you know. He cabbed to the station, and so did I."
+
+"And now perhaps," I said, "after giving me the character of a thief
+wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in
+exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London
+without any definite idea of when I'm coming back, perhaps you'll tell me
+what we're after?"
+
+Hewitt laughed. "You wanted to join in, you know," he said, "and you must
+take your luck as it comes. As a matter of fact there is scarcely anything
+in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this watching and
+following business. Often it lasts for weeks. When we alight, we shall
+have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult possible conditions,
+in the country. There it is often quite impossible to follow a man
+unobserved. It is only because it is the only way that I am undertaking it
+now. As to what we're after, you know that as well as I--the Quinton ruby.
+Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would be impossible to find
+it. We are following him so that he will find it for us."
+
+"He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?"
+
+"Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the
+bag to direct Hollams's suspicion to him. Hollams found out by his
+repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and this
+morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks' possession with
+a revolver. We saw the upshot of that."
+
+Kedderby Station was about forty miles out. At each intermediate stopping
+station Hewitt watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train. "What I
+fear," Hewitt observed, "is that at Kedderby he may take a fly. To stalk a
+man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you _can't_ follow one
+vehicle in another without being spotted. But if he's so smart as I think,
+he won't do it. A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered in
+these places."
+
+He did _not_ take a fly. At Kedderby we saw him jump out quickly and
+hasten from the station. The train stood for a few minutes, and he was out
+of the station before we alighted. Through the railings behind the
+platform we could see him walking briskly away to the right. From the
+ticket collector we ascertained that Radcot lay in that direction, three
+miles off.
+
+To my dying day I shall never forget that three miles. They seemed three
+hundred. In the still country almost every footfall seemed audible for any
+distance, and in the long stretches of road one could see half a mile
+behind or before. Hewitt was cool and patient, but I got into a fever of
+worry, excitement, want of breath, and back-ache. At first, for a little,
+the road zig-zagged, and then the chase was comparatively easy. We waited
+behind one bend till Wilks had passed the next, and then hurried in his
+trail, treading in the dustiest parts of the road or on the side grass,
+when there was any, to deaden the sound of our steps.
+
+At the last of these short bends we looked ahead and saw a long, white
+stretch of road with the dark form of Wilks a couple of hundred yards in
+front. It would never do to let him get to the end of this great stretch
+before following, as he might turn off at some branch road out of sight
+and be lost. So we jumped the hedge and scuttled along as we best might on
+the other side, with backs bent, and our feet often many inches deep in
+wet clay. We had to make continual stoppages to listen and peep out, and
+on one occasion, happening, incautiously, to stand erect, looking after
+him, I was much startled to see Wilks, with his face toward me, gazing
+down the road. I ducked like lightning, and, fortunately, he seemed not to
+have observed me, but went on as before. He had probably heard some slight
+noise, but looked straight along the road for its explanation, instead of
+over the hedge. At hilly parts of the road there was extreme difficulty;
+indeed, on approaching a rise it was usually necessary to lie down under
+the hedge till Wilks had passed the top, since from the higher ground he
+could have seen us easily. This improved neither my clothes, my comfort,
+nor my temper. Luckily we never encountered the difficulty of a long and
+high wall, but once we were nearly betrayed by a man who shouted to order
+us off his field.
+
+At last we saw, just ahead, the square tower of an old church, set about
+with thick trees. Opposite this Wilks paused, looked irresolutely up and
+down the road, and then went on. We crossed the road, availed ourselves of
+the opposite hedge, and followed. The village was to be seen some three or
+four hundred yards farther along the road, and toward it Wilks sauntered
+slowly. Before he actually reached the houses he stopped and turned back.
+
+"The churchyard!" exclaimed Hewitt, under his breath. "Lie close and let
+him pass."
+
+Wilks reached the churchyard gate, and again looked irresolutely about
+him. At that moment a party of children, who had been playing among the
+graves, came chattering and laughing toward and out of the gate, and Wilks
+walked hastily away again, this time in the opposite direction.
+
+"That's the place, clearly," Hewitt said. "We must slip across quietly, as
+soon as he's far enough down the road. Now!"
+
+We hurried stealthily across, through the gate, and into the churchyard,
+where Hewitt threw his blue spectacles away. It was now nearly eight in
+the evening, and the sun was setting. Once again Wilks approached the
+gate, and did not enter, because a laborer passed at the time. Then he
+came back and slipped through.
+
+The grass about the graves was long, and under the trees it was already
+twilight. Hewitt and I, two or three yards apart, to avoid falling over
+one another in case of sudden movement, watched from behind gravestones.
+The form of Wilks stood out large and black against the fading light in
+the west as he stealthily approached through the long grass. A light cart
+came clattering along the road, and Wilks dropped at once and crouched on
+his knees till it had passed. Then, staring warily about him, he made
+straight for the stone behind which Hewitt waited.
+
+I saw Hewitt's dark form swing noiselessly round to the other side of the
+stone. Wilks passed on and dropped on his knee beside a large,
+weather-worn slab that rested on a brick under-structure a foot or so
+high. The long grass largely hid the bricks, and among it Wilks plunged
+his hand, feeling along the brick surface. Presently he drew out a loose
+brick, and laid it on the slab. He felt again in the place, and brought
+forth a small dark object. I saw Hewitt rise erect in the gathering dusk,
+and with extended arm step noiselessly toward the stooping man. Wilks made
+a motion to place the dark object in his pocket, but checked himself, and
+opened what appeared to be a lid, as though to make sure of the safety of
+the contents. The last light, straggling under the trees, fell on a
+brilliantly sparkling object within, and like a flash Hewitt's hand shot
+over Wilks' shoulder and snatched the jewel.
+
+The man actually screamed--one of those curious sharp little screams that
+one may hear from a woman very suddenly alarmed. But he sprang at Hewitt
+like a cat, only to meet a straight drive of the fist that stretched him
+on his back across the slab. I sprang from behind my stone, and helped
+Hewitt to secure his wrists with a pocket-handkerchief. Then we marched
+him, struggling and swearing, to the village.
+
+When, in the lights of the village, he recognized us, he had a perfect fit
+of rage, but afterward he calmed down, and admitted that it was a "very
+clean cop." There was some difficulty in finding the village constable,
+and Sir Valentine Quinton was dining out and did not arrive for at least
+an hour. In the interval Wilks grew communicative.
+
+"How much d'ye think I'll get?" he asked.
+
+"Can't guess," Hewitt replied. "And as we shall probably have to give
+evidence, you'll be giving yourself away if you talk too much."
+
+"Oh, I don't care; that'll make no difference. It's a fair cop, and I'm in
+for it. You got at me nicely, lending me three quid. I never knew a reeler
+do that before. That blinded me. But was it kid about Gold Street?"
+
+"No, it wasn't. Mr. Hollams is safely shut up by this time, I expect, and
+you are avenged for your little trouble with him this afternoon."
+
+"What did you know about that? Well, you've got it up nicely for me, I
+must say. S'pose you've been following me all the time?"
+
+"Well, yes; I haven't been far off. I guessed you'd want to clear out of
+town if Hollams was taken, and I knew this"--Hewitt tapped his breast
+pocket--"was what you'd take care to get hold of first. You hid it, of
+course, because you knew that Hollams would probably have you searched for
+it if he got suspicious?"
+
+"Yes, he did, too. Two blokes went over my pockets one night, and somebody
+got into my room. But I expected that, Hollams is such a greedy pig. Once
+he's got you under his thumb he don't give you half your makings, and, if
+you kick, he'll have you smugged. So that I wasn't going to give him
+_that_ if I could help it. I s'pose it ain't any good asking how you got
+put on to our mob?"
+
+"No," said Hewitt, "it isn't."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We didn't get back till the next day, staying for the night, despite an
+inconvenient want of requisites, at the Hall. There were, in fact, no late
+trains. We told Sir Valentine the story of the Irishman, much to his
+amusement.
+
+"Leamy's tale sounded unlikely, of course," Hewitt said, "but it was
+noticeable that every one of his misfortunes pointed in the same
+direction--that certain persons were tremendously anxious to get at
+something they supposed he had. When he spoke of his adventure with the
+bag, I at once remembered Wilks' arrest and subsequent release. It was a
+curious coincidence, to say the least, that this should happen at the very
+station to which the proceeds of this robbery must come, if they came to
+London at all, and on the day following the robbery itself. Kedderby is
+one of the few stations on this line where no trains would stop after the
+time of the robbery, so that the thief would have to wait till the next
+day to get back. Leamy's recognition of Wilks' portrait made me feel
+pretty certain. Plainly, he had carried stolen property; the poor,
+innocent fellow's conversation with Hollams showed that, as, in fact, did
+the sum, five pounds, paid to him by way of 'regulars,' or customary toll,
+from the plunder of services of carriage. Hollams obviously took Leamy for
+a criminal friend of Wilks', because of his use of the thieves'
+expressions 'sparks' and 'regulars,' and suggested, in terms which Leamy
+misunderstood, that he should sell any plunder he might obtain to himself,
+Hollams. Altogether it would have been very curious if the plunder were
+_not_ that from Radcot Hall, especially as no other robbery had been
+reported at the time.
+
+"Now, among the jewels taken, only one was of a very pre-eminent
+value--the famous ruby. It was scarcely likely that Hollams would go to so
+much trouble and risk, attempting to drug, injuring, waylaying, and
+burgling the rooms of the unfortunate Leamy, for a jewel of small
+value--for any jewel, in fact, but the ruby. So that I felt a pretty
+strong presumption, at all events, that it was the ruby Hollams was after.
+Leamy had not had it, I was convinced, from his tale and his manner, and
+from what I judged of the man himself. The only other person was Wilks,
+and certainly he had a temptation to keep this to himself, and avoid, if
+possible, sharing with his London director, or principal; while the
+carriage of the bag by the Irishman gave him a capital opportunity to put
+suspicion on him, with the results seen. The most daring of Hollams'
+attacks on Leamy was doubtless the attempted maiming or killing at the
+railway station, so as to be able, in the character of a medical man, to
+search his pockets. He was probably desperate at the time, having, I have
+no doubt, been following Leamy about all day at the Crystal Palace without
+finding an opportunity to get at his pockets.
+
+"The struggle and flight of Wilks from Hollams' confirmed my previous
+impressions. Hollams, finally satisfied that very morning that Leamy
+certainly had not the jewel, either on his person or at his lodging, and
+knowing, from having so closely watched him, that he had been nowhere
+where it could be disposed of, concluded that Wilks was cheating him, and
+attempted to extort the ruby from him by the aid of another ruffian and a
+pistol. The rest of my way was plain. Wilks, I knew, would seize the
+opportunity of Hollams' being safely locked up to get at and dispose of
+the ruby. I supplied him with funds and left him to lead us to his
+hiding-place. He did it, and I think that's all."
+
+"He must have walked straight away from my house to the churchyard," Sir
+Valentine remarked, "to hide that pendant. That was fairly cool."
+
+"Only a cool hand could carry out such a robbery single-handed," Hewitt
+answered. "I expect his tools were in the bag that Leamy carried, as well
+as the jewels. They must have been a small and neat set."
+
+They were. We ascertained on our return to town the next day that the bag,
+with all its contents intact, including the tools, had been taken by the
+police at their surprise visit to No. 8 Gold Street, as well as much other
+stolen property.
+
+Hollams and Wilks each got very wholesome doses of penal servitude, to the
+intense delight of Mick Leamy. Leamy himself, by the by, is still to be
+seen, clad in a noble uniform, guarding the door of a well-known London
+restaurant. He has not had any more five-pound notes for carrying bags,
+but knows London too well now to expect it.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY.
+
+It is now a fair number of years back since the loss of the famous Stanway
+Cameo made its sensation, and the only person who had the least interest
+in keeping the real facts of the case secret has now been dead for some
+time, leaving neither relatives nor other representatives. Therefore no
+harm will be done in making the inner history of the case public; on the
+contrary, it will afford an opportunity of vindicating the professional
+reputation of Hewitt, who is supposed to have completely failed to make
+anything of the mystery surrounding the case. At the present time
+connoisseurs in ancient objects of art are often heard regretfully to
+wonder whether the wonderful cameo, so suddenly discovered and so quickly
+stolen, will ever again be visible to the public eye. Now this question
+need be asked no longer.
+
+The cameo, as may be remembered from the many descriptions published at
+the time, was said to be absolutely the finest extant. It was a sardonyx
+of three strata--one of those rare sardonyx cameos in which it has been
+possible for the artist to avail himself of three different colors of
+superimposed stone--the lowest for the ground and the two others for the
+middle and high relief of the design. In size it was, for a cameo,
+immense, measuring seven and a half inches by nearly six. In subject it
+was similar to the renowned Gonzaga Cameo--now the property of the Czar of
+Russia--a male and a female head with imperial insignia; but in this case
+supposed to represent Tiberius Claudius and Messalina. Experts considered
+it probably to be the work of Athenion, a famous gem-cutter of the first
+Christian century, whose most notable other work now extant is a smaller
+cameo, with a mythological subject, preserved in the Vatican.
+
+The Stanway Cameo had been discovered in an obscure Italian village by one
+of those traveling agents who scour all Europe for valuable antiquities
+and objects of art. This man had hurried immediately to London with his
+prize, and sold it to Mr. Claridge of St. James Street, eminent as a
+dealer in such objects. Mr. Claridge, recognizing the importance and value
+of the article, lost no opportunity of making its existence known, and
+very soon the Claudius Cameo, as it was at first usually called, was as
+famous as any in the world. Many experts in ancient art examined it, and
+several large bids were made for its purchase.
+
+In the end it was bought by the Marquis of Stanway for five thousand
+pounds for the purpose of presentation to the British Museum. The marquis
+kept the cameo at his town house for a few days, showing it to his
+friends, and then returned it to Mr. Claridge to be finally and carefully
+cleaned before passing into the national collection. Two nights after Mr.
+Claridge's premises were broken into and the cameo stolen.
+
+Such, in outline, was the generally known history of the Stanway Cameo.
+The circumstances of the burglary in detail were these: Mr. Claridge had
+himself been the last to leave the premises at about eight in the evening,
+at dusk, and had locked the small side door as usual. His assistant, Mr.
+Cutler, had left an hour and a half earlier. When Mr. Claridge left,
+everything was in order, and the policeman on fixed-point duty just
+opposite, who bade Mr. Claridge good-evening as he left, saw nothing
+suspicious during the rest of his term of duty, nor did his successors at
+the point throughout the night.
+
+In the morning, however, Mr. Cutler, the assistant, who arrived first,
+soon after nine o'clock, at once perceived that something unlooked-for had
+happened. The door, of which he had a key, was still fastened, and had not
+been touched; but in the room behind the shop Mr. Claridge's private desk
+had been broken open, and the contents turned out in confusion. The door
+leading on to the staircase had also been forced. Proceeding up the
+stairs, Mr. Cutler found another door open, leading from the top landing
+to a small room; this door had been opened by the simple expedient of
+unscrewing and taking off the lock, which had been on the inside. In the
+ceiling of this room was a trap-door, and this was six or eight inches
+open, the edge resting on the half-wrenched-off bolt, which had been torn
+away when the trap was levered open from the outside.
+
+Plainly, then, this was the path of the thief or thieves. Entrance had
+been made through the trap-door, two more doors had been opened, and then
+the desk had been ransacked. Mr. Cutler afterward explained that at this
+time he had no precise idea what had been stolen, and did not know where
+the cameo had been left on the previous evening. Mr. Claridge had himself
+undertaken the cleaning, and had been engaged on it, the assistant said,
+when he left.
+
+There was no doubt, however, after Mr. Claridge's arrival at ten
+o'clock--the cameo was gone. Mr. Claridge, utterly confounded at his loss,
+explained incoherently, and with curses on his own carelessness, that he
+had locked the precious article in his desk on relinquishing work on it
+the previous evening, feeling rather tired, and not taking the trouble to
+carry it as far as the safe in another part of the house.
+
+The police were sent for at once, of course, and every investigation made,
+Mr. Claridge offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the recovery of
+the cameo. The affair was scribbled off at large in the earliest editions
+of the evening papers, and by noon all the world was aware of the
+extraordinary theft of the Stanway Cameo, and many people were discussing
+the probabilities of the case, with very indistinct ideas of what a
+sardonyx cameo precisely was.
+
+It was in the afternoon of this day that Lord Stanway called on Martin
+Hewitt. The marquis was a tall, upstanding man of spare figure and active
+habits, well known as a member of learned societies and a great patron of
+art. He hurried into Hewitt's private room as soon as his name had been
+announced, and, as soon as Hewitt had given him a chair, plunged into
+business.
+
+"Probably you already guess my business with you, Mr. Hewitt--you have
+seen the early evening papers? Just so; then I needn't tell you again what
+you already know. My cameo is gone, and I badly want it back. Of course
+the police are hard at work at Claridge's, but I'm not quite satisfied. I
+have been there myself for two or three hours, and can't see that they
+know any more about it than I do myself. Then, of course, the police,
+naturally and properly enough from their point of view, look first to find
+the criminal, regarding the recovery of the property almost as a secondary
+consideration. Now, from _my_ point of view, the chief consideration is
+the property. Of course I want the thief caught, if possible, and properly
+punished; but still more I want the cameo."
+
+"Certainly it is a considerable loss. Five thousand pounds----"
+
+"Ah, but don't misunderstand me! It isn't the monetary value of the thing
+that I regret. As a matter of fact, I am indemnified for that already.
+Claridge has behaved most honorably--more than honorably. Indeed, the
+first intimation I had of the loss was a check from him for five thousand
+pounds, with a letter assuring me that the restoration to me of the amount
+I had paid was the least he could do to repair the result of what he
+called his unpardonable carelessness. Legally, I'm not sure that I could
+demand anything of him, unless I could prove very flagrant neglect indeed
+to guard against theft."
+
+"Then I take it, Lord Stanway," Hewitt observed, "that you much prefer the
+cameo to the money?"
+
+"Certainly. Else I should never have been willing to pay the money for the
+cameo. It was an enormous price--perhaps much above the market value, even
+for such a valuable thing--but I was particularly anxious that it should
+not go out of the country. Our public collections here are not so
+fortunate as they should be in the possession of the very finest examples
+of that class of work. In short, I had determined on the cameo, and,
+fortunately, happen to be able to carry out determinations of that sort
+without regarding an extra thousand pounds or so as an obstacle. So that,
+you see, what I want is not the value, but the thing itself. Indeed, I
+don't think I can possibly keep the money Claridge has sent me; the affair
+is more his misfortune than his fault. But I shall say nothing about
+returning it for a little while; it may possibly have the effect of
+sharpening everybody in the search."
+
+"Just so. Do I understand that you would like me to look into the case
+independently, on your behalf?"
+
+"Exactly. I want you, if you can, to approach the matter entirely from my
+point of view--your sole object being to find the cameo. Of course, if you
+happen on the thief as well, so much the better. Perhaps, after all,
+looking for the one is the same thing as looking for the other?"
+
+"Not always; but usually it is, or course; even if they are not together,
+they certainly _have_ been at one time, and to have one is a very long
+step toward having the other. Now, to begin with, is anybody suspected?"
+
+"Well, the police are reserved, but I believe the fact is they've nothing
+to say. Claridge won't admit that he suspects any one, though he believes
+that whoever it was must have watched him yesterday evening through the
+back window of his room, and must have seen him put the cameo away in his
+desk; because the thief would seem to have gone straight to the place. But
+I half fancy that, in his inner mind, he is inclined to suspect one of two
+people. You see, a robbery of this sort is different from others. That
+cameo would never be stolen, I imagine, with the view of its being
+sold--it is much too famous a thing; a man might as well walk about
+offering to sell the Tower of London. There are only a very few people who
+buy such things, and every one of them knows all about it. No dealer would
+touch it; he could never even show it, much less sell it, without being
+called to account. So that it really seems more likely that it has been
+taken by somebody who wishes to keep it for mere love of the thing--a
+collector, in fact--who would then have to keep it secretly at home, and
+never let a soul besides himself see it, living in the consciousness that
+at his death it must be found and this theft known; unless, indeed, an
+ordinary vulgar burglar has taken it without knowing its value."
+
+"That isn't likely," Hewitt replied. "An ordinary burglar, ignorant of its
+value, wouldn't have gone straight to the cameo and have taken it in
+preference to many other things of more apparent worth, which must be
+lying near in such a place as Claridge's."
+
+"True--I suppose he wouldn't. Although the police seem to think that the
+breaking in is clearly the work of a regular criminal--from the
+jimmy-marks, you know, and so on."
+
+"Well, but what of the two people you think Mr. Claridge suspects?"
+
+"Of course I can't say that he does suspect them--I only fancied from his
+tone that it might be possible; he himself insists that he can't, in
+justice, suspect anybody. One of these men is Hahn, the traveling agent
+who sold him the cameo. This man's character does not appear to be
+absolutely irreproachable; no dealer trusts him very far. Of course
+Claridge doesn't say what he paid him for the cameo; these dealers are
+very reticent about their profits, which I believe are as often something
+like five hundred per cent as not. But it seems Hahn bargained to have
+something extra, depending on the amount Claridge could sell the carving
+for. According to the appointment he should have turned up this morning,
+but he hasn't been seen, and nobody seems to know exactly where he is."
+
+"Yes; and the other person?"
+
+"Well, I scarcely like mentioning him, because he is certainly a
+gentleman, and I believe, in the ordinary way, quite incapable of anything
+in the least degree dishonorable; although, of course, they say a
+collector has no conscience in the matter of his own particular hobby, and
+certainly Mr. Wollett is as keen a collector as any man alive. He lives in
+chambers in the next turning past Claridge's premises--can, in fact, look
+into Claridge's back windows if he likes. He examined the cameo several
+times before I bought it, and made several high offers--appeared, in fact,
+very anxious indeed to get it. After I had bought it he made, I
+understand, some rather strong remarks about people like myself 'spoiling
+the market' by paying extravagant prices, and altogether cut up 'crusty,'
+as they say, at losing the specimen." Lord Stanway paused a few seconds,
+and then went on: "I'm not sure that I ought to mention Mr. Woollett's
+name for a moment in connection with such a matter; I am personally
+perfectly certain that he is as incapable of anything like theft as
+myself. But I am telling you all I know."
+
+"Precisely. I can't know too much in a case like this. It can do no harm
+if I know all about fifty innocent people, and may save me from the risk
+of knowing nothing about the thief. Now, let me see: Mr. Wollett's rooms,
+you say, are near Mr. Claridge's place of business? Is there any means of
+communication between the roofs?"
+
+"Yes, I am told that it is perfectly possible to get from one place to the
+other by walking along the leads."
+
+"Very good! Then, unless you can think of any other information that may
+help me, I think, Lord Stanway, I will go at once and look at the place."
+
+"Do, by all means. I think I'll come back with you. Somehow, I don't like
+to feel idle in the matter, though I suppose I can't do much. As to more
+information, I don't think there is any."
+
+"In regard to Mr. Claridge's assistant, now: Do you know anything of him?"
+
+"Only that he has always seemed a very civil and decent sort of man.
+Honest, I should say, or Claridge wouldn't have kept him so many
+years--there are a good many valuable things about at Claridge's. Besides,
+the man has keys of the place himself, and, even if he were a thief, he
+wouldn't need to go breaking in through the roof."
+
+"So that," said Hewitt, "we have, directly connected with this cameo,
+besides yourself, these people: Mr. Claridge, the dealer; Mr. Cutler, the
+assistant in Mr. Claridge's business; Hahn, who sold the article to
+Claridge, and Mr. Woollett, who made bids for it. These are all?"
+
+"All that I know of. Other gentlemen made bids, I believe, but I don't
+know them."
+
+"Take these people in their order. Mr. Claridge is out of the question, as
+a dealer with a reputation to keep up would be, even if he hadn't
+immediately sent you this five thousand pounds--more than the market
+value, I understand, of the cameo. The assistant is a reputable man,
+against whom nothing is known, who would never need to break in, and who
+must understand his business well enough to know that he could never
+attempt to sell the missing stone without instant detection. Hahn is a man
+of shady antecedents, probably clever enough to know as well as anybody
+how to dispose of such plunder--if it be possible to dispose of it at all;
+also, Hahn hasn't been to Claridge's to-day, although he had an
+appointment to take money. Lastly, Mr. Woollett is a gentleman of the most
+honorable record, but a perfectly rabid collector, who had made every
+effort to secure the cameo before you bought it; who, moreover, could have
+seen Mr. Claridge working in his back room, and who has perfectly easy
+access to Mr. Claridge's roof. If we find it can't be none of these, then
+we must look where circumstances indicate."
+
+There was unwonted excitement at Mr. Claridge's place when Hewitt and his
+client arrived. It was a dull old building, and in the windows there was
+never more show than an odd blue china vase or two, or, mayhap, a few old
+silver shoe-buckles and a curious small sword. Nine men out of ten would
+have passed it without a glance; but the tenth at least would probably
+know it for a place famous through the world for the number and value of
+the old and curious objects of art that had passed through it.
+
+On this day two or three loiterers, having heard of the robbery, extracted
+what gratification they might from staring at nothing between the railings
+guarding the windows. Within, Mr. Claridge, a brisk, stout, little old
+man, was talking earnestly to a burly police-inspector in uniform, and Mr.
+Cutler, who had seized the opportunity to attempt amateur detective work
+on his own account, was groveling perseveringly about the floor, among old
+porcelain and loose pieces of armor, in the futile hope of finding any
+clue that the thieves might have considerately dropped.
+
+Mr. Claridge came forward eagerly.
+
+"The leather case has been found, I am pleased to be able to tell you,
+Lord Stanway, since you left."
+
+"Empty, of course?"
+
+"Unfortunately, yes. It had evidently been thrown away by the thief behind
+a chimney-stack a roof or two away, where the police have found it. But it
+is a clue, of course."
+
+"Ah, then this gentleman will give me his opinion of it," Lord Stanway
+said, turning to Hewitt. "This, Mr. Claridge, is Mr. Martin Hewitt, who
+has been kind enough to come with me here at a moment's notice. With the
+police on the one hand and Mr. Hewitt on the other we shall certainly
+recover that cameo, if it is to be recovered, I think."
+
+Mr. Claridge bowed, and beamed on Hewitt through his spectacles. "I'm very
+glad Mr. Hewitt has come," he said. "Indeed, I had already decided to give
+the police till this time to-morrow, and then, if they had found nothing,
+to call in Mr. Hewitt myself."
+
+Hewitt bowed in his turn, and then asked: "Will you let me see the various
+breakages? I hope they have not been disturbed."
+
+"Nothing whatever has been disturbed. Do exactly as seems best. I need
+scarcely say that everything here is perfectly at your disposal. You know
+all the circumstances, of course?"
+
+"In general, yes. I suppose I am right in the belief that you have no
+resident housekeeper?"
+
+"No," Claridge replied, "I haven't. I had one housekeeper who sometimes
+pawned my property in the evening, and then another who used to break my
+most valuable china, till I could never sleep or take a moment's ease at
+home for fear my stock was being ruined here. So I gave up resident
+housekeepers. I felt some confidence in doing it because of the policeman
+who is always on duty opposite."
+
+"Can I see the broken desk?"
+
+Mr. Claridge led the way into the room behind the shop. The desk was
+really a sort of work-table, with a lifting top and a lock. The top had
+been forced roughly open by some instrument which had been pushed in below
+it and used as a lever, so that the catch of the lock was torn away.
+Hewitt examined the damaged parts and the marks of the lever, and then
+looked out at the back window.
+
+"There are several windows about here," he remarked, "from which it might
+be possible to see into this room. Do you know any of the people who live
+behind them?"
+
+"Two or three I know," Mr. Claridge answered, "but there are two
+windows--the pair almost immediately before us--belonging to a room or
+office which is to let. Any stranger might get in there and watch."
+
+"Do the roofs above any of those windows communicate in any way with
+yours?"
+
+"None of those directly opposite. Those at the left do; you may walk all
+the way along the leads."
+
+"And whose windows are they?"
+
+Mr. Claridge hesitated. "Well," he said, "they're Mr. Woollett's, an
+excellent customer of mine. But he's a gentleman, and--well, I really
+think it's absurd to suspect him."
+
+"In a case like this," Hewitt answered, "one must disregard nothing but
+the impossible. Somebody--whether Mr. Woollett himself or another
+person--could possibly have seen into this room from those windows, and
+equally possibly could have reached this room from that one. Therefore we
+must not forget Mr. Woollett. Have any of your neighbors been burgled
+during the night? I mean that strangers anxious to get at your trap-door
+would probably have to begin by getting into some other house close by, so
+as to reach your roof."
+
+"No," Mr. Claridge replied; "there has been nothing of that sort. It was
+the first thing the police ascertained."
+
+Hewitt examined the broken door and then made his way up the stairs with
+the others. The unscrewed lock of the door of the top back-room required
+little examination. In the room below the trap-door was a dusty table on
+which stood a chair, and at the other side of the table sat
+Detective-Inspector Plummer, whom Hewitt knew very well, and who bade him
+"good-day" and then went on with his docket.
+
+"This chair and table were found as they are now, I take it?" Hewitt
+asked.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Claridge; "the thieves, I should think, dropped in through
+the trap-door, after breaking it open, and had to place this chair where
+it is to be able to climb back."
+
+Hewitt scrambled up through the trap-way and examined it from the top. The
+door was hung on long external barn-door hinges, and had been forced open
+in a similar manner to that practiced on the desk. A jimmy had been pushed
+between the frame and the door near the bolt, and the door had been pried
+open, the bolt being torn away from the screws in the operation.
+
+Presently Inspector Plummer, having finished his docket, climbed up to the
+roof after Hewitt, and the two together went to the spot, close under a
+chimney-stack on the next roof but one, where the case had been found.
+Plummer produced the case, which he had in his coat-tail pocket, for
+Hewitt's inspection.
+
+"I don't see anything particular about it; do you?" he said. "It shows us
+the way they went, though, being found just here."
+
+"Well, yes," Hewitt said; "if we kept on in this direction, we should be
+going toward Mr. Woollett's house, and _his_ trap-door, shouldn't we!"
+
+The inspector pursed his lips, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. "Of
+course we haven't waited till now to find that out," he said.
+
+"No, of course. And, as you say, I didn't think there is much to be
+learned from this leather case. It is almost new, and there isn't a mark
+on it." And Hewitt handed it back to the inspector.
+
+"Well," said Plummer, as he returned the case to his pocket, "what's your
+opinion?"
+
+"It's rather an awkward case."
+
+"Yes, it is. Between ourselves--I don't mind telling you--I'm having a
+sharp lookout kept over there"--Plummer jerked his head in the direction
+of Mr. Woollett's chambers--"because the robbery's an unusual one. There's
+only two possible motives--the sale of the cameo or the keeping of it. The
+sale's out of the question, as you know; the thing's only salable to those
+who would collar the thief at once, and who wouldn't have the thing in
+their places now for anything. So that it must be taken to keep, and
+that's a thing nobody but the maddest of collectors would do, just such
+persons as--" and the inspector nodded again toward Mr. Woollett's
+quarters. "Take that with the other circumstances," he added, "and I think
+you'll agree it's worth while looking a little farther that way. Of course
+some of the work--taking off the lock and so on--looks rather like a
+regular burglar, but it's just possible that any one badly wanting the
+cameo would like to hire a man who was up to the work."
+
+"Yes, it's possible."
+
+"Do you know anything of Hahn, the agent?" Plummer asked, a moment later.
+
+"No, I don't. Have you found him yet?"
+
+"I haven't yet, but I'm after him. I've found he was at Charing Cross a
+day or two ago, booking a ticket for the Continent. That and his failing
+to turn up to-day seem to make it worth while not to miss _him_ if we can
+help it. He isn't the sort of man that lets a chance of drawing a bit of
+money go for nothing."
+
+They returned to the room. "Well," said Lord Stanway, "what's the result
+of the consultation? We've been waiting here very patiently, while you two
+clever men have been discussing the matter on the roof."
+
+On the wall just beneath the trap-door a very dusty old tall hat hung on a
+peg. This Hewitt took down and examined very closely, smearing his fingers
+with the dust from the inside lining. "Is this one of your valuable and
+crusted old antiques?" he asked, with a smile, of Mr. Claridge.
+
+"That's only an old hat that I used to keep here for use in bad weather,"
+Mr. Claridge said, with some surprise at the question. "I haven't touched
+it for a year or more."
+
+"Oh, then it couldn't have been left here by your last night's visitor,"
+Hewitt replied, carelessly replacing it on the hook. "You left here at
+eight last night, I think?"
+
+"Eight exactly--or within a minute or two."
+
+"Just so. I think I'll look at the room on the opposite side of the
+landing, if you'll let me."
+
+"Certainly, if you'd like to," Claridge replied; "but they haven't been
+there--it is exactly as it was left. Only a lumber-room, you see," he
+concluded, flinging the door open.
+
+A number of partly broken-up packing-cases littered about this room, with
+much other rubbish. Hewitt took the lid of one of the newest-looking
+packing-cases, and glanced at the address label. Then he turned to a rusty
+old iron box that stood against a wall. "I should like to see behind
+this," he said, tugging at it with his hands. "It is heavy and dirty. Is
+there a small crowbar about the house, or some similar lever?"
+
+Mr. Claridge shook his head. "Haven't such a thing in the place," he said.
+
+"Never mind," Hewitt replied, "another time will do to shift that old box,
+and perhaps, after all, there's little reason for moving it. I will just
+walk round to the police-station, I think, and speak to the constables who
+were on duty opposite during the night. I think, Lord Stanway, I have seen
+all that is necessary here."
+
+"I suppose," asked Mr. Claridge, "it is too soon yet to ask if you have
+formed any theory in the matter?"
+
+"Well--yes, it is," Hewitt answered. "But perhaps I may be able to
+surprise you in an hour or two; but that I don't promise. By the by," he
+added suddenly, "I suppose you're sure the trap-door was bolted last
+night?"
+
+"Certainly," Mr. Claridge answered, smiling. "Else how could the bolt have
+been broken? As a matter of fact, I believe the trap hasn't been opened
+for months. Mr. Cutler, do you remember when the trap-door was last
+opened?"
+
+Mr. Cutler shook his head. "Certainly not for six months," he said.
+
+"Ah, very well; it's not very important," Hewitt replied.
+
+As they reached the front shop a fiery-faced old gentleman bounced in at
+the street door, stumbling over an umbrella that stood in a dark corner,
+and kicking it three yards away.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean," he roared at Mr. Claridge, "by sending these
+police people smelling about my rooms and asking questions of my servants?
+What do you mean, sir, by treating me as a thief? Can't a gentleman come
+into this place to look at an article without being suspected of stealing
+it, when it disappears through your wretched carelessness? I'll ask my
+solicitor, sir, if there isn't a remedy for this sort of thing. And if I
+catch another of your spy fellows on my staircase, or crawling about my
+roof, I'll--I'll shoot him!"
+
+"Really, Mr. Woollett----" began Mr. Claridge, somewhat abashed, but the
+angry old man would hear nothing.
+
+"Don't talk to me, sir; you shall talk to my solicitor. And am I to
+understand, my lord"--turning to Lord Stanway--"that these things are
+being done with your approval?"
+
+"Whatever is being done," Lord Stanway answered, "is being done by the
+police on their own responsibility, and entirely without prompting, I
+believe, by Mr. Claridge--certainly without a suggestion of any sort from
+myself. I think that the personal opinion of Mr. Claridge--certainly my
+own--is that anything like a suspicion of your position in this wretched
+matter is ridiculous. And if you will only consider the matter calmly----"
+
+"Consider it calmly? Imagine yourself considering such a thing calmly,
+Lord Stanway. I _won't_ consider it calmly. I'll--I'll--I won't have it.
+And if I find another man on my roof, I'll pitch him off!" And Mr.
+Woollett bounced into the street again.
+
+"Mr. Woollett is annoyed," Hewitt observed, with a smile. "I'm afraid
+Plummer has a clumsy assistant somewhere."
+
+Mr. Claridge said nothing, but looked rather glum, for Mr. Woollett was a
+most excellent customer.
+
+Lord Stanwood and Hewitt walked slowly down the street, Hewitt staring at
+the pavement in profound thought. Once or twice Lord Stanway glanced at
+his face, but refrained from disturbing him. Presently, however, he
+observed: "You seem, at least, Mr. Hewitt, to have noticed something that
+has set you thinking. Does it look like a clue?"
+
+Hewitt came out of his cogitation at once. "A clue?" he said; "the case
+bristles with clues. The extraordinary thing to me is that Plummer,
+usually a smart man, doesn't seem to have seen one of them. He must be out
+of sorts, I'm afraid. But the case is decidedly a most remarkable one."
+
+"Remarkable in what particular way?"
+
+"In regard to motive. Now it would seem, as Plummer was saying to me just
+now on the roof, that there were only two possible motives for such a
+robbery. Either the man who took all this trouble and risk to break into
+Claridge's place must have desired to sell the cameo at a good price, or
+he must have desired to keep it for himself, being a lover of such things.
+But neither of these has been the actual motive."
+
+"Perhaps he thinks he can extort a good sum from me by way of ransom?"
+
+"No, it isn't that. Nor is it jealousy, nor spite, nor anything of that
+kind. I know the motive, I _think_--but I wish we could get hold of Hahn.
+I will shut myself up alone and turn it over in my mind for half an hour
+presently."
+
+"Meanwhile, what I want to know is, apart from all your professional
+subtleties--which I confess I can't understand--can you get back the
+cameo?"
+
+"That," said Hewitt, stopping at the corner of the street, "I am rather
+afraid I can not--nor anybody else. But I am pretty sure I know the
+thief."
+
+"Then surely that will lead you to the cameo?"
+
+"It _may_, of course; but, then, it is just possible that by this evening
+you may not want to have it back, after all."
+
+Lord Stanway stared in amazement.
+
+"Not want to have it back!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course I shall want to
+have it back. I don't understand you in the least; you talk in conundrums.
+Who is the thief you speak of?"
+
+"I think, Lord Stanway," Hewitt said, "that perhaps I had better not say
+until I have quite finished my inquiries, in case of mistakes. The case is
+quite an extraordinary one, and of quite a different character from what
+one would at first naturally imagine, and I must be very careful to guard
+against the possibility of error. I have very little fear of a mistake,
+however, and I hope I may wait on you in a few hours at Piccadilly with
+news. I have only to see the policemen."
+
+"Certainly, come whenever you please. But why see the policemen? They have
+already most positively stated that they saw nothing whatever suspicious
+in the house or near it."
+
+"I shall not ask them anything at all about the house," Hewitt responded.
+"I shall just have a little chat with them--about the weather." And with a
+smiling bow he turned away, while Lord Stanway stood and gazed after him,
+with an expression that implied a suspicion that his special detective was
+making a fool of him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In rather more than an hour Hewitt was back in Mr. Claridge's shop. "Mr.
+Claridge," he said, "I think I must ask you one or two questions in
+private. May I see you in your own room?"
+
+They went there at once, and Hewitt, pulling a chair before the window,
+sat down with his back to the light. The dealer shut the door, and sat
+opposite him, with the light full in his face.
+
+"Mr. Claridge," Hewitt proceeded slowly, "_when did you first find that
+Lord Stanway's cameo was a forgery_?"
+
+Claridge literally bounced in his chair. His face paled, but he managed to
+stammer sharply: "What--what--what d'you mean? Forgery? Do you mean to say
+I sell forgeries? Forgery? It wasn't a forgery!"
+
+"Then," continued Hewitt in the same deliberate tone, watching the other's
+face the while, "if it wasn't a forgery, _why did you destroy it and burst
+your trap-door and desk to imitate a burglary_?"
+
+The sweat stood thick on the dealer's face, and he gasped. But he
+struggled hard to keep his faculties together, and ejaculated hoarsely:
+"Destroy it? What--what--I didn't--didn't destroy it!"
+
+"Threw it into the river, then--don't prevaricate about details."
+
+"No--no--it's a lie! Who says that? Go away! You're insulting me!"
+Claridge almost screamed.
+
+"Come, come, Mr. Claridge," Hewitt said more placably, for he had gained
+his point; "don't distress yourself, and don't attempt to deceive me--you
+can't, I assure you. I know everything you did before you left here last
+night--everything."
+
+Claridge's face worked painfully. Once or twice he appeared to be on the
+point of returning an indignant reply, but hesitated, and finally broke
+down altogether.
+
+"Don't expose me, Mr. Hewitt!" he pleaded; "I beg you won't expose me! I
+haven't harmed a soul but myself. I've paid Lord Stanway every penny back,
+and I never knew the thing was a forgery till I began to clean it. I'm an
+old man, Mr. Hewitt, and my professional reputation has been spotless
+until now. I beg you won't expose me."
+
+Hewitt's voice softened. "Don't make an unnecessary trouble of it," he
+said. "I see a decanter on your sideboard--let me give you a little brandy
+and water. Come, there's nothing criminal, I believe, in a man's breaking
+open his own desk, or his own trap-door, for that matter. Of course I'm
+acting for Lord Stanway in this affair, and I must, in duty, report to him
+without reserve. But Lord Stanway is a gentleman, and I'll undertake he'll
+do nothing inconsiderate of your feelings, if you're disposed to be frank.
+Let us talk the affair over; tell me about it."
+
+"It was that swindler Hahn who deceived me in the beginning," Claridge
+said. "I have never made a mistake with a cameo before, and I never
+thought so close an imitation was possible. I examined it most carefully,
+and was perfectly satisfied, and many experts examined it afterward, and
+were all equally deceived. I felt as sure as I possibly could feel that I
+had bought one of the finest, if not actually the finest, cameos known to
+exist. It was not until after it had come back from Lord Stanway's, and I
+was cleaning it the evening before last, that in course of my work it
+became apparent that the thing was nothing but a consummately clever
+forgery. It was made of three layers of molded glass, nothing more nor
+less. But the glass was treated in a way I had never before known of, and
+the surface had been cunningly worked on till it defied any ordinary
+examination. Some of the glass imitation cameos made in the latter part of
+the last century, I may tell you, are regarded as marvelous pieces of
+work, and, indeed, command very fair prices, but this was something quite
+beyond any of those.
+
+"I was amazed and horrified. I put the thing away and went home. All that
+night I lay awake in a state of distraction, quite unable to decide what
+to do. To let the cameo go out of my possession was impossible. Sooner or
+later the forgery would be discovered, and my reputation--the highest in
+these matters in this country, I may safely claim, and the growth of
+nearly fifty years of honest application and good judgment--this
+reputation would be gone forever. But without considering this, there was
+the fact that I had taken five thousand pounds of Lord Stanway's money for
+a mere piece of glass, and that money I must, in mere common honesty as
+well as for my own sake, return. But how? The name of the Stanway Cameo
+had become a household word, and to confess that the whole thing was a
+sham would ruin my reputation and destroy all confidence--past, present,
+and future--in me and in my transactions. Either way spelled ruin. Even if
+I confided in Lord Stanway privately, returned his money, and destroyed
+the cameo, what then? The sudden disappearance of an article so famous
+would excite remark at once. It had been presented to the British Museum,
+and if it never appeared in that collection, and no news were to be got of
+it, people would guess at the truth at once. To make it known that I
+myself had been deceived would have availed nothing. It is my business
+_not_ to be deceived; and to have it known that my most expensive
+specimens might be forgeries would equally mean ruin, whether I sold them
+cunningly as a rogue or ignorantly as a fool. Indeed, my pride, my
+reputation as a connoisseur, is a thing near to my heart, and it would be
+an unspeakable humiliation to me to have it known that I had been imposed
+on by such a forgery. What could I do? Every expedient seemed useless but
+one--the one I adopted. It was not straightforward, I admit; but, oh! Mr.
+Hewitt, consider the temptation--and remember that it couldn't do a soul
+any harm. No matter who might be suspected, I knew there could not
+possibly be evidence to make them suffer. All the next day--yesterday--I
+was anxiously worrying out the thing in my mind and carefully devising
+the--the trick, I'm afraid you'll call it, that you by some extraordinary
+means have seen through. It seemed the only thing--what else was there?
+More I needn't tell you; you know it. I have only now to beg that you will
+use your best influence with Lord Stanway to save me from public derision
+and exposure. I will do anything--pay anything--anything but exposure, at
+my age, and with my position."
+
+"Well, you see," Hewitt replied thoughtfully, "I've no doubt Lord Stanway
+will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to
+save you in the circumstances; though you must remember that you _have_
+done some harm--you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest
+man. But as to reputation, I've a professional reputation of my own. If I
+help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed
+in _my_ part of the business."
+
+"But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt. Consider. You are not
+expected--it would be impossible--to succeed invariably; and there are
+only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other
+conspicuous successes----"
+
+"Well, well, we shall see. One thing I don't know, though--whether you
+climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got up
+through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through the
+jamb, so as to bolt it after you."
+
+"There was no available window. I used the string, as you say. My poor
+little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours of
+thought over the question of the trap-door--how to break it open so as to
+leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after I
+had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility of
+suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension. How,
+to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery? Did
+you ever see it?"
+
+"Never. And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to
+express an opinion on it; I'm not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I
+_didn't_ know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I knew
+in the first place was that it was _you_ who had broken into the house. It
+was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain amount of
+thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of the
+question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo again,
+and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway's money. I knew enough of
+your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal of a great
+theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for yourself, when
+you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble and mystery.
+Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first another motive
+seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all this trouble to
+lose five thousand pounds? You had nothing to gain; perhaps you had
+something to save--your professional reputation, for instance. Looking at
+it so, it was plain that you were _suppressing_ the cameo--burking it;
+since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never come to light again.
+That suggested the solution of the mystery at once--you had discovered,
+after the sale, that the cameo was not genuine."
+
+"Yes, yes--I see; but you say you began with the knowledge that I broke
+into the place myself. How did you know that? I can not imagine a
+trace----"
+
+"My dear sir, you left traces everywhere. In the first place, it struck me
+as curious, before I came here, that you had sent off that check for five
+thousand pounds to Lord Stanway an hour or so after the robbery was
+discovered; it looked so much as though you were sure of the cameo never
+coming back, and were in a hurry to avert suspicion. Of course I
+understood that, so far as I then knew the case, you were the most
+unlikely person in the world, and that your eagerness to repay Lord
+Stanway might be the most creditable thing possible. But the point was
+worth remembering, and I remembered it.
+
+"When I came here, I saw suspicious indications in many directions, but
+the conclusive piece of evidence was that old hat hanging below the
+trap-door."
+
+"But I never touched it; I assure you, Mr. Hewitt, I never touched the
+hat; haven't touched it for months----"
+
+"Of course. If you _had_ touched it, I might never have got the clue. But
+we'll deal with the hat presently; that wasn't what struck me at first.
+The trap-door first took my attention. Consider, now: Here was a
+trap-door, most insecurely hung on _external_ hinges; the burglar had a
+screwdriver, for he took off the door-lock below with it. Why, then,
+didn't he take this trap off by the hinges, instead of making a noise and
+taking longer time and trouble to burst the bolt from its fastenings? And
+why, if he were a stranger, was he able to plant his jimmy from the
+outside just exactly opposite the interior bolt? There was only one mark
+on the frame, and that precisely in the proper place.
+
+"After that I saw the leather case. It had not been thrown away, or some
+corner would have shown signs of the fall. It had been put down carefully
+where it was found. These things, however, were of small importance
+compared with the hat. The hat, as you know, was exceedingly thick with
+dust--the accumulation of months. But, on the top side, presented toward
+the trap-door, were a score or so of _raindrop marks_. That was all. They
+were new marks, for there was no dust over them; they had merely had time
+to dry and cake the dust they had fallen on. _Now, there had been no rain
+since a sharp shower just after seven o'clock last night_. At that time
+you, by your own statement, were in the place. You left at eight, and the
+rain was all over at ten minutes or a quarter past seven. The trap-door,
+you also told me, had not been opened for months. The thing was plain.
+You, or somebody who was here when you were, had opened that trap-door
+during, or just before, that shower. I said little then, but went, as soon
+as I had left, to the police-station. There I made perfectly certain that
+there had been no rain during the night by questioning the policemen who
+were on duty outside all the time. There had been none. I knew everything.
+
+"The only other evidence there was pointed with all the rest. There were
+no rain-marks on the leather case; it had been put on the roof as an
+after-thought when there was no rain. A very poor after-thought, let me
+tell you, for no thief would throw away a useful case that concealed his
+booty and protected it from breakage, and throw it away just so as to
+leave a clue as to what direction he had gone in. I also saw, in the
+lumber-room, a number of packing-cases--one with a label dated two days
+back--which had been opened with an iron lever; and yet, when I made an
+excuse to ask for it, you said there was no such thing in the place.
+Inference, you didn't want me to compare it with the marks on the desks
+and doors. That is all, I think."
+
+Mr. Claridge looked dolorously down at the floor. "I'm afraid," he said,
+"that I took an unsuitable rôle when I undertook to rely on my wits to
+deceive men like you. I thought there wasn't a single vulnerable spot in
+my defense, but you walk calmly through it at the first attempt. Why did I
+never think of those raindrops?"
+
+"Come," said Hewitt, with a smile, "that sounds unrepentant. I am going,
+now, to Lord Stanway's. If I were you, I think I should apologize to Mr.
+Woollett in some way."
+
+Lord Stanway, who, in the hour or two of reflection left him after parting
+with Hewitt, had come to the belief that he had employed a man whose mind
+was not always in order, received Hewitt's story with natural
+astonishment. For some time he was in doubt as to whether he would be
+doing right in acquiescing in anything but a straightforward public
+statement of the facts connected with the disappearance of the cameo, but
+in the end was persuaded to let the affair drop, on receiving an assurance
+from Mr. Woollett that he unreservedly accepted the apology offered him by
+Mr. Claridge.
+
+As for the latter, he was at least sufficiently punished in loss of money
+and personal humiliation for his escapade. But the bitterest and last blow
+he sustained when the unblushing Hahn walked smilingly into his office two
+days later to demand the extra payment agreed on in consideration of the
+sale. He had been called suddenly away, he exclaimed, on the day he should
+have come, and hoped his missing the appointment had occasioned no
+inconvenience. As to the robbery of the cameo, of course he was very
+sorry, but "pishness was pishness," and he would be glad of a check for
+the sum agreed on. And the unhappy Claridge was obliged to pay it, knowing
+that the man had swindled him, but unable to open his mouth to say so.
+
+The reward remained on offer for a long time; indeed, it was never
+publicly withdrawn, I believe, even at the time of Claridge's death. And
+several intelligent newspapers enlarged upon the fact that an ordinary
+burglar had completely baffled and defeated the boasted acumen of Mr.
+Martin Hewitt, the well-known private detective.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE.
+
+Very often Hewitt was tempted, by the fascination of some particularly odd
+case, to neglect his other affairs to follow up a matter that from a
+business point of view was of little or no value to him. As a rule, he had
+a sufficient regard for his own interests to resist such temptations, but
+in one curious case, at least, I believe he allowed it largely to
+influence him. It was certainly an extremely odd case--one of those
+affairs that, coming to light at intervals, but more often remaining
+unheard of by the general public, convince one that, after all, there is
+very little extravagance about Mr. R.L. Stevenson's bizarre imaginings of
+doings in London in his "New Arabian Nights." "There is nothing in this
+world that is at all possible," I have often heard Martin Hewitt say,
+"that has not happened or is not happening in London." Certainly he had
+opportunities of knowing.
+
+The case I have referred to occurred some time before my own acquaintance
+with him began--in 1878, in fact. He had called one Monday morning at an
+office in regard to something connected with one of those uninteresting,
+though often difficult, cases which formed, perhaps, the bulk of his
+practice, when he was informed of a most mysterious murder that had taken
+place in another part of the same building on the previous Saturday
+afternoon. Owing to the circumstances of the case, only the vaguest
+account had appeared in the morning papers, and even this, as it chanced,
+Hewitt had not read.
+
+The building was one of a new row in a partly rebuilt street near the
+National Gallery. The whole row had been built by a speculator for the
+purpose of letting out in flats, suites of chambers, and in one or two
+cases, on the ground floors, offices. The rooms had let very well, and to
+desirable tenants, as a rule. The least satisfactory tenant, the
+proprietor reluctantly admitted, was a Mr. Rameau, a negro gentleman,
+single, who had three rooms on the top floor but one of the particular
+building that Hewitt was visiting. His rent was paid regularly, but his
+behavior had produced complaints from other tenants. He got uproariously
+drunk, and screamed and howled in unknown tongues. He fell asleep on the
+staircase, and ladies were afraid to pass. He bawled rough chaff down the
+stairs and along the corridors at butcher-boys and messengers, and played
+on errand-boys brutal practical jokes that ended in police-court
+summonses. He once had a way of sliding down the balusters, shouting: "Ho!
+ho! ho! yah!" as he went, but as he was a big, heavy man, and the
+balusters had been built for different treatment, he had very soon and
+very firmly been requested to stop it. He had plenty of money, and spent
+it freely; but it was generally felt that there was too much of the
+light-hearted savage about him to fit him to live among quiet people.
+
+How much longer the landlord would have stood this sort of thing, Hewitt's
+informant said, was a matter of conjecture, for on the Saturday afternoon
+in question the tenancy had come to a startling full-stop. Rameau had been
+murdered in his room, and the body had, in the most unaccountable fashion,
+been secretly removed from the premises.
+
+The strongest possible suspicion pointed to a man who had been employed in
+shoveling and carrying coals, cleaning windows, and chopping wood for
+several of the buildings, and who had left that very Saturday. The crime
+had, in fact, been committed with this man's chopper, and the man himself
+had been heard, again and again, to threaten Rameau, who, in his brutal
+fashion, had made a butt of him. This man was a Frenchman, Victor Goujon
+by name, who had lost his employment as a watchmaker by reason of an
+injury to his right hand, which destroyed its steadiness, and so he had
+fallen upon evil days and odd jobs.
+
+He was a little man of no great strength, but extraordinarily excitable,
+and the coarse gibes and horse-play of the big negro drove him almost to
+madness. Rameau would often, after some more than ordinarily outrageous
+attack, contemptuously fling Goujon a shilling, which the little
+Frenchman, although wanting a shilling badly enough, would hurl back in
+his face, almost weeping with impotent rage. "Pig! _Canaille_!" he would
+scream. "Dirty pig of Africa! Take your sheelin' to vere you 'ave stole
+it! _Voleur_! Pig!"
+
+There was a tortoise living in the basement, of which Goujon had made
+rather a pet, and the negro would sometimes use this animal as a missile,
+flinging it at the little Frenchman's head. On one such occasion the
+tortoise struck the wall so forcibly as to break its shell, and then
+Goujon seized a shovel and rushed at his tormentor with such blind fury
+that the latter made a bolt of it. These were but a few of the passages
+between Rameau and the fuel-porter, but they illustrate the state of
+feeling between them.
+
+Goujon, after correspondence with a relative in France who offered him
+work, gave notice to leave, which expired on the day of the crime. At
+about three that afternoon a housemaid, proceeding toward Rameau's rooms,
+met Goujon as he was going away. Goujon bade her good-by, and, pointing in
+the direction of Rameau's rooms, said exultantly: "Dere shall be no more
+of the black pig for me; vit 'im I 'ave done for. Zut! I mock me of 'im!
+'E vill never _tracasser_ me no more." And he went away.
+
+The girl went to the outer door of Rameau's rooms, knocked, and got no
+reply. Concluding that the tenant was out, she was about to use her keys,
+when she found that the door was unlocked. She passed through the lobby
+and into the sitting-room, and there fell in a dead faint at the sight
+that met her eyes. Rameau lay with his back across the sofa and his
+head--drooping within an inch of the ground. On the head was a fearful
+gash, and below it was a pool of blood.
+
+The girl must have lain unconscious for about ten minutes. When she came
+to her senses, she dragged herself, terrified, from the room and up to the
+housekeeper's apartments, where, being an excitable and nervous creature,
+she only screamed "Murder!" and immediately fell in a fit of hysterics
+that lasted three-quarters of an hour. When at last she came to herself,
+she told her story, and, the hall-porter having been summoned, Rameau's
+rooms were again approached.
+
+The blood still lay on the floor, and the chopper, with which the crime
+had evidently been committed, rested against the fender; but the body had
+vanished! A search was at once made, but no trace of it could be seen
+anywhere. It seemed impossible that it could have been carried out of the
+building, for the hall-porter must at once have noticed anybody leaving
+with so bulky a burden. Still, in the building it was not to be found.
+
+When Hewitt was informed of these things on Monday, the police were, of
+course, still in possession of Rameau's rooms. Inspector Nettings, Hewitt
+was told, was in charge of the case, and as the inspector was an
+acquaintance of his, and was then in the rooms upstairs, Hewitt went up to
+see him.
+
+Nettings was pleased to see Hewitt, and invited him to look around the
+rooms. "Perhaps you can spot something we have overlooked," he said.
+"Though it's not a case there can be much doubt about."
+
+"You think it's Goujon, don't you?"
+
+"Think? Well, rather! Look here! As soon as we got here on Saturday, we
+found this piece of paper and pin on the floor. We showed it to the
+housemaid, and then she remembered--she was too much upset to think of it
+before--that when she was in the room the paper was laying on the dead
+man's chest--pinned there, evidently. It must have dropped off when they
+removed the body. It's a case of half-mad revenge on Goujon's part,
+plainly. See it; you read French, don't you?"
+
+The paper was a plain, large half-sheet of note-paper, on which a sentence
+in French was scrawled in red ink in a large, clumsy hand, thus:
+
+  _puni par un vengeur de la tortue_.
+
+"_Puni par un vengeur de la tortue_," Hewitt repeated musingly. "'Punished
+by an avenger of the tortoise,' That seems odd."
+
+"Well, rather odd. But you understand the reference, of course. Have they
+told you about Rameau's treatment of Goujon's pet tortoise?"
+
+"I think it was mentioned among his other pranks. But this is an extreme
+revenge for a thing of that sort, and a queer way of announcing it."
+
+"Oh, he's mad--mad with Rameau's continual ragging and baiting," Nettings
+answered. "Anyway, this is a plain indication--plain as though he'd left
+his own signature. Besides, it's in his own language--French. And there's
+his chopper, too."
+
+"Speaking of signatures," Hewitt remarked, "perhaps you have already
+compared this with other specimens of Goujon's writing?"
+
+"I did think of it, but they don't seem to have a specimen to hand, and,
+anyway, it doesn't seem very important. There's 'avenger of the tortoise'
+plain enough, in the man's own language, and that tells everything.
+Besides, handwritings are easily disguised."
+
+"Have you got Goujon?"
+
+"Well, no; we haven't. There seems to be some little difficulty about
+that. But I expect to have him by this time to-morrow. Here comes Mr.
+Styles, the landlord."
+
+Mr. Styles was a thin, querulous, and withered-looking little man, who
+twitched his eyebrows as he spoke, and spoke in short, jerky phrases.
+
+"No news, eh, inspector, eh? eh? Found out nothing else, eh? Terrible
+thing for my property--terrible! Who's your friend?"
+
+Nettings introduced Hewitt.
+
+"Shocking thing this, eh, Mr. Hewitt? Terrible! Comes of having anything
+to do with these blood-thirsty foreigners, eh? New buildings and
+all--character ruined. No one come to live here now, eh? Tenants--noisy
+niggers--murdered by my own servants--terrible! _You_ formed any opinion,
+eh?"
+
+"I dare say I might if I went into the case."
+
+"Yes, yes--same opinion as inspector's, eh? I mean an opinion of your
+own?" The old man scrutinized Hewitt's face sharply.
+
+"If you'd like me to look into the matter----" Hewitt began.
+
+"Eh? Oh, look into it! Well, I can't commission you, you know--matter for
+the police. Mischief's done. Police doing very well, I think--must be
+Goujon. But look about the place, certainly, if you like. If you see
+anything likely to serve _my_ interests, tell me, and--and--perhaps I'll
+employ you, eh, eh? Good-afternoon."
+
+The landlord vanished, and the inspector laughed. "Likes to see what he's
+buying, does Mr. Styles," he said.
+
+Hewitt's first impulse was to walk out of the place at once. But his
+interest in the case had been roused, and he determined, at any rate, to
+examine the rooms, and this he did very minutely. By the side of the lobby
+was a bath-room, and in this was fitted a tip-up wash-basin, which Hewitt
+inspected with particular attention. Then he called the housekeeper, and
+made inquiries about Rameau's clothes and linen. The housekeeper could
+give no idea of how many overcoats or how much linen he had had. He had
+all a negro's love of display, and was continually buying new clothes,
+which, indeed, were lying, hanging, littering, and choking up the bedroom
+in all directions. The housekeeper, however, on Hewitt's inquiring after
+such a garment in particular, did remember one heavy black ulster, which
+Rameau had very rarely worn--only in the coldest weather.
+
+"After the body was discovered," Hewitt asked the housekeeper, "was any
+stranger observed about the place--whether carrying anything or not?"
+
+"No, sir," the housekeeper replied. "There's been particular inquiries
+about that. Of course, after we knew what was wrong and the body was gone,
+nobody was seen, or he'd have been stopped. But the hall-porter says he's
+certain no stranger came or went for half an hour or more before that--the
+time about when the housemaid saw the body and fainted."
+
+At this moment a clerk from the landlord's office arrived and handed
+Nettings a paper. "Here you are," said Nettings to Hewitt; "they've found
+a specimen of Goujon's handwriting at last, if you'd like to see it. I
+don't want it; I'm not a graphologist, and the case is clear enough for me
+anyway."
+
+Hewitt took the paper. "This" he said, "is a different sort of handwriting
+from that on the paper. The red-ink note about the avenger of the tortoise
+is in a crude, large, clumsy, untaught style of writing. This is small,
+neat, and well formed--except that it is a trifle shaky, probably because
+of the hand injury."
+
+"That's nothing," contended Nettings. "handwriting clues are worse than
+useless, as a rule. It's so easy to disguise and imitate writing; and
+besides, if Goujon is such a good penman as you seem to say, why, he could
+all the easier alter his style. Say now yourself, can any fiddling
+question of handwriting get over this thing about 'avenging the
+tortoise'--practically a written confession--to say nothing of the
+chopper, and what he said to the housemaid as he left?"
+
+"Well," said Hewitt, "perhaps not; but we'll see. Meantime"--turning to
+the landlord's clerk--"possibly you will be good enough to tell me one or
+two things. First, what was Goujon's character?"
+
+"Excellent, as far as we know. We never had a complaint about him except
+for little matters of carelessness--leaving coal-scuttles on the
+staircases for people to fall over, losing shovels, and so on. He was
+certainly a bit careless, but, as far as we could see, quite a decent
+little fellow. One would never have thought him capable of committing
+murder for the sake of a tortoise, though he was rather fond of the
+animal."
+
+"The tortoise is dead now, I understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you a lift in this building?"
+
+"Only for coals and heavy parcels. Goujon used to work it, sometimes going
+up and down in it himself with coals, and so on; it goes into the
+basement."
+
+"And are the coals kept under this building?"
+
+"No. The store for the whole row is under the next two houses--the
+basements communicate."
+
+"Do you know Rameau's other name?"
+
+"César Rameau he signed in our agreement."
+
+"Did he ever mention his relations?"
+
+"No. That is to say, he did say something one day when he was very drunk;
+but, of course, it was all rot. Some one told him not to make such a
+row--he was a beastly tenant--and he said he was the best man in the
+place, and his brother was Prime Minister, and all sorts of things. Mere
+drunken rant! I never heard of his saying anything sensible about
+relations. We know nothing of his connections; he came here on a banker's
+reference."
+
+"Thanks. I think that's all I want to ask. You notice," Hewitt proceeded,
+turning to Nettings, "the only ink in this place is scented and violet, and
+the only paper is tinted and scented, too, with a monogram--characteristic
+of a negro with money. The paper that was pinned on Rameau's breast is
+in red ink on common and rather grubby paper, therefore it was written
+somewhere else and brought here. Inference, premeditation."
+
+"Yes, yes. But are you an inch nearer with all these speculations? Can you
+get nearer than I am now without them?"
+
+"Well, perhaps not," Hewitt replied. "I don't profess at this moment to
+know the criminal; you do. I'll concede you that point for the present.
+But you don't offer an opinion as to who removed Rameau's body--which I
+think I know."
+
+"Who was it, then?"
+
+"Come, try and guess that yourself. It wasn't Goujon; I don't mind letting
+you know that. But it was a person quite within your knowledge of the
+case. You've mentioned the person's name more than once."
+
+Nettings stared blankly. "I don't understand you in the least," he said.
+"But, of course, you mean that this mysterious person you speak of as
+having moved the body committed the murder?"
+
+"No, I don't. Nobody could have been more innocent of that."
+
+"Well," Nettings concluded with resignation, "I'm afraid one of us is
+rather thick-headed. What will you do?"
+
+"Interview the person who took away the body," Hewitt replied, with a
+smile.
+
+"But, man alive, why? Why bother about the person if it isn't the
+criminal?"
+
+"Never mind--never mind; probably the person will be a most valuable
+witness."
+
+"Do you mean you think this person--whoever it is--saw the crime?"
+
+"I think it very probable indeed."
+
+"Well, I won't ask you any more. I shall get hold of Goujon; that's simple
+and direct enough for me. I prefer to deal with the heart of the case--the
+murder itself--when there's such clear evidence as I have."
+
+"I shall look a little into that, too, perhaps," Hewitt said, "and, if you
+like, I'll tell you the first thing I shall do."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I shall have a good look at a map of the West Indies, and I advise you to
+do the same. Good-morning."
+
+Nettings stared down the corridor after Hewitt, and continued staring for
+nearly two minutes after he had disappeared. Then he said to the clerk,
+who had remained: "What was he talking about?"
+
+"Don't know," replied the clerk. "Couldn't make head nor tail of it."
+
+"I don't believe there _is_ a head to it," declared Nettings; "nor a tail
+either. He's kidding us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nettings was better than his word, for within two hours of his
+conversation with Hewitt, Goujon was captured and safe in a cab bound for
+Bow Street. He had been stopped at Newhaven in the morning on his way to
+Dieppe, and was brought back to London. But now Nettings met a check.
+
+Late that afternoon he called on Hewitt to explain matters. "We've got
+Goujon," he said, gloomily, "but there's a difficulty. He's got two
+friends who can swear an _alibi_. Rameau was seen alive at half-past one
+on Saturday, and the girl found him dead about three. Now, Goujon's two
+friends, it seems, were with him from one o'clock till four in the
+afternoon, with the exception of five minutes when the girl saw him, and
+then he left them to take a key or something to the housekeeper before
+finally leaving. They were waiting on the landing below when Goujon spoke
+to the housemaid, heard him speaking, and had seen him go all the way up
+to the housekeeper's room and back, as they looked up the wide well of the
+staircase. They are men employed near the place, and seem to have good
+characters. But perhaps we shall find something unfavorable about them.
+They were drinking with Goujon, it seems, by way of 'seeing him off.'"
+
+"Well," Hewitt said, "I scarcely think you need trouble to damage these
+men's characters. They are probably telling the truth. Come, now, be
+plain. You've come here to get a hint as to whether my theory of the case
+helps you, haven't you?"
+
+"Well, if you can give me a friendly hint, although, of course, I may be
+right, after all. Still, I wish you'd explain a bit as to what you meant
+by looking at a map and all that mystery. Nice thing for me to be taking a
+lesson in my own business after all these years! But perhaps I deserve
+it."
+
+"See, now," quoth Hewitt, "you remember what map I told you to look at?"
+
+"The West Indies."
+
+"Right! Well, here you are." Hewitt reached an atlas from his book-shelf.
+"Now, look here: the biggest island of the lot on this map, barring Cuba,
+is Hayti. You know as well as I do that the western part of that island is
+peopled by the black republic of Hayti, and that the country is in a
+degenerate state of almost unexampled savagery, with a ridiculous show of
+civilization. There are revolutions all the time; the South American
+republics are peaceful and prosperous compared to Hayti. The state of the
+country is simply awful--read Sir Spenser St. John's book on it. President
+after president of the vilest sort forces his way to power and commits the
+most horrible and bloodthirsty excesses, murdering his opponents by the
+hundred and seizing their property for himself and his satellites, who are
+usually as bad, if not worse, than the president himself. Whole
+families--men, women, and children--are murdered at the instance of these
+ruffians, and, as a consequence, the most deadly feuds spring up, and the
+presidents and their followers are always themselves in danger of
+reprisals from others. Perhaps the very worst of these presidents in
+recent times has been the notorious Domingue, who was overthrown by an
+insurrection, as they all are sooner or later, and compelled to fly the
+country. Domingue and his nephews, one of whom was Chief Minister, while
+in power committed the cruellest bloodshed, and many members of the
+opposite party sought refuge in a small island lying just to the north of
+Hayti, but were sought out there and almost exterminated. Now, I will show
+you that island on the map. What is its name?"
+
+"Tortuga."
+
+"It is. 'Tortuga,' however, is only the old Spanish name; the Haytians
+speak French--Creole French. Here is a French atlas: now see the name of
+that island."
+
+"La Tortue!"
+
+"La Tortue it is--the tortoise. Tortuga means the same thing in Spanish.
+But that island is always spoken of in Hayti as La Tortue. Now, do you see
+the drift of that paper pinned to Rameau's breast?"
+
+"Punished by an avenger of--or from--the tortoise or La Tortue--clear
+enough. It would seem that the dead man had something to do with the
+massacre there, and somebody from the island is avenging it. The thing's
+most extraordinary."
+
+"And now listen. The name of Domingue's nephew, who was Chief Minister,
+was _Septimus Rameau_."
+
+"And this was César Rameau--his brother, probably. I see. Well, this _is_
+a case."
+
+"I think the relationship probable. Now you understand why I was inclined
+to doubt that Goujon was the man you wanted."
+
+"Of course, of course! And now I suppose I must try to get a nigger--the
+chap who wrote that paper. I wish he hadn't been such an ignorant nigger.
+If he'd only have put the capitals to the words 'La Tortue,' I might have
+thought a little more about them, instead of taking it for granted that
+they meant that wretched tortoise in the basement of the house. Well, I've
+made a fool of a start, but I'll be after that nigger now."
+
+"And I, as I said before," said Hewitt, "shall be after the person that
+carried off Rameau's body. I have had something else to do this afternoon,
+or I should have begun already."
+
+"You said you thought he saw the crime. How did you judge that?"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "I think I'll keep that little secret to myself for the
+present," he said. "You shall know soon."
+
+"Very well," Nettings replied, with resignation. "I suppose I mustn't
+grumble if you don't tell me everything. I feel too great a fool
+altogether over this case to see any farther than you show me." And
+Inspector Nettings left on his search; while Martin Hewitt, as soon as he
+was alone, laughed joyously and slapped his thigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a cab-rank and shelter at the end of the street where Mr.
+Styles' building stood, and early that evening a man approached it and
+hailed the cabmen and the waterman. Any one would have known the new-comer
+at once for a cabman taking a holiday. The brim of the hat, the bird's-eye
+neckerchief, the immense coat-buttons, and, more than all, the rolling
+walk and the wrinkled trousers, marked him out distinctly.
+
+"Watcheer!" he exclaimed, affably, with the self-possessed nod only
+possible to cabbies and 'busmen. "I'm a-lookin' for a bilker. I'm told one
+o' the blokes off this rank carried 'im last Saturday, and I want to know
+where he went. I ain't 'ad a chance o' gettin' 'is address yet. Took a cab
+just as it got dark, I'm told. Tallish chap, muffled up a lot, in a long
+black overcoat. Any of ye seen 'im?"
+
+The cabbies looked at one another and shook their heads; it chanced that
+none of them had been on that particular rank at that time. But the
+waterman said: "'Old on--I bet 'e's the bloke wot old Bill Stammers took.
+Yorkey was fust on the rank, but the bloke wouldn't 'ave a 'ansom--wanted
+a four-wheeler, so old Bill took 'im. Biggish chap in a long black coat,
+collar up an' muffled thick; soft wide-awake 'at, pulled over 'is eyes;
+and he was in a 'urry, too. Jumped in sharp as a weasel."
+
+"Didn't see 'is face, did ye?"
+
+"No--not an inch of it; too much muffled. Couldn't tell if he 'ad a face."
+
+"Was his arm in a sling?"
+
+"Ay, it looked so. Had it stuffed through the breast of his coat, like as
+though there might be a sling inside."
+
+"That's 'im. Any of ye tell me where I might run across old Bill Stammers?
+He'll tell me where my precious bilker went to."
+
+As to this there was plenty of information, and in five minutes Martin
+Hewitt, who had become an unoccupied cabman for the occasion, was on his
+way to find old Bill Stammers. That respectable old man gave him full
+particulars as to the place in the East End where he had driven his
+muffled fare on Saturday, and Hewitt then begun an eighteen, or twenty
+hours' search beyond Whitechapel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At about three on Tuesday afternoon, as Nettings was in the act of leaving
+Bow Street Police Station, Hewitt drove up in a four-wheeler. Some
+prisoner appeared to be crouching low in the vehicle, but, leaving him to
+take care of himself, Hewitt hurried into the station and shook Nettings
+by the hand. "Well," he said, "have you got the murderer of Rameau yet?"
+
+"No," Nettings growled. "Unless--well, Goujon's under remand still, and,
+after all, I've been thinking that he may know something----"
+
+"Pooh, nonsense!" Hewitt answered. "You'd better let him go. Now, I _have_
+got somebody." Hewitt laughed and slapped the inspector's shoulder. "I've
+got the man who carried Rameau's body away!"
+
+"The deuce you have! Where? Bring him in. We must have him----"
+
+"All right, don't be in a hurry; he won't bolt." And Hewitt stepped out to
+the cab and produced his prisoner, who, pulling his hat farther over his
+eyes, hurried furtively into the station. One hand was stowed in the
+breast of his long coat, and below the wide brim of his hat a small piece
+of white bandage could be seen; and, as he lifted his face, it was seen to
+be that of a negro.
+
+"Inspector Nettings," Hewitt said ceremoniously, "allow me to introduce
+Mr. César Rameau!"
+
+Netting's gasped.
+
+"What!" he at length ejaculated. "What! You--you're Rameau?"
+
+The negro looked round nervously, and shrank farther from the door.
+
+"Yes," he said; "but please not so loud--please not loud. Zey may be near,
+and I'm 'fraid."
+
+"You will certify, will you not," asked Hewitt, with malicious glee, "not
+only that you were not murdered last Saturday by Victor Goujon, but that,
+in fact, you were not murdered at all? Also, that you carried your own
+body away in the usual fashion, on your own legs."
+
+"Yes, yes," responded Rameau, looking haggardly about; "but is not
+zis--zis room publique? I should not be seen."
+
+"Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger and
+your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe
+enough."
+
+"I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind
+something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose--why, hang it, you must
+have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting
+upstairs, and walked out. They say there's nothing so hard as a nigger's
+skull, and yours has certainly made a fool of me. But, then, _somebody_
+must have chopped you over the head; who was it?"
+
+"My enemies--my great enemies--enemies politique. I am a great man"--this
+with a faint revival of vanity amid his fear--"a great man in my countree.
+Zey have great secret club-sieties to kill me--me and my fren's; and one
+enemy coming in my rooms does zis--one, two"--he indicated wrist and
+head--"wiz a choppa."
+
+Rameau made the case plain to Nettings, so far as the actual circumstances
+of the assault on himself were concerned. A negro whom he had noticed near
+the place more than once during the previous day or two had attacked him
+suddenly in his rooms, dealing him two savage blows with a chopper. The
+first he had caught on his wrist, which was seriously damaged, as well as
+excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken effect on his head. His
+assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving him for dead; but, as a
+matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock, and had, thanks to the
+adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the ill-direction of the
+chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being no more than grazed.
+He had lain insensible for some time, and must have come to his senses
+soon after the housemaid had left the room. Terrified at the knowledge
+that his enemies had found him out, his only thought was to get away and
+hide himself. He hastily washed and tied up his head, enveloped himself in
+the biggest coat he could find, and let himself down into the basement by
+the coal-lift, for fear of observation. He waited in the basement of one
+of the adjoining buildings till dark and then got away in a cab, with the
+idea of hiding himself in the East End. He had had very little money with
+him on his flight, and it was by reason of this circumstance that Hewitt,
+when he found him, had prevailed on him to leave his hiding-place, since
+it would be impossible for him to touch any of the large sums of money in
+the keeping of his bank so long as he was supposed to be dead. With much
+difficulty, and the promise of ample police protection, he was at last
+convinced that it would be safe to declare himself and get his property,
+and then run away and hide wherever he pleased.
+
+Nettings and Hewitt strolled off together for a few minutes and chatted,
+leaving the wretched Rameau to cower in a corner among several policemen.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hewitt," Nettings said, "this case has certainly been a
+shocking beating for me. I must have been as blind as a bat when I started
+on it. And yet I don't see that you had a deal to go on, even now. What
+struck you first?"
+
+"Well, in the beginning it seemed rather odd to me that the body should
+have been taken away, as I had been told it was, after the written paper
+had been pinned on it. Why should the murderer pin a label on the body of
+his victim if he meant carrying that body away? Who would read the label
+and learn of the nature of the revenge gratified? Plainly, that indicated
+that the person who had carried away the body was _not_ the person who had
+committed the murder. But as soon as I began to examine the place I saw
+the probability that there was no murder, after all. There were any number
+of indications of this fact, and I can't understand your not observing
+them. First, although there was a good deal of blood on the floor just
+below where the housemaid had seen Rameau lying, there was none between
+that place and the door. Now, if the body had been dragged, or even
+carried, to the door, blood must have become smeared about the floor, or
+at least there would have been drops, but there were none, and this seemed
+to hint that the corpse might have come to itself, sat up on the sofa,
+stanched the wound, and walked out. I reflected at once that Rameau was a
+full-blooded negro, and that a negro's head is very nearly invulnerable to
+anything short of bullets. Then, if the body had been dragged out--as such
+a heavy body must have been--almost of necessity the carpet and rugs would
+show signs of the fact, but there were no such signs. But beyond these
+there was the fact that no long black overcoat was left with the other
+clothes, although the housekeeper distinctly remembered Rameau's
+possession of such a garment. I judged he would use some such thing to
+assist his disguise, which was why I asked her. _Why_ he would want to
+disguise was plain, as you shall see presently. There were no towels left
+in the bath-room; inference, used for bandages. Everything seemed to show
+that the only person responsible for Rameau's removal was Rameau himself.
+Why, then, had he gone away secretly and hurriedly, without making
+complaint, and why had he stayed away? What reason would he have for doing
+this if it had been Goujon that had attacked him? None. Goujon was going
+to France. Clearly, Rameau was afraid of another attack from some
+implacable enemy whom he was anxious to avoid--one against whom he feared
+legal complaint or defense would be useless. This brought me at once to
+the paper found on the floor. If this were the work of Goujon and an open
+reference to his tortoise, why should he be at such pains to disguise his
+handwriting? He would have been already pointing himself out by the mere
+mention of the tortoise. And, if he could not avoid a shake in his
+natural, small handwriting, how could he have avoided it in a large,
+clumsy, slowly drawn, assumed hand? No, the paper was not Goujon's."
+
+"As to the writing on the paper," Nettings interposed, "I've told you how
+I made that mistake. I took the readiest explanation of the words, since
+they seemed so pat, and I wouldn't let anything else outweigh that. As to
+the other things--the evidences of Rameau's having gone off by
+himself--well, I don't usually miss such obvious things; but I never
+thought of the possibility of the _victim_ going away on the quiet and not
+coming back, as though _he'd_ done something wrong. Comes of starting with
+a set of fixed notions."
+
+"Well," answered Hewitt, "I fancy you must have been rather 'out of form,'
+as they say; everybody has his stupid days, and you can't keep up to
+concert pitch forever. To return to the case. The evidence of the chopper
+was very untrustworthy, especially when I had heard of Goujon's careless
+habits--losing shovels and leaving coal-scuttles on stairs. Nothing more
+likely than for the chopper to be left lying about, and a criminal who had
+calculated his chances would know the advantage to himself of using a
+weapon that belonged to the place, and leaving it behind to divert
+suspicion. It is quite possible, by the way, that the man who attacked
+Rameau got away down the coal-lift and out by an adjoining basement, just
+as did Rameau himself; this, however, is mere conjecture. The would-be
+murderer had plainly prepared for the crime: witness the previous
+preparation of the paper declaring his revenge, an indication of his pride
+at having run his enemy to earth at such a distant place as this--although
+I expect he was only in England by chance, for Haytians are not a
+persistently energetic race. In regard to the use of small instead of
+capital letters in the words 'La Tortue' on the paper, I observed, in the
+beginning, that the first letter of the whole sentence--the 'p' in
+'puni'--was a small one. Clearly, the writer was an illiterate man, and it
+was at once plain that he may have made the same mistake with ensuing
+words.
+
+"On the whole, it was plain that everybody had begun with a too ready
+disposition to assume that Goujon was guilty. Everybody insisted, too,
+that the body had been carried away--which was true, of course, although
+not in the sense intended--so I didn't trouble to contradict, or to say
+more than that I guessed who _had_ carried the body off. And, to tell you
+the truth, I was a little piqued at Mr. Styles' manner, and indisposed,
+interested in the case as I was, to give away my theories too freely.
+
+"The rest of the job was not very difficult. I found out the cabman who
+had taken Rameau away--you can always get readier help from cabbies if you
+go as one of themselves, especially if you are after a bilker--and from
+him got a sufficiently near East End direction to find Rameau after
+inquiries. I ventured, by the way, on a rather long shot. I described my
+man to the cabman as having an injured arm or wrist--and it turned out a
+correct guess. You see, a man making an attack with a chopper is pretty
+certain to make more than a single blow, and as there appeared to have
+been only a single wound on the head, it seemed probable that another had
+fallen somewhere else--almost certainly on the arm, as it would be raised
+to defend the head. At Limehouse I found he had had his head and wrist
+attended to at a local medico's, and a big nigger in a fright, with a long
+black coat, a broken head, and a lame hand, is not so difficult to find in
+a small area. How I persuaded him up here you know already; I think I
+frightened him a little, too, by explaining how easily I had tracked him,
+and giving him a hint that others might do the same. He is in a great
+funk. He seems to have quite lost faith in England as a safe asylum."
+
+The police failed to catch Rameau's assailant--chiefly because Rameau
+could not be got to give a proper description of him, nor to do anything
+except get out of the country in a hurry. In truth, he was glad to be quit
+of the matter with nothing worse than his broken head. Little Goujon made
+a wild storm about his arrest, and before he did go to France managed to
+extract twenty pounds from Rameau by way of compensation, in spite of the
+absence of any strictly legal claim against his old tormentor. So that, on
+the whole, Goujon was about the only person who derived any particular
+profit from the tortoise mystery.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11252 ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Martin Hewitt, Investigator
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%; background-color: white}
+    H1,H2,H3 {text-align: center; }
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11252 ***</div>
+
+<h1>
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+By<br />
+Arthur Morrison
+</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>
+1894
+</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH1">I. THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH2">II. THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH3">III. THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH4">IV. THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH5">V. THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH6">VI. THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH7">VII. THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-1">
+clues (scraps of paper)
+</a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-2">
+corridor/rooms diagram
+</a>
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH1"></a>
+<h3>
+   I. THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty
+    years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary will
+    case, "Bartley <i>v</i>. Bartley and others," which occupied the Probate
+    Court for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public interest
+    rarely accorded to any but the cases considered in the other division
+    of the same court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity
+    of remarkable and unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff's
+    side&mdash;evidence that took the other party completely by surprise, and
+    overthrew their case like a house of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be
+    more readily recalled as the occasion of the sudden rise to eminence in
+    their profession of Messrs. Crellan, Hunt &amp; Crellan, solicitors for the
+    plaintiff&mdash;a result due entirely to the wonderful ability shown in this
+    case of building up, apparently out of nothing, a smashing weight of
+    irresistible evidence. That the firm has since maintained&mdash;indeed
+    enhanced&mdash;the position it then won for itself need scarcely be said here;
+    its name is familiar to everybody. But there are not many of the outside
+    public who know that the credit of the whole performance was primarily
+    due to a young clerk in the employ of Messrs. Crellan, who had been given
+    charge of the seemingly desperate task of collecting evidence in the
+    case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This Mr. Martin Hewitt had, however, full credit and reward for his
+    exploit from his firm and from their client, and more than one other firm
+    of lawyers engaged in contentious work made good offers to entice Hewitt
+    to change his employers. Instead of this, however, he determined to work
+    independently for the future, having conceived the idea of making a
+    regular business of doing, on behalf of such clients as might retain him,
+    similar work to that he had just done with such conspicuous success for
+    Messrs. Crellan, Hunt &amp; Crellan. This was the beginning of the private
+    detective business of Martin Hewitt, and his action at that time has been
+    completely justified by the brilliant professional successes he has since
+    achieved.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His business has always been conducted in the most private manner, and he
+    has always declined the help of professional assistants, preferring to
+    carry out himself such of the many investigations offered him as he could
+    manage. He has always maintained that he has never lost by this policy,
+    since the chance of his refusing a case begets competition for his
+    services, and his fees rise by a natural process. At the same time, no
+    man could know better how to employ casual assistance at the right time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some curiosity has been expressed as to Mr. Martin Hewitt's system, and,
+    as he himself always consistently maintains that he has no system beyond
+    a judicious use of ordinary faculties, I intend setting forth in detail a
+    few of the more interesting of his cases in order that the public may
+    judge for itself if I am right in estimating Mr. Hewitt's "ordinary
+    faculties" as faculties very extraordinary indeed. He is not a man who
+    has made many friendships (this, probably, for professional reasons),
+    notwithstanding his genial and companionable manners. I myself first made
+    his acquaintance as a result of an accident resulting in a fire at the
+    old house in which Hewitt's office was situated, and in an upper floor of
+    which I occupied bachelor chambers. I was able to help in saving a
+    quantity of extremely important papers relating to his business, and,
+    while repairs were being made, allowed him to lock them in an old
+    wall-safe in one of my rooms which the fire had scarcely damaged.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The acquaintance thus begun has lasted many years, and has become a
+    rather close friendship. I have even accompanied Hewitt on some of his
+    expeditions, and, in a humble way, helped him. Such of the cases,
+    however, as I personally saw nothing of I have put into narrative form
+    from the particulars given me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I consider you, Brett," he said, addressing me, "the most remarkable
+    journalist alive. Not because you're particularly clever, you know,
+    because, between ourselves, I hope you'll admit you're not; but because
+    you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and have
+    never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business secrets
+    you may have become acquainted with. I'm afraid you're not so
+    enterprising a journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you
+    shall write something&mdash;if you think it worth while."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing good-nature
+    that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger who thought of
+    him only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets and crimes.
+    Indeed, the man had always as little of the aspect of the conventional
+    detective as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less
+    observant in manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of
+    the eye&mdash;which might, after all, only be the twinkle of good humor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I <i>did</i> think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt's
+    investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    At the head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an
+    ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty
+    ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word
+    "Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters,
+    "Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in the
+    ground-floor offices had barely hung up their hats, a short, well-dressed
+    young man, wearing spectacles, hastening to open the dusty door, ran into
+    the arms of another man who suddenly issued from it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I beg pardon," the first said. "Is this Hewitt's Detective Agency
+    Office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I believe you will find it so," the other replied. He was a
+    stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round
+    countenance. "You'd better speak to the clerk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with inky
+    fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The printed
+    slip having been filled with the visitor's name and present business, and
+    conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with an invitation to
+    the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat the stoutish man
+    himself, who had only just advised an appeal to the clerk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good-morning, Mr. Lloyd&mdash;Mr. Vernon Lloyd," he said, affably, looking
+    again at the slip. "You'll excuse my care to start even with my
+    visitors&mdash;I must, you know. You come from Sir James Norris, I see."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; I am his secretary. I have only to ask you to go straight to Lenton
+    Croft at once, if you can, on very important business. Sir James would
+    have wired, but had not your precise address. Can you go by the next
+    train? Eleven-thirty is the first available from Paddington."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite possibly. Do you know any thing of the business?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is a case of a robbery in the house, or, rather, I fancy, of several
+    robberies. Jewelry has been stolen from rooms occupied by visitors to the
+    Croft. The first case occurred some months ago&mdash;nearly a year ago, in
+    fact. Last night there was another. But I think you had better get the
+    details on the spot. Sir James has told me to telegraph if you are
+    coming, so that he may meet you himself at the station; and I must
+    hurry, as his drive to the station will be rather a long one. Then I take
+    it you will go, Mr. Hewitt? Twyford is the station."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I shall come, and by the 11.30. Are you going by that train
+    yourself?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I have several things to attend to now I am in town. Good-morning; I
+    shall wire at once."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Martin Hewitt locked the drawer of his table and sent his clerk for a
+    cab.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At Twyford Station Sir James Norris was waiting with a dog-cart. Sir
+    James was a tall, florid man of fifty or thereabout, known away from home
+    as something of a county historian, and nearer his own parts as a great
+    supporter of the hunt, and a gentleman much troubled with poachers. As
+    soon as he and Hewitt had found one another the baronet hurried the
+    detective into his dog-cart. "We've something over seven miles to drive,"
+    he said, "and I can tell you all about this wretched business as we go.
+    That is why I came for you myself, and alone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have sent for you, as Lloyd probably told you, because of a robbery at
+    my place last evening. It appears, as far as I can guess, to be one of
+    three by the same hand, or by the same gang. Late yesterday afternoon&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Pardon me, Sir James," Hewitt interrupted, "but I think I must ask you
+    to begin at the first robbery and tell me the whole tale in proper order.
+    It makes things clearer, and sets them in their proper shape."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well! Eleven months ago, or thereabout, I had rather a large party
+    of visitors, and among them Colonel Heath and Mrs. Heath&mdash;the lady being
+    a relative of my own late wife. Colonel Heath has not been long retired,
+    you know&mdash;used to be political resident in an Indian native state. Mrs.
+    Heath had rather a good stock of jewelry of one sort and another, about
+    the most valuable piece being a bracelet set with a particularly fine
+    pearl&mdash;quite an exceptional pearl, in fact&mdash;that had been one of a heap
+    of presents from the maharajah of his state when Heath left India.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It was a very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere
+    feather-weight piece of native filigree work&mdash;almost too fragile to trust
+    on the wrist&mdash;and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality
+    not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening,
+    and after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by
+    themselves&mdash;shooting, I think&mdash;my daughter, my sister (who is very
+    often down here), and Mrs. Heath took it into their heads to go
+    walking&mdash;fern-hunting, and so on. My sister was rather long dressing,
+    and, while they waited, my daughter went into Mrs. Heath's room, where
+    Mrs. Heath turned over all her treasures to show her, as women do, you
+    know. When my sister was at last ready, they came straight away, leaving
+    the things littering about the room rather than stay longer to pack them
+    up. The bracelet, with other things, was on the dressing-table then."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One moment. As to the door?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They locked it. As they came away my daughter suggested turning the key,
+    as we had one or two new servants about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And the window?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That they left open, as I was going to tell you. Well, they went on
+    their walk and came back, with Lloyd (whom they had met somewhere)
+    carrying their ferns for them. It was dusk and almost dinner-time. Mrs.
+    Heath went straight to her room, and&mdash;the bracelet was gone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was the room disturbed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a bit. Everything was precisely where it had been left, except the
+    bracelet. The door hadn't been tampered with, but of course the window
+    was open, as I have told you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You called the police, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, and had a man from Scotland Yard down in the morning. He seemed a
+    pretty smart fellow, and the first thing he noticed on the
+    dressing-table, within an inch or two of where the bracelet had been,
+    was a match, which had been lit and thrown down. Now nobody about the
+    house had had occasion to use a match in that room that day, and, if they
+    had, certainly wouldn't have thrown it on the cover of the
+    dressing-table. So that, presuming the thief to have used that match, the
+    robbery must have been committed when the room was getting
+    dark&mdash;immediately before Mrs. Heath returned, in fact. The thief had
+    evidently struck the match, passed it hurriedly over the various trinkets
+    lying about, and taken the most valuable."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing else was even moved?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing at all. Then the thief must have escaped by the window, although
+    it was not quite clear how. The walking party approached the house with a
+    full view of the window, but saw nothing, although the robbery must have
+    been actually taking place a moment or two before they turned up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was no water-pipe within any practicable distance of the window,
+    but a ladder usually kept in the stable-yard was found lying along the
+    edge of the lawn. The gardener explained, however, that he had put the
+    ladder there after using it himself early in the afternoon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course it might easily have been used again after that and put back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just what the Scotland Yard man said. He was pretty sharp, too, on the
+    gardener, but very soon decided that he knew nothing of it. No stranger
+    had been seen in the neighborhood, nor had passed the lodge gates.
+    Besides, as the detective said, it scarcely seemed the work of a
+    stranger. A stranger could scarcely have known enough to go straight to
+    the room where a lady&mdash;only arrived the day before&mdash;had left a valuable
+    jewel, and away again without being seen. So all the people about the
+    house were suspected in turn. The servants offered, in a body, to have
+    their boxes searched, and this was done; everything was turned over, from
+    the butler's to the new kitchen-maid's. I don't know that I should have
+    had this carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but it was
+    my guest, and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's little
+    more to be said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it all, and
+    the thing's as great a mystery now as ever. I believe the Scotland Yard
+    man got as far as suspecting <i>me</i> before he gave it up altogether, but
+    give it up he did in the end. I think that's all I know about the first
+    robbery. Is it clear?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
+    the place, but they can wait. What next?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair, that I
+    should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been for one
+    circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of the
+    same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's disaster&mdash;in
+    February of this year, in fact&mdash;Mrs. Armitage, a young widow, who had
+    been a school-fellow of my daughter's, stayed with us for a week or so.
+    The girls don't trouble about the London season, you know, and I have no
+    town house, so they were glad to have their old friend here for a little
+    in the dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active young lady, and was
+    scarcely in the house half an hour before she arranged a drive in a
+    pony-cart with Eva&mdash;my daughter&mdash;to look up old people in the village
+    that she used to know before she was married. So they set off in the
+    afternoon, and made such a round of it that they were late for dinner.
+    Mrs. Armitage had a small plain gold brooch&mdash;not at all valuable, you
+    know; two or three pounds, I suppose&mdash;which she used to pin up a cloak or
+    anything of that sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the
+    pin-cushion on her dressing-table, and left a ring&mdash;rather a good one, I
+    believe&mdash;lying close by."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had occupied,
+    I take it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
+    went&mdash;taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when Mrs.
+    Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a little
+    tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the
+    curious thing was that the ring&mdash;worth a dozen of the brooch&mdash;was left
+    where it had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or not she
+    had locked the door herself, although she found it locked when she
+    returned; but my niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it
+    once&mdash;because she remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the landing
+    near by&mdash;and found it safely locked. The gas-fitter, whom we didn't know
+    at the time, but who since seems to be quite an honest fellow, was ready
+    to swear that nobody but my niece had been to the door while he was in
+    sight of it&mdash;which was almost all the time. As to the window, the
+    sash-line had broken that very morning, and Mrs. Armitage had propped
+    open the bottom half about eight or ten inches with a brush; and, when
+    she returned, that brush, sash, and all were exactly as she had left
+    them. Now I scarcely need tell <i>you</i> what an awkward job it must have
+    been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that unsupported window; and
+    how unlikely he would have been to replace it, with the brush, exactly as
+    he found it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. I suppose the brooch, was really gone? I mean, there was no
+    chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, none at all! There was a most careful search."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes," Sir James replied; "yes, perhaps it would. It was a
+    first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the
+    billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself&mdash;built it out from a
+    smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at the
+    window from the billiard-room roof. But, then," he added, "that couldn't
+    have been the way. Somebody or other was in the billiard-room the whole
+    time, and nobody could have got over the roof (which is nearly all
+    skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there myself for an hour or
+    two, taking a little practice."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, was anything done?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing came
+    of it. It was such a small matter that Mrs. Armitage wouldn't hear of my
+    calling in the police or anything of that sort, although I felt pretty
+    certain that there must be a dishonest servant about somewhere. A servant
+    might take a plain brooch, you know, who would feel afraid of a valuable
+    ring, the loss of which would be made a greater matter of."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, perhaps so, in the case of an inexperienced thief, who also
+    would be likely to snatch up whatever she took in a hurry. But I'm
+    doubtful. What made you connect these two robberies together?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing whatever&mdash;for some months. They seemed quite of a different
+    sort. But scarcely more than a month ago I met Mrs. Armitage at Brighton,
+    and we talked, among other things, of the previous robbery&mdash;that of Mrs.
+    Heath's bracelet. I described the circumstances pretty minutely, and,
+    when I mentioned the match found on the table, she said: 'How strange!
+    Why, <i>my</i> thief left a match on the dressing-table when he took my poor
+    little brooch!'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt nodded. "Yes," he said. "A spent match, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, of course, a spent match. She noticed it lying close by the
+    pin-cushion, but threw it away without mentioning the circumstance.
+    Still, it seemed rather curious to me that a match should be lit and
+    dropped, in each case, on the dressing-cover an inch from where the
+    article was taken. I mentioned it to Lloyd when I got back, and he agreed
+    that it seemed significant."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Scarcely," said Hewitt, shaking his head. "Scarcely, so far, to be
+    called significant, although worth following up. Everybody uses matches
+    in the dark, you know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, at any rate, the coincidence appealed to me so far that it struck
+    me it might be worth while to describe the brooch to the police in order
+    that they could trace it if it had been pawned. They had tried that, of
+    course, over the bracelet without any result, but I fancied the shot
+    might be worth making, and might possibly lead us on the track of the
+    more serious robbery."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite so. It was the right thing to do. Well?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, they found it. A woman had pawned it in London&mdash;at a shop in
+    Chelsea. But that was some time before, and the pawnbroker had clean
+    forgotten all about the woman's appearance. The name and address she gave
+    were false. So that was the end of that business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Had any of the servants left you between the time the brooch was lost
+    and the date of the pawn ticket?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Were all your servants at home on the day the brooch was pawned?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes! I made that inquiry myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good! What next?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yesterday&mdash;and this is what made me send for you. My late wife's sister
+    came here last Tuesday, and we gave her the room from which Mrs. Heath
+    lost her bracelet. She had with her a very old-fashioned brooch,
+    containing a miniature of her father, and set in front with three very
+    fine brilliants and a few smaller stones. Here we are, though, at the
+    Croft. I'll tell you the rest indoors."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laid his hand on the baronet's arm. "Don't pull up, Sir James," he
+    said. "Drive a little farther. I should like to have a general idea of
+    the whole case before we go in."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good!" Sir James Norris straightened the horse's head again and
+    went on. "Late yesterday afternoon, as my sister-in-law was changing her
+    dress, she left her room for a moment to speak to my daughter in her
+    room, almost adjoining. She was gone no more than three minutes, or five
+    at most, but on her return the brooch, which had been left on the table,
+    had gone. Now the window was shut fast, and had not been tampered with.
+    Of course the door was open, but so was my daughter's, and anybody
+    walking near must have been heard. But the strangest circumstance, and
+    one that almost makes me wonder whether I have been awake to-day or not,
+    was that there lay <i>a used match</i> on the very spot, as nearly as
+    possible, where the brooch had been&mdash;and it was broad daylight!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt rubbed his nose and looked thoughtfully before him. "Um&mdash;curious,
+    certainly," he said, "Anything else?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing more than you shall see for yourself. I have had the room locked
+    and watched till you could examine it. My sister-in-law had heard of your
+    name, and suggested that you should be called in; so, of course, I did
+    exactly as she wanted. That she should have lost that brooch, of all
+    things, in my house is most unfortunate; you see, there was some small
+    difference about the thing between my late wife and her sister when their
+    mother died and left it. It's almost worse than the Heaths' bracelet
+    business, and altogether I'm not pleased with things, I can assure you.
+    See what a position it is for me! Here are three ladies, in the space of
+    one year, robbed one after another in this mysterious fashion in my
+    house, and I can't find the thief! It's horrible! People will be afraid
+    to come near the place. And I can do nothing!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, well, we'll see. Perhaps we had better turn back now. By-the-by,
+    were you thinking of having any alterations or additions made to your
+    house?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. What makes you ask?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think you might at least consider the question of painting and
+    decorating, Sir James&mdash;or, say, putting up another coach-house, or
+    something. Because I should like to be (to the servants) the
+    architect&mdash;or the builder, if you please&mdash;come to look around. You
+    haven't told any of them about this business?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a word. Nobody knows but my relatives and Lloyd. I took every
+    precaution myself, at once. As to your little disguise, be the architect
+    by all means, and do as you please. If you can only find this thief and
+    put an end to this horrible state of affairs, you'll do me the greatest
+    service I've ever asked for&mdash;and as to your fee, I'll gladly make it
+    whatever is usual, and three hundred in addition."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Martin Hewitt bowed. "You're very generous, Sir James, and you may be
+    sure I'll do what I can. As a professional man, of course, a good fee
+    always stimulates my interest, although this case of yours certainly
+    seems interesting enough by itself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Most extraordinary! Don't you think so? Here are three persons, all
+    ladies, all in my house, two even in the same room, each successively
+    robbed of a piece of jewelry, each from a dressing-table, and a used
+    match left behind in every case. All in the most difficult&mdash;one would say
+    impossible&mdash;circumstances for a thief, and yet there is no clue!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, we won't say that just yet, Sir James; we must see. And we must
+    guard against any undue predisposition to consider the robberies in a
+    lump. Here we are at the lodge gate again. Is that your gardener&mdash;the man
+    who left the ladder by the lawn on the first occasion you spoke of?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Hewitt nodded in the direction of a man who was clipping a box
+    border.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; will you ask him anything?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, no; at any rate, not now. Remember the building alterations. I
+    think, if there is no objection, I will look first at the room that the
+    lady&mdash;Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;" Hewitt looked up, inquiringly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My sister-in-law? Mrs. Cazenove. Oh, yes! you shall come to her room at
+    once."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you. And I think Mrs. Cazenove had better be there."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They alighted, and a boy from the lodge led the horse and dog-cart away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mrs. Cazenove was a thin and faded, but quick and energetic, lady of
+    middle age. She bent her head very slightly on learning Martin Hewitt's
+    name, and said: "I must thank you, Mr. Hewitt, for your very prompt
+    attention. I need scarcely say that any help you can afford in tracing
+    the thief who has my property&mdash;whoever it may be&mdash;will make me most
+    grateful. My room is quite ready for you to examine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The room was on the second floor&mdash;the top floor at that part of the
+    building. Some slight confusion of small articles of dress was observable
+    in parts of the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This, I take it," inquired Hewitt, "is exactly as it was at the time the
+    brooch was missed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely," Mrs. Cazenove answered. "I have used another room, and put
+    myself to some other inconveniences, to avoid any disturbance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt stood before the dressing-table. "Then this is the used match," he
+    observed, "exactly where it was found?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where was the brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I should say almost on the very same spot. Certainly no more than a very
+    few inches away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt examined the match closely. "It is burned very little," he
+    remarked. "It would appear to have gone out at once. Could you hear it
+    struck?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I heard nothing whatever; absolutely nothing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you will step into Miss Norris' room now for a moment," Hewitt
+    suggested, "we will try an experiment. Tell me if you hear matches
+    struck, and how many. Where is the match-stand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The match-stand proved to be empty, but matches were found in Miss
+    Norris' room, and the test was made. Each striking could be heard
+    distinctly, even with one of the doors pushed to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Both your own door and Miss Norris' were open, I understand; the window
+    shut and fastened inside as it is now, and nothing but the brooch was
+    disturbed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, that was so."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you, Mrs. Cazenove. I don't think I need trouble you any further
+    just at present. I think, Sir James," Hewitt added, turning to the
+    baronet, who was standing by the door&mdash;&mdash;"I think we will see the other
+    room and take a walk outside the house, if you please. I suppose, by the
+    by, that there is no getting at the matches left behind on the first and
+    second occasions?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Sir James answered. "Certainly not here. The Scotland Yard man may
+    have kept his."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The room that Mrs. Armitage had occupied presented no peculiar feature. A
+    few feet below the window the roof of the billiard-room was visible,
+    consisting largely of skylight. Hewitt glanced casually about the walls,
+    ascertained that the furniture and hangings had not been materially
+    changed since the second robbery, and expressed his desire to see the
+    windows from the outside. Before leaving the room, however, he wished to
+    know the names of any persons who were known to have been about the
+    house on the occasions of all three robberies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just carry your mind back, Sir James," he said. "Begin with yourself,
+    for instance. Where were you at these times?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet, I was in Tagley Wood all the
+    afternoon. When Mrs. Armitage was robbed, I believe I was somewhere about
+    the place most of the time she was out. Yesterday I was down at the
+    farm." Sir James' face broadened. "I don't know whether you call those
+    suspicious movements," he added, and laughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not at all; I only asked you so that, remembering your own movements,
+    you might the better recall those of the rest of the household. Was
+    anybody, to your knowledge&mdash;<i>anybody</i>, mind&mdash;in the house on all three
+    occasions?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you know, it's quite impossible to answer for all the servants.
+    You'll only get that by direct questioning&mdash;I can't possibly remember
+    things of that sort. As to the family and visitors&mdash;why, you don't
+    suspect any of them, do you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't suspect a soul, Sir James," Hewitt answered, beaming genially,
+    "not a soul. You see, I can't suspect people till I know something about
+    where they were. It's quite possible there will be independent evidence
+    enough as it is, but you must help me if you can. The visitors, now. Was
+    there any visitor here each time&mdash;or even on the first and last occasions
+    only?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, not one. And my own sister, perhaps you will be pleased to know, was
+    only there at the time of the first robbery."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so! And your daughter, as I have gathered, was clearly absent from
+    the spot each time&mdash;indeed, was in company with the party robbed. Your
+    niece, now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why hang it all, Mr. Hewitt, I can't talk of my niece as a suspected
+    criminal! The poor girl's under my protection, and I really can't
+    allow&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt raised his hand, and shook his head deprecatingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear sir, haven't I said that I don't suspect a soul? <i>Do</i> let me
+    know how the people were distributed, as nearly as possible. Let me see.
+    It was your, niece, I think, who found that Mrs. Armitage's door was
+    locked&mdash;this door, in fact&mdash;on the day she lost her brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it was."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so&mdash;at the time when Mrs. Armitage herself had forgotten whether
+    she locked it or not. And yesterday&mdash;was she out then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I think not. Indeed, she goes out very little&mdash;her health is usually
+    bad. She was indoors, too, at the time of the Heath robbery, since you
+    ask. But come, now, I don't like this. It's ridiculous to suppose that
+    <i>she</i> knows anything of it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't suppose it, as I have said. I am only asking for information.
+    That is all your resident family, I take it, and you know nothing of
+    anybody else's movements&mdash;except, perhaps, Mr. Lloyd's?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lloyd? Well, you know yourself that he was out with the ladies when the
+    first robbery took place. As to the others, I don't remember. Yesterday
+    he was probably in his room, writing. I think that acquits <i>him</i>, eh?"
+    Sir James looked quizzically into the broad face of the affable
+    detective, who smiled and replied:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, of course nobody can be in two places at once, else what would
+    become of the <i>alibi</i> as an institution? But, as I have said, I am only
+    setting my facts in order. Now, you see, we get down to the
+    servants&mdash;unless some stranger is the party wanted. Shall we go outside
+    now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lenton Croft was a large, desultory sort of house, nowhere more than
+    three floors high, and mostly only two. It had been added to bit by bit,
+    till it zigzagged about its site, as Sir James Norris expressed it, "like
+    a game of dominoes." Hewitt scrutinized its external features carefully
+    as they strolled around, and stopped some little while before the windows
+    of the two bed-rooms he had just seen from the inside. Presently they
+    approached the stables and coach-house, where a groom was washing the
+    wheels of the dog-cart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mind my smoking?" Hewitt asked Sir James. "Perhaps you will take
+    a cigar yourself&mdash;they are not so bad, I think. I will ask your man for a
+    light."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James felt for his own match-box, but Hewitt had gone, and was
+    lighting his cigar with a match from a box handed him by the groom. A
+    smart little terrier was trotting about by the coach-house, and Hewitt
+    stooped to rub its head. Then he made some observation about the dog,
+    which enlisted the groom's interest, and was soon absorbed in a chat with
+    the man. Sir James, waiting a little way off, tapped the stones rather
+    impatiently with his foot, and presently moved away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For full a quarter of an hour Hewitt chatted with the groom, and, when at
+    last he came away and overtook Sir James, that gentleman was about
+    re-entering the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I beg your pardon, Sir James," Hewitt said, "for leaving you in that
+    unceremonious fashion to talk to your groom, but a dog, Sir James&mdash;a good
+    dog&mdash;will draw me anywhere."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh!" replied Sir James, shortly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There is one other thing," Hewitt went on, disregarding the other's
+    curtness, "that I should like to know: There are two windows directly
+    below that of the room occupied yesterday by Mrs. Cazenove&mdash;one on each
+    floor. What rooms do they light?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That on the ground floor is the morning-room; the other is Mr.
+    Lloyd's&mdash;my secretary. A sort of study or sitting-room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now you will see at once, Sir James," Hewitt pursued, with an affable
+    determination to win the baronet back to good-humor&mdash;"you will see at
+    once that, if a ladder had been used in Mrs. Heath's case, anybody
+    looking from either of these rooms would have seen it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course! The Scotland Yard man questioned everybody as to that, but
+    nobody seemed to have been in either of the rooms when the thing
+    occurred; at any rate, nobody saw anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Still, I think I should like to look out of those windows myself; it
+    will, at least, give me an idea of what <i>was</i> in view and what was not,
+    if anybody had been there."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James Norris led the way to the morning-room. As they reached the
+    door a young lady, carrying a book and walking very languidly, came out.
+    Hewitt stepped aside to let her pass, and afterward said interrogatively:
+    "Miss Norris, your daughter, Sir James?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, my niece. Do you want to ask her anything? Dora, my dear," Sir
+    James added, following her in the corridor, "this is Mr. Hewitt, who is
+    investigating these wretched robberies for me. I think he would like to
+    hear if you remember anything happening at any of the three times."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lady bowed slightly, and said in a plaintive drawl: "I, uncle?
+    Really, I don't remember anything; nothing at all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You found Mrs. Armitage's door locked, I believe," asked Hewitt, "when
+    you tried it, on the afternoon when she lost her brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; I believe it was locked. Yes, it was."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Had the key been left in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The key? Oh, no! I think not; no."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you remember anything out of the common happening&mdash;anything whatever,
+    no matter how trivial&mdash;on the day Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, really, I don't. I can't remember at all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nor yesterday?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, nothing. I don't remember anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you," said Hewitt, hastily; "thank you. Now the morning-room, Sir
+    James."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning-room Hewitt stayed but a few seconds, doing little more
+    than casually glance out of the windows. In the room above he took a
+    little longer time. It was a comfortable room, but with rather effeminate
+    indications about its contents. Little pieces of draped silk-work hung
+    about the furniture, and Japanese silk fans decorated the mantel-piece.
+    Near the window was a cage containing a gray parrot, and the
+    writing-table was decorated with two vases of flowers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lloyd makes himself pretty comfortable, eh?" Sir James observed. "But it
+    isn't likely anybody would be here while he was out, at the time that
+    bracelet went."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," replied Hewitt, meditatively. "No, I suppose not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He stared thoughtfully out of the window, and then, still deep in
+    thought, rattled at the wires of the cage with a quill toothpick and
+    played a moment with the parrot. Then, looking up at the window again, he
+    said: "That is Mr. Lloyd, isn't it, coming back in a fly?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I think so. Is there anything else you would care to see here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, thank you," Hewitt replied; "I don't think there is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They went down to the smoking-room, and Sir James went away to speak to
+    his secretary. When he returned, Hewitt said quietly: "I think, Sir
+    James&mdash;I <i>think</i> that I shall be able to give you your thief presently."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What! Have you a clue? Who do you think? I began to believe you were
+    hopelessly stumped."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes. I have rather a good clue, although I can't tell you much
+    about it just yet. But it is so good a clue that I should like to know
+    now whether you are determined to prosecute when you have the criminal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, bless me, of course," Sir James replied, with surprise. "It doesn't
+    rest with me, you know&mdash;the property belongs to my friends. And even if
+    they were disposed to let the thing slide, I shouldn't allow it&mdash;I
+    couldn't, after they had been robbed in my house."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, of course! Then, if I can, I should like to send a message to
+    Twyford by somebody perfectly trustworthy&mdash;not a servant. Could anybody
+    go?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, there's Lloyd, although he's only just back from his journey. But,
+    if it's important, he'll go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is important. The fact is we must have a policeman or two here this
+    evening, and I'd like Mr. Lloyd to fetch them without telling anybody
+    else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James rang, and, in response to his message, Mr. Lloyd appeared.
+    While Sir James gave his secretary his instructions, Hewitt strolled to
+    the door of the smoking-room, and intercepted the latter as he came out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm sorry to give you this trouble, Mr. Lloyd," he said, "but I must
+    stay here myself for a little, and somebody who can be trusted must go.
+    Will you just bring back a police-constable with you? or rather two&mdash;two
+    would be better. That is all that is wanted. You won't let the servants
+    know, will you? Of course there will be a female searcher at the Twyford
+    police-station? Ah&mdash;of course. Well, you needn't bring her, you know.
+    That sort of thing is done at the station." And, chatting thus
+    confidentially, Martin Hewitt saw him off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Hewitt returned to the smoking-room, Sir James said, suddenly: "Why,
+    bless my soul, Mr. Hewitt, we haven't fed you! I'm awfully sorry. We came
+    in rather late for lunch, you know, and this business has bothered me so
+    I clean forgot everything else. There's no dinner till seven, so you'd
+    better let me give you something now. I'm really sorry. Come along."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you, Sir James," Hewitt replied; "I won't take much. A few
+    biscuits, perhaps, or something of that sort. And, by the by, if you
+    don't mind, I rather think I should like to take it alone. The fact is I
+    want to go over this case thoroughly by myself. Can you put me in a
+    room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Any room you like. Where will you go? The dining-room's rather large,
+    but there's my study, that's pretty snug, or&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps I can go into Mr. Lloyd's room for half an hour or so; I don't
+    think he'll mind, and it's pretty comfortable."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, if you'd like. I'll tell them to send you whatever they've
+    got."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much. Perhaps they'll also send me a lump of sugar and a
+    walnut; it's&mdash;it's a little fad of mine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A&mdash;what? A lump of sugar and a walnut?" Sir James stopped for a moment,
+    with his hand on the bell-rope. "Oh, certainly, if you'd like it;
+    certainly," he added, and stared after this detective with curious tastes
+    as he left the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the vehicle, bringing back the secretary and the policeman, drew up
+    on the drive, Martin Hewitt left the room on the first floor and
+    proceeded down-stairs. On the landing he met Sir James Norris and Mrs.
+    Cazenove, who stared with astonishment on perceiving that the detective
+    carried in his hand the parrot-cage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think our business is about brought to a head now," Hewitt remarked,
+    on the stairs. "Here are the police officers from Twyford." The men were
+    standing in the hall with Mr. Lloyd, who, on catching sight of the cage
+    in Hewitt's hand, paled suddenly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is the person who will be charged, I think," Hewitt pursued,
+    addressing the officers, and indicating Lloyd with his finger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What, Lloyd?" gasped Sir James, aghast. "No&mdash;not Lloyd&mdash;nonsense!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He doesn't seem to think it nonsense himself, does he?" Hewitt placidly
+    observed. Lloyd had sank on a chair, and, gray of face, was staring
+    blindly at the man he had run against at the office door that morning.
+    His lips moved in spasms, but there was no sound. The wilted flower fell
+    from his button-hole to the floor, but he did not move.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is his accomplice," Hewitt went on, placing the parrot and cage on
+    the hall table, "though I doubt whether there will be any use in charging
+    <i>him</i>. Eh, Polly?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The parrot put his head aside and chuckled. "Hullo, Polly!" it quietly
+    gurgled. "Come along!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James Norris was hopelessly bewildered. "Lloyd&mdash;Lloyd," he said,
+    under his breath. "Lloyd&mdash;and that!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was his little messenger, his useful Mercury," Hewitt explained,
+    tapping the cage complacently; "in fact, the actual lifter. Hold him up!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The last remark referred to the wretched Lloyd, who had fallen forward
+    with something between a sob and a loud sigh. The policemen took him by
+    the arms and propped him in his chair.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    "System?" said Hewitt, with a shrug of the shoulders, an hour or two
+    after in Sir James' study. "I can't say I have a system. I call it
+    nothing but common-sense and a sharp pair of eyes. Nobody using these
+    could help taking the right road in this case. I began at the match, just
+    as the Scotland Yard man did, but I had the advantage of taking a line
+    through three cases. To begin with, it was plain that that match, being
+    left there in daylight, in Mrs. Cazenove's room, could not have been used
+    to light the table-top, in the full glare of the window; therefore it had
+    been used for some other purpose&mdash;<i>what</i> purpose I could not, at the
+    moment, guess. Habitual thieves, you know, often have curious
+    superstitions, and some will never take anything without leaving
+    something behind&mdash;a pebble or a piece of coal, or something like that&mdash;in
+    the premises they have been robbing. It seemed at first extremely likely
+    that this was a case of that kind. The match had clearly been <i>brought
+    in</i>&mdash;because, when I asked for matches, there were none in the stand, not
+    even an empty box, and the room had not been disturbed. Also the match
+    probably had not been struck there, nothing having been heard, although,
+    of course, a mistake in this matter was just possible. This match, then,
+    it was fair to assume, had been lit somewhere else and blown out
+    immediately&mdash;I remarked at the time that it was very little burned.
+    Plainly it could not have been treated thus for nothing, and the only
+    possible object would have been to prevent it igniting accidentally.
+    Following on this, it became obvious that the match was used, for
+    whatever purpose, not <i>as</i> a match, but merely as a convenient splinter
+    of wood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So far so good. But on examining the match very closely I observed, as
+    you can see for yourself, certain rather sharp indentations in the wood.
+    They are very small, you see, and scarcely visible, except upon narrow
+    inspection; but there they are, and their positions are regular. See,
+    there are two on each side, each opposite the corresponding mark of the
+    other pair. The match, in fact, would seem to have been gripped in some
+    fairly sharp instrument, holding it at two points above and two below&mdash;an
+    instrument, as it may at once strike you, not unlike the beak of a bird.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now here was an idea. What living creature but a bird could possibly
+    have entered Mrs. Heath's window without a ladder&mdash;supposing no ladder to
+    have been used&mdash;or could have got into Mrs. Armitage's window without
+    lifting the sash higher than the eight or ten inches it was already
+    open? Plainly, nothing. Further, it is significant that only <i>one</i>
+    article was stolen at a time, although others were about. A human being
+    could have carried any reasonable number, but a bird could only take one
+    at a time. But why should a bird carry a match in its beak? Certainly it
+    must have been trained to do that for a purpose, and a little
+    consideration made that purpose pretty clear. A noisy, chattering bird
+    would probably betray itself at once. Therefore it must be trained to
+    keep quiet both while going for and coming away with its plunder. What
+    readier or more probably effectual way than, while teaching it to carry
+    without dropping, to teach it also to keep quiet while carrying? The one
+    thing would practically cover the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I thought at once, of course, of a jackdaw or a magpie&mdash;these birds'
+    thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match
+    were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I
+    conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived
+    near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity of a little chat with your
+    groom on the subject of dogs and pets in general, and ascertained that
+    there was no tame raven in the place. I also, incidentally, by getting a
+    light from the coach-house box of matches, ascertained that the match
+    found was of the sort generally used about the establishment&mdash;the large,
+    thick, red-topped English match. But I further found that Mr. Lloyd had a
+    parrot which was a most intelligent pet, and had been trained into
+    comparative quietness&mdash;for a parrot. Also, I learned that more than once
+    the groom had met Mr. Lloyd carrying his parrot under his coat, it
+    having, as its owner explained, learned the trick of opening its
+    cage-door and escaping.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I said nothing, of course, to you of all this, because I had as yet
+    nothing but a train of argument and no results. I got to Lloyd's room as
+    soon as possible. My chief object in going there was achieved when I
+    played with the parrot, and induced it to bite a quill toothpick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When you left me in the smoking-room, I compared the quill and the match
+    very carefully, and found that the marks corresponded exactly. After this
+    I felt very little doubt indeed. The fact of Lloyd having met the ladies
+    walking before dark on the day of the first robbery proved nothing,
+    because, since it was clear that the match had <i>not</i> been used to procure
+    a light, the robbery might as easily have taken place in daylight as
+    not&mdash;must have so taken place, in fact, if my conjectures were right.
+    That they were right I felt no doubt. There could be no other
+    explanation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When Mrs. Heath left her window open and her door shut, anybody
+    climbing upon the open sash of Lloyd's high window could have put the
+    bird upon the sill above. The match placed in the bird's beak for the
+    purpose I have indicated, and struck first, in case by accident it should
+    ignite by rubbing against something and startle the bird&mdash;this match
+    would, of course, be dropped just where the object to be removed was
+    taken up; as you know, in every case the match was found almost upon the
+    spot where the missing article had been left&mdash;scarcely a likely triple
+    coincidence had the match been used by a human thief. This would have
+    been done as soon after the ladies had left as possible, and there would
+    then have been plenty of time for Lloyd to hurry out and meet them before
+    dark&mdash;especially plenty of time to meet them <i>coming back</i>, as they must
+    have been, since they were carrying their ferns. The match was an article
+    well chosen for its purpose, as being a not altogether unlikely thing to
+    find on a dressing-table, and, if noticed, likely to lead to the wrong
+    conclusions adopted by the official detective.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In Mrs. Armitage's case the taking of an inferior brooch and the leaving
+    of a more valuable ring pointed clearly either to the operator being a
+    fool or unable to distinguish values, and certainly, from other
+    indications, the thief seemed no fool. The door was locked, and the
+    gas-fitter, so to speak, on guard, and the window was only eight or ten
+    inches open and propped with a brush. A human thief entering the window
+    would have disturbed this arrangement, and would scarcely risk discovery
+    by attempting to replace it, especially a thief in so great a hurry as to
+    snatch the brooch up without unfastening the pin. The bird could pass
+    through the opening as it was, and <i>would have</i> to tear the pin-cushion
+    to pull the brooch off, probably holding the cushion down with its claw
+    the while.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now in yesterday's case we had an alteration of conditions. The window
+    was shut and fastened, but the door was open&mdash;but only left for a few
+    minutes, during which time no sound was heard either of coming or going.
+    Was it not possible, then, that the thief was <i>already</i> in the room, in
+    hiding, while Mrs. Cazenove was there, and seized its first opportunity
+    on her temporary absence? The room is full of draperies, hangings, and
+    what not, allowing of plenty of concealment for a bird, and a bird could
+    leave the place noiselessly and quickly. That the whole scheme was
+    strange mattered not at all. Robberies presenting such unaccountable
+    features must have been effected by strange means of one sort or
+    another. There was no improbability. Consider how many hundreds of
+    examples of infinitely higher degrees of bird-training are exhibited in
+    the London streets every week for coppers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So that, on the whole, I felt pretty sure of my ground. But before
+    taking any definite steps I resolved to see if Polly could not be
+    persuaded to exhibit his accomplishments to an indulgent stranger. For
+    that purpose I contrived to send Lloyd away again and have a quiet hour
+    alone with his bird. A piece of sugar, as everybody knows, is a good
+    parrot bribe; but a walnut, split in half, is a better&mdash;especially if the
+    bird be used to it; so I got you to furnish me with both. Polly was shy
+    at first, but I generally get along very well with pets, and a little
+    perseverance soon led to a complete private performance for my benefit.
+    Polly would take the match, mute as wax, jump on the table, pick up the
+    brightest thing he could see, in a great hurry, leave the match behind,
+    and scuttle away round the room; but at first wouldn't give up the
+    plunder to <i>me</i>. It was enough. I also took the liberty, as you know, of
+    a general look round, and discovered that little collection of Brummagem
+    rings and trinkets that you have just seen&mdash;used in Polly's education, no
+    doubt. When we sent Lloyd away, it struck me that he might as well be
+    usefully employed as not, so I got him to fetch the police, deluding him
+    a little, I fear, by talking about the servants and a female searcher.
+    There will be no trouble about evidence; he'll confess. Of that I'm sure.
+    I know the sort of man. But I doubt if you'll get Mrs. Cazenove's brooch
+    back. You see, he has been to London to-day, and by this time the swag is
+    probably broken up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James listened to Hewitt's explanation with many expressions of
+    assent and some of surprise. When it was over, he smoked a few whiffs and
+    then said: "But Mrs. Armitage's brooch was pawned, and by a woman."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly. I expect our friend Lloyd was rather disgusted at his small
+    luck&mdash;probably gave the brooch to some female connection in London, and
+    she realized on it. Such persons don't always trouble to give a correct
+    address."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two smoked in silence for a few minutes, and then Hewitt continued:
+    "I don't expect our friend has had an easy job altogether with that bird.
+    His successes at most have only been three, and I suspect he had many
+    failures and not a few anxious moments that we know nothing of. I should
+    judge as much merely from what the groom told me of frequently meeting
+    Lloyd with his parrot. But the plan was not a bad one&mdash;not at all. Even
+    if the bird had been caught in the act, it would only have been 'That
+    mischievous parrot!' you see. And his master would only have been looking
+    for him."
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH2"></a>
+<h3>
+   II. THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It was, of course, always a part of Martin Hewitt's business to be
+    thoroughly at home among any and every class of people, and to be able to
+    interest himself intelligently, or to appear to do so, in their various
+    pursuits. In one of the most important cases ever placed in his hands he
+    could have gone but a short way toward success had he not displayed some
+    knowledge of the more sordid aspects of professional sport, and a great
+    interest in the undertakings of a certain dealer therein.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great case itself had nothing to do with sport, and, indeed, from a
+    narrative point of view, was somewhat uninteresting, but the man who
+    alone held the one piece of information wanted was a keeper, backer, or
+    "gaffer" of professional pedestrians, and it was through the medium of
+    his pecuniary interest in such matters that Hewitt was enabled to strike
+    a bargain with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man was a publican on the outskirts of Padfield, a northern town,
+    pretty famous for its sporting tastes, and to Padfield, therefore, Hewitt
+    betook himself, and, arrayed in a way to indicate some inclination of
+    his own toward sport, he began to frequent the bar of the Hare and
+    Hounds. Kentish, the landlord, was a stout, bull-necked man, of no great
+    communicativeness at first; but after a little acquaintance he opened out
+    wonderfully, became quite a jolly (and rather intelligent) companion, and
+    came out with innumerable anecdotes of his sporting adventures. He could
+    put a very decent dinner on the table, too, at the Hare and Hounds, and
+    Hewitt's frequent invitation to him to join therein and divide a bottle
+    of the best in the cellar soon put the two on the very best of terms.
+    Good terms with Mr. Kentish was Hewitt's great desire, for the
+    information he wanted was of a sort that could never be extracted by
+    casual questioning, but must be a matter of open communication by the
+    publican, extracted in what way it might be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here," said Kentish one day, "I'll put you on to a good thing, my
+    boy&mdash;a real good thing. Of course you know all about the Padfield 135
+    Yards Handicap being run off now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I haven't looked into it much," Hewitt replied. "Ran the first
+    round of heats last Saturday and Monday, didn't they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They did. Well"&mdash;Kentish spoke in a stage whisper as he leaned over and
+    rapped the table&mdash;"I've got the final winner in this house." He nodded
+    his head, took a puff at his cigar, and added, in his ordinary voice.
+    "Don't say nothing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, of course not. Got something on, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Rather! What do you think? Got any price I liked. Been saving him up for
+    this. Why, he's got twenty-one yards, and he can do even time all the
+    way! Fact! Why, he could win runnin' back'ards. He won his heat on Monday
+    like&mdash;like&mdash;like that!" The gaffer snapped his fingers, in default of a
+    better illustration, and went on. "He might ha' took it a little easier,
+    <i>I</i> think; it's shortened his price, of course, him jumpin' in by two
+    yards. But you can get decent odds now, if you go about it right. You
+    take my tip&mdash;back him for his heat next Saturday, in the second round,
+    and for the final. You'll get a good price for the final, if you pop it
+    down at once. But don't go makin' a song of it, will you, now? I'm givin'
+    you a tip I wouldn't give anybody else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thanks, very much; it's awfully good of you. I'll do what you advise.
+    But isn't there a dark horse anywhere else?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not dark to me, my boy, not dark to me. I know every man runnin' like a
+    book. Old Taylor&mdash;him over at the Cop&mdash;he's got a very good lad at
+    eighteen yards, a very good lad indeed; and he's a tryer this time, I
+    know. But, bless you, my lad could give him ten, instead o' taking three,
+    and beat him then! When I'm runnin' a real tryer, I'm generally runnin'
+    something very near a winner, you bet; and this time, mind <i>this</i> time,
+    I'm runnin' the certainest winner I <i>ever</i> run&mdash;and I don't often make a
+    mistake. You back him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall, if you're as sure as that. But who is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Crockett's his name&mdash;Sammy Crockett. He's quite a new lad. I've got
+    young Steggles looking after him&mdash;sticks to him like wax. Takes his
+    little breathers in my bit o' ground at the back here. I've got a
+    cinder-sprint path there, over behind the trees. I don't let him out o'
+    sight much, I can tell you. He's a straight lad, and he knows it'll be
+    worth his while to stick to me; but there's some 'ud poison him, if they
+    thought he'd spoil their books."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon afterward the two strolled toward the taproom. "I expect Sammy'll be
+    there," the landlord said, "with Steggles. I don't hide him too
+    much&mdash;they'd think I'd got something extra on if I did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the tap-room sat a lean, wire-drawn-looking youth, with sloping
+    shoulders and a thin face, and by his side was a rather short, thick-set
+    man, who had an odd air, no matter what he did, of proprietorship and
+    surveillance of the lean youth. Several other men sat about, and there
+    was loud laughter, under which the lean youth looked sheepishly angry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Tarn't no good, Sammy, lad," some one was saying, "you a-makin' after
+    Nancy Webb&mdash;she'll ha' nowt to do with 'ee."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' like 'em so thread-papery," added another. "No, Sammy, you aren't
+    the lad for she. I see her&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What about Nancy Webb?" asked Kentish, pushing open the door. "Sammy's
+    all right, any way. You keep fit, my lad, an' go on improving, and some
+    day you'll have as good a house as me. Never mind the lasses. Had his
+    glass o' beer, has he?" This to Raggy Steggles, who, answering in the
+    affirmative, viewed his charge as though he were a post, and the beer a
+    recent coat of paint.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Has two glasses of mild a day," the landlord said to Hewitt. "Never puts
+    on flesh, so he can stand it. Come out now." He nodded to Steggles, who
+    rose and marched Sammy Crockett away for exercise.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    On the following afternoon (it was Thursday), as Hewitt and Kentish
+    chatted in the landlord's own snuggery, Steggles burst into the room in a
+    great state of agitation and spluttered out: "He&mdash;he's bolted; gone
+    away!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sammy&mdash;gone! Hooked it! <i>I</i> can't find him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord stared blankly at the trainer, who stood with a sweater
+    dangling from his hand and stared blankly back. "What d'ye mean?" Kentish
+    said, at last. "Don't be a fool! He's in the place somewhere. Find him!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this Steggles defied anybody to do. He had looked already. He had
+    left Crockett at the cinder-path behind the trees in his running-gear,
+    with the addition of the long overcoat and cap he used in going between
+    the path and the house to guard against chill. "I was goin' to give him a
+    bust or two with the pistol," the trainer explained, "but, when we got
+    over t'other side, 'Raggy,' ses he, 'it's blawin' a bit chilly. I think
+    I'll ha' a sweater. There's one on my box, ain't there?' So in I coomes
+    for the sweater, and it weren't on his box, and, when I found it and got
+    back&mdash;he weren't there. They'd seen nowt o' him in t' house, and he
+    weren't nowhere."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt and the landlord, now thoroughly startled, searched everywhere,
+    but to no purpose. "What should he go off the place for?" asked Kentish,
+    in a sweat of apprehension. "'Tain't chilly a bit&mdash;it's warm. He didn't
+    want no sweater; never wore one before. It was a piece of kid to be able
+    to clear out. Nice thing, this is. I stand to win two years' takings over
+    him. Here&mdash;you'll have to find him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, but how?" exclaimed the disconcerted trainer, dancing about
+    distractedly. "I've got all I could scrape on him myself. Where can I
+    look?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here was Hewitt's opportunity. He took Kentish aside and whispered. What
+    he said startled the landlord considerably. "Yes, I'll tell you all about
+    that," he said, "if that's all you want. It's no good or harm to me
+    whether I tell or no. But can you find him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That I can't promise, of course. But you know who I am now, and what I'm
+    here for. If you like to give me the information I want, I'll go into the
+    case for you, and, of course, I shan't charge any fee. I may have luck,
+    you know, but I can't promise, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord looked in Hewitt's face for a moment. Then he said: "Done!
+    It's a deal."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," Hewitt replied; "get together the one or two papers you
+    have, and we'll go into my business in the evening. As to Crockett, don't
+    say a word to anybody. I'm afraid it must get out, since they all know
+    about it in the house, but there's no use in making any unnecessary
+    noise. Don't make hedging bets or do anything that will attract notice.
+    Now we'll go over to the back and look at this cinder-path of yours."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here Steggles, who was still standing near, was struck with an idea. "How
+    about old Taylor, at the Cop, guv'nor, eh?" he said, meaningly. "His
+    lad's good enough to win with Sammy out, and Taylor is backing him
+    plenty. Think he knows any thing o' this?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's likely," Hewitt observed, before Kentish could reply. "Yes. Look
+    here&mdash;suppose Steggles goes and keeps his eye on the Cop for an hour or
+    two, in case there's anything to be heard of? Don't show yourself, of
+    course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish agreed, and the trainer went. When Hewitt and Kentish arrived at
+    the path behind the trees, Hewitt at once began examining the ground. One
+    or two rather large holes in the cinders were made, as the publican
+    explained, by Crockett, in practicing getting off his mark. Behind these
+    were several fresh tracks of spiked shoes. The tracks led up to within a
+    couple of yards of the high fence bounding the ground, and there stopped
+    abruptly and entirely. In the fence, a little to the right of where the
+    tracks stopped, there was a stout door. This Hewitt tried, and found
+    ajar.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's always kept bolted," Kentish said. "He's gone out that way&mdash;he
+    couldn't have gone any other without comin' through the house."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But he isn't in the habit of making a step three yards long, is he?"
+    Hewitt asked, pointing at the last footmark and then at the door, which
+    was quite that distance away from it. "Besides," he added, opening the
+    door, "there's no footprint here nor outside."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The door opened on a lane, with another fence and a thick plantation of
+    trees at the other side. Kentish looked at the footmarks, then at the
+    door, then down the lane, and finally back toward the house. "That's a
+    licker!" he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is a quiet sort of lane," was Hewitt's next remark. "No houses in
+    sight. Where does it lead?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That way it goes to the Old Kilns&mdash;disused. This way down to a turning
+    off the Padfield and Catton road."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt returned to the cinder-path again, and once more examined the
+    footmarks. He traced them back over the grass toward the house.
+    "Certainly," he said, "he hasn't gone back to the house. Here is the
+    double line of tracks, side by side, from the house&mdash;Steggles' ordinary
+    boots with iron tips, and Crockett's running pumps; thus they came out.
+    Here is Steggles' track in the opposite direction alone, made when he
+    went back for the sweater. Crockett remained; you see various prints in
+    those loose cinders at the end of the path where he moved this way and
+    that, and then two or three paces toward the fence&mdash;not directly toward
+    the door, you notice&mdash;and there they stop dead, and there are no more,
+    either back or forward. Now, if he had wings, I should be tempted to the
+    opinion that he flew straight away in the air from that spot&mdash;unless the
+    earth swallowed him and closed again without leaving a wrinkle on its
+    face."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish stared gloomily at the tracks and said nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "However," Hewitt resumed, "I think I'll take a little walk now and think
+    over it. You go into the house and show yourself at the bar. If anybody
+    wants to know how Crockett is, he's pretty well, thank you. By the by,
+    can I get to the Cop&mdash;this place of Taylor's&mdash;by this back lane?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, down to the end leading to the Catton road, turn to the left and
+    then first on the right. Any one'll show you the Cop," and Kentish shut
+    the door behind the detective, who straightway walked&mdash;toward the Old
+    Kilns.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In little more than an hour he was back. It was now becoming dusk, and
+    the landlord looked out papers from a box near the side window of his
+    snuggery, for the sake of the extra light. "I've got these papers
+    together for you," he said, as Hewitt entered. "Any news?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing very great. Here's a bit of handwriting I want you to recognize,
+    if you can. Get a light."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish lit a lamp, and Hewitt laid upon the table half a dozen small
+    pieces of torn paper, evidently fragments of a letter which had been torn
+    up, here reproduced in fac-simile:
+</p>
+<a name="image-1"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/058.jpg" width="231" height="88"
+alt="scraps of paper: mmy, throw them ou, right away,
+ left hi, hate his, lane wr" >
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord turned the scraps over, regarding them dubiously. "These
+    aren't much to recognize, anyhow. <i>I</i> don't know the writing. Where did
+    you find 'em?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They were lying in the lane at the back, a little way down. Plainly they
+    are pieces of a note addressed to some one called Sammy or something very
+    like it. See the first piece, with its 'mmy'? That is clearly from the
+    beginning of the note, because there is no line between it and the
+    smooth, straight edge of the paper above; also, nothing follows on the
+    same line. Some one writes to Crockett&mdash;presuming it to be a letter
+    addressed to him, as I do for other reasons&mdash;as Sammy. It is a pity that
+    there is no more of the letter to be found than these pieces. I expect
+    the person who tore it up put the rest in his pocket and dropped these by
+    accident."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish, who had been picking up and examining each piece in turn, now
+    dolorously broke out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, it's plain he's sold us&mdash;bolted and done us; me as took him out o'
+    the gutter, too. Look here&mdash;'throw them over'; that's plain enough&mdash;can't
+    mean anything else. Means throw <i>me</i> over, and my friends&mdash;me, after what
+    I've done for him! Then 'right away'&mdash;go right away, I s'pose, as he has
+    done. Then"&mdash;he was fiddling with the scraps and finally fitted two
+    together&mdash;"why, look here, this one with 'lane' on it fits over the one
+    about throwing over, and it says 'poor f' where its torn; that means
+    'poor fool,' I s'pose&mdash;<i>me</i>, or 'fathead,' or something like that. That's
+    nice. Why, I'd twist his neck if I could get hold of him; and I will!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled. "Perhaps it's not quite so uncomplimentary, after all," he
+    said. "If you can't recognize the writing, never mind. But, if he's gone
+    away to sell you, it isn't much use finding him, is it? He won't win if
+    he doesn't want to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, he wouldn't dare to rope under my very eyes. I'd&mdash;I'd&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, well; perhaps we'll get him to run, after all, and as well as he
+    can. One thing is certain&mdash;he left this place of his own will. Further, I
+    think he is in Padfield now; he went toward the town, I believe. And I
+    don't think he means to sell you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, he shouldn't. I've made it worth his while to stick to me. I've
+    put a fifty on for him out of my own pocket, and told him so; and, if he
+    won, that would bring him a lump more than he'd probably get by going
+    crooked, besides the prize money and anything I might give him over. But
+    it seems to me he's putting me in the cart altogether."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That we shall see. Meantime, don't mention anything I've told you to any
+    one&mdash;not even to Steggles. He can't help us, and he might blurt things
+    out inadvertently. Don't say anything about these pieces of paper, which
+    I shall keep myself. By-the-by, Steggles is indoors, isn't he? Very well,
+    keep him in. Don't let him be seen hunting about this evening. I'll stay
+    here to-night and we'll proceed with Crockett's business in the morning.
+    And now we'll settle <i>my</i> business, please."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    In the morning Hewitt took his breakfast in the snuggery, carefully
+    listening to any conversation that might take place at the bar. Soon
+    after nine o'clock a fast dog-cart stopped outside, and a red-faced,
+    loud-voiced man swaggered in, greeting Kentish with boisterous
+    cordiality. He had a drink with the landlord, and said: "How's things?
+    Fancy any of 'em for the sprint handicap? Got a lad o' your own in,
+    haven't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes," Kentish replied. "Crockett. Only a young un not got to his
+    proper mark yet, I reckon. I think old Taylor's got No. 1 this time."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Capital lad," the other replied, with a confidential nod. "Shouldn't
+    wonder at all. Want to do anything yourself over it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't think so. I'm not on at present. Might have a little flutter
+    on the grounds just for fun; nothing else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There were a few more casual remarks, and then the red-faced man drove
+    away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who was that?" asked Hewitt, who had watched the visitor through the
+    snuggery window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's Danby&mdash;bookmaker. Cute chap. He's been told Crockett's missing,
+    I'll bet anything, and come here to pump me. No good, though. As a matter
+    of fact, I've worked Sammy Crockett into his books for about half I'm in
+    for altogether&mdash;through third parties, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt reached for his hat. "I'm going out for half an hour now," he
+    said. "If Steggles wants to go out before I come back, don't let him. Let
+    him go and smooth over all those tracks on the cinder-path, very
+    carefully. And, by the by, could you manage to have your son about the
+    place to-day, in case I happen to want a little help out of doors?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly; I'll get him to stay in. But what do you want the cinders
+    smoothed for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled, and patted his host's shoulder. "I'll explain all my
+    tricks when the job's done," he said, and went out.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    On the lane from Padfield to Sedby village stood the Plough beer-house,
+    wherein J. Webb was licensed to sell by retail beer to be consumed on the
+    premises or off, as the thirsty list. Nancy Webb, with a very fine color,
+    a very curly fringe, and a wide smiling mouth revealing a fine set of
+    teeth, came to the bar at the summons of a stoutish old gentleman in
+    spectacles who walked with a stick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The stoutish old gentleman had a glass of bitter beer, and then said in
+    the peculiarly quiet voice of a very deaf man: "Can you tell me, if you
+    please, the way into the main Catton road?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Down the lane, turn to the right at the cross-roads, then first to the
+    left."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman waited with his hand to his ear for some few seconds
+    after she had finished speaking, and then resumed in his whispering
+    voice: "I'm afraid I'm very deaf this morning." He fumbled in his pocket
+    and produced a note-book and pencil. "May I trouble you to write it down?
+    I'm so very deaf at times that I&mdash;Thank you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl wrote the direction, and the old gentleman bade her good-morning
+    and left. All down the lane he walked slowly with his stick. At the
+    cross-roads he turned, put the stick under his arm, thrust his spectacles
+    into his pocket, and strode away in the ordinary guise of Martin Hewitt.
+    He pulled out his note-book, examined Miss Webb's direction very
+    carefully, and then went off another way altogether, toward the Hare and
+    Hounds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish lounged moodily in his bar. "Well, my boy," said Hewitt, "has
+    Steggles wiped out the tracks?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not yet; I haven't told him. But he's somewhere about; I'll tell him
+    now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, don't. I don't think we'll have that done, after all. I expect he'll
+    want to go out soon&mdash;at any rate, some time during the day. Let him go
+    whenever he likes. I'll sit upstairs a bit in the club-room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well. But how do you know Steggles will be going out?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, he's pretty restless after his lost <i>protégé</i>, isn't he? I don't
+    suppose he'll be able to remain idle long."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And about Crockett. Do you give him up?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no! Don't you be impatient. I can't say I'm quite confident yet of
+    laying hold of him&mdash;the time is so short, you see&mdash;but I think I shall at
+    least have news for you by the evening."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt sat in the club-room until the afternoon, taking his lunch there.
+    At length he saw, through the front window, Raggy Steggles walking down
+    the road. In an instant Hewitt was down-stairs and at the door. The road
+    bent eighty yards away, and as soon as Steggles passed the bend the
+    detective hurried after him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All the way to Padfield town and more than half through it Hewitt dogged
+    the trainer. In the end Steggles stopped at a corner and gave a note to a
+    small boy who was playing near. The boy ran with the note to a bright,
+    well-kept house at the opposite corner. Martin Hewitt was interested to
+    observe the legend, "H. Danby, Contractor," on a board over a gate in the
+    side wall of the garden behind this house. In five minutes a door in the
+    side gate opened, and the head and shoulders of the red-faced man
+    emerged. Steggles immediately hurried across and disappeared through the
+    gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was both interesting and instructive. Hewitt took up a position in
+    the side street and waited. In ten minutes the trainer reappeared and
+    hurried off the way he had come, along the street Hewitt had
+    considerately left clear for him. Then Hewitt strolled toward the smart
+    house and took a good look at it. At one corner of the small piece of
+    forecourt garden, near the railings, a small, baize-covered,
+    glass-fronted notice-board stood on two posts. On its top edge appeared
+    the words, "H. Danby. Houses to be Sold or Let." But the only notice
+    pinned to the green baize within was an old and dusty one, inviting
+    tenants for three shops, which were suitable for any business, and which
+    would be fitted to suit tenants. Apply within.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt pushed open the front gate and rang the door-bell. "There are some
+    shops to let, I see," he said, when a maid appeared. "I should like to
+    see them, if you will let me have the key."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Master's out, sir. You can't see the shops till Monday."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dear me, that's unfortunate, I'm afraid I can't wait till Monday. Didn't
+    Mr. Danby leave any instructions, in case anybody should inquire?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir&mdash;as I've told you. He said anybody who called about 'em must
+    come again on Monday."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, very well, then; I suppose I must try. One of the shops is in High
+    Street, isn't it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, sir; they're all in the new part&mdash;Granville Road."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, I'm afraid that will scarcely do. But I'll see. Good-day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Martin Hewitt walked away a couple of streets' lengths before he inquired
+    the way to Granville Road. When at last he found that thoroughfare, in a
+    new and muddy suburb, crowded with brick-heaps and half-finished streets,
+    he took a slow walk along its entire length. It was a melancholy example
+    of baffled enterprise. A row of a dozen or more shops had been built
+    before any population had arrived to demand goods. Would-be tradesmen
+    had taken many of these shops, and failure and disappointment stared
+    from the windows. Some were half covered by shutters, because the
+    scanty stock scarce sufficed to fill the remaining half. Others were
+    shut almost altogether, the inmates only keeping open the door for
+    their own convenience, and, perhaps, keeping down a shutter for the
+    sake of a little light. Others, again, had not yet fallen so low, but
+    struggled bravely still to maintain a show of business and prosperity,
+    with very little success. Opposite the shops there still remained a
+    dusty, ill-treated hedge and a forlorn-looking field, which an old board
+    offered on building leases. Altogether a most depressing spot.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was little difficulty in identifying the three shops offered for
+    letting by Mr. H. Danby. They were all together near the middle of the
+    row, and were the only ones that appeared not yet to have been occupied.
+    A dusty "To Let" bill hung in each window, with written directions to
+    inquire of Mr. H. Danby or at No. 7. Now No. 7 was a melancholy baker's
+    shop, with a stock of three loaves and a plate of stale buns. The
+    disappointed baker assured Hewitt that he usually kept the keys of the
+    shops, but that the landlord, Mr. Danby, had taken them away the day
+    before to see how the ceilings were standing, and had not returned them.
+    "But if you was thinking of taking a shop here," the poor baker added,
+    with some hesitation, "I&mdash;I&mdash;if you'll excuse my advising you&mdash;I
+    shouldn't recommend it. I've had a sickener of it myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt thanked the baker for his advice, wished him better luck in
+    future, and left. To the Hare and Hounds his pace was brisk. "Come," he
+    said, as he met Kentish's inquiring glance, "this has been a very good
+    day, on the whole. I know where our man is now, and I think we can get
+    him, by a little management."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, down in Padfield. As a matter of fact, he's being kept there against
+    his will, we shall find. I see that your friend Mr. Danby is a builder as
+    well as a bookmaker."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a regular builder. He speculates in a street of new houses now and
+    again, that's all. But is he in it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's as deep in it as anybody, I think. Now, don't fly into a passion.
+    There are a few others in it as well, but you'll do harm if you don't
+    keep quiet."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But go and get the police; come and fetch him, if you know where they're
+    keeping him. Why&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So we will, if we can't do it without them. But it's quite possible we
+    can, and without all the disturbance and, perhaps, delay that calling in
+    the police would involve. Consider, now, in reference to your own
+    arrangements. Wouldn't it pay you better to get him back quietly, without
+    a soul knowing&mdash;perhaps not even Danby knowing&mdash;till the heat is run
+    to-morrow?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, it would, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good, then, so be it. Remember what I have told you about keeping
+    your mouth shut; say nothing to Steggles or anybody. Is there a cab or
+    brougham your son and I can have for the evening?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There's an old hiring landau in the stables you can shut up into a cab,
+    if that'll do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Excellent. We'll run down to the town in it as soon as it's ready. But,
+    first, a word about Crockett. What sort of a lad is he? Likely to give
+    them trouble, show fight, and make a disturbance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I should say not. He's no plucked un, certainly; all his manhood's
+    in his legs, I believe. You see, he ain't a big sort o' chap at best, and
+    he'd be pretty easy put upon&mdash;at least, I guess so."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good, so much the better, for then he won't have been damaged, and
+    they will probably only have one man to guard him. Now the carriage,
+    please."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Young Kentish was a six-foot sergeant of grenadiers home on furlough, and
+    luxuriating in plain clothes. He and Hewitt walked a little way toward
+    the town, allowing the landau to catch them up. They traveled in it to
+    within a hundred yards of the empty shops and then alighted, bidding the
+    driver wait.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall show you three empty shops," Hewitt said, as he and young
+    Kentish walked down Granville Road. "I am pretty sure that Sammy Crockett
+    is in one of them, and I am pretty sure that that is the middle one.
+    Take a look as we go past."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the shops had been slowly passed, Hewitt resumed: "Now, did you see
+    anything about those shops that told a tale of any sort?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Sergeant Kentish replied. "I can't say I noticed anything beyond
+    the fact that they were empty&mdash;and likely to stay so, I should think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We'll stroll back, and look in at the windows, if nobody's watching us,"
+    Hewitt said. "You see, it's reasonable to suppose they've put him in the
+    middle one, because that would suit their purpose best. The shops at each
+    side of the three are occupied, and, if the prisoner struggled, or
+    shouted, or made an uproar, he might be heard if he were in one of the
+    shops next those inhabited. So that the middle shop is the most likely.
+    Now, see there," he went on, as they stopped before the window of the
+    shop in question, "over at the back there's a staircase not yet
+    partitioned off. It goes down below and up above. On the stairs and on
+    the floor near them there are muddy footmarks. These must have been made
+    to-day, else they would not be muddy, but dry and dusty, since there
+    hasn't been a shower for a week till to-day. Move on again. Then you
+    noticed that there were no other such marks in the shop. Consequently
+    the man with the muddy feet did not come in by the front door, but by the
+    back; otherwise he would have made a trail from the door. So we will go
+    round to the back ourselves."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was now growing dusk. The small pieces of ground behind the shops were
+    bounded by a low fence, containing a door for each house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This door is bolted inside, of course," Hewitt said, "but there is no
+    difficulty in climbing. I think we had better wait in the garden till
+    dark. In the meantime, the jailer, whoever he is, may come out; in which
+    case we shall pounce on him as soon as he opens the door. You have that
+    few yards of cord in your pocket, I think? And my handkerchief, properly
+    rolled, will make a very good gag. Now over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They climbed the fence and quietly approached the house, placing
+    themselves in the angle of an outhouse out of sight from the windows.
+    There was no sound, and no light appeared. Just above the ground about a
+    foot of window was visible, with a grating over it, apparently lighting a
+    basement. Suddenly Hewitt touched his companion's arm and pointed toward
+    the window. A faint rustling sound was perceptible, and, as nearly as
+    could be discerned in the darkness, some white blind or covering was
+    placed over the glass from the inside. Then came the sound of a striking
+    match, and at the side edge of the window there was a faint streak of
+    light.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's the place," Hewitt whispered. "Come, we'll make a push for it.
+    You stand against the wall at one side of the door and I'll stand at the
+    other, and we'll have him as he comes out. Quietly, now, and I'll startle
+    them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He took a stone from among the rubbish littering the garden and flung it
+    crashing through the window. There was a loud exclamation from within,
+    the blind fell, and somebody rushed to the back door and flung it open.
+    Instantly Kentish let fly a heavy right-hander, and the man went over
+    like a skittle. In a moment Hewitt was upon him and the gag in his mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hold him," Hewitt whispered, hurriedly. "I'll see if there are others."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He peered down through the low window. Within Sammy Crockett, his bare
+    legs dangling from beneath his long overcoat, sat on a packing-box,
+    leaning with his head on his hand and his back toward the window. A
+    guttering candle stood on the mantel-piece, and the newspaper which had
+    been stretched across the window lay in scattered sheets on the floor. No
+    other person besides Sammy was visible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They led their prisoner indoors. Young Kentish recognized him as a
+    public-house loafer and race-course ruffian, well known in the
+    neighborhood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So it's you, is it, Browdie?" he said. "I've caught you one hard clump,
+    and I've half a mind to make it a score more. But you'll get it pretty
+    warm one way or another before this job's forgotten."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sammy Crockett was overjoyed at his rescue. He had not been ill-treated,
+    he explained, but had been thoroughly cowed by Browdie, who had from time
+    to time threatened him savagely with an iron bar by way of persuading him
+    to quietness and submission. He had been fed, and had taken no worse harm
+    than a slight stiffness from his adventure, due to his light under-attire
+    of jersey and knee-shorts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sergeant Kentish tied Browdie's elbows firmly together behind, and
+    carried the line round the ankles, bracing all up tight. Then he ran a
+    knot from one wrist to the other over the back of the neck, and left the
+    prisoner, trussed and helpless, on the heap of straw that had been
+    Sammy's bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You won't be very jolly, I expect," Kentish said, "for some time. You
+    can't shout and you can't walk, and I know you can't untie yourself.
+    You'll get a bit hungry, too, perhaps, but that'll give you an appetite.
+    I don't suppose you'll be disturbed till some time to-morrow, unless our
+    friend Danby turns up in the meantime. But you can come along to jail
+    instead, if you prefer it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They left him where he lay, and took Sammy to the old landau. Sammy
+    walked in slippers, carrying his spiked shoes, hanging by the lace, in
+    his hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah," said Hewitt, "I think I know the name of the young lady who gave
+    you those slippers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Crockett looked ashamed and indignant. "Yes," he said, "they've done me
+    nicely between 'em. But I'll pay her&mdash;I'll&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hush, hush!" Hewitt said; "you mustn't talk unkindly of a lady, you
+    know. Get into this carriage, and we'll take you home. We'll see if I can
+    tell you your adventures without making a mistake. First, you had a note
+    from Miss Webb, telling you that you were mistaken in supposing she had
+    slighted you, and that, as a matter of fact, she had quite done with
+    somebody else&mdash;left him&mdash;of whom you were jealous. Isn't that so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes," young Crockett answered, blushing deeply under the
+    carriage-lamp; "but I don't see how you come to know that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then she went on to ask you to get rid of Steggles on Thursday afternoon
+    for a few minutes, and speak to her in the back lane. Now, your running
+    pumps, with their thin soles, almost like paper, no heels and long
+    spikes, hurt your feet horribly if you walk on hard ground, don't they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ay, that they do&mdash;enough to cripple you. I'd never go on much hard
+    ground with 'em."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They're not like cricket shoes, I see."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a bit. Cricket shoes you can walk anywhere in!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, she knew this&mdash;I think I know who told her&mdash;and she promised to
+    bring you a new pair of slippers, and to throw them over the fence for
+    you to come out in."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I s'pose she's been tellin' you all this?" Crockett said, mournfully.
+    "You couldn't ha' seen the letter; I saw her tear it up and put the bits
+    in her pocket. She asked me for it in the lane, in case Steggles saw it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, at any rate, you sent Steggles away, and the slippers did come
+    over, and you went into the lane. You walked with her as far as the road
+    at the end, and then you were seized and gagged, and put into a
+    carriage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That was Browdie did that," said Crockett, "and another chap I don't
+    know. But&mdash;why, this is Padfield High Street?" He looked through the
+    window and regarded the familiar shops with astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course it is. Where did you think it was?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, where was that place you found me in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Granville Road, Padfield. I suppose they told you you were in another
+    town?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Told me it was Newstead Hatch. They drove for about three or four hours,
+    and kept me down on the floor between the seats so as I couldn't see
+    where we was going."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Done for two reasons," said Hewitt. "First, to mystify you, and prevent
+    any discovery of the people directing the conspiracy; and second, to be
+    able to put you indoors at night and unobserved. Well, I think I have
+    told you all you know yourself now as far as the carriage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But there is the Hare and Hounds just in front. We'll pull up here, and
+    I'll get out and see if the coast is clear. I fancy Mr. Kentish would
+    rather you came in unnoticed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a few seconds Hewitt was back, and Crockett was conveyed indoors by a
+    side entrance. Hewitt's instructions to the landlord were few, but
+    emphatic. "Don't tell Steggles about it," he said; "make an excuse to get
+    rid of him, and send him out of the house. Take Crockett into some other
+    bedroom, not his own, and let your son look after him. Then come here,
+    and I'll tell you all about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sammy Crockett was undergoing a heavy grooming with white embrocation at
+    the hands of Sergeant Kentish when the landlord returned to Hewitt. "Does
+    Danby know you've got him?" he asked. "How did you do it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Danby doesn't know yet, and with luck he won't know till he sees
+    Crockett running to-morrow. The man who has sold you is Steggles."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Steggles?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Steggles it is. At the very first, when Steggles rushed in to report
+    Sammy Crockett missing, I suspected him. You didn't, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. He's always been considered a straight man, and he looked as
+    startled as anybody."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I must say he acted it very well. But there was something
+    suspicious in his story. What did he say? Crockett had remarked a
+    chilliness, and asked for a sweater, which Steggles went to fetch. Now,
+    just think. You understand these things. Would any trainer who knew his
+    business (as Steggles does) have gone to bring out a sweater for his man
+    to change for his jersey in the open air, at the very time the man was
+    complaining of chilliness? Of course not. He would have taken his man
+    indoors again and let him change there under shelter. Then supposing
+    Steggles had really been surprised at missing Crockett, wouldn't he have
+    looked about, found the gate open, and <i>told</i> you it was open when he
+    first came in? He said nothing of that&mdash;we found the gate open for
+    ourselves. So that from the beginning I had a certain opinion of
+    Steggles."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What you say seems pretty plain now, although it didn't strike me at the
+    time. But, if Steggles was selling us, why couldn't he have drugged the
+    lad? That would have been a deal simpler."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Because Steggles is a good trainer, and has a certain reputation to keep
+    up. It would have done him no good to have had a runner drugged while
+    under his care; certainly it would have cooked his goose with <i>you</i>. It
+    was much the safer thing to connive at kidnapping. That put all the
+    active work into other hands, and left him safe, even if the trick
+    failed. Now, you remember that we traced the prints of Crockett's spiked
+    shoes to within a couple of yards from the fence, and that there they
+    ceased suddenly?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. You said it looked as though he had flown up into the air; and so
+    it did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I was sure that it was by that gate that Crockett had left, and by
+    no other. He couldn't have got through the house without being seen, and
+    there was no other way&mdash;let alone the evidence of the unbolted gate.
+    Therefore, as the footprints ceased where they did, and were not repeated
+    anywhere in the lane, I knew that he had taken his spiked shoes
+    off&mdash;probably changed them for something else, because a runner anxious
+    as to his chances would never risk walking on bare feet, with a chance of
+    cutting them. Ordinary, broad, smooth-soled slippers would leave no
+    impression on the coarse cinders bordering the track, and nothing short
+    of spiked shoes would leave a mark on the hard path in the lane behind.
+    The spike-tracks were leading, not directly toward the door, but in the
+    direction of the fence, when they stopped; somebody had handed, or
+    thrown, the slippers over the fence, and he had changed them on the spot.
+    The enemy had calculated upon the spikes leaving a track in the lane that
+    might lead us in our search, and had arranged accordingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So far so good. I could see no footprints near the gate in the lane. You
+    will remember that I sent Steggles off to watch at the Cop before I went
+    out to the back&mdash;merely, of course, to get him out of the way. I went out
+    into the lane, leaving you behind, and walked its whole length, first
+    toward the Old Kilns and then back toward the road. I found nothing to
+    help me except these small pieces of paper&mdash;which are here in my
+    pocket-book, by the by. Of course this 'mmy' might have meant 'Jimmy' or
+    'Tommy' as possibly as 'Sammy,' but they were not to be rejected on that
+    account. Certainly Crockett had been decoyed out of your ground, not
+    taken by force, or there would have been marks of a scuffle in the
+    cinders. And as his request for a sweater was probably an excuse&mdash;because
+    it was not at all a cold afternoon&mdash;he must have previously designed
+    going out. Inference, a letter received; and here were pieces of a
+    letter. Now, in the light of what I have said, look at these pieces.
+    First, there is the 'mmy'&mdash;that I have dealt with. Then see this 'throw
+    them ov'&mdash;clearly a part of 'throw them over'; exactly what had probably
+    been done with the slippers. Then the 'poor f,' coming just on the line
+    before, and seen, by joining up with this other piece, might easily be a
+    reference to 'poor feet.' These coincidences, one on the other, went far
+    to establish the identity of the letter, and to confirm my previous
+    impressions. But then there is something else. Two other pieces evidently
+    mean 'left him,' and 'right away,' perhaps; but there is another,
+    containing almost all of the words 'hate his,' with the word 'hate'
+    underlined. Now, who writes 'hate' with the emphasis of underscoring&mdash;who
+    but a woman? The writing is large and not very regular; it might easily
+    be that of a half-educated woman. Here was something more&mdash;Sammy had been
+    enticed away by a woman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, I remembered that, when we went into the tap-room on Wednesday,
+    some of his companions were chaffing Crockett about a certain Nancy Webb,
+    and the chaff went home, as was plain to see. The woman, then, who could
+    most easily entice Sammy Crockett away was Nancy Webb. I resolved to find
+    who Nancy Webb was and learn more of her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meantime, I took a look at the road at the end of the lane. It was
+    damper than the lane, being lower, and overhung by trees. There were many
+    wheel-tracks, but only one set that turned in the road and went back the
+    way it came, toward the town; and they were narrow wheels&mdash;carriage
+    wheels. Crockett tells me now that they drove him about for a long time
+    before shutting him up; probably the inconvenience of taking him straight
+    to the hiding-place didn't strike them when they first drove off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A few inquiries soon set me in the direction of the Plough and Miss
+    Nancy Webb. I had the curiosity to look around the place as I approached,
+    and there, in the garden behind the house, were Steggles and the young
+    lady in earnest confabulation!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Every conjecture became a certainty. Steggles was the lover of whom
+    Crockett was jealous, and he had employed the girl to bring Sammy out. I
+    watched Steggles home, and gave you a hint to keep him there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But the thing that remained was to find Steggles' employer in this
+    business. I was glad to be in when Danby called. He came, of course, to
+    hear if you would blurt out anything, and to learn, if possible, what
+    steps you were taking. He failed. By way of making assurance doubly sure
+    I took a short walk this morning in the character of a deaf gentleman,
+    and got Miss Webb to write me a direction that comprised three of the
+    words on these scraps of paper&mdash;'left,' 'right,' and 'lane'; see, they
+    correspond, the peculiar 'f's,' 't's,' and all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, I felt perfectly sure that Steggles would go for his pay to-day. In
+    the first place, I knew that people mixed up with shady transactions in
+    professional pedestrianism are not apt to trust one another far&mdash;they
+    know better. Therefore Steggles wouldn't have had his bribe first. But he
+    would take care to get it before the Saturday heats were run, because
+    once they were over the thing was done, and the principal conspirator
+    might have refused to pay up, and Steggles couldn't have helped himself.
+    Again I hinted he should not go out till I could follow him, and this
+    afternoon, when he went, follow him I did. I saw him go into Danby's
+    house by the side way and come away again. Danby it was, then, who had
+    arranged the business; and nobody was more likely, considering his large
+    pecuniary stake against Crockett's winning this race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But now how to find Crockett? I made up my mind he wouldn't be in
+    Danby's own house. That would be a deal too risky, with servants about
+    and so on. I saw that Danby was a builder, and had three shops to let&mdash;it
+    was on a paper before his house. What more likely prison than an empty
+    house? I knocked at Danby's door and asked for the keys of those shops. I
+    couldn't have them. The servant told me Danby was out (a manifest lie,
+    for I had just seen him), and that nobody could see the shops till
+    Monday. But I got out of her the address of the shops, and that was all I
+    wanted at the time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, why was nobody to see those shops till Monday? The interval was
+    suspicious&mdash;just enough to enable Crockett to be sent away again and cast
+    loose after the Saturday racing, supposing him to be kept in one of the
+    empty buildings. I went off at once and looked at the shops, forming my
+    conclusions as to which would be the most likely for Danby's purpose.
+    Here I had another confirmation of my ideas. A poor, half-bankrupt baker
+    in one of the shops had, by the bills, the custody of a set of keys; but
+    he, too, told me I couldn't have them; Danby had taken them away&mdash;and on
+    Thursday, the very day&mdash;with some trivial excuse, and hadn't brought them
+    back. That was all I wanted or could expect in the way of guidance. The
+    whole thing was plain. The rest you know all about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you're certainly as smart as they give you credit for, I must say.
+    But suppose Danby had taken down his 'To Let' notice, what would you have
+    done, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had our course, even then. We should have gone to Danby, astounded
+    him by telling him all about his little games, terrorized him with
+    threats of the law, and made him throw up his hand and send Crockett
+    back. But, as it is, you see, he doesn't know at this moment&mdash;probably
+    won't know till to-morrow afternoon&mdash;that the lad is safe and sound here.
+    You will probably use the interval to make him pay for losing the
+    game&mdash;by some of the ingenious financial devices you are no doubt
+    familiar with."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ay, that I will. He'll give any price against Crockett now, so long as
+    the bet don't come direct from me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But about Crockett, now," Hewitt went on. "Won't this confinement be
+    likely to have damaged his speed for a day or two?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, perhaps," the landlord replied; "but, bless ye, that won't matter.
+    There's four more in his heat to-morrow. Two I know aren't tryers, and
+    the other two I can hold in at a couple of quid apiece any day. The third
+    round and final won't be till to-morrow week, and he'll be as fit as ever
+    by then. It's as safe as ever it was. How much are you going to have on?
+    I'll lump it on for you safe enough. This is a chance not to be missed;
+    it's picking money up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you; I don't think I'll have anything to do with it. This
+    professional pedestrian business doesn't seem a pretty one at all. I
+    don't call myself a moralist, but, if you'll excuse my saying so, the
+    thing is scarcely the game I care to pick tap money at in any way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, very well! if you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't
+    think so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't
+    quarrel; you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only
+    feel I aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now,
+    you've got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll
+    pay it like a lord, and feel a deal more pleased than if you made a favor
+    of it&mdash;not that I'm above a favor, of course. But I'd prefer paying, and
+    that's a fact."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear sir, you have paid," Hewitt said, with a smile. "You paid in
+    advance. It was a bargain, wasn't it, that I should do your business if
+    you would help me in mine? Very well; a bargain's a bargain, and we've
+    both performed our parts. And you mustn't be offended at what I said just
+    now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That I won't! But as to that Raggy Steggles, once those heats are over
+    to-morrow, I'll&mdash;well&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was on the following Sunday week that Martin Hewitt, in his rooms in
+    London, turned over his paper and read, under the head "Padfield Annual
+    135 Yards Handicap," this announcement: "Final heat: Crockett, first;
+    Willis, second; Trewby, third; Owen, 0; Howell, 0. A runaway win by
+    nearly three yards."
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH3"></a>
+<h3>
+   III. THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Almost the only dogmatism that Martin Hewitt permitted himself in regard
+    to his professional methods was one on the matter of accumulative
+    probabilities. Often when I have remarked upon the apparently trivial
+    nature of the clews by which he allowed himself to be guided&mdash;sometimes,
+    to all seeming, in the very face of all likelihood&mdash;he has replied that
+    two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became at once, by
+    their mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important
+    considerations. "If I were in search of a man," he would say, "of whom I
+    knew nothing but that he squinted, bore a birthmark on his right hand,
+    and limped, and I observed a man who answered to the first peculiarity,
+    so far the clue would be trivial, because thousands of men squint. Now,
+    if that man presently moved and exhibited a birthmark on his right hand,
+    the value of that squint and that mark would increase at once a hundred
+    or a thousand fold. Apart they are little; together much. The weight of
+    evidence is not doubled merely; it would be only doubled if half the men
+    who squinted had right-hand birthmarks; whereas the proportion, if it
+    could be ascertained, would be, perhaps, more like one in ten thousand.
+    The two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become very
+    strong evidence. And, when the man is seen to walk with a limp, that
+    limp (another triviality), re-enforcing the others, brings the matter
+    to the rank of a practical certainty. The Bertillon system of
+    identification&mdash;what is it but a summary of trivialities? Thousands of
+    men are of the same height, thousands of the same length of foot,
+    thousands of the same girth of head&mdash;thousands correspond in any separate
+    measurement you may name. It is when the measurements are taken
+    <i>together</i> that you have your man identified forever. Just consider how
+    few, if any, of your friends correspond exactly in any two personal
+    peculiarities." Hewitt's dogma received its illustration unexpectedly
+    close at home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old house wherein my chambers and Hewitt's office were situated
+    contained, besides my own, two or three more bachelors' dens, in addition
+    to the offices on the ground and first and second floors. At the very top
+    of all, at the back, a fat, middle-aged man, named Foggatt, occupied a
+    set of four rooms. It was only after a long residence, by an accidental
+    remark of the housekeeper's, that I learned the man's name, which was
+    not painted on his door or displayed, with all the others, on the wall of
+    the ground-floor porch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Foggatt appeared to have few friends, but lived in something as
+    nearly approaching luxury as an old bachelor living in chambers can live.
+    An ascending case of champagne was a common phenomenon of the staircase,
+    and I have more than once seen a picture, destined for the top floor, of
+    a sort that went far to awaken green covetousness in the heart of a poor
+    journalist.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man himself was not altogether prepossessing. Fat as he was, he had a
+    way of carrying his head forward on his extended neck and gazing widely
+    about with a pair of the roundest and most prominent eyes I remember to
+    have ever seen, except in a fish. On the whole, his appearance was rather
+    vulgar, rather arrogant, and rather suspicious, without any very
+    pronounced quality of any sort. But certainly he was not pretty. In the
+    end, however, he was found shot dead in his sitting-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was in this way: Hewitt and I had dined together at my club, and late
+    in the evening had returned to my rooms to smoke and discuss whatever
+    came uppermost. I had made a bargain that day with two speculative odd
+    lots at a book sale, each of which contained a hidden prize. We sat
+    talking and turning over these books while time went unperceived, when
+    suddenly we were startled by a loud report. Clearly it was in the
+    building. We listened for a moment, but heard nothing else, and then
+    Hewitt expressed his opinion that the report was that of a gunshot.
+    Gunshots in residential chambers are not common things, wherefore I got
+    up and went to the landing, looking up the stairs and down.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the top of the next flight I saw Mrs. Clayton, the housekeeper. She
+    appeared to be frightened, and told me that the report came from Mr.
+    Foggatt's room. She thought he might have had an accident with the pistol
+    that usually lay on his mantel-piece. We went upstairs with her, and she
+    knocked at Mr. Foggatt's door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no reply. Through the ventilating fanlight over the door it
+    could be seen that there were lights within, a sign, Mrs. Clayton
+    maintained, that Mr. Foggatt was not out. We knocked again, much more
+    loudly, and called, but still ineffectually. The door was locked, and an
+    application of the housekeeper's key proved that the tenant's key had
+    been left in the lock inside. Mrs. Clayton's conviction that "something
+    had happened" became distressing, and in the end Hewitt pried open the
+    door with a small poker.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Something <i>had</i> happened. In the sitting-room Mr. Foggatt sat with his
+    head bowed over the table, quiet and still. The head was ill to look at,
+    and by it lay a large revolver, of the full-sized army pattern. Mrs.
+    Clayton ran back toward the landing with faint screams.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Run, Brett!" said Hewitt; "a doctor and a policeman!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I bounced down the stairs half a flight at a time. "First," I thought, "a
+    doctor. He may not be dead." I could think of no doctor in the immediate
+    neighborhood, but ran up the street away from the Strand, as being the
+    more likely direction for the doctor, although less so for the policeman.
+    It took me a good five minutes to find the medico, after being led astray
+    by a red lamp at a private hotel, and another five to get back, with a
+    policeman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Foggatt was dead, without a doubt. Probably had shot himself, the doctor
+    thought, from the powder-blackening and other circumstances. Certainly
+    nobody could have left the room by the door, or he must have passed my
+    landing, while the fact of the door being found locked from the inside
+    made the thing impossible. There were two windows to the room, both of
+    which were shut, one being fastened by the catch, while the catch of the
+    other was broken&mdash;an old fracture. Below these windows was a sheer drop
+    of fifty feet or more, without a foot or hand-hold near. The windows in
+    the other rooms were shut and fastened. Certainly it seemed
+    suicide&mdash;unless it were one of those accidents that will occur to people
+    who fiddle ignorantly with firearms. Soon the rooms were in possession of
+    the police, and we were turned out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We looked in at the housekeeper's kitchen, where her daughter was
+    reviving and calming Mrs. Clayton with gin and water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mustn't upset yourself, Mrs. Clayton," Hewitt said, "or what will
+    become of us all? The doctor thinks it was an accident."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He took a small bottle of sewing-machine oil from his pocket and handed
+    it to the daughter, thanking her for the loan.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    There was little evidence at the inquest. The shot had been heard, the
+    body had been found&mdash;that was the practical sum of the matter. No friends
+    or relatives of the dead man came forward. The doctor gave his opinion as
+    to the probability of suicide or an accident, and the police evidence
+    tended in the same direction. Nothing had been found to indicate that any
+    other person had been near the dead man's rooms on the night of the
+    fatality. On the other hand, his papers, bankbook, etc., proved him to be
+    a man of considerable substance, with no apparent motive for suicide.
+    The police had been unable to trace any relatives, or, indeed, any nearer
+    connections than casual acquaintances, fellow-clubmen, and so on. The
+    jury found that Mr. Foggatt had died by accident.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, Brett," Hewitt asked me afterward, "what do you think of the
+    verdict?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said that it seemed to be the most reasonable one possible, and to
+    square with the common-sense view of the case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," he replied, "perhaps it does. From the point of view of the jury,
+    and on their information, their verdict was quite reasonable.
+    Nevertheless, Mr. Foggatt did not shoot himself. He was shot by a rather
+    tall, active young man, perhaps a sailor, but certainly a gymnast&mdash;a
+    young man whom I think I could identify if I saw him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But how do you know this?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By the simplest possible inferences, which you may easily guess, if you
+    will but think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, then, why didn't you say this at the inquest?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear fellow, they don't want any inferences and conjectures at an
+    inquest; they only want evidence. If I had traced the murderer, of course
+    then I should have communicated with the police. As a matter of fact, it
+    is quite possible that the police have observed and know as much as I
+    do&mdash;or more. They don't give everything away at an inquest, you know. It
+    wouldn't do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, if you are right, how did the man get away?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, we are near home now. Let us take a look at the back of the house.
+    He <i>couldn't</i> have left by Foggatt's landing door, as we know; and as he
+    <i>was</i> there (I am certain of that), and as the chimney is out of the
+    question&mdash;for there was a good fire in the grate&mdash;he must have gone out
+    by the window. Only one window is possible&mdash;that with the broken
+    catch&mdash;for all the others were fastened inside. Out of that window, then,
+    he went."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But how? The window is fifty feet up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course it is. But why <i>will</i> you persist in assuming that the only
+    way of escape by a window is downward? See, now, look up there. The
+    window is at the top floor, and it has a very broad sill. Over the window
+    is nothing but the flat face of the gable-end; but to the right, and a
+    foot or two above the level of the top of the window, an iron gutter
+    ends. Observe, it is not of lead composition, but a strong iron gutter,
+    supported, just at its end, by an iron bracket. If a tall man stood on
+    the end of the window-sill, steadying himself by the left hand and
+    leaning to the right, he could just touch the end of this gutter with his
+    right hand. The full stretch, toe to finger, is seven feet three inches.
+    I have measured it. An active gymnast, or a sailor, could catch the
+    gutter with a slight spring, and by it draw himself upon the roof. You
+    will say he would have to be <i>very</i> active, dexterous, and cool. So he
+    would. And that very fact helps us, because it narrows the field of
+    inquiry. We know the sort of man to look for. Because, being certain (as
+    I am) that the man was in the room, I <i>know</i> that he left in the way I am
+    telling you. He must have left in some way, and, all the other ways being
+    impossible, this alone remains, difficult as the feat may seem. The fact
+    of his shutting the window behind him further proves his coolness and
+    address at so great a height from the ground."
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this was very plain, but the main point was still dark.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You say you <i>know</i> that another man was in the room," I said; "how do
+    you know that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As I said, by an obvious inference. Come, now, you shall guess how I
+    arrived at that inference. You often speak of your interest in my work,
+    and the attention with which you follow it. This shall be a simple
+    exercise for you. You saw everything in the room as plainly as I myself.
+    Bring the scene back to your memory, and think over the various small
+    objects littering about, and how they would affect the case. Quick
+    observation is the first essential for my work. Did you see a newspaper,
+    for instance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. There was an evening paper on the floor, but I didn't examine it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Anything else?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the table there was a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand
+    on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as
+    though only one person were present."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So it did, perhaps, although the inference wouldn't be very strong. Go
+    on!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was a fruit-stand on the sideboard, with a plate beside it
+    containing a few nutshells, a piece of apple, a pair of nut-crackers,
+    and, I think, some orange peel. There was, of course, all the ordinary
+    furniture, but no chair pulled up to the table, except that used by
+    Foggatt himself. That's all I noticed, I think. Stay&mdash;there was an
+    ash-tray on the table, and a partly burned cigar near it&mdash;only one cigar,
+    though."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Excellent&mdash;excellent, indeed, as far as memory and simple observation
+    go. You saw everything plainly, and you remember everything. Surely <i>now</i>
+    you know how I found out that another man had just left?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't; unless there were different kinds of ash in the ash-tray."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is a fairly good suggestion, but there were not&mdash;there was only a
+    single ash, corresponding in every way to that on the cigar. Don't you
+    remember everything that I did as we went down-stairs?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You returned a bottle of oil to the housekeeper's daughter, I think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I did. Doesn't that give you a hint? Come, you surely have it now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I haven't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then I sha'n't tell you; you don't deserve it. Think, and don't mention
+    the subject again till you have at least one guess to make. The thing
+    stares you in the face; you see it, you remember it, and yet you <i>won't</i>
+    see it. I won't encourage your slovenliness of thought, my boy, by
+    telling you what you can know for yourself if you like. Good-by&mdash;I'm off
+    now. There's a case in hand I can't neglect."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you propose to go further into this, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not a policeman," he said. "The case
+    is in very good hands. Of course, if anybody comes to me to do it as a
+    matter of business, I'll take it up. It's very interesting, but I can't
+    neglect my regular work for it. Naturally, I shall keep my eyes open and
+    my memory in order. Sometimes these things come into the hands by
+    themselves, as it were; in that case, of course, I am a loyal citizen,
+    and ready to help the law. <i>Au revoir</i>!"
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    I am a busy man myself, and thought little more of Hewitt's conundrum for
+    some time; indeed, when I did think, I saw no way to the answer. A week
+    after the inquest I took a holiday (I had written my nightly leaders
+    regularly every day for the past five years), and saw no more of Hewitt
+    for six weeks. After my return, with still a few days of leave to run,
+    one evening we together turned into Luzatti's, off Coventry Street, for
+    dinner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have been here several times lately," Hewitt said; "they feed you very
+    well. No, not that table"&mdash;he seized my arm as I turned to an unoccupied
+    corner&mdash;"I fancy it's draughty." He led the way to a longer table where a
+    dark, lithe, and (as well as could be seen) tall young man already sat,
+    and took chairs opposite him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We had scarcely seated ourselves before Hewitt broke into a torrent of
+    conversation on the subject of bicycling. As our previous conversation
+    had been of a literary sort, and as I had never known Hewitt at any other
+    time to show the slightest interest in bicycling, this rather surprised
+    me. I had, however, such a general outsider's grasp of the subject as is
+    usual in a journalist-of-all-work, and managed to keep the talk going
+    from my side. As we went on I could see the face of the young man
+    opposite brighten with interest. He was a rather fine-looking fellow,
+    with a dark, though very clear skin, but had a hard, angry look of eye, a
+    prominence of cheek-bone, and a squareness of jaw that gave him a rather
+    uninviting aspect. As Hewitt rattled on, however, our neighbor's
+    expression became one of pleasant interest merely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course," Hewitt said, "we've a number of very capital men just now,
+    but I believe a deal in the forgotten riders of five, ten, and fifteen
+    years back. Osmond, I believe, was better than any man riding now, and I
+    think it would puzzle some of them to beat Furnivall as he was, at his
+    best. But poor old Cortis&mdash;really, I believe he was as good as anybody.
+    Nobody ever beat Cortis&mdash;except&mdash;let me see&mdash;I think somebody beat Cortis
+    once&mdash;who was it now? I can't remember."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Liles," said the young man opposite, looking up quickly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, yes&mdash;Liles it was; Charley Liles. Wasn't it a championship?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mile championship, 1880; Cortis won the other three, though."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, so he did. I saw Cortis when he first broke the old 2.46 mile
+    record." And straightway Hewitt plunged into a whirl of talk of bicycles,
+    tricycles, records, racing cyclists, Hillier, and Synyer and Noel
+    Whiting, Taylerson and Appleyard&mdash;talk wherein the young man opposite
+    bore an animated share, while I was left in the cold.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our new friend, it seems, had himself been a prominent racing bicyclist a
+    few years back, and was presently, at Hewitt's request, exhibiting a neat
+    gold medal that hung at his watch-guard. That was won, he explained, in
+    the old tall bicycle days, the days of bad tracks, when every racing
+    cyclist carried cinder scars on his face from numerous accidents. He
+    pointed to a blue mark on his forehead, which, he told us, was a track
+    scar, and described a bad fall that had cost him two teeth, and broken
+    others. The gaps among his teeth were plain to see as he smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently the waiter brought dessert, and the young man opposite took an
+    apple. Nut-crackers and a fruit-knife lay on our side of the stand, and
+    Hewitt turned the stand to offer him the knife.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, thanks," he said; "I only polish a good apple, never peel it. It's a
+    mistake, except with thick-skinned foreign ones."
+</p>
+<p>
+    And he began to munch the apple as only a boy or a healthy athlete can.
+    Presently he turned his head to order coffee. The waiter's back was
+    turned, and he had to be called twice. To my unutterable amazement Hewitt
+    reached swiftly across the table, snatched the half-eaten apple from the
+    young man's plate and pocketed it, gazing immediately, with an abstracted
+    air, at a painted Cupid on the ceiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our neighbor turned again, looked doubtfully at his plate and the
+    table-cloth about it, and then shot a keen glance in the direction of
+    Hewitt. He said nothing, however, but took his coffee and his bill,
+    deliberately drank the former, gazing quietly at Hewitt as he did it,
+    paid the latter, and left.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Immediately Hewitt was on his feet and, taking an umbrella, which stood
+    near, followed. Just as he reached the door he met our late neighbor, who
+    had turned suddenly back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Your umbrella, I think?" Hewitt asked, offering it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, thanks." But the man's eye had more than its former hardness, and
+    his jaw muscles tightened as I looked. He turned and went. Hewitt came
+    back to me. "Pay the bill," he said, "and go back to your rooms; I will
+    come on later. I must follow this man&mdash;it's the Foggatt case." As he went
+    out I heard a cab rattle away, and immediately after it another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I paid the bill and went home. It was ten o'clock before Hewitt turned
+    up, calling in at his office below on his way up to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Sidney Mason," he said, "is the gentleman the police will be wanting
+    to-morrow, I expect, for the Foggatt murder. He is as smart a man as I
+    remember ever meeting, and has done me rather neatly twice this evening."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean the man we sat opposite at Luzatti's, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I got his name, of course, from the reverse of that gold medal he
+    was good enough to show me. But I fear he has bilked me over the address.
+    He suspected me, that was plain, and left his umbrella by way of
+    experiment to see if I were watching him sharply enough to notice the
+    circumstance, and to avail myself of it to follow him. I was hasty and
+    fell into the trap. He cabbed it away from Luzatti's, and I cabbed it
+    after him. He has led me a pretty dance up and down London to-night, and
+    two cabbies have made quite a stroke of business out of us. In the end he
+    entered a house of which, of course, I have taken the address, but I
+    expect he doesn't live there. He is too smart a man to lead me to his
+    den; but the police can certainly find something of him at the house he
+    went in at&mdash;and, I expect, left by the back way. By the way, you never
+    guessed that simple little puzzle as to how I found that this <i>was</i> a
+    murder, did you? You see it now, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Something to do with that apple you stole, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Something to do with it? I should think so, you worthy innocent. Just
+    ring your bell; we'll borrow Mrs. Clayton's sewing-machine oil again. On
+    the night we broke into Foggatt's room you saw the nutshells and the
+    bitten remains of an apple on the sideboard, and you remembered it; and
+    yet you couldn't see that in that piece of apple possibly lay an
+    important piece of evidence. Of course I never expected you to have
+    arrived at any conclusion, as I had, because I had ten minutes in which
+    to examine that apple, and to do what I did with it. But, at least, you
+    should have seen the possibility of evidence in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "First, now, the apple was white. A bitten apple, as you must have
+    observed, turns of a reddish brown color if left to stand long. Different
+    kinds of apples brown with different rapidities, and the browning always
+    begins at the core. This is one of the twenty thousand tiny things that
+    few people take the trouble to notice, but which it is useful for a man
+    in my position to know. A russet will brown quite quickly. The apple on
+    the sideboard was, as near as I could tell, a Newtown pippin or other
+    apple of that kind, which will brown at the core in from twenty minutes
+    to half an hour, and in other parts in a quarter of an hour more. When we
+    saw it, it was white, with barely a tinge of brown about the exposed
+    core. Inference, somebody had been eating it fifteen or twenty minutes
+    before, perhaps a little longer&mdash;an inference supported by the fact that
+    it was only partly eaten.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I examined that apple, and found it bore marks of very irregular teeth.
+    While you were gone, I oiled it over, and, rushing down to my rooms,
+    where I always have a little plaster of Paris handy for such work, took a
+    mold of the part where the teeth had left the clearest marks. I then
+    returned the apple to its place for the police to use if they thought
+    fit. Looking at my mold, it was plain that the person who had bitten that
+    apple had lost two teeth, one at top and one below, not exactly opposite,
+    but nearly so. The other teeth, although they would appear to have been
+    fairly sound, were irregular in size and line. Now, the dead man had, as
+    I saw, a very excellent set of false teeth, regular and sharp, with none
+    missing. Therefore it was plain that somebody <i>else</i> had been eating that
+    apple. Do I make myself clear?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite! Go on!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There were other inferences to be made&mdash;slighter, but all pointing the
+    same way. For instance, a man of Foggatt's age does not, as a rule, munch
+    an unpeeled apple like a school-boy. Inference, a young man, and healthy.
+    Why I came to the conclusion that he was tall, active, a gymnast, and
+    perhaps a sailor, I have already told you, when we examined the outside
+    of Foggatt's window. It was also pretty clear that robbery was not the
+    motive, since nothing was disturbed, and that a friendly conversation had
+    preceded the murder&mdash;witness the drinking and the eating of the apple.
+    Whether or not the police noticed these things I can't say. If they had
+    had their best men on, they certainly would, I think; but the case, to a
+    rough observer, looked so clearly one of accident or suicide that
+    possibly they didn't.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As I said, after the inquest I was unable to devote any immediate time
+    to the case, but I resolved to keep my eyes open. The man to look for was
+    tall, young, strong and active, with a very irregular set of teeth, a
+    tooth missing from the lower jaw just to the left of the center, and
+    another from the upper jaw a little farther still toward the left. He
+    might possibly be a person I had seen about the premises (I have a good
+    memory for faces), or, of course, he possibly might not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just before you returned from your holiday I noticed a young man at
+    Luzatti's whom I remembered to have seen somewhere about the offices in
+    this building. He was tall, young, and so on, but I had a client with me,
+    and was unable to examine him more narrowly; indeed, as I was not exactly
+    engaged on the case, and as there are several tall young men about, I
+    took little trouble. But to-day, finding the same young man with a vacant
+    seat opposite him, I took the opportunity of making a closer
+    acquaintance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You certainly managed to draw him out."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; the easiest person in the world to draw out is a cyclist. The
+    easiest cyclist to draw out is, of course, the novice, but the next
+    easiest is the veteran. When you see a healthy, well-trained-looking man,
+    who, nevertheless, has a slight stoop in the shoulders, and, maybe, a
+    medal on his watch-guard, it is always a safe card to try him first with
+    a little cycle-racing talk. I soon brought Mr. Mason out of his shell,
+    read his name on his medal, and had a chance of observing his
+    teeth&mdash;indeed, he spoke of them himself. Now, as I observed just now,
+    there are several tall, athletic young men about, and also there are
+    several men who have lost teeth. But now I saw that this tall and
+    athletic young man had lost exactly <i>two</i> teeth&mdash;one from the lower jaw,
+    just to the left of the center, and another from the upper jaw, farther
+    still toward the left! Trivialities, pointing in the same direction,
+    became important considerations. More, his teeth were irregular
+    throughout, and, as nearly as I could remember it, looked remarkably like
+    this little plaster mold of mine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He produced from his pocket an irregular lump of plaster, about three
+    inches long. On one side of this appeared in relief the likeness of two
+    irregular rows of six or eight teeth, minus one in each row, where a deep
+    gap was seen, in the position spoken of by my friend. He proceeded:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was enough at least to set me after this young man. But he gave me
+    the greatest chance of all when he turned and left his apple (eaten
+    unpeeled, remember!&mdash;another important triviality) on his plate. I'm
+    afraid I wasn't at all polite, and I ran the risk of arousing his
+    suspicions, but I couldn't resist the temptation to steal it. I did, as
+    you saw, and here it is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He brought the apple from his coat-pocket. One bitten side, placed
+    against the upper half of the mold, fitted precisely, a projection of
+    apple filling exactly the deep gap. The other side similarly fitted the
+    lower half.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There's no getting behind that, you see," Hewitt remarked. "Merely
+    observing the man's teeth was a guide, to some extent, but this is as
+    plain as his signature or his thumb impression. You'll never find two men
+    <i>bite</i> exactly alike, no matter whether they leave distinct teeth-marks
+    or not. Here, by the by, is Mrs. Clayton's oil. We'll take another mold
+    from this apple, and compare <i>them</i>."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He oiled the apple, heaped a little plaster in a newspaper, took my
+    water-jug, and rapidly pulled off a hard mold. The parts corresponding to
+    the merely broken places in the apple were, of course, dissimilar; but as
+    to the teeth-marks, the impressions were identical.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That will do, I think," Hewitt said. "Tomorrow morning, Brett, I shall
+    put up these things in a small parcel, and take them round to Bow
+    Street."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But are they sufficient evidence?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite sufficient for the police purpose. There is the man, and all the
+    rest&mdash;his movements on the day and so forth&mdash;are simple matters of
+    inquiry; at any rate, that is police business."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    I had scarcely sat down to my breakfast on the following morning when
+    Hewitt came into the room and put a long letter before me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "From our friend of last night," he said; "read it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This letter began abruptly, and undated, and was as follows:
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>
+    "TO MARTIN HEWITT, ESQ.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "SIR: I must compliment you on the adroitness you exhibited this evening
+    in extracting from me my name. The address I was able to balk you of for
+    the time being, although by the time you read this you will probably have
+    found it through the <i>Law List</i>, as I am an admitted solicitor. That,
+    however, will be of little use to you, for I am removing myself, I think,
+    beyond the reach even of your abilities of search. I knew you well by
+    sight, and was, perhaps, foolish to allow myself to be drawn as I did.
+    Still, I had no idea that it would be dangerous, especially after seeing
+    you, as a witness with very little to say, at the inquest upon the
+    scoundrel I shot. Your somewhat discourteous seizure of my apple at first
+    amazed me&mdash;indeed, I was a little doubtful as to whether you had really
+    taken it&mdash;but it was my first warning that you might be playing a deep
+    game against me, incomprehensible as the action was to my mind. I
+    subsequently reflected that I had been eating an apple, instead of taking
+    the drink he first offered me, in the dead wretch's rooms on the night he
+    came to his merited end. From this I assume that your design was in some
+    way to compare what remained of the two apples&mdash;although I do not
+    presume to fathom the depths of your detective system. Still, I have
+    heard of many of your cases, and profoundly admire the keenness you
+    exhibit. I am thought to be a keen man myself, but, although I was able,
+    to some extent, to hold my own to-night, I admit that your acumen in this
+    case alone is something beyond me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I do not know by whom you are commissioned to hunt me, nor to what
+    extent you may be acquainted with my connection with the creature I
+    killed. I have sufficient respect for you, however, to wish that you
+    should not regard me as a vicious criminal, and a couple of hours to
+    spare in which to offer you an explanation that will convince you that
+    such is not altogether the case. A hasty and violent temper I admit
+    possessing; but even now I can not forget the one crime it has led me
+    into&mdash;for it is, I suppose, strictly speaking, a crime. For it was the
+    man Foggatt who made a felon of my father before the eyes of the world,
+    and killed him with shame. It was he who murdered my mother, and none the
+    less murdered her because she died of a broken heart. That he was also a
+    thief and a hypocrite might have concerned me little but for that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of my father I remember very little. He must, I fear, have been a weak
+    and incapable man in many respects. He had no business abilities&mdash;in
+    fact, was quite unable to understand the complicated business matters in
+    which he largely dealt. Foggatt was a consummate master of all those arts
+    of financial jugglery that make so many fortunes, and ruin so many
+    others, in matters of company promoting, stocks, and shares. He was
+    unable to exercise them, however, because of a great financial disaster
+    in which he had been mixed up a few years before, and which made his name
+    one to be avoided in future. In these circumstances he made a sort of
+    secret and informal partnership with my father, who, ostensibly alone in
+    the business, acted throughout on the directions of Foggatt,
+    understanding as little what he did, poor, simple man, as a schoolboy
+    would have done. The transactions carried on went from small to large,
+    and, unhappily from honorable to dishonorable. My father relied on the
+    superior abilities of Foggatt with an absolute trust, carrying out each
+    day the directions given him privately the previous evening, buying,
+    selling, printing prospectuses, signing whatever had to be signed, all
+    with sole responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the
+    scenes absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and
+    foolish father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who
+    pulled all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible.
+    At last three companies, for the promotion of which my father was
+    responsible, came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all
+    their history, and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was
+    left to meet ruin, disgrace, and imprisonment. From beginning to end he,
+    and he only, was responsible. There was no shred of evidence to connect
+    Foggatt with the matter, and no means of escape from the net drawn about
+    my father. He lived through three years of imprisonment, and then,
+    entirely abandoned by the man who had made use of his simplicity, he
+    died&mdash;of nothing but shame and a broken heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of this I knew nothing at the time. Again and again, as a small boy, I
+    remember asking of my mother why I had no father at home, as other boys
+    had&mdash;unconscious of the stab I thus inflicted on her gentle heart. Of her
+    my earliest, as well as my latest, memory is that of a pale, weeping
+    woman, who grudged to let me out of her sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Little by little I learned the whole cause of my mother's grief, for she
+    had no other confidant, and I fear my character developed early, for my
+    first coherent remembrance of the matter is that of a childish design to
+    take a table-knife and kill the bad man who had made my father die in
+    prison and caused my mother to cry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One thing, however, I never knew&mdash;the name of that bad man. Again and
+    again, as I grew older, I demanded to know, but my mother always withheld
+    it from me, with a gentle reminder that vengeance was for a greater hand
+    than mine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was seventeen years of age when my mother died. I believe that nothing
+    but her strong attachment to myself and her desire to see me safely
+    started in life kept her alive so long. Then I found that through all
+    those years of narrowed means she had contrived to scrape and save a
+    little money&mdash;sufficient, as it afterward proved, to see me through the
+    examinations for entrance to my profession, with the generous assistance
+    of my father's old legal advisers, who gave me my articles, and who have
+    all along treated me with extreme kindness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For most of the succeeding years my life does not concern the matter in
+    hand. I was a lawyer's clerk in my benefactors' service, and afterward a
+    qualified man among their assistants. All through the firm were careful,
+    in pursuance of my poor mother's wishes, that I should not learn the name
+    or whereabouts of the man who had wrecked her life and my father's. I
+    first met the man himself at the Clifton Club, where I had gone with an
+    acquaintance who was a member. It was not till afterward that I
+    understood his curious awkwardness on that occasion. A week later I
+    called (as I had frequently done) at the building in which your office is
+    situated, on business with a solicitor who has an office on the floor
+    above your own. On the stairs I almost ran against Mr. Foggatt. He
+    started and turned pale, exhibiting signs of alarm that I could not
+    understand, and asked me if I wished to see him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'No,' I replied, 'I didn't know you lived here. I am after somebody else
+    just now. Aren't you well?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He looked at me rather doubtfully, and said he was <i>not</i> very well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I met him twice or thrice after that, and on each occasion his manner
+    grew more friendly, in a servile, flattering, and mean sort of way&mdash;a
+    thing unpleasant enough in anybody, but doubly so in the intercourse of a
+    man with another young enough to be his own son. Still, of course, I
+    treated the man civilly enough. On one occasion he asked me into his
+    rooms to look at a rather fine picture he had lately bought, and observed
+    casually, lifting a large revolver from the mantel-piece:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'You see, I am prepared for any unwelcome visitors to my little den! He!
+    He!' Conceiving him, of course, to refer to burglars, I could not help
+    wondering at the forced and hollow character of his laugh. As we went
+    down the stairs he said: 'I think we know one another pretty well now,
+    Mr. Mason, eh? And if I could do anything to advance your professional
+    prospects, I should be glad of the chance, of course. I understand the
+    struggles of a young professional man&mdash;he! he!' It was the forced laugh
+    again, and the man spoke nervously. 'I think,' he added, 'that if you
+    will drop in to-morrow evening, perhaps I may have a little proposal to
+    make. Will you?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I assented, wondering what this proposal could be. Perhaps this
+    eccentric old gentleman was a good fellow, after all, anxious to do me a
+    good turn, and his awkwardness was nothing but a natural delicacy in
+    breaking the ice. I was not so flush of good friends as to be willing to
+    lose one. He might be desirous of putting business in my way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I went, and was received with cordiality that even then seemed a little
+    over-effusive. We sat and talked of one thing and another for a long
+    while, and I began to wonder when Mr. Foggatt was coming to the point
+    that most interested me. Several times he invited me to drink and smoke,
+    but long usage to athletic training has given me a distaste for both
+    practices, and I declined. At last he began to talk about myself. He was
+    afraid that my professional prospects in this country were not great, but
+    he had heard that in some of the colonies&mdash;South Africa, for
+    example&mdash;young lawyers had brilliant opportunities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'If you'd like to go there,' he said, 'I've no doubt, with a little
+    capital, a clever man like you could get a grand practice together very
+    soon. Or you might buy a share in some good established practice. I
+    should be glad to let you have £500, or even a little more, if that
+    wouldn't satisfy you, and&mdash;&mdash;'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I stood aghast. Why should this man, almost a stranger, offer me £500,
+    or even more, 'if that wouldn't satisfy' me? What claim had I on him? It
+    was very generous of him, of course, but out of the question. I was, at
+    least, a gentleman, and had a gentleman's self-respect. Meanwhile, he had
+    gone maundering on, in a halting sort of way, and presently let slip a
+    sentence that struck me like a blow between the eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'I shouldn't like you to bear ill-will because of what has happened in
+    the past,' he said. 'Your late&mdash;your late lamented mother&mdash;I'm
+    afraid&mdash;she had unworthy suspicions&mdash;I'm sure&mdash;it was best for all
+    parties&mdash;your father always appreciated&mdash;&mdash;'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I set back my chair and stood erect before him. This groveling wretch,
+    forcing the words through his dry lips, was the thief who had made
+    another of my father and had brought to miserable ends the lives of both
+    my parents! Everything was clear. The creature went in fear of me, never
+    imagining that I did not know him, and sought to buy me off&mdash;to buy me
+    from the remembrance of my dead mother's broken heart for £500&mdash;£500 that
+    he had made my father steal for him! I said not a word. But the memory of
+    all my mother's bitter years, and a savage sense of this crowning insult
+    to myself, took a hold upon me, and I was a tiger. Even then I verily
+    believe that one word of repentance, one tone of honest remorse, would
+    have saved him. But he drooped his eyes, snuffled excuses, and stammered
+    of 'unworthy suspicions' and 'no ill-will.' I let him stammer. Presently
+    he looked up and saw my face; and fell back in his chair, sick with
+    terror. I snatched the pistol from the mantel-piece, and, thrusting it in
+    his face, shot him where he sat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My subsequent coolness and quietness surprise me now. I took my hat and
+    stepped toward the door. But there were voices on the stairs. The door
+    was locked on the inside, and I left it so. I went back and quietly
+    opened a window. Below was a clear drop into darkness, and above was
+    plain wall; but away to one side, where the slope of the gable sprang
+    from the roof, an iron gutter ended, supported by a strong bracket. It
+    was the only way. I got upon the sill and carefully shut the window
+    behind me, for people were already knocking at the lobby door. From the
+    end of the sill, holding on by the reveal of the window with one hand,
+    leaning and stretching my utmost, I caught the gutter, swung myself
+    clear, and scrambled on the roof. I climbed over many roofs before I
+    found, in an adjoining street, a ladder lashed perpendicularly against
+    the front of a house in course of repair. This, to me, was an easy
+    opportunity of descent, notwithstanding the boards fastened over the face
+    of the ladder, and I availed myself of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have taken some time and trouble in order that you (so far as I am
+    aware the only human being beside myself who knows me to be the author of
+    Foggatt's death) shall have at least the means of appraising my crime at
+    its just value of culpability. How much you already know of what I have
+    told you I can not guess. I am wrong, hardened, and flagitious, I make no
+    doubt, but I speak of the facts as they are. You see the thing, of
+    course, from your own point of view&mdash;I from mine. And I remember my
+    mother!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Trusting that you will forgive the odd freak of a man&mdash;a criminal, let
+    us say&mdash;who makes a confidant of the man set to hunt him down, I beg
+    leave to be, sir, your obedient servant,
+</p>
+<p>
+    "SIDNEY MASON."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I read the singular document through and handed it back to Hewitt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How does it strike you?" Hewitt asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mason would seem to be a man of very marked character," I said.
+    "Certainly no fool. And, if his tale is true, Foggatt is no great loss to
+    the world."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so&mdash;if the tale is true. Personally I am disposed to believe it
+    is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where was the letter posted?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It wasn't posted. It was handed in with the others from the front-door
+    letter-box this morning in an unstamped envelope. He must have dropped it
+    in himself during the night. Paper," Hewitt proceeded, holding it up to
+    the light, "Turkey mill, ruled foolscap. Envelope, blue, official shape,
+    Pirie's watermark. Both quite ordinary and no special marks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where do you suppose he's gone?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Impossible to guess. Some might think he meant suicide by the expression
+    'beyond the reach even of your abilities of search,' but I scarcely think
+    he is the sort of man to do that. No, there is no telling. Something may
+    be got by inquiring at his late address, of course; but, when such a man
+    tells you he doesn't think you will find him, you may count upon its
+    being a difficult job. His opinion is not to be despised."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What shall you do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Put the letter in the box with the casts for the police. <i>Fiat
+    justitia</i>, you know, without any question of sentiment. As to the apple,
+    I really think, if the police will let me, I'll make you a present of it.
+    Keep it somewhere as a souvenir of your absolute deficiency in reflective
+    observation in this case, and look at it whenever you feel yourself
+    growing dangerously conceited. It should cure you."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    This is the history of the withered and almost petrified half apple that
+    stands in my cabinet among a number of flint implements and one or two
+    rather fine old Roman vessels. Of Mr. Sidney Mason we never heard another
+    word. The police did their best, but he had left not a track behind him.
+    His rooms were left almost undisturbed, and he had gone without anything
+    in the way of elaborate preparation for his journey, and without leaving
+    a trace of his intentions.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH4"></a>
+<h3>
+   IV. THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Hewitt was very apt, in conversation, to dwell upon the many curious
+    chances and coincidences that he had observed, not only in connection
+    with his own cases, but also in matters dealt with by the official
+    police, with whom he was on terms of pretty regular, and, indeed,
+    friendly, acquaintanceship. He has told me many an anecdote of singular
+    happenings to Scotland Yard officials with whom he has exchanged
+    experiences. Of Inspector Nettings, for instance, who spent many weary
+    months in a search for a man wanted by the American Government, and in
+    the end found, by the merest accident (a misdirected call), that the man
+    had been lodging next door to himself the whole of the time; just as
+    ignorant, of course, as was the inspector himself as to the enemy at the
+    other side of the party-wall. Also of another inspector, whose name I can
+    not recall, who, having been given rather meager and insufficient details
+    of a man whom he anticipated having great difficulty in finding, went
+    straight down the stairs of the office where he had received
+    instructions, and actually <i>fell over</i> the man near the door, where he
+    had stooped down to tie his shoe-lace! There were cases, too, in which,
+    when a great and notorious crime had been committed, and various persons
+    had been arrested on suspicion, some were found among them who had long
+    been badly wanted for some other crime altogether. Many criminals had met
+    their deserts by venturing out of their own particular line of crime into
+    another; often a man who got into trouble over something comparatively
+    small found himself in for a startlingly larger trouble, the result of
+    some previous misdeed that otherwise would have gone unpunished. The
+    ruble note-forger Mirsky might never have been handed over to the Russian
+    authorities had he confined his genius to forgery alone. It was generally
+    supposed at the time of his extradition that he had communicated with the
+    Russian Embassy, with a view to giving himself up&mdash;a foolish proceeding
+    on his part, it would seem, since his whereabouts, indeed even his
+    identity as the forger, had not been suspected. He <i>had</i> communicated
+    with the Russian Embassy, it is true, but for quite a different purpose,
+    as Martin Hewitt well understood at the time. What that purpose was is
+    now for the first time published.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    The time was half-past one in the afternoon, and Hewitt sat in his inner
+    office examining and comparing the handwriting of two letters by the aid
+    of a large lens. He put down the lens and glanced at the clock on the
+    mantel-piece with a premonition of lunch; and as he did so his clerk
+    quietly entered the room with one of those printed slips which were kept
+    for the announcement of unknown visitors. It was filled up in a hasty and
+    almost illegible hand, thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+    Name of visitor: <i>F. Graham Dixon</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Address: <i>Chancery Lane</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Business: <i>Private and urgent</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Show Mr. Dixon in," said Martin Hewitt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Dixon was a gaunt, worn-looking man of fifty or so, well, although
+    rather carelessly, dressed, and carrying in his strong, though drawn,
+    face and dullish eyes the look that characterizes the life-long strenuous
+    brain-worker. He leaned forward anxiously in the chair which Hewitt
+    offered him, and told his story with a great deal of very natural
+    agitation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You may possibly have heard, Mr. Hewitt&mdash;I know there are rumors&mdash;of the
+    new locomotive torpedo which the government is about adopting; it is, in
+    fact, the Dixon torpedo, my own invention, and in every respect&mdash;not
+    merely in my own opinion, but in that of the government experts&mdash;by far
+    the most efficient and certain yet produced. It will travel at least
+    four hundred yards farther than any torpedo now made, with perfect
+    accuracy of aim (a very great desideratum, let me tell you), and will
+    carry an unprecedentedly heavy charge. There are other advantages&mdash;speed,
+    simple discharge, and so forth&mdash;that I needn't bother you about. The
+    machine is the result of many years of work and disappointment, and its
+    design has only been arrived at by a careful balancing of principles and
+    means, which are expressed on the only four existing sets of drawings.
+    The whole thing, I need hardly tell you, is a profound secret, and you
+    may judge of my present state of mind when I tell you that one set of
+    drawings has been stolen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "From your house?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "From my office, in Chancery Lane, this morning. The four sets of
+    drawings were distributed thus: Two were at the Admiralty Office, one
+    being a finished set on thick paper, and the other a set of tracings
+    therefrom; and the other two were at my own office, one being a penciled
+    set, uncolored&mdash;a sort of finished draft, you understand&mdash;and the other a
+    set of tracings similar to those at the Admiralty. It is this last set
+    that has gone. The two sets were kept together in one drawer in my room.
+    Both were there at ten this morning; of that I am sure, for I had to go
+    to that very drawer for something else when I first arrived. But at
+    twelve the tracings had vanished."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You suspect somebody, probably?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can not. It is a most extraordinary thing. Nobody has left the office
+    (except myself, and then only to come to you) since ten this morning, and
+    there has been no visitor. And yet the drawings are gone!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But have you searched the place?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course I have! It was twelve o'clock when I first discovered my loss,
+    and I have been turning the place upside down ever since&mdash;I and my
+    assistants. Every drawer has been emptied, every desk and table turned
+    over, the very carpet and linoleum have been taken up, but there is not a
+    sign of the drawings. My men even insisted on turning all their pockets
+    inside out, although I never for a moment suspected either of them, and
+    it would take a pretty big pocket to hold the drawings, doubled up as
+    small as they might be."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You say your men&mdash;there are two, I understand&mdash;had neither left the
+    office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Neither; and they are both staying in now. Worsfold suggested that it
+    would be more satisfactory if they did not leave till something was done
+    toward clearing the mystery up, and, although, as I have said, I don't
+    suspect either in the least, I acquiesced."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. Now&mdash;I am assuming that you wish me to undertake the recovery
+    of these drawings?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The engineer nodded hastily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good; I will go round to your office. But first perhaps you can
+    tell me something about your assistants&mdash;something it might be awkward to
+    tell me in their presence, you know. Mr. Worsfold, for instance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He is my draughtsman&mdash;a very excellent and intelligent man, a very smart
+    man, indeed, and, I feel sure, quite beyond suspicion. He has prepared
+    many important drawings for me (he has been with me nearly ten years
+    now), and I have always found him trustworthy. But, of course, the
+    temptation in this case would be enormous. Still, I can not suspect
+    Worsfold. Indeed, how can I suspect anybody in the circumstances?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The other, now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "His name's Ritter. He is merely a tracer, not a fully skilled
+    draughtsman. He is quite a decent young fellow, and I have had him two
+    years. I don't consider him particularly smart, or he would have learned
+    a little more of his business by this time. But I don't see the least
+    reason to suspect him. As I said before, I can't reasonably suspect
+    anybody."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well; we will get to Chancery Lane now, if you please, and you can
+    tell me more as we go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have a cab waiting. What else can I tell you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I understand the position to be succinctly this: The drawings were in
+    the office when you arrived. Nobody came out, and nobody went in; and
+    <i>yet</i> they vanished. Is that so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is so. When I say that absolutely nobody came in, of course I
+    except the postman. He brought a couple of letters during the morning. I
+    mean that absolutely nobody came past the barrier in the outer
+    office&mdash;the usual thing, you know, like a counter, with a frame of ground
+    glass over it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I quite understand that. But I think you said that the drawings were in
+    a drawer in your <i>own</i> room&mdash;not the outer office, where the draughtsmen
+    are, I presume?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is the case. It is an inner room, or, rather, a room parallel with
+    the other, and communicating with it; just as your own room is, which we
+    have just left."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, then, you say you never left your office, and yet the drawings
+    vanished&mdash;apparently by some unseen agency&mdash;while you were there in the
+    room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let me explain more clearly." The cab was bowling smoothly along the
+    Strand, and the engineer took out a pocket-book and pencil. "I fear," he
+    proceeded, "that I am a little confused in my explanation&mdash;I am naturally
+    rather agitated. As you will see presently, my offices consist of three
+    rooms, two at one side of a corridor, and the other opposite&mdash;thus." He
+    made a rapid pencil sketch.
+</p>
+ <a name="image-2"></a>
+ <p class="ctr"><img src="images/128.jpg"  width="198" height="193"
+ alt="diagram of rooms and corridor" >
+ </p>
+<p>
+    "In the outer office my men usually work. In the inner office I work
+    myself. These rooms communicate, as you see, by a door. Our ordinary way
+    in and out of the place is by the door of the outer office leading into
+    the corridor, and we first pass through the usual lifting flap in the
+    barrier. The door leading from the <i>inner</i> office to the corridor is
+    always kept locked on the inside, and I don't suppose I unlock it once in
+    three months. It has not been unlocked all the morning. The drawer in
+    which the missing drawings were kept, and in which I saw them at ten
+    o'clock this morning, is at the place marked D; it is a large chest of
+    shallow drawers in which the plans lie flat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I quite understand. Then there is the private room opposite. What of
+    that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is a sort of private sitting-room that I rarely use, except for
+    business interviews of a very private nature. When I said I never left my
+    office, I did not mean that I never stirred out of the inner office. I
+    was about in one room and another, both the outer and the inner offices,
+    and once I went into the private room for five minutes, but nobody came
+    either in or out of any of the rooms at that time, for the door of the
+    private room was wide open, and I was standing at the book-case (I had
+    gone to consult a book), just inside the door, with a full view of the
+    doors opposite. Indeed, Worsfold was at the door of the outer office most
+    of the short time. He came to ask me a question."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Hewitt replied, "it all comes to the simple first statement. You
+    know that nobody left the place or arrived, except the postman, who
+    couldn't get near the drawings, and yet the drawings went. Is this your
+    office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cab had stopped before a large stone building. Mr. Dixon alighted and
+    led the way to the first-floor. Hewitt took a casual glance round each of
+    the three rooms. There was a sort of door in the frame of ground glass
+    over the barrier to admit of speech with visitors. This door Hewitt
+    pushed wide open, and left so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He and the engineer went into the inner office. "Would you like to ask
+    Worsfold and Ritter any questions?" Mr. Dixon inquired.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Presently. Those are their coats, I take it, hanging just to the right
+    of the outer office door, over the umbrella stand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, those are all their things&mdash;coats, hats, stick, and umbrella."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And those coats were searched, you say?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And this is the drawer&mdash;thoroughly searched, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, certainly; every drawer was taken out and turned over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, of course I must assume you made no mistake in your hunt. Now tell
+    me, did anybody know where these plans were, beyond yourself and your two
+    men?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As far as I can tell, not a soul."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't keep an office boy?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. There would be nothing for him to do except to post a letter now and
+    again, which Ritter does quite well for."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As you are quite sure that the drawings were there at ten o'clock,
+    perhaps the thing scarcely matters. But I may as well know if your men
+    have keys of the office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Neither. I have patent locks to each door and I keep all the keys
+    myself. If Worsfold or Ritter arrive before me in the morning they have
+    to wait to be let in; and I am always present myself when the rooms are
+    cleaned. I have not neglected precautions, you see."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. I suppose the object of the theft&mdash;assuming it is a theft&mdash;is pretty
+    plain: the thief would offer the drawings for sale to some foreign
+    government?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course. They would probably command a great sum. I have been looking,
+    as I need hardly tell you, to that invention to secure me a very large
+    fortune, and I shall be ruined, indeed, if the design is taken abroad. I
+    am under the strictest engagements to secrecy with the Admiralty, and not
+    only should I lose all my labor, but I should lose all the confidence
+    reposed in me at headquarters; should, in fact, be subject to penalties
+    for breach of contract, and my career stopped forever. I can not tell
+    you what a serious business this is for me. If you can not help me, the
+    consequences will be terrible. Bad for the service of the country, too,
+    of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course. Now tell me this: It would, I take it, be necessary for the
+    thief to <i>exhibit</i> these drawings to anybody anxious to buy the secret&mdash;I
+    mean, he couldn't describe the invention by word of mouth."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, that would be impossible. The drawings are of the most
+    complicated description, and full of figures upon which the whole thing
+    depends. Indeed, one would have to be a skilled expert to properly
+    appreciate the design at all. Various principles of hydrostatics,
+    chemistry, electricity, and pneumatics are most delicately manipulated
+    and adjusted, and the smallest error or omission in any part would upset
+    the whole. No, the drawings are necessary to the thing, and they are
+    gone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this moment the door of the outer office was heard to open and
+    somebody entered. The door between the two offices was ajar, and Hewitt
+    could see right through to the glass door left open over the barrier and
+    into the space beyond. A well-dressed, dark, bushy-bearded man stood
+    there carrying a hand-bag, which he placed on the ledge before him.
+    Hewitt raised his hand to enjoin silence. The man spoke in a rather
+    high-pitched voice and with a slight accent. "Is Mr. Dixon now within?"
+    he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He is engaged," answered one of the draughtsmen; "very particularly
+    engaged. I am afraid you won't be able to see him this afternoon. Can I
+    give him any message?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is two&mdash;the second time I have come to-day. Not two hours ago Mr.
+    Dixon himself tells me to call again. I have a very important&mdash;very
+    excellent steam-packing to show him that is very cheap and the best of
+    the market." The man tapped his bag. "I have just taken orders from the
+    largest railway companies. Can not I see him, for one second only? I will
+    not detain him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really, I'm sure you can't this afternoon; he isn't seeing anybody. But
+    if you'll leave your name&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My name is Hunter; but what the good of that? He ask me to call a little
+    later, and I come, and now he is engaged. It is a very great pity." And
+    the man snatched up his bag and walking-stick, and stalked off,
+    indignantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt stood still, gazing through the small aperture in the doorway.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'd scarcely expect a man with such a name as Hunter to talk with that
+    accent, would you?" he observed, musingly. "It isn't a French accent,
+    nor a German; but it seems foreign. You don't happen to know him, I
+    suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't. He called here about half-past twelve, just while we were
+    in the middle of our search and I was frantic over the loss of the
+    drawings. I was in the outer office myself, and told him to call later. I
+    have lots of such agents here, anxious to sell all sorts of engineering
+    appliances. But what will you do now? Shall you see my men?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think," said Hewitt, rising&mdash;"I think I'll get you to question them
+    yourself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Myself?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I have a reason. Will you trust me with the 'key' of the private
+    room opposite? I will go over there for a little, while you talk to your
+    men in this room. Bring them in here and shut the door; I can look after
+    the office from across the corridor, you know. Ask them each to detail
+    his exact movements about the office this morning, and get them to recall
+    each visitor who has been here from the beginning of the week. I'll let
+    you know the reason of this later. Come across to me in a few minutes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt took the key and passed through the outer office into the
+    corridor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ten minutes later Mr. Dixon, having questioned his draughtsmen, followed
+    him. He found Hewitt standing before the table in the private room, on
+    which lay several drawings on tracing-paper.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "See here, Mr. Dixon," said Hewitt, "I think these are the drawings you
+    are anxious about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The engineer sprang toward them with a cry of delight. "Why, yes, yes,"
+    he exclaimed, turning them over, "every one of them! But where&mdash;how&mdash;they
+    must have been in the place after all, then? What a fool I have been!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt shook his head. "I'm afraid you're not quite so lucky as you
+    think, Mr. Dixon," he said. "These drawings have most certainly been out
+    of the house for a little while. Never mind how&mdash;we'll talk of that
+    after. There is no time to lose. Tell me&mdash;how long would it take a good
+    draughtsman to copy them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They couldn't possibly be traced over properly in less than two or two
+    and a half long days of very hard work," Dixon replied with eagerness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah! then it is as I feared. These tracings have been photographed, Mr.
+    Dixon, and our task is one of every possible difficulty. If they had been
+    copied in the ordinary way, one might hope to get hold of the copy. But
+    photography upsets everything. Copies can be multiplied with such amazing
+    facility that, once the thief gets a decent start, it is almost hopeless
+    to checkmate him. The only chance is to get at the negatives before
+    copies are taken. I must act at once; and I fear, between ourselves, it
+    may be necessary for me to step very distinctly over the line of the law
+    in the matter. You see, to get at those negatives may involve something
+    very like house-breaking. There must be no delay, no waiting for legal
+    procedure, or the mischief is done. Indeed, I very much question whether
+    you have any legal remedy, strictly speaking."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Hewitt, I implore you, do what you can. I need not say that all I
+    have is at your disposal. I will guarantee to hold you harmless for
+    anything that may happen. But do, I entreat you, do everything possible.
+    Think of what the consequences may be!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, so I do," Hewitt remarked, with a smile. "The consequences to
+    me, if I were charged with house-breaking, might be something that no
+    amount of guarantee could mitigate. However, I will do what I can, if
+    only from patriotic motives. Now, I must see your tracer, Ritter. He is
+    the traitor in the camp."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ritter? But how?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind that now. You are upset and agitated, and had better not know
+    more than is necessary for a little while, in case you say or do
+    something unguarded. With Ritter I must take a deep course; what I don't
+    know I must appear to know, and that will seem more likely to him if I
+    disclaim acquaintance with what I do know. But first put these tracings
+    safely away out of sight."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dixon slipped them behind his book-case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," Hewitt pursued, "call Mr. Worsfold and give him something to do
+    that will keep him in the inner office across the way, and tell him to
+    send Ritter here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Dixon called his chief draughtsman and requested him to put in order
+    the drawings in the drawers of the inner room that had been disarranged
+    by the search, and to send Ritter, as Hewitt had suggested.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter walked into the private room with an air of respectful attention.
+    He was a puffy-faced, unhealthy-looking young man, with very small eyes
+    and a loose, mobile mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sit down, Mr. Ritter," Hewitt said, in a stern voice. "Your recent
+    transactions with your friend Mr. Hunter are well known both to Mr. Dixon
+    and myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter, who had at first leaned easily back in his chair, started forward
+    at this, and paled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are surprised, I observe; but you should be more careful in your
+    movements out of doors if you do not wish your acquaintances to be known.
+    Mr. Hunter, I believe, has the drawings which Mr. Dixon has lost, and,
+    if so, I am certain that you have given them to him. That, you know, is
+    theft, for which the law provides a severe penalty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter broke down completely and turned appealingly to Mr. Dixon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, sir," he pleaded, "it isn't so bad, I assure you. I was tempted, I
+    confess, and hid the drawings; but they are still in the office, and I
+    can give them to you&mdash;really, I can."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed?" Hewitt went on. "Then, in that case, perhaps you'd better get
+    them at once. Just go and fetch them in; we won't trouble to observe your
+    hiding-place. I'll only keep this door open, to be sure you don't lose
+    your way, you know&mdash;down the stairs, for instance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The wretched Ritter, with hanging head, slunk into the office opposite.
+    Presently he reappeared, looking, if possible, ghastlier than before. He
+    looked irresolutely down the corridor, as if meditating a run for it, but
+    Hewitt stepped toward him and motioned him back to the private room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mustn't try any more of that sort of humbug," Hewitt said with
+    increased severity. "The drawings are gone, and you have stolen them; you
+    know that well enough. Now attend to me. If you received your deserts,
+    Mr. Dixon would send for a policeman this moment, and have you hauled
+    off to the jail that is your proper place. But, unfortunately, your
+    accomplice, who calls himself Hunter&mdash;but who has other names besides
+    that&mdash;as I happen to know&mdash;has the drawings, and it is absolutely
+    necessary that these should be recovered. I am afraid that it will be
+    necessary, therefore, to come to some arrangement with this scoundrel&mdash;to
+    square him, in fact. Now, just take that pen and paper, and write to your
+    confederate as I dictate. You know the alternative if you cause any
+    difficulty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter reached tremblingly for the pen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Address him in your usual way," Hewitt proceeded. "Say this: 'There has
+    been an alteration in the plans.' Have you got that? 'There has been an
+    alteration in the plans. I shall be alone here at six o'clock. Please
+    come, without fail.' Have you got it? Very well; sign it, and address the
+    envelope. He must come here, and then we may arrange matters. In the
+    meantime, you will remain in the inner office opposite."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The note was written, and Martin Hewitt, without glancing at the address,
+    thrust it into his pocket. When Ritter was safely in the inner office,
+    however, he drew it out and read the address. "I see," he observed, "he
+    uses the same name, Hunter; 27 Little Carton Street, Westminster, is the
+    address, and there I shall go at once with the note. If the man comes
+    here, I think you had better lock him in with Ritter, and send for a
+    policeman&mdash;it may at least frighten him. My object is, of course, to get
+    the man away, and then, if possible, to invade his house, in some way or
+    another, and steal or smash his negatives if they are there and to be
+    found. Stay here, in any case, till I return. And don't forget to lock up
+    those tracings."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    It was about six o'clock when Hewitt returned, alone, but with a smiling
+    face that told of good fortune at first sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "First, Mr. Dixon," he said, as he dropped into an easy chair in the
+    private room, "let me ease your mind by the information that I have been
+    most extraordinarily lucky; in fact, I think you have no further cause
+    for anxiety. Here are the negatives. They were not all quite dry when
+    I&mdash;well, what?&mdash;stole them, I suppose I must say; so that they have stuck
+    together a bit, and probably the films are damaged. But you don't mind
+    that, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He laid a small parcel, wrapped in a newspaper, on the table. The
+    engineer hastily tore away the paper and took up five or six glass
+    photographic negatives, of a half-plate size, which were damp, and stuck
+    together by the gelatine films in couples. He held them, one after
+    another, up to the light of the window, and glanced through them. Then,
+    with a great sigh of relief, he placed them on the hearth and pounded
+    them to dust and fragments with the poker.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For a few seconds neither spoke. Then Dixon, flinging himself into a
+    chair, said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Hewitt, I can't express my obligation to you. What would have
+    happened if you had failed, I prefer not to think of. But what shall we
+    do with Ritter now? The other man hasn't been here yet, by the by."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No; the fact is I didn't deliver the letter. The worthy gentleman saved
+    me a world of trouble by taking himself out of the way." Hewitt laughed.
+    "I'm afraid he has rather got himself into a mess by trying two kinds of
+    theft at once, and you may not be sorry to hear that his attempt on your
+    torpedo plans is likely to bring him a dose of penal servitude for
+    something else. I'll tell you what has happened.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Little Carton Street, Westminster, I found to be a seedy sort of
+    place&mdash;one of those old streets that have seen much better days. A good
+    many people seem to live in each house&mdash;they are fairly large houses, by
+    the way&mdash;and there is quite a company of bell-handles on each doorpost,
+    all down the side like organ-stops. A barber had possession of the
+    ground floor front of No. 27 for trade purposes, so to him I went. 'Can
+    you tell me,' I said, 'where in this house I can find Mr. Hunter?' He
+    looked doubtful, so I went on: 'His friend will do, you know&mdash;I can't
+    think of his name; foreign gentleman, dark, with a bushy beard.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The barber understood at once. 'Oh, that's Mirsky, I expect,' he said.
+    'Now, I come to think of it, he has had letters addressed to Hunter once
+    or twice; I've took 'em in. Top floor back.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was good so far. I had got at 'Mr. Hunter's' other alias. So, by
+    way of possessing him with the idea that I knew all about him, I
+    determined to ask for him as Mirsky before handing over the letter
+    addressed to him as Hunter. A little bluff of that sort is invaluable at
+    the right time. At the top floor back I stopped at the door and tried to
+    open it at once, but it was locked. I could hear somebody scuttling about
+    within, as though carrying things about, and I knocked again. In a little
+    while the door opened about a foot, and there stood Mr. Hunter&mdash;or
+    Mirsky, as you like&mdash;the man who, in the character of a traveler in
+    steam-packing, came here twice to-day. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and
+    cuddled something under his arm, hastily covered with a spotted
+    pocket-handkerchief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'I have called to see M. Mirsky," I said, 'with a confidential
+    letter&mdash;&mdash;'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Oh, yas, yas,' he answered hastily; 'I know&mdash;I know. Excuse me one
+    minute.' And he rushed off down-stairs with his parcel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here was a noble chance. For a moment I thought of following him, in
+    case there might be something interesting in the parcel. But I had to
+    decide in a moment, and I decided on trying the room. I slipped inside
+    the door, and, finding the key on the inside, locked it. It was a
+    confused sort of room, with a little iron bedstead in one corner and a
+    sort of rough boarded inclosure in another. This I rightly conjectured to
+    be the photographic dark-room, and made for it at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was plenty of light within when the door was left open, and I made
+    at once for the drying-rack that was fastened over the sink. There were a
+    number of negatives in it, and I began hastily examining them one after
+    another. In the middle of this our friend Mirsky returned and tried the
+    door. He rattled violently at the handle and pushed. Then he called.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "At this moment I had come upon the first of the negatives you have just
+    smashed. The fixing and washing had evidently only lately been completed,
+    and the negative was drying on the rack. I seized it, of course, and the
+    others which stood by it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Who are you, there, inside?' Mirsky shouted indignantly from the
+    landing. 'Why for you go in my room like that? Open this door at once, or
+    I call the police!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I took no notice. I had got the full number of negatives, one for each
+    drawing, but I was not by any means sure that he had not taken an extra
+    set; so I went on hunting down the rack. There were no more, so I set to
+    work to turn out all the undeveloped plates. It was quite possible, you
+    see, that the other set, if it existed, had not yet been developed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mirsky changed his tune. After a little more banging and shouting I
+    could hear him kneel down and try the key-hole. I had left the key there,
+    so that he could see nothing. But he began talking softly and rapidly
+    through the hole in a foreign language. I did not know it in the least,
+    but I believe it was Russian. What had led him to believe I understood
+    Russian I could not at the time imagine, though I have a notion now. I
+    went on ruining his stock of plates. I found several boxes, apparently of
+    new plates, but, as there was no means of telling whether they were really
+    unused or were merely undeveloped, but with the chemical impress of your
+    drawings on them, I dragged every one ruthlessly from its hiding-place
+    and laid it out in the full glare of the sunlight&mdash;destroying it thereby,
+    of course, whether it was unused or not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mirsky left off talking, and I heard him quietly sneaking off. Perhaps
+    his conscience was not sufficiently clear to warrant an appeal to the
+    police, but it seemed to me rather probable at the time that that was
+    what he was going for. So I hurried on with my work. I found three dark
+    slides&mdash;the parts that carried the plates in the back of the camera, you
+    know&mdash;one of them fixed in the camera itself. These I opened, and exposed
+    the plates to ruination as before. I suppose nobody ever did so much
+    devastation in a photographic studio in ten minutes as I managed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I had spoiled every plate I could find, and had the developed negatives
+    safely in my pocket, when I happened to glance at a porcelain
+    washing-well under the sink. There was one negative in that, and I took
+    it up. It was <i>not</i> a negative of a drawing of yours, but of a Russian
+    twenty-ruble note!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    This <i>was</i> a discovery. The only possible reason any man could have for
+    photographing a bank-note was the manufacture of an etched plate for the
+    production of forged copies. I was almost as pleased as I had been at
+    the discovery of <i>your</i> negatives. He might bring the police now as soon
+    as he liked; I could turn the tables on him completely. I began to hunt
+    about for anything else relating to this negative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found an inking-roller, some old pieces of blanket (used in printing
+    from plates), and in a corner on the floor, heaped over with newspapers
+    and rubbish, a small copying-press. There was also a dish of acid, but
+    not an etched plate or a printed note to be seen. I was looking at the
+    press, with the negative in one hand and the inking-roller in the other,
+    when I became conscious of a shadow across the window. I looked up
+    quickly, and there was Mirsky hanging over from some ledge or projection
+    to the side of the window, and staring straight at me, with a look of
+    unmistakable terror and apprehension.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The face vanished immediately. I had to move a table to get at the
+    window, and by the time I had opened it there was no sign or sound of the
+    rightful tenant of the room. I had no doubt now of his reason for
+    carrying a parcel down-stairs. He probably mistook me for another visitor
+    he was expecting, and, knowing he must take this visitor into his room,
+    threw the papers and rubbish over the press, and put up his plates and
+    papers in a bundle and secreted them somewhere down-stairs, lest his
+    occupation should be observed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Plainly, my duty now was to communicate with the police. So, by the help
+    of my friend the barber down-stairs, a messenger was found and a note
+    sent over to Scotland Yard. I awaited, of course, for the arrival of the
+    police, and occupied the interval in another look round&mdash;finding nothing
+    important, however. When the official detective arrived, he recognized at
+    once the importance of the case. A large number of forged Russian notes
+    have been put into circulation on the Continent lately, it seems, and it
+    was suspected that they came from London. The Russian Government have
+    been sending urgent messages to the police here on the subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course I said nothing about your business; but, while I was talking
+    with the Scotland Yard man, a letter was left by a messenger, addressed
+    to Mirsky. The letter will be examined, of course, by the proper
+    authorities, but I was not a little interested to perceive that the
+    envelope bore the Russian imperial arms above the words 'Russian
+    Embassy.' Now, why should Mirsky communicate with the Russian Embassy?
+    Certainly not to let the officials know that he was carrying on a very
+    extensive and lucrative business in the manufacture of spurious Russian
+    notes. I think it is rather more than possible that he wrote&mdash;probably
+    before he actually got your drawings&mdash;to say that he could sell
+    information of the highest importance, and that this letter was a reply.
+    Further, I think it quite possible that, when I asked for him by his
+    Russian name and spoke of 'a confidential letter,' he at once concluded
+    that <i>I</i> had come from the embassy in answer to his letter. That would
+    account for his addressing me in Russian through the key-hole; and, of
+    course, an official from the Russian Embassy would be the very last
+    person in the world whom he would like to observe any indications of his
+    little etching experiments. But, anyhow, be that as it may," Hewitt
+    concluded, "your drawings are safe now, and if once Mirsky is caught, and
+    I think it likely, for a man in his shirt-sleeves, with scarcely any
+    start, and, perhaps, no money about him, hasn't a great chance to get
+    away&mdash;if he is caught, I say, he will probably get something handsome at
+    St. Petersburg in the way of imprisonment, or Siberia, or what not; so
+    that you will be amply avenged."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but I don't at all understand this business of the drawings even
+    now. How in the world were they taken out of the place, and how in the
+    world did you find it out?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing could be simpler; and yet the plan was rather ingenious. I'll
+    tell you exactly how the thing revealed itself to me. From your original
+    description of the case many people would consider that an impossibility
+    had been performed. Nobody had gone out and nobody had come in, and yet
+    the drawings had been taken away. But an impossibility is an
+    impossibility, after all, and as drawings don't run away of themselves,
+    plainly somebody had taken them, unaccountable as it might seem. Now, as
+    they were in your inner office, the only people who could have got at
+    them besides yourself were your assistants, so that it was pretty clear
+    that one of them, at least, had something to do with the business. You
+    told me that Worsfold was an excellent and intelligent draughtsman. Well,
+    if such a man as that meditated treachery, he would probably be able to
+    carry away the design in his head&mdash;at any rate, a little at a time&mdash;and
+    would be under no necessity to run the risk of stealing a set of the
+    drawings. But Ritter, you remarked, was an inferior sort of man. 'Not
+    particularly smart,' I think, were your words&mdash;only a mechanical sort of
+    tracer. <i>He</i> would be unlikely to be able to carry in his head the
+    complicated details of such designs as yours, and, being in a subordinate
+    position, and continually overlooked, he would find it impossible to make
+    copies of the plans in the office. So that, to begin with, I thought I
+    saw the most probable path to start on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When I looked round the rooms, I pushed open the glass door of the
+    barrier and left the door to the inner office ajar, in order to be able
+    to see any thing that <i>might</i> happen in any part of the place, without
+    actually expecting any definite development. While we were talking, as it
+    happened, our friend Mirsky (or Hunter&mdash;as you please) came into the
+    outer office, and my attention was instantly called to him by the first
+    thing he did. Did you notice anything peculiar yourself?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, really, I can't say I did. He seemed to behave much as any traveler
+    or agent might."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, what I noticed was the fact that as soon as he entered the place
+    he put his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand over there by the door,
+    close by where he stood, a most unusual thing for a casual caller to do,
+    before even knowing whether you were in. This made me watch him closely.
+    I perceived with increased interest that the stick was exactly of the
+    same kind and pattern as one already standing there, also a curious
+    thing. I kept my eyes carefully on those sticks, and was all the more
+    interested and edified to see, when he left, that he took the <i>other</i>
+    stick&mdash;not the one he came with&mdash;from the stand, and carried it away,
+    leaving his own behind. I might have followed him, but I decided that
+    more could be learned by staying, as, in fact, proved to be the case.
+    This, by the by, is the stick he carried away with him. I took the
+    liberty of fetching it back from Westminster, because I conceive it to be
+    Ritier's property."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt produced the stick. It was an ordinary, thick Malacca cane, with a
+    buck-horn handle and a silver band. Hewitt bent it across his knee and
+    laid it on the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," Dixon answered, "that is Ritter's stick. I think I have often seen
+    it in the stand. But what in the world&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One moment; I'll just fetch the stick Mirsky left behind." And Hewitt
+    stepped across the corridor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He returned with another stick, apparently an exact fac-simile of the
+    other, and placed it by the side of the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When your assistants went into the inner room, I carried this stick off
+    for a minute or two. I knew it was not Worsfold's, because there was an
+    umbrella there with his initial on the handle. Look at this."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Martin Hewitt gave the handle a twist and rapidly unscrewed it from the
+    top. Then it was seen that the stick was a mere tube of very thin metal,
+    painted to appear like a Malacca cane.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It was plain at once that this was no Malacca cane&mdash;it wouldn't bend.
+    Inside it I found your tracings, rolled up tightly. You can get a
+    marvelous quantity of thin tracing-paper into a small compass by tight
+    rolling."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And this&mdash;this was the way they were brought back!" the engineer
+    exclaimed. "I see that clearly. But how did they get away? That's as
+    mysterious as ever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a bit of it! See here. Mirsky gets hold of Ritter, and they agree to
+    get your drawings and photograph them. Ritter is to let his confederate
+    have the drawings, and Mirsky is to bring them back as soon as possible,
+    so that they sha'n't be missed for a moment. Ritter habitually carries
+    this Malacca cane, and the cunning of Mirsky at once suggests that this
+    tube should be made in outward fac-simile. This morning Mirsky keeps the
+    actual stick, and Ritter comes to the office with the tube. He seizes the
+    first opportunity&mdash;probably when you were in this private room, and
+    Worsfold was talking to you from the corridor&mdash;to get at the tracings,
+    roll them up tightly, and put them in the tube, putting the tube back
+    into the umbrella-stand. At half-past twelve, or whenever it was, Mirsky
+    turns up for the first time with the actual stick and exchanges them,
+    just as he afterward did when he brought the drawings back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but Mirsky came half an hour after they were&mdash;Oh, yes, I see. What
+    a fool I was! I was forgetting. Of course, when I first missed the
+    tracings, they were in this walking-stick, safe enough, and I was tearing
+    my hair out within arm's reach of them!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. And Mirsky took them away before your very eyes. I expect
+    Ritter was in a rare funk when he found that the drawings were missed. He
+    calculated, no doubt, on your not wanting them for the hour or two they
+    would be out of the office."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How lucky that it struck me to jot a pencil-note on one of them! I might
+    easily have made my note somewhere else, and then I should never have
+    known that they had been away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, they didn't give you any too much time to miss them. Well, I think
+    the rest pretty clear. I brought the tracings in here, screwed up the
+    sham stick and put it back. You identified the tracings and found none
+    missing, and then my course was pretty clear, though it looked difficult.
+    I knew you would be very naturally indignant with Ritter, so, as I wanted
+    to manage him myself, I told you nothing of what he had actually done,
+    for fear that, in your agitated state, you might burst out with something
+    that would spoil my game. To Ritter I pretended to know nothing of the
+    return of the drawings or <i>how</i> they had been stolen&mdash;the only things I
+    did know with certainty. But I <i>did</i> pretend to know all about Mirsky&mdash;or
+    Hunter&mdash;when, as a matter of fact, I knew nothing at all, except that he
+    probably went under more than one name. That put Ritter into my hands
+    completely. When he found the game was up, he began with a lying
+    confession. Believing that the tracings were still in the stick and that
+    we knew nothing of their return, he said that they had not been away, and
+    that he would fetch them&mdash;as I had expected he would. I let him go for
+    them alone, and, when he returned, utterly broken up by the discovery
+    that they were not there, I had him altogether at my mercy. You see, if
+    he had known that the drawings were all the time behind your book-case,
+    he might have brazened it out, sworn that the drawings had been there all
+    the time, and we could have done nothing with him. We couldn't have
+    sufficiently frightened him by a threat of prosecution for theft, because
+    there the things were in your possession, to his knowledge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As it was he answered the helm capitally: gave us Mirsky's address on
+    the envelope, and wrote the letter that was to have got him out of the
+    way while I committed burglary, if that disgraceful expedient had not
+    been rendered unnecessary. On the whole, the case has gone very well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has gone marvelously well, thanks to yourself. But what shall I do
+    with Ritter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here's his stick&mdash;knock him down-stairs with it, if you like. I should
+    keep the tube, if I were you, as a memento. I don't suppose the
+    respectable Mirsky will ever call to ask for it. But I should certainly
+    kick Ritter out of doors&mdash;or out of window, if you like&mdash;without delay."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mirsky was caught, and, after two remands at the police-court, was
+    extradited on the charge of forging Russian notes. It came out that he
+    had written to the embassy, as Hewitt had surmised, stating that he had
+    certain valuable information to offer, and the letter which Hewitt had
+    seen delivered was an acknowledgment, and a request for more definite
+    particulars. This was what gave rise to the impression that Mirsky had
+    himself informed the Russian authorities of his forgeries. His real
+    intent was very different, but was never guessed.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    "I wonder," Hewitt has once or twice observed, "whether, after all, it
+    would not have paid the Russian authorities better on the whole if I had
+    never investigated Mirsky's little note factory. The Dixon torpedo was
+    worth a good many twenty-ruble notes."
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH5"></a>
+<h3>
+   V. THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It was comparatively rarely that Hewitt came into contact with members of
+    the regular criminal class&mdash;those, I mean, who are thieves, of one sort
+    or another, by exclusive profession. Still, nobody could have been better
+    prepared than Hewitt for encountering this class when it became
+    necessary. By some means, which I never quite understood, he managed to
+    keep abreast of the very latest fashions in the ever-changing slang
+    dialect of the fraternity, and he was a perfect master of the more modern
+    and debased form of Romany. So much so that frequently a gypsy who began
+    (as they always do) by pretending that he understood nothing, and never
+    heard of a gypsy language, ended by confessing that Hewitt could <i>rokker</i>
+    better than most Romany <i>chals</i> themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this acquaintance with their habits and talk Hewitt was sometimes able
+    to render efficient service in cases of especial importance. In the
+    Quinton jewel affair Hewitt came into contact with a very accomplished
+    thief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The case will probably be very well remembered. Sir Valentine Quinton,
+    before he married, had been as poor as only a man of rank with an old
+    country establishment to keep up can be. His marriage, however, with the
+    daughter of a wealthy financier had changed all that, and now the Quinton
+    establishment was carried on on as lavish a scale as might be; and,
+    indeed, the extravagant habits of Lady Quinton herself rendered it an
+    extremely lucky thing that she had brought a fortune with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Among other things her jewels made quite a collection, and chief among
+    them was the great ruby, one of the very few that were sent to this
+    country to be sold (at an average price of somewhere about twenty
+    thousand pounds apiece, I believe) by the Burmese king before the
+    annexation of his country. Let but a ruby be of a great size and color,
+    and no equally fine diamond can approach its value. Well, this great ruby
+    (which was set in a pendant, by the by), together with a necklace,
+    brooches, bracelets, ear-rings&mdash;indeed, the greater part of Lady
+    Quinton's collection&mdash;were stolen. The robbery was effected at the usual
+    time and in the usual way in cases of carefully planned jewelry
+    robberies. The time was early evening&mdash;dinner-time, in fact&mdash;and an
+    entrance had been made by the window to Lady Quinton's dressing-room, the
+    door screwed up on the inside, and wires artfully stretched about the
+    grounds below to overset anybody who might observe and pursue the
+    thieves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On an investigation by London detectives, however, a feature of
+    singularity was brought to light. There had plainly been only one thief
+    at work at Radcot Hall, and no other had been inside the grounds. Alone
+    he had planted the wires, opened the window, screwed the door, and picked
+    the lock of the safe. Clearly this was a thief of the most accomplished
+    description.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some few days passed, and, although the police had made various arrests,
+    they appeared to be all mistakes, and the suspected persons were released
+    one after another. I was talking of the robbery with Hewitt at lunch, and
+    asked him if he had received any commission to hunt for the missing
+    jewels.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Hewitt replied, "I haven't been commissioned. They are offering an
+    immense reward however&mdash;a very pleasant sum, indeed. I have had a short
+    note from Radcot Hall informing me of the amount, and that's all.
+    Probably they fancy that I may take the case up as a speculation, but
+    that is a great mistake. I'm not a beginner, and I must be commissioned
+    in a regular manner, hit or miss, if I am to deal with the case. I've
+    quite enough commissions going now, and no time to waste hunting for a
+    problematical reward."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But we were nearer a clue to the Quinton jewels than we then supposed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We talked of other things, and presently rose and left the restaurant,
+    strolling quietly toward home. Some little distance from the Strand, and
+    near our own door, we passed an excited Irishman&mdash;without doubt an
+    Irishman by appearance and talk&mdash;who was pouring a torrent of angry
+    complaints in the ears of a policeman. The policeman obviously thought
+    little of the man's grievances, and with an amused smile appeared to be
+    advising him to go home quietly and think no more about it. We passed on
+    and mounted our stairs. Something interesting in our conversation made me
+    stop for a little while at Hewitt's office door on my way up, and, while
+    I stood there, the Irishman we had seen in the street mounted the stairs.
+    He was a poorly dressed but sturdy-looking fellow, apparently a laborer,
+    in a badly-worn best suit of clothes. His agitation still held him, and
+    without a pause he immediately burst out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which of ye jintlemen will be Misther Hewitt, sor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is Mr. Hewitt," I said. "Do you want him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's protecshin I want, sor&mdash;protecshin! I spake to the polis, an' they
+    laff at me, begob. Foive days have I lived in London, an' 'tis nothin'
+    but battle, murdher, an' suddhen death for me here all day an' ivery day!
+    An' the polis say I'm dhrunk!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He gesticulated wildly, and to me it seemed just possible that the police
+    might be right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They say I'm drunk, sor," he continued, "but, begob, I b'lieve they
+    think I'm mad. An' me being thracked an' folleyed an' dogged an' waylaid
+    an' poisoned an' blandandhered an' kidnapped an' murdhered, an' for why I
+    do not know!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And who's doing all this?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sthrangers, sor&mdash;sthrangers. 'Tis a sthranger here I am mesilf, an' fwy
+    they do it bates me, onless I do be so like the Prince av Wales or other
+    crowned head they thry to slaughter me. They're layin' for me in the
+    sthreet now, I misdoubt not, and fwat they may thry next I can tell no
+    more than the Lord Mayor. An' the polis won't listen to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    This, I thought, must be one of the very common cases of mental
+    hallucination which one hears of every day&mdash;the belief of the sufferer
+    that he is surrounded by enemies and followed by spies. It is probably
+    the most usual delusion of the harmless lunatic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But what have these people done?" Hewitt asked, looking rather
+    interested, although amused. "What actual assaults have they committed,
+    and when? And who told you to come here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who towld me, is ut? Who but the payler outside&mdash;in the street below! I
+    explained to 'um, an' sez he: 'Ah, you go an' take a slape,' sez he; 'you
+    go an' take a good slape, an' they'll be all gone whin ye wake up.' 'But
+    they'll murdher me,' sez I. 'Oh, no!' sez he, smilin' behind av his ugly
+    face. 'Oh, no, they won't; you take ut aisy, me frind, an' go home!'
+    'Take it aisy, is ut, an' go home!' sez I; 'why, that's just where
+    they've been last, a-ruinationin' an' a-turnin' av the place upside down,
+    an' me strook on the head onsensible a mile away. Take ut aisy, is ut, ye
+    say, whin all the demons in this unholy place is jumpin' on me every
+    minut in places promiscuous till I can't tell where to turn, descendin'
+    an' vanishin' marvelious an' onaccountable? Take ut aisy, is ut?' sez I.
+    'Well, me frind,' sez he, 'I can't help ye; that's the marvelious an'
+    onaccountable departmint up the stairs forninst ye. Misther Hewitt ut
+    is,' sez he, 'that attinds to the onaccountable departmint, him as wint
+    by a minut ago. You go an' bother him.' That's how I was towld, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," he said; "and now what are these extraordinary troubles of
+    yours? Don't declaim," he added, as the Irishman raised his hand and
+    opened his mouth, preparatory to another torrent of complaint; "just say
+    in ten words, if you can, what they've done to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will, sor. Wan day had I been in London, sor&mdash;wan day only, an' a low
+    scutt thried to poison me dhrink; next day some udther thief av sin
+    shoved me off av a railway platform undher a train, malicious and
+    purposeful; glory be, he didn't kill me! but the very docther that felt
+    me bones thried to pick me pockut, I du b'lieve. Sunday night I was
+    grabbed outrageous in a darrk turnin', rowled on the groun', half
+    strangled, an' me pockuts nigh ripped out av me trousies. An' this very
+    blessed mornin' av light I was strook onsensible an' left a livin'
+    corpse, an' my lodgin's penethrated an' all the thruck mishandled an'
+    bruk up behind me back. Is that a panjandhery for the polis to laff at,
+    sor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Had Hewitt not been there I think I should have done my best to quiet the
+    poor fellow with a few soothing words and to persuade him to go home to
+    his friends. His excited and rather confused manner, his fantastic story
+    of a sort of general conspiracy to kill him, and the absurd reference to
+    the doctor who tried to pick his pocket seemed to me plainly to confirm
+    my first impression that he was insane. But Hewitt appeared strangely
+    interested.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did they steal anything?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Divil a shtick but me door-key, an' that they tuk home an' lift in the
+    door."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt opened his office door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come in," he said, "and tell me all about this. You come, too, Brett."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Irishman and I followed him into the inner office, where, shutting
+    the door, Hewitt suddenly turned on the Irishman and exclaimed sharply:
+    "<i>Then you've still got it</i>?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked keenly in the man's eyes, but the only expression there was one
+    of surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Got ut?" said the Irishman. "Got fwhat, sor? Is ut you're thinkin' I've
+    got the horrors, as well as the polis?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt's gaze relaxed. "Sit down, sit down!" he said. "You've still got
+    your watch and money, I suppose, since you weren't robbed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, that? Glory be, I have ut still! though for how long&mdash;or me own
+    head, for that matter&mdash;in this state of besiegement, I can not say."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said Hewitt, "I want a full, true, and particular account of
+    yourself and your doings for the last week. First, your name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Leamy's my name, sor&mdash;Michael Leamy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lately from Ireland?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Over from Dublin this last blessed Wednesday, and a crooil bad
+    poundherin' tit was in the boat, too&mdash;shpakin'av that same."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Looking for work?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is my purshuit at prisint, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did anything noticeable happen before these troubles of yours
+    began&mdash;anything here in London or on the journey?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sure," the Irishman smiled, "part av the way I thraveled first-class by
+    favor av the gyard, an' I got a small job before I lift the train."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How was that? Why did you travel first-class part of the way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was a station fwhere we shtopped afther a long run, an' I got down
+    to take the cramp out av me joints, an' take a taste av dhrink. I
+    over-shtayed somehow, an', whin I got to the train, begob, it was on the
+    move. There was a first-class carr'ge door opin right forninst me, an'
+    into that the gyard crams me holus-bolus. There was a juce of a foine
+    jintleman sittin' there, an' he stares at me umbrageous, but I was not
+    dishcommoded, bein' onbashful by natur'. We thravelled along a heap av
+    miles more, till we came near London. Afther we had shtopped at a station
+    where they tuk tickets we wint ahead again, an' prisintly, as we rips
+    through some udther station, up jumps the jintleman opposite, swearin'
+    hard undher his tongue, an' looks out at the windy. 'I thought this
+    train shtopped here,' sez he."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Chalk Farm," observed Hewitt, with a nod.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The name I do not know, sor, but that's fwhat he said. Then he looks at
+    me onaisy for a little, an' at last he sez: 'Wud ye loike a small job, me
+    good man, well paid?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Faith,' sez I, ''tis that will suit me well.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Then, see here,' sez he, 'I should have got out at that station, havin'
+    particular business; havin' missed, I must sen' a telegrammer from
+    Euston. Now, here's a bag,' sez he, 'a bag full of imporrtant papers for
+    my solicitor&mdash;imporrtant to me, ye ondershtand, not worth the shine av a
+    brass farden to a sowl else&mdash;an' I want 'em tuk on to him. Take you this
+    bag,' he sez, 'an' go you straight out wid it at Euston an' get a cab. I
+    shall stay in the station a bit to see to the telegrammer. Dhrive out av
+    the station, across the road outside, an' wait there five minuts by the
+    clock. Ye ondershtand? Wait five minuts, an, maybe I'll come an' join ye.
+    If I don't 'twill be bekase I'm detained onexpected, an' then ye'll
+    dhrive to my solicitor straight. Here's his address, if ye can read
+    writin',' an' he put ut on a piece av paper. He gave me half-a-crown for
+    the cab, an' I tuk his bag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One moment&mdash;have you the paper with the address now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have not, sor. I missed ut afther the blayguards overset me
+    yesterday; but the solicitor's name was Hollams, an' a liberal jintleman
+    wid his money he was, too, by that same token."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What was his address?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Twas in Chelsea, and 'twas Gold or Golden something, which I know by
+    the good token av fwhat he gave me; but the number I misremember."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt turned to his directory. "Gold Street is the place, probably," he
+    said, "and it seems to be a street chiefly of private houses. You would
+    be able to point out the house if you were taken there, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I should that, sor; indade, I was thinkin' av goin' there an' tellin'
+    Misther Hollams all my throubles, him havin' been so kind."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now tell me exactly what instructions the man in the train gave you, and
+    what happened?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He sez: 'You ask for Misther Hollams, an' see nobody else. Tell him
+    ye've brought the sparks from Misther W.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I fancied I could see a sudden twinkle in Hewitt's eye, but he made no
+    other sign, and the Irishman proceeded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Sparks?' sez I. 'Yes, sparks,' sez he. 'Misther Hollams will know; 'tis
+    our jokin' word for 'em; sometimes papers is sparks when they set a
+    lawsuit ablaze,' and he laffed. 'But be sure ye say the <i>sparks from
+    Misther W.</i>,' he sez again, 'bekase then he'll know ye're jinuine an'
+    he'll pay ye han'some. Say Misther W. sez you're to have your reg'lars,
+    if ye like. D'ye mind that?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Ay,' sez I, 'that I'm to have my reg'lars.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, sor, I tuk the bag and wint out of the station, tuk the cab, an'
+    did all as he towld me. I waited the foive minuts, but he niver came, so
+    off I druv to Misther Hollams, and he threated me han'some, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but tell me exactly all he did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Misther Hollams, sor?' sez I. 'Who are ye?' sez he. 'Mick Leamy, sor,'
+    sez I, 'from Misther W. wid the sparks.' 'Oh,' sez he, 'thin come in.' I
+    wint in. 'They're in here, are they?' sez he, takin' the bag. 'They are,
+    sor,' sez I, 'an' Misther W. sez I'm to have me reg'lars.' 'You shall,'
+    sez he. 'What shall we say, now&mdash;afinnip?' 'Fwhat's that, sor?' sez I.
+    'Oh,' sez he, 'I s'pose ye're a new hand; five quid&mdash;ondershtand that?'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Begob, I did ondershtand it, an' moighty plazed I was to have come to a
+    place where they pay five-pun' notes for carryin' bags. So whin he asked
+    me was I new to London an' shud I kape in the same line av business, I
+    towld him I shud for certin, or any thin' else payin' like it. 'Right,'
+    sez he; 'let me know whin ye've got any thin'&mdash;ye'll find me all right.'
+    An' he winked frindly. 'Faith, that I know I shall, sor,' sez I, wid the
+    money safe in me pockut; an' I winked him back, conjanial. 'I've a smart
+    family about me,' sez he, 'an' I treat 'em all fair an' liberal.' An',
+    saints, I thought it likely his family 'ud have all they wanted, seein'
+    he was so free-handed wid a stranger. Thin he asked me where I was a
+    livin' in London, and, when I towld him nowhere, he towld me av a room in
+    Musson Street, here by Drury Lane, that was to let, in a house his fam'ly
+    knew very well, an' I wint straight there an' tuk ut, an' there I do be
+    stayin' still, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I hadn't understood at first why Hewitt took so much interest in the
+    Irishman's narrative, but the latter part of it opened my eyes a little.
+    It seemed likely that Leamy had, in his innocence, been made a conveyer
+    of stolen property. I knew enough of thieves' slang to know that "sparks"
+    meant diamonds or other jewels; that "regulars" was the term used for a
+    payment made to a brother thief who gave assistance in some small way,
+    such as carrying the booty; and that the "family" was the time-honored
+    expression for a gang of thieves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was all on Wednesday, I understand," said Hewitt. "Now tell me what
+    happened on Thursday&mdash;the poisoning, or drugging, you know?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, sor, I was walking out, an' toward the evenin' I lost mesilf. Up
+    comes a man, seemin'ly a sthranger, and shmacks me on the showldher.
+    'Why, Mick!' sez he; 'it's Mick Leamy, I du b'lieve!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'I am that,' sez I, 'but you I do not know.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Not know me?' sez he. 'Why, I wint to school wid ye.' An' wid that he
+    hauls me off to a bar, blarneyin' and minowdherin', an' orders dhrinks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can ye rache me a poipe-loight?' sez he, an' I turned to get ut, but,
+    lookin' back suddent, there was that onblushin' thief av the warl'
+    tippin' a paperful of phowder stuff into me glass."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you do?" Hewitt asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I knocked the dhirty face av him, sor, an' can ye blame me? A mane
+    scutt, thryin' for to poison a well-manin' sthranger. I knocked the face
+    av him, an' got away home."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now the next misfortune?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Faith, that was av a sort likely to turn out the last of all
+    misfortunes. I wint that day to the Crystial Palace, bein' dishposed for
+    a little sphort, seein' as I was new to London. Comin' home at night,
+    there was a juce av a crowd on the station platform, consekins of a late
+    thrain. Sthandin' by the edge av the platform at the fore end, just as
+    thrain came in, some onvisible murdherer gives me a stupenjus drive in
+    the back, and over I wint on the line, mid-betwixt the rails. The engine
+    came up an' wint half over me widout givin' me a scratch, bekase av my
+    centraleous situation, an' then the porther-men pulled me out, nigh sick
+    wid fright, sor, as ye may guess. A jintleman in the crowd sings out:
+    'I'm a medical man!' an' they tuk me in the waitin'-room, an' he
+    investigated me, havin' turned everybody else out av the room. There wuz
+    no bones bruk, glory be! and the docthor-man he was tellin' me so, after
+    feelin' me over, whin I felt his hand in me waistcoat pockut.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'An' fwhat's this, sor?' sez I. 'Do you be lookin' for your fee that
+    thief's way?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He laffed, and said: 'I want no fee from ye, me man, an' I did but feel
+    your ribs,' though on me conscience he had done that undher me waistcoat
+    already. An' so I came home."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did they do to you on Saturday?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Saturday, sor, they gave me a whole holiday, and I began to think less
+    of things; but on Saturday night, in a dark place, two blayguards tuk me
+    throat from behind, nigh choked me, flung me down, an' wint through all
+    me pockuts in about a quarter av a minut."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And they took nothing, you say?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing, sor. But this mornin' I got my worst dose. I was trapesing
+    along distreshful an' moighty sore, in a street just away off the Strand
+    here, when I obsarved the docthor-man that was at the Crystial Palace
+    station a-smilin' an' beckonin' at me from a door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'How are ye now?' sez he. 'Well,' sez I, 'I'm moighty sore an' sad
+    bruised,' sez I. 'Is that so?' sez he. 'Sthep in here.' So I sthepped in,
+    an' before I could wink there dhropped a crack on the back av me head
+    that sent me off as unknowledgable as a corrpse. I knew no more for a
+    while, sor, whether half an hour or an hour, an' thin I got up in a room
+    av the place, marked 'To Let.' 'Twas a house full av offices, by the same
+    token, like this. There was a sore bad lump on me head&mdash;see ut, sor?&mdash;an'
+    the whole warl' was shpinnin' roun' rampageous. The things out av me
+    pockuts were lyin' on the flure by me&mdash;all barrin' the key av me room. So
+    that the demons had been through me posseshins again, bad luck to 'em."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are quite sure, are you, that everything was there except the key?"
+    Hewitt asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certin, sor? Well, I got along to me room, sick an' sorry enough, an'
+    doubtsome whether I might get in wid no key. But there was the key in the
+    open door, an', by this an' that, all the shtuff in the room&mdash;chair,
+    table, bed, an' all&mdash;was shtandin' on their heads twisty-ways, an' the
+    bedclothes an' every thin' else; such a disgraceful stramash av
+    conglomerated thruck as ye niver dhreamt av. The chist av drawers was
+    lyin' on uts face, wid all the dhrawers out an' emptied on the flure.
+    'Twas as though an arrmy had been lootin', sor!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But still nothing was gone?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothin', so far as I investigated, sor. But I didn't shtay. I came out
+    to spake to the polis, an' two av them laffed at me&mdash;wan afther another!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has certainly been no laughing matter for you. Now, tell me&mdash;have you
+    anything in your possession&mdash;documents, or valuables, or anything&mdash;that
+    any other person, to your knowledge, is anxious to get hold of!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have not, sor&mdash;divil a document! As to valuables, thim an' me is the
+    cowldest av sthrangers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just call to mind, now, the face of the man who tried to put powder in
+    your drink, and that of the doctor who attended to you in the railway
+    station. Were they at all alike, or was either like anybody you have seen
+    before?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Leamy puckered his forehead and thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Faith," he said presently, "they were a bit alike, though one had a
+    beard an' the udther whiskers only."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Neither happened to look like Mr. Hollams, for instance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Leamy started. "Begob, but they did! They'd ha' been mortal like him if
+    they'd been shaved." Then, after a pause, he suddenly added: "Holy
+    saints! is ut the fam'ly he talked av?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laughed. "Perhaps it is," he said. "Now, as to the man who sent
+    you with the bag. Was it an old bag?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bran' cracklin' new&mdash;a brown leather bag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Locked?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That I niver thried, sor. It was not my consarn."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "True. Now, as to this Mr. W. himself." Hewitt had been rummaging for
+    some few minutes in a portfolio, and finally produced a photograph, and
+    held it before the Irishman's eye. "Is that like him?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Shure it's the man himself! Is he a friend av yours, sor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, he's not exactly a friend of mine," Hewitt answered, with a grim
+    chuckle. "I fancy he's one of that very respectable <i>family</i> you heard
+    about at Mr. Hollams'. Come along with me now to Chelsea, and see if you
+    can point out that house in Gold Street. I'll send for a cab."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He made for the outer office, and I went with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is all this, Hewitt?" I asked. "A gang of thieves with stolen
+    property?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt looked in my face and replied: "<i>It's the Quinton ruby</i>!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What! The ruby? Shall you take the case up, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall. It is no longer a speculation."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then do you expect to find it at Hollams' house in Chelsea?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't, because it isn't there&mdash;else why are they trying to get it
+    from this unlucky Irishman? There has been bad faith in Hollams' gang, I
+    expect, and Hollams has missed the ruby and suspects Leamy of having
+    taken it from the bag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then who is this Mr. W. whose portrait you have in your possession?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "See here!" Hewitt turned over a small pile of recent newspapers and
+    selected one, pointing at a particular paragraph. "I kept that in my
+    mind, because to me it seemed to be the most likely arrest of the lot,"
+    he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was an evening paper of the previous Thursday, and the paragraph was a
+    very short one, thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The man Wilks, who was arrested at Euston Station yesterday, in
+    connection with the robbery of Lady Quinton's jewels, has been released,
+    nothing being found to incriminate him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How does that strike you?" asked Hewitt. "Wilks is a man well known to
+    the police&mdash;one of the most accomplished burglars in this country, in
+    fact. I have had no dealings with him as yet, but I found means, some
+    time ago, to add his portrait to my little collection, in case I might
+    want it, and to-day it has been quite useful."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The thing was plain now. Wilks must have been bringing his booty to town,
+    and calculated on getting out at Chalk Farm and thus eluding the watch
+    which he doubtless felt pretty sure would be kept (by telegraphic
+    instruction) at Euston for suspicious characters arriving from the
+    direction of Radcot. His transaction with Leamy was his only possible
+    expedient to save himself from being hopelessly taken with the swag in
+    his possession. The paragraph told me why Leamy had waited in vain for
+    "Mr. W." in the cab.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What shall you do now?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall go to the Gold Street house and find out what I can as soon as
+    this cab turns up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There seemed a possibility of some excitement in the adventure, so I
+    asked: "Will you want any help?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled. "I <i>think</i> I can get through it alone," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then may I come to look on?" I said. "Of course I don't want to be in
+    your way, and the result of the business, whatever it is, will be to
+    your credit alone. But I am curious."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, then, by all means. The cab will be a four-wheeler, and there will
+    be plenty of room."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Gold Street was a short street of private houses of very fair size and of
+    a half-vanished pretension to gentility. We drove slowly through, and
+    Leamy had no difficulty in pointing out the house wherein he had been
+    paid five pounds for carrying a bag. At the end the cab turned the corner
+    and stopped, while Hewitt wrote a short note to an official of Scotland
+    Yard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take this note," he instructed Leamy, "to Scotland Yard in the cab, and
+    then go home. I will pay the cabman now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will, sor. An' will I be protected?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes! Stay at home for the rest of the day, and I expect you'll be
+    left alone in future. Perhaps I shall have something to tell you in a day
+    or two; if I do, I'll send. Good-by."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cab rolled off, and Hewitt and I strolled back along Gold Street. "I
+    think," Hewitt said, "we will drop in on Mr. Hollams for a few minutes
+    while we can. In a few hours I expect the police will have him, and his
+    house, too, if they attend promptly to my note."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you ever seen him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not to my knowledge, though I may know him by some other name. Wilks I
+    know by sight, though he doesn't know me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What shall we say?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That will depend on circumstances. I may not get my cue till the door
+    opens, or even till later. At worst, I can easily apply for a reference
+    as to Leamy, who, you remember, is looking for work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But we were destined not to make Mr. Hollams' acquaintance, after all. As
+    we approached the house a great uproar was heard from the lower part
+    giving on to the area, and suddenly a man, hatless, and with a sleeve of
+    his coat nearly torn away burst through the door and up the area steps,
+    pursued by two others. I had barely time to observe that one of the
+    pursuers carried a revolver, and that both hesitated and retired on
+    seeing that several people were about the street, when Hewitt, gripping
+    my arm and exclaiming: "That's our man!" started at a run after the
+    fugitive.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We turned the next corner and saw the man thirty yards before us,
+    walking, and pulling up his sleeve at the shoulder, so as to conceal the
+    rent. Plainly he felt safe from further molestation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's Sim Wilks," Hewitt explained, as we followed, "the 'juce of a
+    foine jintleman' who got Leamy to carry his bag, and the man who knows
+    where the Quinton ruby is, unless I am more than usually mistaken. Don't
+    stare after him, in case he looks round. Presently, when we get into the
+    busier streets, I shall have a little chat with him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But for some time the man kept to the back streets. In time, however, he
+    emerged into the Buckingham Palace Road, and we saw him stop and look at
+    a hat-shop. But after a general look over the window and a glance in at
+    the door he went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good sign!" observed Hewitt; "got no money with him&mdash;makes it easier for
+    us."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a little while Wilks approached a small crowd gathered about a woman
+    fiddler. Hewitt touched my arm, and a few quick steps took us past our
+    man and to the opposite side of the crowd. When Wilks emerged, he met us
+    coming in the opposite direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What, Sim!" burst out Hewitt with apparent delight. "I haven't piped
+    your mug<a href="#note-A"><small><sup>[A]</sup></small></a>
+    for a stretch;<a href="#note-B"><small><sup>[B]</sup></small></a>
+    I thought you'd fell.<a href="#note-C"><small><sup>[C]</sup></small></a>
+    Where's your cady?"<a href="#note-D"><small><sup>[D]</sup></small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="note-A"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>A</u></sup>    [Seen your face.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-B"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>B</u></sup>    [A year.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-C"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>C</u></sup>    [Been imprisoned.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-D"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>D</u></sup>    [Hat.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks looked astonished and suspicious. "I don't know you," he said.
+    "You've made a mistake."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laughed. "I'm glad you don't know me," he said. "If you don't,
+    I'm pretty sure the
+    reelers<a href="#note-E"><small><sup>[E]</sup></small></a> won't.
+    I think I've faked my mug pretty well, and my
+    clobber,<a href="#note-F"><small><sup>[F]</sup></small></a> too.
+    Look here: I'll stand you a new cady. Strange blokes don't do that, eh?"
+</p>
+<a name="note-E"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>E</u></sup>    [Police.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-F"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>F</u></sup>    [Clothes.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks was still suspicious. "I don't know what you mean," he said. Then,
+    after a pause, he added: "Who are you, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt winked and screwed his face genially aside. "Hooky!" he said.  "I've had
+    a lucky touch<a href="#note-G"><small><sup>[G]</sup></small></a> and
+    I'm Mr. Smith till I've melted the
+    pieces.<a href="#note-H"><small><sup>[H]</sup></small></a> You come
+    and damp it."
+</p>
+<a name="note-G"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>G</u></sup>    [Robbery.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-H"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>H</u></sup>    [Spent the money.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm off," Wilks replied. "Unless you're pal enough to lend me a quid,"
+    he added, laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am that," responded Hewitt, plunging his hand in his pocket. "I'm
+    flush, my boy, flush, and I've been wetting it pretty well to-day. I feel
+    pretty jolly now, and I shouldn't wonder if I went home
+    cannon.<a href="#note-I"><small><sup>[I]</sup></small></a> Only a
+    quid? Have two, if you want 'em&mdash;or three; there's plenty more, and
+    you'll do the same for me some day. Here y'are."
+</p>
+<a name="note-I"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>I</u></sup>    [Drunk.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt had, of a sudden, assumed the whole appearance, manners, and
+    bearing of a slightly elevated rowdy. Now he pulled his hand from his
+    pocket and extended it, full of silver, with five or six sovereigns
+    interspersed, toward Wilks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll have three quid," Wilks said, with decision, taking the money; "but
+    I'm blowed if I remember you. Who's your pal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt jerked his hand in my direction, winked, and said, in a low voice:
+    "He's all right. Having a rest. Can't stand Manchester," and winked
+    again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks laughed and nodded, and I understood from that that Hewitt had very
+    flatteringly given me credit for being "wanted" by the Manchester police.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We lurched into a public house, and drank a very little very bad whisky
+    and water. Wilks still regarded us curiously, and I could see him again
+    and again glancing doubtfully in Hewitt's face. But the loan of three
+    pounds had largely reassured him. Presently Hewitt said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How about our old pal down in Gold Street? Do anything with him now?
+    Seen him lately?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's a good job. It 'ud be awkward if you were about there to-day, I
+    can tell you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind, so long as you're not there. I know something, if I <i>have</i>
+    been away. I'm glad I haven't had any truck with Gold Street lately,
+    that's all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "D'you mean the reelers are on it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt looked cautiously over his shoulder, leaned toward Wilks, and
+    said: "Look here: this is the straight tip. I know this&mdash;I got it from
+    the very nark<a href="#note-J"><small><sup>[J]</sup></small></a> that's
+    given the show away: By six o'clock No. 8 Gold
+    Street will be turned inside out, like an old glove, and everyone in the
+    place will be&mdash;&mdash;" He finished the sentence by crossing his wrists like
+    a handcuffed man. "What's more," he went on, "they know all about what's
+    gone on there lately, and everybody that's been in or out for the last
+    two moons<a href="#note-K"><small><sup>[K]</sup></small></a> will
+    be wanted particular&mdash;and will be found, I'm told."
+    Hewitt concluded with a confidential frown, a nod, and a wink, and took
+    another mouthful of whisky. Then he added, as an after-thought: "So I'm
+    glad you haven't been there lately."
+</p>
+<a name="note-J"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>J</u></sup>    [Police spy.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-K"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>K</u></sup>    [Months.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks looked in Hewitt's face and asked: "Is that straight?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "<i>Is</i> it?" replied Hewitt with emphasis. "You go and have a look, if you
+    ain't afraid of being smugged yourself. Only <i>I</i> shan't go near No. 8
+    just yet&mdash;I know that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks fidgeted, finished his drink, and expressed his intention of going.
+    "Very well, if you <i>won't</i> have another&mdash;&mdash;" replied Hewitt. But he had
+    gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good!" said Hewitt, moving toward the door; "he has suddenly developed a
+    hurry. I shall keep him in sight, but you had better take a cab and go
+    straight to Euston. Take tickets to the nearest station to
+    Radcot&mdash;Kedderby, I think it is&mdash;and look up the train arrangements.
+    Don't show yourself too much, and keep an eye on the entrance. Unless I
+    am mistaken, Wilks will be there pretty soon, and I shall be on his
+    heels. If I <i>am</i> wrong, then you won't see the end of the fun, that's
+    all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt hurried after Wilks, and I took the cab and did as he wished.
+    There was an hour and a few minutes, I found, to wait for the next train,
+    and that time I occupied as best I might, keeping a sharp lookout across
+    the quadrangle. Barely five minutes before the train was to leave, and
+    just as I was beginning to think about the time of the next, a cab dashed
+    up and Hewitt alighted. He hurried in, found me, and drew me aside into a
+    recess, just as another cab arrived.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here he is," Hewitt said. "I followed him as far as Euston Road and
+    then got my cabby to spurt up and pass him. He had had his mustache
+    shaved off, and I feared you mightn't recognize him, and so let him see
+    you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    From our retreat we could see Wilks hurry into the booking-office. We
+    watched him through to the platform and followed. He wasted no time, but
+    made the best of his way to a third-class carriage at the extreme fore
+    end of the train.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We have three minutes," Hewitt said, "and everything depends on his not
+    seeing us get into this train. Take this cap. Fortunately, we're both in
+    tweed suits."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He had bought a couple of tweed cricket caps, and these we assumed,
+    sending our "bowler" hats to the cloak-room. Hewitt also put on a pair of
+    blue spectacles, and then walked boldly up the platform and entered a
+    first-class carriage. I followed close on his heels, in such a manner
+    that a person looking from the fore end of the train would be able to see
+    but very little of me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So far so good," said Hewitt, when we were seated and the train began to
+    move off. "I must keep a lookout at each station, in case our friend goes
+    off unexpectedly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I waited some time," I said; "where did you both go to?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "First he went and bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some
+    distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets
+    in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor's
+    shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat
+    mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way
+    up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber's shop. I took a
+    cautious peep at the window, saw two or three other customers also
+    waiting, and took the opportunity to rush over to a 'notion' shop and buy
+    these blue spectacles, and to a hatter's for these caps&mdash;of which I
+    regret to observe that yours is too big. He was rather a long while in
+    the barber's, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache.
+    This was a good indication. It made it plainer than ever that he had
+    believed my warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street
+    and its frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was
+    quite true. The rest you know. He cabbed to the station, and so did I."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And now perhaps," I said, "after giving me the character of a thief
+    wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in
+    exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London
+    without any definite idea of when I'm coming back, perhaps you'll tell me
+    what we're after?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laughed. "You wanted to join in, you know," he said, "and you
+    must take your luck as it comes. As a matter of fact there is scarcely
+    anything in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this
+    watching and following business. Often it lasts for weeks. When we
+    alight, we shall have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult
+    possible conditions, in the country. There it is often quite impossible
+    to follow a man unobserved. It is only because it is the only way that I
+    am undertaking it now. As to what we're after, you know that as well as
+    I&mdash;the Quinton ruby. Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would
+    be impossible to find it. We are following him so that he will find it
+    for us."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the
+    bag to direct Hollams's suspicion to him. Hollams found out by his
+    repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and
+    this morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks'
+    possession with a revolver. We saw the upshot of that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kedderby Station was about forty miles out. At each intermediate stopping
+    station Hewitt watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train. "What
+    I fear," Hewitt observed, "is that at Kedderby he may take a fly. To stalk
+    a man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you <i>can't</i> follow
+    one vehicle in another without being spotted. But if he's so smart as I
+    think, he won't do it. A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered
+    in these places."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He did <i>not</i> take a fly. At Kedderby we saw him jump out quickly and
+    hasten from the station. The train stood for a few minutes, and he was
+    out of the station before we alighted. Through the railings behind the
+    platform we could see him walking briskly away to the right. From the
+    ticket collector we ascertained that Radcot lay in that direction, three
+    miles off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To my dying day I shall never forget that three miles. They seemed three
+    hundred. In the still country almost every footfall seemed audible for
+    any distance, and in the long stretches of road one could see half a mile
+    behind or before. Hewitt was cool and patient, but I got into a fever of
+    worry, excitement, want of breath, and back-ache. At first, for a little,
+    the road zig-zagged, and then the chase was comparatively easy. We waited
+    behind one bend till Wilks had passed the next, and then hurried in his
+    trail, treading in the dustiest parts of the road or on the side grass,
+    when there was any, to deaden the sound of our steps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the last of these short bends we looked ahead and saw a long, white
+    stretch of road with the dark form of Wilks a couple of hundred yards in
+    front. It would never do to let him get to the end of this great stretch
+    before following, as he might turn off at some branch road out of sight
+    and be lost. So we jumped the hedge and scuttled along as we best might
+    on the other side, with backs bent, and our feet often many inches deep
+    in wet clay. We had to make continual stoppages to listen and peep out,
+    and on one occasion, happening, incautiously, to stand erect, looking
+    after him, I was much startled to see Wilks, with his face toward me,
+    gazing down the road. I ducked like lightning, and, fortunately, he
+    seemed not to have observed me, but went on as before. He had probably
+    heard some slight noise, but looked straight along the road for its
+    explanation, instead of over the hedge. At hilly parts of the road there
+    was extreme difficulty; indeed, on approaching a rise it was usually
+    necessary to lie down under the hedge till Wilks had passed the top,
+    since from the higher ground he could have seen us easily. This improved
+    neither my clothes, my comfort, nor my temper. Luckily we never
+    encountered the difficulty of a long and high wall, but once we were
+    nearly betrayed by a man who shouted to order us off his field.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last we saw, just ahead, the square tower of an old church, set about
+    with thick trees. Opposite this Wilks paused, looked irresolutely up and
+    down the road, and then went on. We crossed the road, availed ourselves
+    of the opposite hedge, and followed. The village was to be seen some
+    three or four hundred yards farther along the road, and toward it Wilks
+    sauntered slowly. Before he actually reached the houses he stopped and
+    turned back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The churchyard!" exclaimed Hewitt, under his breath. "Lie close and let
+    him pass."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks reached the churchyard gate, and again looked irresolutely about
+    him. At that moment a party of children, who had been playing among the
+    graves, came chattering and laughing toward and out of the gate, and
+    Wilks walked hastily away again, this time in the opposite direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's the place, clearly," Hewitt said. "We must slip across quietly,
+    as soon as he's far enough down the road. Now!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    We hurried stealthily across, through the gate, and into the churchyard,
+    where Hewitt threw his blue spectacles away. It was now nearly eight in
+    the evening, and the sun was setting. Once again Wilks approached the
+    gate, and did not enter, because a laborer passed at the time. Then he
+    came back and slipped through.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grass about the graves was long, and under the trees it was already
+    twilight. Hewitt and I, two or three yards apart, to avoid falling over
+    one another in case of sudden movement, watched from behind gravestones.
+    The form of Wilks stood out large and black against the fading light in
+    the west as he stealthily approached through the long grass. A light cart
+    came clattering along the road, and Wilks dropped at once and crouched on
+    his knees till it had passed. Then, staring warily about him, he made
+    straight for the stone behind which Hewitt waited.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I saw Hewitt's dark form swing noiselessly round to the other side of
+    the stone. Wilks passed on and dropped on his knee beside a large,
+    weather-worn slab that rested on a brick under-structure a foot or so
+    high. The long grass largely hid the bricks, and among it Wilks plunged
+    his hand, feeling along the brick surface. Presently he drew out a loose
+    brick, and laid it on the slab. He felt again in the place, and brought
+    forth a small dark object. I saw Hewitt rise erect in the gathering dusk,
+    and with extended arm step noiselessly toward the stooping man. Wilks
+    made a motion to place the dark object in his pocket, but checked
+    himself, and opened what appeared to be a lid, as though to make sure of
+    the safety of the contents. The last light, straggling under the trees,
+    fell on a brilliantly sparkling object within, and like a flash Hewitt's
+    hand shot over Wilks' shoulder and snatched the jewel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man actually screamed&mdash;one of those curious sharp little screams that
+    one may hear from a woman very suddenly alarmed. But he sprang at Hewitt
+    like a cat, only to meet a straight drive of the fist that stretched him
+    on his back across the slab. I sprang from behind my stone, and helped
+    Hewitt to secure his wrists with a pocket-handkerchief. Then we marched
+    him, struggling and swearing, to the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When, in the lights of the village, he recognized us, he had a perfect
+    fit of rage, but afterward he calmed down, and admitted that it was a
+    "very clean cop." There was some difficulty in finding the village
+    constable, and Sir Valentine Quinton was dining out and did not arrive
+    for at least an hour. In the interval Wilks grew communicative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How much d'ye think I'll get?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can't guess," Hewitt replied. "And as we shall probably have to give
+    evidence, you'll be giving yourself away if you talk too much."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I don't care; that'll make no difference. It's a fair cop, and I'm
+    in for it. You got at me nicely, lending me three quid. I never knew a
+    reeler do that before. That blinded me. But was it kid about Gold
+    Street?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, it wasn't. Mr. Hollams is safely shut up by this time, I expect,
+    and you are avenged for your little trouble with him this afternoon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you know about that? Well, you've got it up nicely for me, I
+    must say. S'pose you've been following me all the time?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes; I haven't been far off. I guessed you'd want to clear out of
+    town if Hollams was taken, and I knew this"&mdash;Hewitt tapped his breast
+    pocket&mdash;"was what you'd take care to get hold of first. You hid it, of
+    course, because you knew that Hollams would probably have you searched
+    for it if he got suspicious?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, he did, too. Two blokes went over my pockets one night, and
+    somebody got into my room. But I expected that, Hollams is such a greedy
+    pig. Once he's got you under his thumb he don't give you half your
+    makings, and, if you kick, he'll have you smugged. So that I wasn't going
+    to give him <i>that</i> if I could help it. I s'pose it ain't any good asking
+    how you got put on to our mob?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Hewitt, "it isn't."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    We didn't get back till the next day, staying for the night, despite an
+    inconvenient want of requisites, at the Hall. There were, in fact, no
+    late trains. We told Sir Valentine the story of the Irishman, much to his
+    amusement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Leamy's tale sounded unlikely, of course," Hewitt said, "but it was
+    noticeable that every one of his misfortunes pointed in the same
+    direction&mdash;that certain persons were tremendously anxious to get at
+    something they supposed he had. When he spoke of his adventure with the
+    bag, I at once remembered Wilks' arrest and subsequent release. It was a
+    curious coincidence, to say the least, that this should happen at the
+    very station to which the proceeds of this robbery must come, if they
+    came to London at all, and on the day following the robbery itself.
+    Kedderby is one of the few stations on this line where no trains would
+    stop after the time of the robbery, so that the thief would have to wait
+    till the next day to get back. Leamy's recognition of Wilks' portrait
+    made me feel pretty certain. Plainly, he had carried stolen property; the
+    poor, innocent fellow's conversation with Hollams showed that, as, in
+    fact, did the sum, five pounds, paid to him by way of 'regulars,' or
+    customary toll, from the plunder of services of carriage. Hollams
+    obviously took Leamy for a criminal friend of Wilks', because of his use
+    of the thieves' expressions 'sparks' and 'regulars,' and suggested, in
+    terms which Leamy misunderstood, that he should sell any plunder he might
+    obtain to himself, Hollams. Altogether it would have been very curious if
+    the plunder were <i>not</i> that from Radcot Hall, especially as no other
+    robbery had been reported at the time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, among the jewels taken, only one was of a very pre-eminent
+    value&mdash;the famous ruby. It was scarcely likely that Hollams would go to
+    so much trouble and risk, attempting to drug, injuring, waylaying, and
+    burgling the rooms of the unfortunate Leamy, for a jewel of small
+    value&mdash;for any jewel, in fact, but the ruby. So that I felt a pretty
+    strong presumption, at all events, that it was the ruby Hollams was
+    after. Leamy had not had it, I was convinced, from his tale and his
+    manner, and from what I judged of the man himself. The only other person
+    was Wilks, and certainly he had a temptation to keep this to himself, and
+    avoid, if possible, sharing with his London director, or principal; while
+    the carriage of the bag by the Irishman gave him a capital opportunity to
+    put suspicion on him, with the results seen. The most daring of Hollams'
+    attacks on Leamy was doubtless the attempted maiming or killing at the
+    railway station, so as to be able, in the character of a medical man, to
+    search his pockets. He was probably desperate at the time, having, I have
+    no doubt, been following Leamy about all day at the Crystal Palace
+    without finding an opportunity to get at his pockets.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The struggle and flight of Wilks from Hollams' confirmed my previous
+    impressions. Hollams, finally satisfied that very morning that Leamy
+    certainly had not the jewel, either on his person or at his lodging, and
+    knowing, from having so closely watched him, that he had been nowhere
+    where it could be disposed of, concluded that Wilks was cheating him, and
+    attempted to extort the ruby from him by the aid of another ruffian and a
+    pistol. The rest of my way was plain. Wilks, I knew, would seize the
+    opportunity of Hollams' being safely locked up to get at and dispose of
+    the ruby. I supplied him with funds and left him to lead us to his
+    hiding-place. He did it, and I think that's all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He must have walked straight away from my house to the churchyard," Sir
+    Valentine remarked, "to hide that pendant. That was fairly cool."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Only a cool hand could carry out such a robbery single-handed," Hewitt
+    answered. "I expect his tools were in the bag that Leamy carried, as well
+    as the jewels. They must have been a small and neat set."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were. We ascertained on our return to town the next day that the
+    bag, with all its contents intact, including the tools, had been taken by
+    the police at their surprise visit to No. 8 Gold Street, as well as much
+    other stolen property.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hollams and Wilks each got very wholesome doses of penal servitude, to
+    the intense delight of Mick Leamy. Leamy himself, by the by, is still to
+    be seen, clad in a noble uniform, guarding the door of a well-known
+    London restaurant. He has not had any more five-pound notes for carrying
+    bags, but knows London too well now to expect it.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH6"></a>
+<h3>
+   VI. THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It is now a fair number of years back since the loss of the famous
+    Stanway Cameo made its sensation, and the only person who had the least
+    interest in keeping the real facts of the case secret has now been dead
+    for some time, leaving neither relatives nor other representatives.
+    Therefore no harm will be done in making the inner history of the case
+    public; on the contrary, it will afford an opportunity of vindicating the
+    professional reputation of Hewitt, who is supposed to have completely
+    failed to make anything of the mystery surrounding the case. At the
+    present time connoisseurs in ancient objects of art are often heard
+    regretfully to wonder whether the wonderful cameo, so suddenly discovered
+    and so quickly stolen, will ever again be visible to the public eye. Now
+    this question need be asked no longer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cameo, as may be remembered from the many descriptions published at
+    the time, was said to be absolutely the finest extant. It was a sardonyx
+    of three strata&mdash;one of those rare sardonyx cameos in which it has been
+    possible for the artist to avail himself of three different colors of
+    superimposed stone&mdash;the lowest for the ground and the two others for the
+    middle and high relief of the design. In size it was, for a cameo,
+    immense, measuring seven and a half inches by nearly six. In subject it
+    was similar to the renowned Gonzaga Cameo&mdash;now the property of the Czar
+    of Russia&mdash;a male and a female head with imperial insignia; but in this
+    case supposed to represent Tiberius Claudius and Messalina. Experts
+    considered it probably to be the work of Athenion, a famous gem-cutter of
+    the first Christian century, whose most notable other work now extant is
+    a smaller cameo, with a mythological subject, preserved in the Vatican.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Stanway Cameo had been discovered in an obscure Italian village by
+    one of those traveling agents who scour all Europe for valuable
+    antiquities and objects of art. This man had hurried immediately to
+    London with his prize, and sold it to Mr. Claridge of St. James Street,
+    eminent as a dealer in such objects. Mr. Claridge, recognizing the
+    importance and value of the article, lost no opportunity of making its
+    existence known, and very soon the Claudius Cameo, as it was at first
+    usually called, was as famous as any in the world. Many experts in
+    ancient art examined it, and several large bids were made for its
+    purchase.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the end it was bought by the Marquis of Stanway for five thousand
+    pounds for the purpose of presentation to the British Museum. The marquis
+    kept the cameo at his town house for a few days, showing it to his
+    friends, and then returned it to Mr. Claridge to be finally and carefully
+    cleaned before passing into the national collection. Two nights after Mr.
+    Claridge's premises were broken into and the cameo stolen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such, in outline, was the generally known history of the Stanway Cameo.
+    The circumstances of the burglary in detail were these: Mr. Claridge had
+    himself been the last to leave the premises at about eight in the
+    evening, at dusk, and had locked the small side door as usual. His
+    assistant, Mr. Cutler, had left an hour and a half earlier. When Mr.
+    Claridge left, everything was in order, and the policeman on fixed-point
+    duty just opposite, who bade Mr. Claridge good-evening as he left, saw
+    nothing suspicious during the rest of his term of duty, nor did his
+    successors at the point throughout the night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning, however, Mr. Cutler, the assistant, who arrived first,
+    soon after nine o'clock, at once perceived that something unlooked-for
+    had happened. The door, of which he had a key, was still fastened, and
+    had not been touched; but in the room behind the shop Mr. Claridge's
+    private desk had been broken open, and the contents turned out in
+    confusion. The door leading on to the staircase had also been forced.
+    Proceeding up the stairs, Mr. Cutler found another door open, leading
+    from the top landing to a small room; this door had been opened by the
+    simple expedient of unscrewing and taking off the lock, which had been on
+    the inside. In the ceiling of this room was a trap-door, and this was six
+    or eight inches open, the edge resting on the half-wrenched-off bolt,
+    which had been torn away when the trap was levered open from the outside.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Plainly, then, this was the path of the thief or thieves. Entrance had
+    been made through the trap-door, two more doors had been opened, and then
+    the desk had been ransacked. Mr. Cutler afterward explained that at this
+    time he had no precise idea what had been stolen, and did not know where
+    the cameo had been left on the previous evening. Mr. Claridge had himself
+    undertaken the cleaning, and had been engaged on it, the assistant said,
+    when he left.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no doubt, however, after Mr. Claridge's arrival at ten
+    o'clock&mdash;the cameo was gone. Mr. Claridge, utterly confounded at his
+    loss, explained incoherently, and with curses on his own carelessness,
+    that he had locked the precious article in his desk on relinquishing
+    work on it the previous evening, feeling rather tired, and not taking the
+    trouble to carry it as far as the safe in another part of the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The police were sent for at once, of course, and every investigation
+    made, Mr. Claridge offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the
+    recovery of the cameo. The affair was scribbled off at large in the
+    earliest editions of the evening papers, and by noon all the world was
+    aware of the extraordinary theft of the Stanway Cameo, and many people
+    were discussing the probabilities of the case, with very indistinct ideas
+    of what a sardonyx cameo precisely was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was in the afternoon of this day that Lord Stanway called on Martin
+    Hewitt. The marquis was a tall, upstanding man of spare figure and active
+    habits, well known as a member of learned societies and a great patron of
+    art. He hurried into Hewitt's private room as soon as his name had been
+    announced, and, as soon as Hewitt had given him a chair, plunged into
+    business.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Probably you already guess my business with you, Mr. Hewitt&mdash;you have
+    seen the early evening papers? Just so; then I needn't tell you again
+    what you already know. My cameo is gone, and I badly want it back. Of
+    course the police are hard at work at Claridge's, but I'm not quite
+    satisfied. I have been there myself for two or three hours, and can't see
+    that they know any more about it than I do myself. Then, of course, the
+    police, naturally and properly enough from their point of view, look
+    first to find the criminal, regarding the recovery of the property almost
+    as a secondary consideration. Now, from <i>my</i> point of view, the chief
+    consideration is the property. Of course I want the thief caught, if
+    possible, and properly punished; but still more I want the cameo."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly it is a considerable loss. Five thousand pounds&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, but don't misunderstand me! It isn't the monetary value of the thing
+    that I regret. As a matter of fact, I am indemnified for that already.
+    Claridge has behaved most honorably&mdash;more than honorably. Indeed, the
+    first intimation I had of the loss was a check from him for five thousand
+    pounds, with a letter assuring me that the restoration to me of the
+    amount I had paid was the least he could do to repair the result of what
+    he called his unpardonable carelessness. Legally, I'm not sure that I
+    could demand anything of him, unless I could prove very flagrant neglect
+    indeed to guard against theft."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then I take it, Lord Stanway," Hewitt observed, "that you much prefer
+    the cameo to the money?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly. Else I should never have been willing to pay the money for
+    the cameo. It was an enormous price&mdash;perhaps much above the market value,
+    even for such a valuable thing&mdash;but I was particularly anxious that it
+    should not go out of the country. Our public collections here are not so
+    fortunate as they should be in the possession of the very finest examples
+    of that class of work. In short, I had determined on the cameo, and,
+    fortunately, happen to be able to carry out determinations of that sort
+    without regarding an extra thousand pounds or so as an obstacle. So that,
+    you see, what I want is not the value, but the thing itself. Indeed, I
+    don't think I can possibly keep the money Claridge has sent me; the
+    affair is more his misfortune than his fault. But I shall say nothing
+    about returning it for a little while; it may possibly have the effect of
+    sharpening everybody in the search."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. Do I understand that you would like me to look into the case
+    independently, on your behalf?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly. I want you, if you can, to approach the matter entirely from my
+    point of view&mdash;your sole object being to find the cameo. Of course, if
+    you happen on the thief as well, so much the better. Perhaps, after all,
+    looking for the one is the same thing as looking for the other?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not always; but usually it is, or course; even if they are not
+    together, they certainly <i>have</i> been at one time, and to have one is a
+    very long step toward having the other. Now, to begin with, is anybody
+    suspected?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, the police are reserved, but I believe the fact is they've nothing
+    to say. Claridge won't admit that he suspects any one, though he believes
+    that whoever it was must have watched him yesterday evening through the
+    back window of his room, and must have seen him put the cameo away in his
+    desk; because the thief would seem to have gone straight to the place.
+    But I half fancy that, in his inner mind, he is inclined to suspect one
+    of two people. You see, a robbery of this sort is different from others.
+    That cameo would never be stolen, I imagine, with the view of its being
+    sold&mdash;it is much too famous a thing; a man might as well walk about
+    offering to sell the Tower of London. There are only a very few people
+    who buy such things, and every one of them knows all about it. No dealer
+    would touch it; he could never even show it, much less sell it, without
+    being called to account. So that it really seems more likely that it has
+    been taken by somebody who wishes to keep it for mere love of the
+    thing&mdash;a collector, in fact&mdash;who would then have to keep it secretly at
+    home, and never let a soul besides himself see it, living in the
+    consciousness that at his death it must be found and this theft known;
+    unless, indeed, an ordinary vulgar burglar has taken it without knowing
+    its value."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That isn't likely," Hewitt replied. "An ordinary burglar, ignorant of
+    its value, wouldn't have gone straight to the cameo and have taken it in
+    preference to many other things of more apparent worth, which must be
+    lying near in such a place as Claridge's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "True&mdash;I suppose he wouldn't. Although the police seem to think that the
+    breaking in is clearly the work of a regular criminal&mdash;from the
+    jimmy-marks, you know, and so on."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, but what of the two people you think Mr. Claridge suspects?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course I can't say that he does suspect them&mdash;I only fancied from his
+    tone that it might be possible; he himself insists that he can't, in
+    justice, suspect anybody. One of these men is Hahn, the traveling agent
+    who sold him the cameo. This man's character does not appear to be
+    absolutely irreproachable; no dealer trusts him very far. Of course
+    Claridge doesn't say what he paid him for the cameo; these dealers are
+    very reticent about their profits, which I believe are as often something
+    like five hundred per cent as not. But it seems Hahn bargained to have
+    something extra, depending on the amount Claridge could sell the carving
+    for. According to the appointment he should have turned up this morning,
+    but he hasn't been seen, and nobody seems to know exactly where he is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; and the other person?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I scarcely like mentioning him, because he is certainly a
+    gentleman, and I believe, in the ordinary way, quite incapable of
+    anything in the least degree dishonorable; although, of course, they say
+    a collector has no conscience in the matter of his own particular hobby,
+    and certainly Mr. Wollett is as keen a collector as any man alive. He
+    lives in chambers in the next turning past Claridge's premises&mdash;can, in
+    fact, look into Claridge's back windows if he likes. He examined the
+    cameo several times before I bought it, and made several high
+    offers&mdash;appeared, in fact, very anxious indeed to get it. After I had
+    bought it he made, I understand, some rather strong remarks about people
+    like myself 'spoiling the market' by paying extravagant prices, and
+    altogether cut up 'crusty,' as they say, at losing the specimen." Lord
+    Stanway paused a few seconds, and then went on: "I'm not sure that I
+    ought to mention Mr. Woollett's name for a moment in connection with such
+    a matter; I am personally perfectly certain that he is as incapable of
+    anything like theft as myself. But I am telling you all I know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. I can't know too much in a case like this. It can do no harm
+    if I know all about fifty innocent people, and may save me from the risk
+    of knowing nothing about the thief. Now, let me see: Mr. Wollett's rooms,
+    you say, are near Mr. Claridge's place of business? Is there any means of
+    communication between the roofs?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I am told that it is perfectly possible to get from one place to
+    the other by walking along the leads."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good! Then, unless you can think of any other information that may
+    help me, I think, Lord Stanway, I will go at once and look at the place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do, by all means. I think I'll come back with you. Somehow, I don't like
+    to feel idle in the matter, though I suppose I can't do much. As to more
+    information, I don't think there is any."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In regard to Mr. Claridge's assistant, now: Do you know anything of
+    him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Only that he has always seemed a very civil and decent sort of man.
+    Honest, I should say, or Claridge wouldn't have kept him so many
+    years&mdash;there are a good many valuable things about at Claridge's.
+    Besides, the man has keys of the place himself, and, even if he were a
+    thief, he wouldn't need to go breaking in through the roof."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So that," said Hewitt, "we have, directly connected with this cameo,
+    besides yourself, these people: Mr. Claridge, the dealer; Mr. Cutler, the
+    assistant in Mr. Claridge's business; Hahn, who sold the article to
+    Claridge, and Mr. Woollett, who made bids for it. These are all?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All that I know of. Other gentlemen made bids, I believe, but I don't
+    know them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take these people in their order. Mr. Claridge is out of the question,
+    as a dealer with a reputation to keep up would be, even if he hadn't
+    immediately sent you this five thousand pounds&mdash;more than the market
+    value, I understand, of the cameo. The assistant is a reputable man,
+    against whom nothing is known, who would never need to break in, and who
+    must understand his business well enough to know that he could never
+    attempt to sell the missing stone without instant detection. Hahn is a
+    man of shady antecedents, probably clever enough to know as well as
+    anybody how to dispose of such plunder&mdash;if it be possible to dispose of
+    it at all; also, Hahn hasn't been to Claridge's to-day, although he had
+    an appointment to take money. Lastly, Mr. Woollett is a gentleman of the
+    most honorable record, but a perfectly rabid collector, who had made
+    every effort to secure the cameo before you bought it; who, moreover,
+    could have seen Mr. Claridge working in his back room, and who has
+    perfectly easy access to Mr. Claridge's roof. If we find it can't be none
+    of these, then we must look where circumstances indicate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was unwonted excitement at Mr. Claridge's place when Hewitt and his
+    client arrived. It was a dull old building, and in the windows there was
+    never more show than an odd blue china vase or two, or, mayhap, a few old
+    silver shoe-buckles and a curious small sword. Nine men out of ten would
+    have passed it without a glance; but the tenth at least would probably
+    know it for a place famous through the world for the number and value of
+    the old and curious objects of art that had passed through it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On this day two or three loiterers, having heard of the robbery,
+    extracted what gratification they might from staring at nothing between
+    the railings guarding the windows. Within, Mr. Claridge, a brisk, stout,
+    little old man, was talking earnestly to a burly police-inspector in
+    uniform, and Mr. Cutler, who had seized the opportunity to attempt
+    amateur detective work on his own account, was groveling perseveringly
+    about the floor, among old porcelain and loose pieces of armor, in the
+    futile hope of finding any clue that the thieves might have
+    considerately dropped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge came forward eagerly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The leather case has been found, I am pleased to be able to tell you,
+    Lord Stanway, since you left."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Empty, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Unfortunately, yes. It had evidently been thrown away by the thief
+    behind a chimney-stack a roof or two away, where the police have found
+    it. But it is a clue, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, then this gentleman will give me his opinion of it," Lord Stanway
+    said, turning to Hewitt. "This, Mr. Claridge, is Mr. Martin Hewitt, who
+    has been kind enough to come with me here at a moment's notice. With the
+    police on the one hand and Mr. Hewitt on the other we shall certainly
+    recover that cameo, if it is to be recovered, I think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge bowed, and beamed on Hewitt through his spectacles. "I'm
+    very glad Mr. Hewitt has come," he said. "Indeed, I had already decided
+    to give the police till this time to-morrow, and then, if they had found
+    nothing, to call in Mr. Hewitt myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt bowed in his turn, and then asked: "Will you let me see the
+    various breakages? I hope they have not been disturbed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing whatever has been disturbed. Do exactly as seems best. I need
+    scarcely say that everything here is perfectly at your disposal. You know
+    all the circumstances, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In general, yes. I suppose I am right in the belief that you have no
+    resident housekeeper?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Claridge replied, "I haven't. I had one housekeeper who sometimes
+    pawned my property in the evening, and then another who used to break my
+    most valuable china, till I could never sleep or take a moment's ease at
+    home for fear my stock was being ruined here. So I gave up resident
+    housekeepers. I felt some confidence in doing it because of the policeman
+    who is always on duty opposite."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can I see the broken desk?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge led the way into the room behind the shop. The desk was
+    really a sort of work-table, with a lifting top and a lock. The top had
+    been forced roughly open by some instrument which had been pushed in
+    below it and used as a lever, so that the catch of the lock was torn
+    away. Hewitt examined the damaged parts and the marks of the lever, and
+    then looked out at the back window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There are several windows about here," he remarked, "from which it might
+    be possible to see into this room. Do you know any of the people who live
+    behind them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Two or three I know," Mr. Claridge answered, "but there are two
+    windows&mdash;the pair almost immediately before us&mdash;belonging to a room or
+    office which is to let. Any stranger might get in there and watch."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do the roofs above any of those windows communicate in any way with
+    yours?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "None of those directly opposite. Those at the left do; you may walk all
+    the way along the leads."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And whose windows are they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge hesitated. "Well," he said, "they're Mr. Woollett's, an
+    excellent customer of mine. But he's a gentleman, and&mdash;well, I really
+    think it's absurd to suspect him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In a case like this," Hewitt answered, "one must disregard nothing but
+    the impossible. Somebody&mdash;whether Mr. Woollett himself or another
+    person&mdash;could possibly have seen into this room from those windows, and
+    equally possibly could have reached this room from that one. Therefore we
+    must not forget Mr. Woollett. Have any of your neighbors been burgled
+    during the night? I mean that strangers anxious to get at your trap-door
+    would probably have to begin by getting into some other house close by,
+    so as to reach your roof."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Mr. Claridge replied; "there has been nothing of that sort. It was
+    the first thing the police ascertained."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt examined the broken door and then made his way up the stairs with
+    the others. The unscrewed lock of the door of the top back-room required
+    little examination. In the room below the trap-door was a dusty table on
+    which stood a chair, and at the other side of the table sat
+    Detective-Inspector Plummer, whom Hewitt knew very well, and who bade him
+    "good-day" and then went on with his docket.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This chair and table were found as they are now, I take it?" Hewitt
+    asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said Mr. Claridge; "the thieves, I should think, dropped in
+    through the trap-door, after breaking it open, and had to place this
+    chair where it is to be able to climb back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt scrambled up through the trap-way and examined it from the top.
+    The door was hung on long external barn-door hinges, and had been forced
+    open in a similar manner to that practiced on the desk. A jimmy had been
+    pushed between the frame and the door near the bolt, and the door had
+    been pried open, the bolt being torn away from the screws in the
+    operation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Inspector Plummer, having finished his docket, climbed up to
+    the roof after Hewitt, and the two together went to the spot, close under
+    a chimney-stack on the next roof but one, where the case had been found.
+    Plummer produced the case, which he had in his coat-tail pocket, for
+    Hewitt's inspection.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't see anything particular about it; do you?" he said. "It shows us
+    the way they went, though, being found just here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes," Hewitt said; "if we kept on in this direction, we should be
+    going toward Mr. Woollett's house, and <i>his</i> trap-door, shouldn't we!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The inspector pursed his lips, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. "Of
+    course we haven't waited till now to find that out," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, of course. And, as you say, I didn't think there is much to be
+    learned from this leather case. It is almost new, and there isn't a mark
+    on it." And Hewitt handed it back to the inspector.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Plummer, as he returned the case to his pocket, "what's your
+    opinion?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's rather an awkward case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it is. Between ourselves&mdash;I don't mind telling you&mdash;I'm having a
+    sharp lookout kept over there"&mdash;Plummer jerked his head in the direction
+    of Mr. Woollett's chambers&mdash;"because the robbery's an unusual one.
+    There's only two possible motives&mdash;the sale of the cameo or the keeping
+    of it. The sale's out of the question, as you know; the thing's only
+    salable to those who would collar the thief at once, and who wouldn't
+    have the thing in their places now for anything. So that it must be taken
+    to keep, and that's a thing nobody but the maddest of collectors would
+    do, just such persons as&mdash;" and the inspector nodded again toward Mr.
+    Woollett's quarters. "Take that with the other circumstances," he added,
+    "and I think you'll agree it's worth while looking a little farther that
+    way. Of course some of the work&mdash;taking off the lock and so on&mdash;looks
+    rather like a regular burglar, but it's just possible that any one badly
+    wanting the cameo would like to hire a man who was up to the work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it's possible."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you know anything of Hahn, the agent?" Plummer asked, a moment later.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't. Have you found him yet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I haven't yet, but I'm after him. I've found he was at Charing Cross a
+    day or two ago, booking a ticket for the Continent. That and his failing
+    to turn up to-day seem to make it worth while not to miss <i>him</i> if we can
+    help it. He isn't the sort of man that lets a chance of drawing a bit of
+    money go for nothing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They returned to the room. "Well," said Lord Stanway, "what's the result
+    of the consultation? We've been waiting here very patiently, while you
+    two clever men have been discussing the matter on the roof."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the wall just beneath the trap-door a very dusty old tall hat hung on
+    a peg. This Hewitt took down and examined very closely, smearing his
+    fingers with the dust from the inside lining. "Is this one of your
+    valuable and crusted old antiques?" he asked, with a smile, of Mr.
+    Claridge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's only an old hat that I used to keep here for use in bad weather,"
+    Mr. Claridge said, with some surprise at the question. "I haven't touched
+    it for a year or more."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, then it couldn't have been left here by your last night's visitor,"
+    Hewitt replied, carelessly replacing it on the hook. "You left here at
+    eight last night, I think?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Eight exactly&mdash;or within a minute or two."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. I think I'll look at the room on the opposite side of the
+    landing, if you'll let me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, if you'd like to," Claridge replied; "but they haven't been
+    there&mdash;it is exactly as it was left. Only a lumber-room, you see," he
+    concluded, flinging the door open.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A number of partly broken-up packing-cases littered about this room, with
+    much other rubbish. Hewitt took the lid of one of the newest-looking
+    packing-cases, and glanced at the address label. Then he turned to a
+    rusty old iron box that stood against a wall. "I should like to see
+    behind this," he said, tugging at it with his hands. "It is heavy and
+    dirty. Is there a small crowbar about the house, or some similar lever?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge shook his head. "Haven't such a thing in the place," he
+    said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind," Hewitt replied, "another time will do to shift that old
+    box, and perhaps, after all, there's little reason for moving it. I will
+    just walk round to the police-station, I think, and speak to the
+    constables who were on duty opposite during the night. I think, Lord
+    Stanway, I have seen all that is necessary here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose," asked Mr. Claridge, "it is too soon yet to ask if you have
+    formed any theory in the matter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;yes, it is," Hewitt answered. "But perhaps I may be able to
+    surprise you in an hour or two; but that I don't promise. By the by," he
+    added suddenly, "I suppose you're sure the trap-door was bolted last
+    night?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly," Mr. Claridge answered, smiling. "Else how could the bolt
+    have been broken? As a matter of fact, I believe the trap hasn't been
+    opened for months. Mr. Cutler, do you remember when the trap-door was
+    last opened?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Cutler shook his head. "Certainly not for six months," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, very well; it's not very important," Hewitt replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they reached the front shop a fiery-faced old gentleman bounced in at
+    the street door, stumbling over an umbrella that stood in a dark corner,
+    and kicking it three yards away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What the deuce do you mean," he roared at Mr. Claridge, "by sending
+    these police people smelling about my rooms and asking questions of my
+    servants? What do you mean, sir, by treating me as a thief? Can't a
+    gentleman come into this place to look at an article without being
+    suspected of stealing it, when it disappears through your wretched
+    carelessness? I'll ask my solicitor, sir, if there isn't a remedy for
+    this sort of thing. And if I catch another of your spy fellows on my
+    staircase, or crawling about my roof, I'll&mdash;I'll shoot him!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really, Mr. Woollett&mdash;&mdash;" began Mr. Claridge, somewhat abashed, but the
+    angry old man would hear nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't talk to me, sir; you shall talk to my solicitor. And am I to
+    understand, my lord"&mdash;turning to Lord Stanway&mdash;"that these things are
+    being done with your approval?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whatever is being done," Lord Stanway answered, "is being done by the
+    police on their own responsibility, and entirely without prompting, I
+    believe, by Mr. Claridge&mdash;certainly without a suggestion of any sort from
+    myself. I think that the personal opinion of Mr. Claridge&mdash;certainly my
+    own&mdash;is that anything like a suspicion of your position in this wretched
+    matter is ridiculous. And if you will only consider the matter calmly&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Consider it calmly? Imagine yourself considering such a thing calmly,
+    Lord Stanway. I <i>won't</i> consider it calmly. I'll&mdash;I'll&mdash;I won't have it.
+    And if I find another man on my roof, I'll pitch him off!" And Mr.
+    Woollett bounced into the street again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Woollett is annoyed," Hewitt observed, with a smile. "I'm afraid
+    Plummer has a clumsy assistant somewhere."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge said nothing, but looked rather glum, for Mr. Woollett was a
+    most excellent customer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lord Stanwood and Hewitt walked slowly down the street, Hewitt staring at
+    the pavement in profound thought. Once or twice Lord Stanway glanced at
+    his face, but refrained from disturbing him. Presently, however, he
+    observed: "You seem, at least, Mr. Hewitt, to have noticed something that
+    has set you thinking. Does it look like a clue?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt came out of his cogitation at once. "A clue?" he said; "the case
+    bristles with clues. The extraordinary thing to me is that Plummer,
+    usually a smart man, doesn't seem to have seen one of them. He must be
+    out of sorts, I'm afraid. But the case is decidedly a most remarkable
+    one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Remarkable in what particular way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In regard to motive. Now it would seem, as Plummer was saying to me just
+    now on the roof, that there were only two possible motives for such a
+    robbery. Either the man who took all this trouble and risk to break into
+    Claridge's place must have desired to sell the cameo at a good price, or
+    he must have desired to keep it for himself, being a lover of such
+    things. But neither of these has been the actual motive."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps he thinks he can extort a good sum from me by way of ransom?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, it isn't that. Nor is it jealousy, nor spite, nor anything of that
+    kind. I know the motive, I <i>think</i>&mdash;but I wish we could get hold of Hahn.
+    I will shut myself up alone and turn it over in my mind for half an hour
+    presently."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meanwhile, what I want to know is, apart from all your professional
+    subtleties&mdash;which I confess I can't understand&mdash;can you get back the
+    cameo?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That," said Hewitt, stopping at the corner of the street, "I am rather
+    afraid I can not&mdash;nor anybody else. But I am pretty sure I know the
+    thief."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then surely that will lead you to the cameo?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It <i>may</i>, of course; but, then, it is just possible that by this evening
+    you may not want to have it back, after all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lord Stanway stared in amazement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not want to have it back!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course I shall want to
+    have it back. I don't understand you in the least; you talk in
+    conundrums. Who is the thief you speak of?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think, Lord Stanway," Hewitt said, "that perhaps I had better not say
+    until I have quite finished my inquiries, in case of mistakes. The case
+    is quite an extraordinary one, and of quite a different character from
+    what one would at first naturally imagine, and I must be very careful to
+    guard against the possibility of error. I have very little fear of a
+    mistake, however, and I hope I may wait on you in a few hours at
+    Piccadilly with news. I have only to see the policemen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, come whenever you please. But why see the policemen? They
+    have already most positively stated that they saw nothing whatever
+    suspicious in the house or near it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall not ask them anything at all about the house," Hewitt responded.
+    "I shall just have a little chat with them&mdash;about the weather." And with
+    a smiling bow he turned away, while Lord Stanway stood and gazed after
+    him, with an expression that implied a suspicion that his special
+    detective was making a fool of him.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    In rather more than an hour Hewitt was back in Mr. Claridge's shop. "Mr.
+    Claridge," he said, "I think I must ask you one or two questions in
+    private. May I see you in your own room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    They went there at once, and Hewitt, pulling a chair before the window,
+    sat down with his back to the light. The dealer shut the door, and sat
+    opposite him, with the light full in his face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Claridge," Hewitt proceeded slowly, "<i>when did you first find that
+    Lord Stanway's cameo was a forgery</i>?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Claridge literally bounced in his chair. His face paled, but he managed
+    to stammer sharply: "What&mdash;what&mdash;what d'you mean? Forgery? Do you mean to
+    say I sell forgeries? Forgery? It wasn't a forgery!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then," continued Hewitt in the same deliberate tone, watching the
+    other's face the while, "if it wasn't a forgery, <i>why did you destroy it
+    and burst your trap-door and desk to imitate a burglary</i>?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sweat stood thick on the dealer's face, and he gasped. But he
+    struggled hard to keep his faculties together, and ejaculated hoarsely:
+    "Destroy it? What&mdash;what&mdash;I didn't&mdash;didn't destroy it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Threw it into the river, then&mdash;don't prevaricate about details."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No&mdash;no&mdash;it's a lie! Who says that? Go away! You're insulting me!"
+    Claridge almost screamed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, come, Mr. Claridge," Hewitt said more placably, for he had gained
+    his point; "don't distress yourself, and don't attempt to deceive me&mdash;you
+    can't, I assure you. I know everything you did before you left here last
+    night&mdash;everything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Claridge's face worked painfully. Once or twice he appeared to be on the
+    point of returning an indignant reply, but hesitated, and finally broke
+    down altogether.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't expose me, Mr. Hewitt!" he pleaded; "I beg you won't expose me! I
+    haven't harmed a soul but myself. I've paid Lord Stanway every penny
+    back, and I never knew the thing was a forgery till I began to clean it.
+    I'm an old man, Mr. Hewitt, and my professional reputation has been
+    spotless until now. I beg you won't expose me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt's voice softened. "Don't make an unnecessary trouble of it," he
+    said. "I see a decanter on your sideboard&mdash;let me give you a little
+    brandy and water. Come, there's nothing criminal, I believe, in a man's
+    breaking open his own desk, or his own trap-door, for that matter. Of
+    course I'm acting for Lord Stanway in this affair, and I must, in duty,
+    report to him without reserve. But Lord Stanway is a gentleman, and I'll
+    undertake he'll do nothing inconsiderate of your feelings, if you're
+    disposed to be frank. Let us talk the affair over; tell me about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It was that swindler Hahn who deceived me in the beginning," Claridge
+    said. "I have never made a mistake with a cameo before, and I never
+    thought so close an imitation was possible. I examined it most carefully,
+    and was perfectly satisfied, and many experts examined it afterward, and
+    were all equally deceived. I felt as sure as I possibly could feel that I
+    had bought one of the finest, if not actually the finest, cameos known to
+    exist. It was not until after it had come back from Lord Stanway's, and I
+    was cleaning it the evening before last, that in course of my work it
+    became apparent that the thing was nothing but a consummately clever
+    forgery. It was made of three layers of molded glass, nothing more nor
+    less. But the glass was treated in a way I had never before known of, and
+    the surface had been cunningly worked on till it defied any ordinary
+    examination. Some of the glass imitation cameos made in the latter part
+    of the last century, I may tell you, are regarded as marvelous pieces of
+    work, and, indeed, command very fair prices, but this was something quite
+    beyond any of those.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was amazed and horrified. I put the thing away and went home. All that
+    night I lay awake in a state of distraction, quite unable to decide what
+    to do. To let the cameo go out of my possession was impossible. Sooner or
+    later the forgery would be discovered, and my reputation&mdash;the highest in
+    these matters in this country, I may safely claim, and the growth of
+    nearly fifty years of honest application and good judgment&mdash;this
+    reputation would be gone forever. But without considering this, there was
+    the fact that I had taken five thousand pounds of Lord Stanway's money
+    for a mere piece of glass, and that money I must, in mere common honesty
+    as well as for my own sake, return. But how? The name of the Stanway
+    Cameo had become a household word, and to confess that the whole thing
+    was a sham would ruin my reputation and destroy all confidence&mdash;past,
+    present, and future&mdash;in me and in my transactions. Either way spelled
+    ruin. Even if I confided in Lord Stanway privately, returned his money,
+    and destroyed the cameo, what then? The sudden disappearance of an
+    article so famous would excite remark at once. It had been presented to
+    the British Museum, and if it never appeared in that collection, and no
+    news were to be got of it, people would guess at the truth at once. To
+    make it known that I myself had been deceived would have availed nothing.
+    It is my business <i>not</i> to be deceived; and to have it known that my most
+    expensive specimens might be forgeries would equally mean ruin, whether I
+    sold them cunningly as a rogue or ignorantly as a fool. Indeed, my pride,
+    my reputation as a connoisseur, is a thing near to my heart, and it would
+    be an unspeakable humiliation to me to have it known that I had been
+    imposed on by such a forgery. What could I do? Every expedient seemed
+    useless but one&mdash;the one I adopted. It was not straightforward, I admit;
+    but, oh! Mr. Hewitt, consider the temptation&mdash;and remember that it
+    couldn't do a soul any harm. No matter who might be suspected, I knew
+    there could not possibly be evidence to make them suffer. All the next
+    day&mdash;yesterday&mdash;I was anxiously worrying out the thing in my mind and
+    carefully devising the&mdash;the trick, I'm afraid you'll call it, that you by
+    some extraordinary means have seen through. It seemed the only
+    thing&mdash;what else was there? More I needn't tell you; you know it. I have
+    only now to beg that you will use your best influence with Lord Stanway
+    to save me from public derision and exposure. I will do anything&mdash;pay
+    anything&mdash;anything but exposure, at my age, and with my position."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you see," Hewitt replied thoughtfully, "I've no doubt Lord Stanway
+    will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to
+    save you in the circumstances; though you must remember that you <i>have</i>
+    done some harm&mdash;you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest
+    man. But as to reputation, I've a professional reputation of my own. If I
+    help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed
+    in <i>my</i> part of the business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt. Consider. You are not
+    expected&mdash;it would be impossible&mdash;to succeed invariably; and there are
+    only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other
+    conspicuous successes&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, well, we shall see. One thing I don't know, though&mdash;whether you
+    climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got
+    up through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through
+    the jamb, so as to bolt it after you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was no available window. I used the string, as you say. My poor
+    little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours
+    of thought over the question of the trap-door&mdash;how to break it open so as
+    to leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after
+    I had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility
+    of suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension.
+    How, to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery?
+    Did you ever see it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never. And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to
+    express an opinion on it; I'm not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I
+    <i>didn't</i> know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I
+    knew in the first place was that it was <i>you</i> who had broken into the
+    house. It was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain
+    amount of thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of
+    the question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo
+    again, and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway's money. I knew
+    enough of your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal
+    of a great theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for
+    yourself, when you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble
+    and mystery. Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first
+    another motive seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all
+    this trouble to lose five thousand pounds? You had nothing to gain;
+    perhaps you had something to save&mdash;your professional reputation, for
+    instance. Looking at it so, it was plain that you were <i>suppressing</i> the
+    cameo&mdash;burking it; since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never
+    come to light again. That suggested the solution of the mystery at
+    once&mdash;you had discovered, after the sale, that the cameo was not
+    genuine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes&mdash;I see; but you say you began with the knowledge that I broke
+    into the place myself. How did you know that? I can not imagine a
+    trace&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear sir, you left traces everywhere. In the first place, it struck
+    me as curious, before I came here, that you had sent off that check for
+    five thousand pounds to Lord Stanway an hour or so after the robbery was
+    discovered; it looked so much as though you were sure of the cameo never
+    coming back, and were in a hurry to avert suspicion. Of course I
+    understood that, so far as I then knew the case, you were the most
+    unlikely person in the world, and that your eagerness to repay Lord
+    Stanway might be the most creditable thing possible. But the point was
+    worth remembering, and I remembered it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When I came here, I saw suspicious indications in many directions, but
+    the conclusive piece of evidence was that old hat hanging below the
+    trap-door."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I never touched it; I assure you, Mr. Hewitt, I never touched the
+    hat; haven't touched it for months&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course. If you <i>had</i> touched it, I might never have got the clue. But
+    we'll deal with the hat presently; that wasn't what struck me at first.
+    The trap-door first took my attention. Consider, now: Here was a
+    trap-door, most insecurely hung on <i>external</i> hinges; the burglar had a
+    screwdriver, for he took off the door-lock below with it. Why, then,
+    didn't he take this trap off by the hinges, instead of making a noise and
+    taking longer time and trouble to burst the bolt from its fastenings? And
+    why, if he were a stranger, was he able to plant his jimmy from the
+    outside just exactly opposite the interior bolt? There was only one mark
+    on the frame, and that precisely in the proper place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "After that I saw the leather case. It had not been thrown away, or some
+    corner would have shown signs of the fall. It had been put down carefully
+    where it was found. These things, however, were of small importance
+    compared with the hat. The hat, as you know, was exceedingly thick with
+    dust&mdash;the accumulation of months. But, on the top side, presented toward
+    the trap-door, were a score or so of <i>raindrop marks</i>. That was all. They
+    were new marks, for there was no dust over them; they had merely had time
+    to dry and cake the dust they had fallen on. <i>Now, there had been no rain
+    since a sharp shower just after seven o'clock last night</i>. At that time
+    you, by your own statement, were in the place. You left at eight, and the
+    rain was all over at ten minutes or a quarter past seven. The trap-door,
+    you also told me, had not been opened for months. The thing was plain.
+    You, or somebody who was here when you were, had opened that trap-door
+    during, or just before, that shower. I said little then, but went, as
+    soon as I had left, to the police-station. There I made perfectly certain
+    that there had been no rain during the night by questioning the policemen
+    who were on duty outside all the time. There had been none. I knew
+    everything.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The only other evidence there was pointed with all the rest. There were
+    no rain-marks on the leather case; it had been put on the roof as an
+    after-thought when there was no rain. A very poor after-thought, let me
+    tell you, for no thief would throw away a useful case that concealed his
+    booty and protected it from breakage, and throw it away just so as to
+    leave a clue as to what direction he had gone in. I also saw, in the
+    lumber-room, a number of packing-cases&mdash;one with a label dated two days
+    back&mdash;which had been opened with an iron lever; and yet, when I made an
+    excuse to ask for it, you said there was no such thing in the place.
+    Inference, you didn't want me to compare it with the marks on the desks
+    and doors. That is all, I think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge looked dolorously down at the floor. "I'm afraid," he said,
+    "that I took an unsuitable rôle when I undertook to rely on my wits to
+    deceive men like you. I thought there wasn't a single vulnerable spot in
+    my defense, but you walk calmly through it at the first attempt. Why did
+    I never think of those raindrops?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come," said Hewitt, with a smile, "that sounds unrepentant. I am going,
+    now, to Lord Stanway's. If I were you, I think I should apologize to Mr.
+    Woollett in some way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lord Stanway, who, in the hour or two of reflection left him after
+    parting with Hewitt, had come to the belief that he had employed a man
+    whose mind was not always in order, received Hewitt's story with natural
+    astonishment. For some time he was in doubt as to whether he would be
+    doing right in acquiescing in anything but a straightforward public
+    statement of the facts connected with the disappearance of the cameo, but
+    in the end was persuaded to let the affair drop, on receiving an
+    assurance from Mr. Woollett that he unreservedly accepted the apology
+    offered him by Mr. Claridge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the latter, he was at least sufficiently punished in loss of money
+    and personal humiliation for his escapade. But the bitterest and last
+    blow he sustained when the unblushing Hahn walked smilingly into his
+    office two days later to demand the extra payment agreed on in
+    consideration of the sale. He had been called suddenly away, he
+    exclaimed, on the day he should have come, and hoped his missing the
+    appointment had occasioned no inconvenience. As to the robbery of the
+    cameo, of course he was very sorry, but "pishness was pishness," and he
+    would be glad of a check for the sum agreed on. And the unhappy Claridge
+    was obliged to pay it, knowing that the man had swindled him, but unable
+    to open his mouth to say so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The reward remained on offer for a long time; indeed, it was never
+    publicly withdrawn, I believe, even at the time of Claridge's death. And
+    several intelligent newspapers enlarged upon the fact that an ordinary
+    burglar had completely baffled and defeated the boasted acumen of Mr.
+    Martin Hewitt, the well-known private detective.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH7"></a>
+<h3>
+   VII. THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Very often Hewitt was tempted, by the fascination of some particularly
+    odd case, to neglect his other affairs to follow up a matter that from a
+    business point of view was of little or no value to him. As a rule, he
+    had a sufficient regard for his own interests to resist such temptations,
+    but in one curious case, at least, I believe he allowed it largely to
+    influence him. It was certainly an extremely odd case&mdash;one of those
+    affairs that, coming to light at intervals, but more often remaining
+    unheard of by the general public, convince one that, after all, there is
+    very little extravagance about Mr. R.L. Stevenson's bizarre imaginings of
+    doings in London in his "New Arabian Nights." "There is nothing in this
+    world that is at all possible," I have often heard Martin Hewitt say,
+    "that has not happened or is not happening in London." Certainly he had
+    opportunities of knowing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The case I have referred to occurred some time before my own acquaintance
+    with him began&mdash;in 1878, in fact. He had called one Monday morning at an
+    office in regard to something connected with one of those uninteresting,
+    though often difficult, cases which formed, perhaps, the bulk of his
+    practice, when he was informed of a most mysterious murder that had taken
+    place in another part of the same building on the previous Saturday
+    afternoon. Owing to the circumstances of the case, only the vaguest
+    account had appeared in the morning papers, and even this, as it chanced,
+    Hewitt had not read.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The building was one of a new row in a partly rebuilt street near the
+    National Gallery. The whole row had been built by a speculator for the
+    purpose of letting out in flats, suites of chambers, and in one or two
+    cases, on the ground floors, offices. The rooms had let very well, and to
+    desirable tenants, as a rule. The least satisfactory tenant, the
+    proprietor reluctantly admitted, was a Mr. Rameau, a negro gentleman,
+    single, who had three rooms on the top floor but one of the particular
+    building that Hewitt was visiting. His rent was paid regularly, but his
+    behavior had produced complaints from other tenants. He got uproariously
+    drunk, and screamed and howled in unknown tongues. He fell asleep on the
+    staircase, and ladies were afraid to pass. He bawled rough chaff down the
+    stairs and along the corridors at butcher-boys and messengers, and played
+    on errand-boys brutal practical jokes that ended in police-court
+    summonses. He once had a way of sliding down the balusters, shouting:
+    "Ho! ho! ho! yah!" as he went, but as he was a big, heavy man, and the
+    balusters had been built for different treatment, he had very soon and
+    very firmly been requested to stop it. He had plenty of money, and spent
+    it freely; but it was generally felt that there was too much of the
+    light-hearted savage about him to fit him to live among quiet people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How much longer the landlord would have stood this sort of thing,
+    Hewitt's informant said, was a matter of conjecture, for on the Saturday
+    afternoon in question the tenancy had come to a startling full-stop.
+    Rameau had been murdered in his room, and the body had, in the most
+    unaccountable fashion, been secretly removed from the premises.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The strongest possible suspicion pointed to a man who had been employed
+    in shoveling and carrying coals, cleaning windows, and chopping wood for
+    several of the buildings, and who had left that very Saturday. The crime
+    had, in fact, been committed with this man's chopper, and the man himself
+    had been heard, again and again, to threaten Rameau, who, in his brutal
+    fashion, had made a butt of him. This man was a Frenchman, Victor Goujon
+    by name, who had lost his employment as a watchmaker by reason of an
+    injury to his right hand, which destroyed its steadiness, and so he had
+    fallen upon evil days and odd jobs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was a little man of no great strength, but extraordinarily excitable,
+    and the coarse gibes and horse-play of the big negro drove him almost to
+    madness. Rameau would often, after some more than ordinarily outrageous
+    attack, contemptuously fling Goujon a shilling, which the little
+    Frenchman, although wanting a shilling badly enough, would hurl back in
+    his face, almost weeping with impotent rage. "Pig! <i>Canaille</i>!" he would
+    scream. "Dirty pig of Africa! Take your sheelin' to vere you 'ave stole
+    it! <i>Voleur</i>! Pig!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a tortoise living in the basement, of which Goujon had made
+    rather a pet, and the negro would sometimes use this animal as a missile,
+    flinging it at the little Frenchman's head. On one such occasion the
+    tortoise struck the wall so forcibly as to break its shell, and then
+    Goujon seized a shovel and rushed at his tormentor with such blind fury
+    that the latter made a bolt of it. These were but a few of the passages
+    between Rameau and the fuel-porter, but they illustrate the state of
+    feeling between them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Goujon, after correspondence with a relative in France who offered him
+    work, gave notice to leave, which expired on the day of the crime. At
+    about three that afternoon a housemaid, proceeding toward Rameau's rooms,
+    met Goujon as he was going away. Goujon bade her good-by, and, pointing
+    in the direction of Rameau's rooms, said exultantly: "Dere shall be no
+    more of the black pig for me; vit 'im I 'ave done for. Zut! I mock me of
+    'im! 'E vill never <i>tracasser</i> me no more." And he went away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl went to the outer door of Rameau's rooms, knocked, and got no
+    reply. Concluding that the tenant was out, she was about to use her keys,
+    when she found that the door was unlocked. She passed through the lobby
+    and into the sitting-room, and there fell in a dead faint at the sight
+    that met her eyes. Rameau lay with his back across the sofa and his
+    head&mdash;drooping within an inch of the ground. On the head was a fearful
+    gash, and below it was a pool of blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl must have lain unconscious for about ten minutes. When she came
+    to her senses, she dragged herself, terrified, from the room and up to
+    the housekeeper's apartments, where, being an excitable and nervous
+    creature, she only screamed "Murder!" and immediately fell in a fit of
+    hysterics that lasted three-quarters of an hour. When at last she came
+    to herself, she told her story, and, the hall-porter having been
+    summoned, Rameau's rooms were again approached.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The blood still lay on the floor, and the chopper, with which the crime
+    had evidently been committed, rested against the fender; but the body had
+    vanished! A search was at once made, but no trace of it could be seen
+    anywhere. It seemed impossible that it could have been carried out of the
+    building, for the hall-porter must at once have noticed anybody leaving
+    with so bulky a burden. Still, in the building it was not to be found.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Hewitt was informed of these things on Monday, the police were, of
+    course, still in possession of Rameau's rooms. Inspector Nettings, Hewitt
+    was told, was in charge of the case, and as the inspector was an
+    acquaintance of his, and was then in the rooms upstairs, Hewitt went up
+    to see him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings was pleased to see Hewitt, and invited him to look around the
+    rooms. "Perhaps you can spot something we have overlooked," he said.
+    "Though it's not a case there can be much doubt about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You think it's Goujon, don't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Think? Well, rather! Look here! As soon as we got here on Saturday, we
+    found this piece of paper and pin on the floor. We showed it to the
+    housemaid, and then she remembered&mdash;she was too much upset to think of it
+    before&mdash;that when she was in the room the paper was laying on the dead
+    man's chest&mdash;pinned there, evidently. It must have dropped off when they
+    removed the body. It's a case of half-mad revenge on Goujon's part,
+    plainly. See it; you read French, don't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The paper was a plain, large half-sheet of note-paper, on which a
+    sentence in French was scrawled in red ink in a large, clumsy hand, thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>puni par un vengeur de la tortue</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "<i>Puni par un vengeur de la tortue</i>," Hewitt repeated musingly.
+    "'Punished by an avenger of the tortoise,' That seems odd."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, rather odd. But you understand the reference, of course. Have they
+    told you about Rameau's treatment of Goujon's pet tortoise?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think it was mentioned among his other pranks. But this is an extreme
+    revenge for a thing of that sort, and a queer way of announcing it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, he's mad&mdash;mad with Rameau's continual ragging and baiting," Nettings
+    answered. "Anyway, this is a plain indication&mdash;plain as though he'd left
+    his own signature. Besides, it's in his own language&mdash;French. And there's
+    his chopper, too."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Speaking of signatures," Hewitt remarked, "perhaps you have already
+    compared this with other specimens of Goujon's writing?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I did think of it, but they don't seem to have a specimen to hand, and,
+    anyway, it doesn't seem very important. There's 'avenger of the tortoise'
+    plain enough, in the man's own language, and that tells everything.
+    Besides, handwritings are easily disguised."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you got Goujon?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, no; we haven't. There seems to be some little difficulty about
+    that. But I expect to have him by this time to-morrow. Here comes Mr.
+    Styles, the landlord."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Styles was a thin, querulous, and withered-looking little man, who
+    twitched his eyebrows as he spoke, and spoke in short, jerky phrases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No news, eh, inspector, eh? eh? Found out nothing else, eh? Terrible
+    thing for my property&mdash;terrible! Who's your friend?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings introduced Hewitt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Shocking thing this, eh, Mr. Hewitt? Terrible! Comes of having anything
+    to do with these blood-thirsty foreigners, eh? New buildings and
+    all&mdash;character ruined. No one come to live here now, eh? Tenants&mdash;noisy
+    niggers&mdash;murdered by my own servants&mdash;terrible! <i>You</i> formed any opinion,
+    eh?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I dare say I might if I went into the case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes&mdash;same opinion as inspector's, eh? I mean an opinion of your
+    own?" The old man scrutinized Hewitt's face sharply.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you'd like me to look into the matter&mdash;&mdash;" Hewitt began.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Eh? Oh, look into it! Well, I can't commission you, you know&mdash;matter for
+    the police. Mischief's done. Police doing very well, I think&mdash;must be
+    Goujon. But look about the place, certainly, if you like. If you see
+    anything likely to serve <i>my</i> interests, tell me, and&mdash;and&mdash;perhaps I'll
+    employ you, eh, eh? Good-afternoon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord vanished, and the inspector laughed. "Likes to see what he's
+    buying, does Mr. Styles," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt's first impulse was to walk out of the place at once. But his
+    interest in the case had been roused, and he determined, at any rate, to
+    examine the rooms, and this he did very minutely. By the side of the
+    lobby was a bath-room, and in this was fitted a tip-up wash-basin, which
+    Hewitt inspected with particular attention. Then he called the
+    housekeeper, and made inquiries about Rameau's clothes and linen. The
+    housekeeper could give no idea of how many overcoats or how much linen
+    he had had. He had all a negro's love of display, and was continually
+    buying new clothes, which, indeed, were lying, hanging, littering, and
+    choking up the bedroom in all directions. The housekeeper, however, on
+    Hewitt's inquiring after such a garment in particular, did remember one
+    heavy black ulster, which Rameau had very rarely worn&mdash;only in the
+    coldest weather.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "After the body was discovered," Hewitt asked the housekeeper, "was any
+    stranger observed about the place&mdash;whether carrying anything or not?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, sir," the housekeeper replied. "There's been particular inquiries
+    about that. Of course, after we knew what was wrong and the body was
+    gone, nobody was seen, or he'd have been stopped. But the hall-porter
+    says he's certain no stranger came or went for half an hour or more
+    before that&mdash;the time about when the housemaid saw the body and fainted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this moment a clerk from the landlord's office arrived and handed
+    Nettings a paper. "Here you are," said Nettings to Hewitt; "they've found
+    a specimen of Goujon's handwriting at last, if you'd like to see it. I
+    don't want it; I'm not a graphologist, and the case is clear enough for
+    me anyway."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt took the paper. "This" he said, "is a different sort of
+    handwriting from that on the paper. The red-ink note about the avenger of
+    the tortoise is in a crude, large, clumsy, untaught style of writing.
+    This is small, neat, and well formed&mdash;except that it is a trifle shaky,
+    probably because of the hand injury."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's nothing," contended Nettings. "handwriting clues are worse than
+    useless, as a rule. It's so easy to disguise and imitate writing; and
+    besides, if Goujon is such a good penman as you seem to say, why, he
+    could all the easier alter his style. Say now yourself, can any fiddling
+    question of handwriting get over this thing about 'avenging the
+    tortoise'&mdash;practically a written confession&mdash;to say nothing of the
+    chopper, and what he said to the housemaid as he left?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Hewitt, "perhaps not; but we'll see. Meantime"&mdash;turning to
+    the landlord's clerk&mdash;"possibly you will be good enough to tell me one or
+    two things. First, what was Goujon's character?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Excellent, as far as we know. We never had a complaint about him except
+    for little matters of carelessness&mdash;leaving coal-scuttles on the
+    staircases for people to fall over, losing shovels, and so on. He was
+    certainly a bit careless, but, as far as we could see, quite a decent
+    little fellow. One would never have thought him capable of committing
+    murder for the sake of a tortoise, though he was rather fond of the
+    animal."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The tortoise is dead now, I understand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you a lift in this building?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Only for coals and heavy parcels. Goujon used to work it, sometimes
+    going up and down in it himself with coals, and so on; it goes into the
+    basement."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And are the coals kept under this building?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. The store for the whole row is under the next two houses&mdash;the
+    basements communicate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you know Rameau's other name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "César Rameau he signed in our agreement."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did he ever mention his relations?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. That is to say, he did say something one day when he was very drunk;
+    but, of course, it was all rot. Some one told him not to make such a
+    row&mdash;he was a beastly tenant&mdash;and he said he was the best man in the
+    place, and his brother was Prime Minister, and all sorts of things. Mere
+    drunken rant! I never heard of his saying anything sensible about
+    relations. We know nothing of his connections; he came here on a banker's
+    reference."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thanks. I think that's all I want to ask. You notice," Hewitt
+    proceeded, turning to Nettings, "the only ink in this place is scented
+    and violet, and the only paper is tinted and scented, too, with a
+    monogram&mdash;characteristic of a negro with money. The paper that was pinned
+    on Rameau's breast is in red ink on common and rather grubby paper,
+    therefore it was written somewhere else and brought here. Inference,
+    premeditation."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes. But are you an inch nearer with all these speculations? Can
+    you get nearer than I am now without them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, perhaps not," Hewitt replied. "I don't profess at this moment to
+    know the criminal; you do. I'll concede you that point for the present.
+    But you don't offer an opinion as to who removed Rameau's body&mdash;which I
+    think I know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who was it, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, try and guess that yourself. It wasn't Goujon; I don't mind
+    letting you know that. But it was a person quite within your knowledge of
+    the case. You've mentioned the person's name more than once."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings stared blankly. "I don't understand you in the least," he said.
+    "But, of course, you mean that this mysterious person you speak of as
+    having moved the body committed the murder?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't. Nobody could have been more innocent of that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Nettings concluded with resignation, "I'm afraid one of us is
+    rather thick-headed. What will you do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Interview the person who took away the body," Hewitt replied, with a
+    smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, man alive, why? Why bother about the person if it isn't the
+    criminal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind&mdash;never mind; probably the person will be a most valuable
+    witness."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean you think this person&mdash;whoever it is&mdash;saw the crime?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think it very probable indeed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I won't ask you any more. I shall get hold of Goujon; that's
+    simple and direct enough for me. I prefer to deal with the heart of the
+    case&mdash;the murder itself&mdash;when there's such clear evidence as I have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall look a little into that, too, perhaps," Hewitt said, "and, if
+    you like, I'll tell you the first thing I shall do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall have a good look at a map of the West Indies, and I advise you
+    to do the same. Good-morning."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings stared down the corridor after Hewitt, and continued staring for
+    nearly two minutes after he had disappeared. Then he said to the clerk,
+    who had remained: "What was he talking about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't know," replied the clerk. "Couldn't make head nor tail of it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't believe there <i>is</i> a head to it," declared Nettings; "nor a tail
+    either. He's kidding us."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Nettings was better than his word, for within two hours of his
+    conversation with Hewitt, Goujon was captured and safe in a cab bound for
+    Bow Street. He had been stopped at Newhaven in the morning on his way to
+    Dieppe, and was brought back to London. But now Nettings met a check.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Late that afternoon he called on Hewitt to explain matters. "We've got
+    Goujon," he said, gloomily, "but there's a difficulty. He's got two
+    friends who can swear an <i>alibi</i>. Rameau was seen alive at half-past one
+    on Saturday, and the girl found him dead about three. Now, Goujon's two
+    friends, it seems, were with him from one o'clock till four in the
+    afternoon, with the exception of five minutes when the girl saw him, and
+    then he left them to take a key or something to the housekeeper before
+    finally leaving. They were waiting on the landing below when Goujon spoke
+    to the housemaid, heard him speaking, and had seen him go all the way up
+    to the housekeeper's room and back, as they looked up the wide well of
+    the staircase. They are men employed near the place, and seem to have
+    good characters. But perhaps we shall find something unfavorable about
+    them. They were drinking with Goujon, it seems, by way of 'seeing him
+    off.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Hewitt said, "I scarcely think you need trouble to damage these
+    men's characters. They are probably telling the truth. Come, now, be
+    plain. You've come here to get a hint as to whether my theory of the case
+    helps you, haven't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, if you can give me a friendly hint, although, of course, I may be
+    right, after all. Still, I wish you'd explain a bit as to what you meant
+    by looking at a map and all that mystery. Nice thing for me to be taking
+    a lesson in my own business after all these years! But perhaps I deserve
+    it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "See, now," quoth Hewitt, "you remember what map I told you to look at?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The West Indies."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Right! Well, here you are." Hewitt reached an atlas from his book-shelf.
+    "Now, look here: the biggest island of the lot on this map, barring Cuba,
+    is Hayti. You know as well as I do that the western part of that island
+    is peopled by the black republic of Hayti, and that the country is in a
+    degenerate state of almost unexampled savagery, with a ridiculous show of
+    civilization. There are revolutions all the time; the South American
+    republics are peaceful and prosperous compared to Hayti. The state of the
+    country is simply awful&mdash;read Sir Spenser St. John's book on it.
+    President after president of the vilest sort forces his way to power and
+    commits the most horrible and bloodthirsty excesses, murdering his
+    opponents by the hundred and seizing their property for himself and his
+    satellites, who are usually as bad, if not worse, than the president
+    himself. Whole families&mdash;men, women, and children&mdash;are murdered at the
+    instance of these ruffians, and, as a consequence, the most deadly feuds
+    spring up, and the presidents and their followers are always themselves
+    in danger of reprisals from others. Perhaps the very worst of these
+    presidents in recent times has been the notorious Domingue, who was
+    overthrown by an insurrection, as they all are sooner or later, and
+    compelled to fly the country. Domingue and his nephews, one of whom was
+    Chief Minister, while in power committed the cruellest bloodshed, and
+    many members of the opposite party sought refuge in a small island lying
+    just to the north of Hayti, but were sought out there and almost
+    exterminated. Now, I will show you that island on the map. What is its
+    name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tortuga."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is. 'Tortuga,' however, is only the old Spanish name; the Haytians
+    speak French&mdash;Creole French. Here is a French atlas: now see the name of
+    that island."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "La Tortue!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "La Tortue it is&mdash;the tortoise. Tortuga means the same thing in Spanish.
+    But that island is always spoken of in Hayti as La Tortue. Now, do you
+    see the drift of that paper pinned to Rameau's breast?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Punished by an avenger of&mdash;or from&mdash;the tortoise or La Tortue&mdash;clear
+    enough. It would seem that the dead man had something to do with the
+    massacre there, and somebody from the island is avenging it. The thing's
+    most extraordinary."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And now listen. The name of Domingue's nephew, who was Chief Minister,
+    was <i>Septimus Rameau</i>."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And this was César Rameau&mdash;his brother, probably. I see. Well, this <i>is</i>
+    a case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think the relationship probable. Now you understand why I was inclined
+    to doubt that Goujon was the man you wanted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, of course! And now I suppose I must try to get a nigger&mdash;the
+    chap who wrote that paper. I wish he hadn't been such an ignorant nigger.
+    If he'd only have put the capitals to the words 'La Tortue,' I might have
+    thought a little more about them, instead of taking it for granted that
+    they meant that wretched tortoise in the basement of the house. Well,
+    I've made a fool of a start, but I'll be after that nigger now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And I, as I said before," said Hewitt, "shall be after the person that
+    carried off Rameau's body. I have had something else to do this
+    afternoon, or I should have begun already."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You said you thought he saw the crime. How did you judge that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled. "I think I'll keep that little secret to myself for the
+    present," he said. "You shall know soon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well," Nettings replied, with resignation. "I suppose I mustn't
+    grumble if you don't tell me everything. I feel too great a fool
+    altogether over this case to see any farther than you show me." And
+    Inspector Nettings left on his search; while Martin Hewitt, as soon as he
+    was alone, laughed joyously and slapped his thigh.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    There was a cab-rank and shelter at the end of the street where Mr.
+    Styles' building stood, and early that evening a man approached it and
+    hailed the cabmen and the waterman. Any one would have known the
+    new-comer at once for a cabman taking a holiday. The brim of the hat, the
+    bird's-eye neckerchief, the immense coat-buttons, and, more than all,
+    the rolling walk and the wrinkled trousers, marked him out distinctly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Watcheer!" he exclaimed, affably, with the self-possessed nod only
+    possible to cabbies and 'busmen. "I'm a-lookin' for a bilker. I'm told
+    one o' the blokes off this rank carried 'im last Saturday, and I want to
+    know where he went. I ain't 'ad a chance o' gettin' 'is address yet. Took
+    a cab just as it got dark, I'm told. Tallish chap, muffled up a lot, in a
+    long black overcoat. Any of ye seen 'im?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cabbies looked at one another and shook their heads; it chanced that
+    none of them had been on that particular rank at that time. But the
+    waterman said: "'Old on&mdash;I bet 'e's the bloke wot old Bill Stammers took.
+    Yorkey was fust on the rank, but the bloke wouldn't 'ave a 'ansom&mdash;wanted
+    a four-wheeler, so old Bill took 'im. Biggish chap in a long black coat,
+    collar up an' muffled thick; soft wide-awake 'at, pulled over 'is eyes;
+    and he was in a 'urry, too. Jumped in sharp as a weasel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't see 'is face, did ye?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No&mdash;not an inch of it; too much muffled. Couldn't tell if he 'ad a
+    face."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was his arm in a sling?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ay, it looked so. Had it stuffed through the breast of his coat, like as
+    though there might be a sling inside."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's 'im. Any of ye tell me where I might run across old Bill
+    Stammers? He'll tell me where my precious bilker went to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to this there was plenty of information, and in five minutes Martin
+    Hewitt, who had become an unoccupied cabman for the occasion, was on his
+    way to find old Bill Stammers. That respectable old man gave him full
+    particulars as to the place in the East End where he had driven his
+    muffled fare on Saturday, and Hewitt then begun an eighteen, or twenty
+    hours' search beyond Whitechapel.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    At about three on Tuesday afternoon, as Nettings was in the act of
+    leaving Bow Street Police Station, Hewitt drove up in a four-wheeler.
+    Some prisoner appeared to be crouching low in the vehicle, but, leaving
+    him to take care of himself, Hewitt hurried into the station and shook
+    Nettings by the hand. "Well," he said, "have you got the murderer of
+    Rameau yet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Nettings growled. "Unless&mdash;well, Goujon's under remand still, and,
+    after all, I've been thinking that he may know something&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Pooh, nonsense!" Hewitt answered. "You'd better let him go. Now, I
+    <i>have</i> got somebody." Hewitt laughed and slapped the inspector's
+    shoulder. "I've got the man who carried Rameau's body away!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The deuce you have! Where? Bring him in. We must have him&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right, don't be in a hurry; he won't bolt." And Hewitt stepped out
+    to the cab and produced his prisoner, who, pulling his hat farther over
+    his eyes, hurried furtively into the station. One hand was stowed in the
+    breast of his long coat, and below the wide brim of his hat a small piece
+    of white bandage could be seen; and, as he lifted his face, it was seen
+    to be that of a negro.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Inspector Nettings," Hewitt said ceremoniously, "allow me to introduce
+    Mr. César Rameau!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Netting's gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What!" he at length ejaculated. "What! You&mdash;you're Rameau?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro looked round nervously, and shrank farther from the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," he said; "but please not so loud&mdash;please not loud. Zey may be
+    near, and I'm 'fraid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You will certify, will you not," asked Hewitt, with malicious glee, "not
+    only that you were not murdered last Saturday by Victor Goujon, but that,
+    in fact, you were not murdered at all? Also, that you carried your own
+    body away in the usual fashion, on your own legs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes," responded Rameau, looking haggardly about; "but is not
+    zis&mdash;zis room publique? I should not be seen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger
+    and your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe
+    enough."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind
+    something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose&mdash;why, hang it, you must
+    have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting
+    upstairs, and walked out. They say there's nothing so hard as a nigger's
+    skull, and yours has certainly made a fool of me. But, then, <i>somebody</i>
+    must have chopped you over the head; who was it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My enemies&mdash;my great enemies&mdash;enemies politique. I am a great man"&mdash;this
+    with a faint revival of vanity amid his fear&mdash;"a great man in my
+    countree. Zey have great secret club-sieties to kill me&mdash;me and my
+    fren's; and one enemy coming in my rooms does zis&mdash;one, two"&mdash;he
+    indicated wrist and head&mdash;"wiz a choppa."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Rameau made the case plain to Nettings, so far as the actual
+    circumstances of the assault on himself were concerned. A negro whom he
+    had noticed near the place more than once during the previous day or two
+    had attacked him suddenly in his rooms, dealing him two savage blows with
+    a chopper. The first he had caught on his wrist, which was seriously
+    damaged, as well as excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken
+    effect on his head. His assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving
+    him for dead; but, as a matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock,
+    and had, thanks to the adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the
+    ill-direction of the chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being
+    no more than grazed. He had lain insensible for some time, and must have
+    come to his senses soon after the housemaid had left the room. Terrified
+    at the knowledge that his enemies had found him out, his only thought was
+    to get away and hide himself. He hastily washed and tied up his head,
+    enveloped himself in the biggest coat he could find, and let himself down
+    into the basement by the coal-lift, for fear of observation. He waited in
+    the basement of one of the adjoining buildings till dark and then got
+    away in a cab, with the idea of hiding himself in the East End. He had
+    had very little money with him on his flight, and it was by reason of
+    this circumstance that Hewitt, when he found him, had prevailed on him to
+    leave his hiding-place, since it would be impossible for him to touch any
+    of the large sums of money in the keeping of his bank so long as he was
+    supposed to be dead. With much difficulty, and the promise of ample
+    police protection, he was at last convinced that it would be safe to
+    declare himself and get his property, and then run away and hide wherever
+    he pleased.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings and Hewitt strolled off together for a few minutes and chatted,
+    leaving the wretched Rameau to cower in a corner among several policemen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, Mr. Hewitt," Nettings said, "this case has certainly been a
+    shocking beating for me. I must have been as blind as a bat when I
+    started on it. And yet I don't see that you had a deal to go on, even
+    now. What struck you first?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, in the beginning it seemed rather odd to me that the body should
+    have been taken away, as I had been told it was, after the written paper
+    had been pinned on it. Why should the murderer pin a label on the body of
+    his victim if he meant carrying that body away? Who would read the label
+    and learn of the nature of the revenge gratified? Plainly, that indicated
+    that the person who had carried away the body was <i>not</i> the person who
+    had committed the murder. But as soon as I began to examine the place I
+    saw the probability that there was no murder, after all. There were any
+    number of indications of this fact, and I can't understand your not
+    observing them. First, although there was a good deal of blood on the
+    floor just below where the housemaid had seen Rameau lying, there was
+    none between that place and the door. Now, if the body had been dragged,
+    or even carried, to the door, blood must have become smeared about the
+    floor, or at least there would have been drops, but there were none, and
+    this seemed to hint that the corpse might have come to itself, sat up on
+    the sofa, stanched the wound, and walked out. I reflected at once that
+    Rameau was a full-blooded negro, and that a negro's head is very nearly
+    invulnerable to anything short of bullets. Then, if the body had been
+    dragged out&mdash;as such a heavy body must have been&mdash;almost of necessity the
+    carpet and rugs would show signs of the fact, but there were no such
+    signs. But beyond these there was the fact that no long black overcoat
+    was left with the other clothes, although the housekeeper distinctly
+    remembered Rameau's possession of such a garment. I judged he would use
+    some such thing to assist his disguise, which was why I asked her. <i>Why</i>
+    he would want to disguise was plain, as you shall see presently. There
+    were no towels left in the bath-room; inference, used for bandages.
+    Everything seemed to show that the only person responsible for Rameau's
+    removal was Rameau himself. Why, then, had he gone away secretly and
+    hurriedly, without making complaint, and why had he stayed away? What
+    reason would he have for doing this if it had been Goujon that had
+    attacked him? None. Goujon was going to France. Clearly, Rameau was
+    afraid of another attack from some implacable enemy whom he was anxious
+    to avoid&mdash;one against whom he feared legal complaint or defense would be
+    useless. This brought me at once to the paper found on the floor. If this
+    were the work of Goujon and an open reference to his tortoise, why should
+    he be at such pains to disguise his handwriting? He would have been
+    already pointing himself out by the mere mention of the tortoise. And, if
+    he could not avoid a shake in his natural, small handwriting, how could
+    he have avoided it in a large, clumsy, slowly drawn, assumed hand? No,
+    the paper was not Goujon's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As to the writing on the paper," Nettings interposed, "I've told you how
+    I made that mistake. I took the readiest explanation of the words, since
+    they seemed so pat, and I wouldn't let anything else outweigh that. As to
+    the other things&mdash;the evidences of Rameau's having gone off by
+    himself&mdash;well, I don't usually miss such obvious things; but I never
+    thought of the possibility of the <i>victim</i> going away on the quiet and
+    not coming back, as though <i>he'd</i> done something wrong. Comes of starting
+    with a set of fixed notions."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," answered Hewitt, "I fancy you must have been rather 'out of
+    form,' as they say; everybody has his stupid days, and you can't keep up
+    to concert pitch forever. To return to the case. The evidence of the
+    chopper was very untrustworthy, especially when I had heard of Goujon's
+    careless habits&mdash;losing shovels and leaving coal-scuttles on stairs.
+    Nothing more likely than for the chopper to be left lying about, and a
+    criminal who had calculated his chances would know the advantage to
+    himself of using a weapon that belonged to the place, and leaving it
+    behind to divert suspicion. It is quite possible, by the way, that the
+    man who attacked Rameau got away down the coal-lift and out by an
+    adjoining basement, just as did Rameau himself; this, however, is mere
+    conjecture. The would-be murderer had plainly prepared for the crime:
+    witness the previous preparation of the paper declaring his revenge, an
+    indication of his pride at having run his enemy to earth at such a
+    distant place as this&mdash;although I expect he was only in England by
+    chance, for Haytians are not a persistently energetic race. In regard to
+    the use of small instead of capital letters in the words 'La Tortue' on
+    the paper, I observed, in the beginning, that the first letter of the
+    whole sentence&mdash;the 'p' in 'puni'&mdash;was a small one. Clearly, the writer
+    was an illiterate man, and it was at once plain that he may have made the
+    same mistake with ensuing words.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the whole, it was plain that everybody had begun with a too ready
+    disposition to assume that Goujon was guilty. Everybody insisted, too,
+    that the body had been carried away&mdash;which was true, of course, although
+    not in the sense intended&mdash;so I didn't trouble to contradict, or to say
+    more than that I guessed who <i>had</i> carried the body off. And, to tell you
+    the truth, I was a little piqued at Mr. Styles' manner, and indisposed,
+    interested in the case as I was, to give away my theories too freely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The rest of the job was not very difficult. I found out the cabman who
+    had taken Rameau away&mdash;you can always get readier help from cabbies if
+    you go as one of themselves, especially if you are after a bilker&mdash;and
+    from him got a sufficiently near East End direction to find Rameau after
+    inquiries. I ventured, by the way, on a rather long shot. I described my
+    man to the cabman as having an injured arm or wrist&mdash;and it turned out a
+    correct guess. You see, a man making an attack with a chopper is pretty
+    certain to make more than a single blow, and as there appeared to have
+    been only a single wound on the head, it seemed probable that another had
+    fallen somewhere else&mdash;almost certainly on the arm, as it would be raised
+    to defend the head. At Limehouse I found he had had his head and wrist
+    attended to at a local medico's, and a big nigger in a fright, with a
+    long black coat, a broken head, and a lame hand, is not so difficult to
+    find in a small area. How I persuaded him up here you know already; I
+    think I frightened him a little, too, by explaining how easily I had
+    tracked him, and giving him a hint that others might do the same. He is
+    in a great funk. He seems to have quite lost faith in England as a safe
+    asylum."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The police failed to catch Rameau's assailant&mdash;chiefly because Rameau
+    could not be got to give a proper description of him, nor to do anything
+    except get out of the country in a hurry. In truth, he was glad to be
+    quit of the matter with nothing worse than his broken head. Little Goujon
+    made a wild storm about his arrest, and before he did go to France
+    managed to extract twenty pounds from Rameau by way of compensation, in
+    spite of the absence of any strictly legal claim against his old
+    tormentor. So that, on the whole, Goujon was about the only person who
+    derived any particular profit from the tortoise mystery.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+    THE END.
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11252 ***</div>
+</body>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #11252 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11252)
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+Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Martin Hewitt, Investigator
+
+Author: Arthur Morrison
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2004 [EBook #11252]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Andrea Ball and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+
+By
+Arthur Morrison
+
+
+1894
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+I. THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES
+
+II. THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT
+
+III. THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT
+
+IV. THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO
+
+V. THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR
+
+VI. THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY
+
+VII. THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES.
+
+Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty
+years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary will
+case, "Bartley _v_. Bartley and others," which occupied the Probate Court
+for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public interest rarely
+accorded to any but the cases considered in the other division of the same
+court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity of remarkable and
+unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff's side--evidence that took the
+other party completely by surprise, and overthrew their case like a house
+of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be more readily recalled as the
+occasion of the sudden rise to eminence in their profession of Messrs.
+Crellan, Hunt & Crellan, solicitors for the plaintiff--a result due
+entirely to the wonderful ability shown in this case of building up,
+apparently out of nothing, a smashing weight of irresistible evidence.
+That the firm has since maintained--indeed enhanced--the position it then
+won for itself need scarcely be said here; its name is familiar to
+everybody. But there are not many of the outside public who know that the
+credit of the whole performance was primarily due to a young clerk in the
+employ of Messrs. Crellan, who had been given charge of the seemingly
+desperate task of collecting evidence in the case.
+
+This Mr. Martin Hewitt had, however, full credit and reward for his
+exploit from his firm and from their client, and more than one other firm
+of lawyers engaged in contentious work made good offers to entice Hewitt
+to change his employers. Instead of this, however, he determined to work
+independently for the future, having conceived the idea of making a
+regular business of doing, on behalf of such clients as might retain him,
+similar work to that he had just done with such conspicuous success for
+Messrs. Crellan, Hunt & Crellan. This was the beginning of the private
+detective business of Martin Hewitt, and his action at that time has been
+completely justified by the brilliant professional successes he has since
+achieved.
+
+His business has always been conducted in the most private manner, and he
+has always declined the help of professional assistants, preferring to
+carry out himself such of the many investigations offered him as he could
+manage. He has always maintained that he has never lost by this policy,
+since the chance of his refusing a case begets competition for his
+services, and his fees rise by a natural process. At the same time, no man
+could know better how to employ casual assistance at the right time.
+
+Some curiosity has been expressed as to Mr. Martin Hewitt's system, and,
+as he himself always consistently maintains that he has no system beyond a
+judicious use of ordinary faculties, I intend setting forth in detail a
+few of the more interesting of his cases in order that the public may
+judge for itself if I am right in estimating Mr. Hewitt's "ordinary
+faculties" as faculties very extraordinary indeed. He is not a man who has
+made many friendships (this, probably, for professional reasons),
+notwithstanding his genial and companionable manners. I myself first made
+his acquaintance as a result of an accident resulting in a fire at the old
+house in which Hewitt's office was situated, and in an upper floor of
+which I occupied bachelor chambers. I was able to help in saving a
+quantity of extremely important papers relating to his business, and,
+while repairs were being made, allowed him to lock them in an old
+wall-safe in one of my rooms which the fire had scarcely damaged.
+
+The acquaintance thus begun has lasted many years, and has become a rather
+close friendship. I have even accompanied Hewitt on some of his
+expeditions, and, in a humble way, helped him. Such of the cases, however,
+as I personally saw nothing of I have put into narrative form from the
+particulars given me.
+
+"I consider you, Brett," he said, addressing me, "the most remarkable
+journalist alive. Not because you're particularly clever, you know,
+because, between ourselves, I hope you'll admit you're not; but because
+you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and have
+never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business secrets you
+may have become acquainted with. I'm afraid you're not so enterprising a
+journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you shall write
+something--if you think it worth while."
+
+This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing good-nature
+that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger who thought of him
+only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets and crimes. Indeed,
+the man had always as little of the aspect of the conventional detective
+as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less observant in
+manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of the
+eye--which might, after all, only be the twinkle of good humor.
+
+I _did_ think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt's
+investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an
+ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty
+ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word
+"Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters,
+"Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in the
+ground-floor offices had barely hung up their hats, a short, well-dressed
+young man, wearing spectacles, hastening to open the dusty door, ran into
+the arms of another man who suddenly issued from it.
+
+"I beg pardon," the first said. "Is this Hewitt's Detective Agency
+Office?"
+
+"Yes, I believe you will find it so," the other replied. He was a
+stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round
+countenance. "You'd better speak to the clerk."
+
+In the little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with inky
+fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The printed slip
+having been filled with the visitor's name and present business, and
+conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with an invitation to
+the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat the stoutish man
+himself, who had only just advised an appeal to the clerk.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Lloyd--Mr. Vernon Lloyd," he said, affably, looking
+again at the slip. "You'll excuse my care to start even with my
+visitors--I must, you know. You come from Sir James Norris, I see."
+
+"Yes; I am his secretary. I have only to ask you to go straight to Lenton
+Croft at once, if you can, on very important business. Sir James would
+have wired, but had not your precise address. Can you go by the next
+train? Eleven-thirty is the first available from Paddington."
+
+"Quite possibly. Do you know any thing of the business?"
+
+"It is a case of a robbery in the house, or, rather, I fancy, of several
+robberies. Jewelry has been stolen from rooms occupied by visitors to the
+Croft. The first case occurred some months ago--nearly a year ago, in
+fact. Last night there was another. But I think you had better get the
+details on the spot. Sir James has told me to telegraph if you are coming,
+so that he may meet you himself at the station; and I must hurry, as his
+drive to the station will be rather a long one. Then I take it you will
+go, Mr. Hewitt? Twyford is the station."
+
+"Yes, I shall come, and by the 11.30. Are you going by that train
+yourself?"
+
+"No, I have several things to attend to now I am in town. Good-morning; I
+shall wire at once."
+
+Mr. Martin Hewitt locked the drawer of his table and sent his clerk for a
+cab.
+
+At Twyford Station Sir James Norris was waiting with a dog-cart. Sir James
+was a tall, florid man of fifty or thereabout, known away from home as
+something of a county historian, and nearer his own parts as a great
+supporter of the hunt, and a gentleman much troubled with poachers. As
+soon as he and Hewitt had found one another the baronet hurried the
+detective into his dog-cart. "We've something over seven miles to drive,"
+he said, "and I can tell you all about this wretched business as we go.
+That is why I came for you myself, and alone."
+
+Hewitt nodded.
+
+"I have sent for you, as Lloyd probably told you, because of a robbery at
+my place last evening. It appears, as far as I can guess, to be one of
+three by the same hand, or by the same gang. Late yesterday afternoon----"
+
+"Pardon me, Sir James," Hewitt interrupted, "but I think I must ask you to
+begin at the first robbery and tell me the whole tale in proper order. It
+makes things clearer, and sets them in their proper shape."
+
+"Very well! Eleven months ago, or thereabout, I had rather a large party
+of visitors, and among them Colonel Heath and Mrs. Heath--the lady being a
+relative of my own late wife. Colonel Heath has not been long retired, you
+know--used to be political resident in an Indian native state. Mrs. Heath
+had rather a good stock of jewelry of one sort and another, about the most
+valuable piece being a bracelet set with a particularly fine pearl--quite
+an exceptional pearl, in fact--that had been one of a heap of presents
+from the maharajah of his state when Heath left India.
+
+"It was a very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere
+feather-weight piece of native filigree work--almost too fragile to trust
+on the wrist--and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality
+not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening, and
+after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by
+themselves--shooting, I think--my daughter, my sister (who is very often
+down here), and Mrs. Heath took it into their heads to go
+walking--fern-hunting, and so on. My sister was rather long dressing, and,
+while they waited, my daughter went into Mrs. Heath's room, where Mrs.
+Heath turned over all her treasures to show her, as women do, you know.
+When my sister was at last ready, they came straight away, leaving the
+things littering about the room rather than stay longer to pack them up.
+The bracelet, with other things, was on the dressing-table then."
+
+"One moment. As to the door?"
+
+"They locked it. As they came away my daughter suggested turning the key,
+as we had one or two new servants about."
+
+"And the window?"
+
+"That they left open, as I was going to tell you. Well, they went on their
+walk and came back, with Lloyd (whom they had met somewhere) carrying
+their ferns for them. It was dusk and almost dinner-time. Mrs. Heath went
+straight to her room, and--the bracelet was gone."
+
+"Was the room disturbed?"
+
+"Not a bit. Everything was precisely where it had been left, except the
+bracelet. The door hadn't been tampered with, but of course the window was
+open, as I have told you."
+
+"You called the police, of course?"
+
+"Yes, and had a man from Scotland Yard down in the morning. He seemed a
+pretty smart fellow, and the first thing he noticed on the dressing-table,
+within an inch or two of where the bracelet had been, was a match, which
+had been lit and thrown down. Now nobody about the house had had occasion
+to use a match in that room that day, and, if they had, certainly wouldn't
+have thrown it on the cover of the dressing-table. So that, presuming the
+thief to have used that match, the robbery must have been committed when
+the room was getting dark--immediately before Mrs. Heath returned, in
+fact. The thief had evidently struck the match, passed it hurriedly over
+the various trinkets lying about, and taken the most valuable."
+
+"Nothing else was even moved?"
+
+"Nothing at all. Then the thief must have escaped by the window, although
+it was not quite clear how. The walking party approached the house with a
+full view of the window, but saw nothing, although the robbery must have
+been actually taking place a moment or two before they turned up.
+
+"There was no water-pipe within any practicable distance of the window,
+but a ladder usually kept in the stable-yard was found lying along the
+edge of the lawn. The gardener explained, however, that he had put the
+ladder there after using it himself early in the afternoon."
+
+"Of course it might easily have been used again after that and put back."
+
+"Just what the Scotland Yard man said. He was pretty sharp, too, on the
+gardener, but very soon decided that he knew nothing of it. No stranger
+had been seen in the neighborhood, nor had passed the lodge gates.
+Besides, as the detective said, it scarcely seemed the work of a stranger.
+A stranger could scarcely have known enough to go straight to the room
+where a lady--only arrived the day before--had left a valuable jewel, and
+away again without being seen. So all the people about the house were
+suspected in turn. The servants offered, in a body, to have their boxes
+searched, and this was done; everything was turned over, from the butler's
+to the new kitchen-maid's. I don't know that I should have had this
+carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but it was my guest,
+and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's little more to be
+said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it all, and the thing's as
+great a mystery now as ever. I believe the Scotland Yard man got as far as
+suspecting _me_ before he gave it up altogether, but give it up he did in
+the end. I think that's all I know about the first robbery. Is it clear?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
+the place, but they can wait. What next?"
+
+"Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair, that I
+should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been for one
+circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of the
+same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's disaster--in
+February of this year, in fact--Mrs. Armitage, a young widow, who had been
+a school-fellow of my daughter's, stayed with us for a week or so. The
+girls don't trouble about the London season, you know, and I have no town
+house, so they were glad to have their old friend here for a little in the
+dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active young lady, and was scarcely in
+the house half an hour before she arranged a drive in a pony-cart with
+Eva--my daughter--to look up old people in the village that she used to
+know before she was married. So they set off in the afternoon, and made
+such a round of it that they were late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a
+small plain gold brooch--not at all valuable, you know; two or three
+pounds, I suppose--which she used to pin up a cloak or anything of that
+sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the pin-cushion on her
+dressing-table, and left a ring--rather a good one, I believe--lying close
+by."
+
+"This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had occupied, I
+take it?"
+
+"No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
+went--taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when Mrs.
+Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a little
+tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the curious
+thing was that the ring--worth a dozen of the brooch--was left where it
+had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or not she had locked
+the door herself, although she found it locked when she returned; but my
+niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it once--because she
+remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the landing near by--and found
+it safely locked. The gas-fitter, whom we didn't know at the time, but who
+since seems to be quite an honest fellow, was ready to swear that nobody
+but my niece had been to the door while he was in sight of it--which was
+almost all the time. As to the window, the sash-line had broken that very
+morning, and Mrs. Armitage had propped open the bottom half about eight or
+ten inches with a brush; and, when she returned, that brush, sash, and all
+were exactly as she had left them. Now I scarcely need tell _you_ what an
+awkward job it must have been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that
+unsupported window; and how unlikely he would have been to replace it,
+with the brush, exactly as he found it."
+
+"Just so. I suppose the brooch, was really gone? I mean, there was no
+chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?"
+
+"Oh, none at all! There was a most careful search."
+
+"Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?"
+
+"Well, yes," Sir James replied; "yes, perhaps it would. It was a
+first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the
+billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself--built it out from a
+smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at the
+window from the billiard-room roof. But, then," he added, "that couldn't
+have been the way. Somebody or other was in the billiard-room the whole
+time, and nobody could have got over the roof (which is nearly all
+skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there myself for an hour or
+two, taking a little practice."
+
+"Well, was anything done?"
+
+"Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing came
+of it. It was such a small matter that Mrs. Armitage wouldn't hear of my
+calling in the police or anything of that sort, although I felt pretty
+certain that there must be a dishonest servant about somewhere. A servant
+might take a plain brooch, you know, who would feel afraid of a valuable
+ring, the loss of which would be made a greater matter of."
+
+"Well, yes, perhaps so, in the case of an inexperienced thief, who also
+would be likely to snatch up whatever she took in a hurry. But I'm
+doubtful. What made you connect these two robberies together?"
+
+"Nothing whatever--for some months. They seemed quite of a different sort.
+But scarcely more than a month ago I met Mrs. Armitage at Brighton, and we
+talked, among other things, of the previous robbery--that of Mrs. Heath's
+bracelet. I described the circumstances pretty minutely, and, when I
+mentioned the match found on the table, she said: 'How strange! Why, _my_
+thief left a match on the dressing-table when he took my poor little
+brooch!'"
+
+Hewitt nodded. "Yes," he said. "A spent match, of course?"
+
+"Yes, of course, a spent match. She noticed it lying close by the
+pin-cushion, but threw it away without mentioning the circumstance. Still,
+it seemed rather curious to me that a match should be lit and dropped, in
+each case, on the dressing-cover an inch from where the article was taken.
+I mentioned it to Lloyd when I got back, and he agreed that it seemed
+significant."
+
+"Scarcely," said Hewitt, shaking his head. "Scarcely, so far, to be called
+significant, although worth following up. Everybody uses matches in the
+dark, you know."
+
+"Well, at any rate, the coincidence appealed to me so far that it struck
+me it might be worth while to describe the brooch to the police in order
+that they could trace it if it had been pawned. They had tried that, of
+course, over the bracelet without any result, but I fancied the shot might
+be worth making, and might possibly lead us on the track of the more
+serious robbery."
+
+"Quite so. It was the right thing to do. Well?"
+
+"Well, they found it. A woman had pawned it in London--at a shop in
+Chelsea. But that was some time before, and the pawnbroker had clean
+forgotten all about the woman's appearance. The name and address she gave
+were false. So that was the end of that business."
+
+"Had any of the servants left you between the time the brooch was lost and
+the date of the pawn ticket?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Were all your servants at home on the day the brooch was pawned?"
+
+"Oh, yes! I made that inquiry myself."
+
+"Very good! What next?"
+
+"Yesterday--and this is what made me send for you. My late wife's sister
+came here last Tuesday, and we gave her the room from which Mrs. Heath
+lost her bracelet. She had with her a very old-fashioned brooch,
+containing a miniature of her father, and set in front with three very
+fine brilliants and a few smaller stones. Here we are, though, at the
+Croft. I'll tell you the rest indoors."
+
+Hewitt laid his hand on the baronet's arm. "Don't pull up, Sir James," he
+said. "Drive a little farther. I should like to have a general idea of the
+whole case before we go in."
+
+"Very good!" Sir James Norris straightened the horse's head again and went
+on. "Late yesterday afternoon, as my sister-in-law was changing her dress,
+she left her room for a moment to speak to my daughter in her room, almost
+adjoining. She was gone no more than three minutes, or five at most, but
+on her return the brooch, which had been left on the table, had gone. Now
+the window was shut fast, and had not been tampered with. Of course the
+door was open, but so was my daughter's, and anybody walking near must
+have been heard. But the strangest circumstance, and one that almost makes
+me wonder whether I have been awake to-day or not, was that there lay _a
+used match_ on the very spot, as nearly as possible, where the brooch had
+been--and it was broad daylight!"
+
+Hewitt rubbed his nose and looked thoughtfully before him. "Um--curious,
+certainly," he said, "Anything else?"
+
+"Nothing more than you shall see for yourself. I have had the room locked
+and watched till you could examine it. My sister-in-law had heard of your
+name, and suggested that you should be called in; so, of course, I did
+exactly as she wanted. That she should have lost that brooch, of all
+things, in my house is most unfortunate; you see, there was some small
+difference about the thing between my late wife and her sister when their
+mother died and left it. It's almost worse than the Heaths' bracelet
+business, and altogether I'm not pleased with things, I can assure you.
+See what a position it is for me! Here are three ladies, in the space of
+one year, robbed one after another in this mysterious fashion in my house,
+and I can't find the thief! It's horrible! People will be afraid to come
+near the place. And I can do nothing!"
+
+"Ah, well, we'll see. Perhaps we had better turn back now. By-the-by, were
+you thinking of having any alterations or additions made to your house?"
+
+"No. What makes you ask?"
+
+"I think you might at least consider the question of painting and
+decorating, Sir James--or, say, putting up another coach-house, or
+something. Because I should like to be (to the servants) the architect--or
+the builder, if you please--come to look around. You haven't told any of
+them about this business?"
+
+"Not a word. Nobody knows but my relatives and Lloyd. I took every
+precaution myself, at once. As to your little disguise, be the architect
+by all means, and do as you please. If you can only find this thief and
+put an end to this horrible state of affairs, you'll do me the greatest
+service I've ever asked for--and as to your fee, I'll gladly make it
+whatever is usual, and three hundred in addition."
+
+Martin Hewitt bowed. "You're very generous, Sir James, and you may be sure
+I'll do what I can. As a professional man, of course, a good fee always
+stimulates my interest, although this case of yours certainly seems
+interesting enough by itself."
+
+"Most extraordinary! Don't you think so? Here are three persons, all
+ladies, all in my house, two even in the same room, each successively
+robbed of a piece of jewelry, each from a dressing-table, and a used match
+left behind in every case. All in the most difficult--one would say
+impossible--circumstances for a thief, and yet there is no clue!"
+
+"Well, we won't say that just yet, Sir James; we must see. And we must
+guard against any undue predisposition to consider the robberies in a
+lump. Here we are at the lodge gate again. Is that your gardener--the man
+who left the ladder by the lawn on the first occasion you spoke of?"
+
+Mr. Hewitt nodded in the direction of a man who was clipping a box border.
+
+"Yes; will you ask him anything?"
+
+"No, no; at any rate, not now. Remember the building alterations. I think,
+if there is no objection, I will look first at the room that the
+lady--Mrs.----" Hewitt looked up, inquiringly.
+
+"My sister-in-law? Mrs. Cazenove. Oh, yes! you shall come to her room at
+once."
+
+"Thank you. And I think Mrs. Cazenove had better be there."
+
+They alighted, and a boy from the lodge led the horse and dog-cart away.
+
+Mrs. Cazenove was a thin and faded, but quick and energetic, lady of
+middle age. She bent her head very slightly on learning Martin Hewitt's
+name, and said: "I must thank you, Mr. Hewitt, for your very prompt
+attention. I need scarcely say that any help you can afford in tracing the
+thief who has my property--whoever it may be--will make me most grateful.
+My room is quite ready for you to examine."
+
+The room was on the second floor--the top floor at that part of the
+building. Some slight confusion of small articles of dress was observable
+in parts of the room.
+
+"This, I take it," inquired Hewitt, "is exactly as it was at the time the
+brooch was missed?"
+
+"Precisely," Mrs. Cazenove answered. "I have used another room, and put
+myself to some other inconveniences, to avoid any disturbance."
+
+Hewitt stood before the dressing-table. "Then this is the used match," he
+observed, "exactly where it was found?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where was the brooch?"
+
+"I should say almost on the very same spot. Certainly no more than a very
+few inches away."
+
+Hewitt examined the match closely. "It is burned very little," he
+remarked. "It would appear to have gone out at once. Could you hear it
+struck?"
+
+"I heard nothing whatever; absolutely nothing."
+
+"If you will step into Miss Norris' room now for a moment," Hewitt
+suggested, "we will try an experiment. Tell me if you hear matches struck,
+and how many. Where is the match-stand?"
+
+The match-stand proved to be empty, but matches were found in Miss Norris'
+room, and the test was made. Each striking could be heard distinctly, even
+with one of the doors pushed to.
+
+"Both your own door and Miss Norris' were open, I understand; the window
+shut and fastened inside as it is now, and nothing but the brooch was
+disturbed?"
+
+"Yes, that was so."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Cazenove. I don't think I need trouble you any further
+just at present. I think, Sir James," Hewitt added, turning to the
+baronet, who was standing by the door----"I think we will see the other
+room and take a walk outside the house, if you please. I suppose, by the
+by, that there is no getting at the matches left behind on the first and
+second occasions?"
+
+"No," Sir James answered. "Certainly not here. The Scotland Yard man may
+have kept his."
+
+The room that Mrs. Armitage had occupied presented no peculiar feature. A
+few feet below the window the roof of the billiard-room was visible,
+consisting largely of skylight. Hewitt glanced casually about the walls,
+ascertained that the furniture and hangings had not been materially
+changed since the second robbery, and expressed his desire to see the
+windows from the outside. Before leaving the room, however, he wished to
+know the names of any persons who were known to have been about the house
+on the occasions of all three robberies.
+
+"Just carry your mind back, Sir James," he said. "Begin with yourself, for
+instance. Where were you at these times?"
+
+"When Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet, I was in Tagley Wood all the
+afternoon. When Mrs. Armitage was robbed, I believe I was somewhere about
+the place most of the time she was out. Yesterday I was down at the farm."
+Sir James' face broadened. "I don't know whether you call those suspicious
+movements," he added, and laughed.
+
+"Not at all; I only asked you so that, remembering your own movements, you
+might the better recall those of the rest of the household. Was anybody,
+to your knowledge--_anybody_, mind--in the house on all three occasions?"
+
+"Well, you know, it's quite impossible to answer for all the servants.
+You'll only get that by direct questioning--I can't possibly remember
+things of that sort. As to the family and visitors--why, you don't suspect
+any of them, do you?"
+
+"I don't suspect a soul, Sir James," Hewitt answered, beaming genially,
+"not a soul. You see, I can't suspect people till I know something about
+where they were. It's quite possible there will be independent evidence
+enough as it is, but you must help me if you can. The visitors, now. Was
+there any visitor here each time--or even on the first and last occasions
+only?"
+
+"No, not one. And my own sister, perhaps you will be pleased to know, was
+only there at the time of the first robbery."
+
+"Just so! And your daughter, as I have gathered, was clearly absent from
+the spot each time--indeed, was in company with the party robbed. Your
+niece, now?"
+
+"Why hang it all, Mr. Hewitt, I can't talk of my niece as a suspected
+criminal! The poor girl's under my protection, and I really can't
+allow----"
+
+Hewitt raised his hand, and shook his head deprecatingly.
+
+"My dear sir, haven't I said that I don't suspect a soul? _Do_ let me know
+how the people were distributed, as nearly as possible. Let me see. It was
+your, niece, I think, who found that Mrs. Armitage's door was locked--this
+door, in fact--on the day she lost her brooch?"
+
+"Yes, it was."
+
+"Just so--at the time when Mrs. Armitage herself had forgotten whether she
+locked it or not. And yesterday--was she out then?"
+
+"No, I think not. Indeed, she goes out very little--her health is usually
+bad. She was indoors, too, at the time of the Heath robbery, since you
+ask. But come, now, I don't like this. It's ridiculous to suppose that
+_she_ knows anything of it."
+
+"I don't suppose it, as I have said. I am only asking for information.
+That is all your resident family, I take it, and you know nothing of
+anybody else's movements--except, perhaps, Mr. Lloyd's?"
+
+"Lloyd? Well, you know yourself that he was out with the ladies when the
+first robbery took place. As to the others, I don't remember. Yesterday he
+was probably in his room, writing. I think that acquits _him_, eh?" Sir
+James looked quizzically into the broad face of the affable detective, who
+smiled and replied:
+
+"Oh, of course nobody can be in two places at once, else what would become
+of the _alibi_ as an institution? But, as I have said, I am only setting
+my facts in order. Now, you see, we get down to the servants--unless some
+stranger is the party wanted. Shall we go outside now?"
+
+Lenton Croft was a large, desultory sort of house, nowhere more than three
+floors high, and mostly only two. It had been added to bit by bit, till it
+zigzagged about its site, as Sir James Norris expressed it, "like a game
+of dominoes." Hewitt scrutinized its external features carefully as they
+strolled around, and stopped some little while before the windows of the
+two bed-rooms he had just seen from the inside. Presently they approached
+the stables and coach-house, where a groom was washing the wheels of the
+dog-cart.
+
+"Do you mind my smoking?" Hewitt asked Sir James. "Perhaps you will take a
+cigar yourself--they are not so bad, I think. I will ask your man for a
+light."
+
+Sir James felt for his own match-box, but Hewitt had gone, and was
+lighting his cigar with a match from a box handed him by the groom. A
+smart little terrier was trotting about by the coach-house, and Hewitt
+stooped to rub its head. Then he made some observation about the dog,
+which enlisted the groom's interest, and was soon absorbed in a chat with
+the man. Sir James, waiting a little way off, tapped the stones rather
+impatiently with his foot, and presently moved away.
+
+For full a quarter of an hour Hewitt chatted with the groom, and, when at
+last he came away and overtook Sir James, that gentleman was about
+re-entering the house.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir James," Hewitt said, "for leaving you in that
+unceremonious fashion to talk to your groom, but a dog, Sir James--a good
+dog--will draw me anywhere."
+
+"Oh!" replied Sir James, shortly.
+
+"There is one other thing," Hewitt went on, disregarding the other's
+curtness, "that I should like to know: There are two windows directly
+below that of the room occupied yesterday by Mrs. Cazenove--one on each
+floor. What rooms do they light?"
+
+"That on the ground floor is the morning-room; the other is Mr.
+Lloyd's--my secretary. A sort of study or sitting-room."
+
+"Now you will see at once, Sir James," Hewitt pursued, with an affable
+determination to win the baronet back to good-humor--"you will see at once
+that, if a ladder had been used in Mrs. Heath's case, anybody looking from
+either of these rooms would have seen it."
+
+"Of course! The Scotland Yard man questioned everybody as to that, but
+nobody seemed to have been in either of the rooms when the thing occurred;
+at any rate, nobody saw anything."
+
+"Still, I think I should like to look out of those windows myself; it
+will, at least, give me an idea of what _was_ in view and what was not, if
+anybody had been there."
+
+Sir James Norris led the way to the morning-room. As they reached the door
+a young lady, carrying a book and walking very languidly, came out. Hewitt
+stepped aside to let her pass, and afterward said interrogatively: "Miss
+Norris, your daughter, Sir James?"
+
+"No, my niece. Do you want to ask her anything? Dora, my dear," Sir James
+added, following her in the corridor, "this is Mr. Hewitt, who is
+investigating these wretched robberies for me. I think he would like to
+hear if you remember anything happening at any of the three times."
+
+The lady bowed slightly, and said in a plaintive drawl: "I, uncle? Really,
+I don't remember anything; nothing at all."
+
+"You found Mrs. Armitage's door locked, I believe," asked Hewitt, "when
+you tried it, on the afternoon when she lost her brooch?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I believe it was locked. Yes, it was."
+
+"Had the key been left in?"
+
+"The key? Oh, no! I think not; no."
+
+"Do you remember anything out of the common happening--anything whatever,
+no matter how trivial--on the day Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet?"
+
+"No, really, I don't. I can't remember at all."
+
+"Nor yesterday?"
+
+"No, nothing. I don't remember anything."
+
+"Thank you," said Hewitt, hastily; "thank you. Now the morning-room, Sir
+James."
+
+In the morning-room Hewitt stayed but a few seconds, doing little more
+than casually glance out of the windows. In the room above he took a
+little longer time. It was a comfortable room, but with rather effeminate
+indications about its contents. Little pieces of draped silk-work hung
+about the furniture, and Japanese silk fans decorated the mantel-piece.
+Near the window was a cage containing a gray parrot, and the writing-table
+was decorated with two vases of flowers.
+
+"Lloyd makes himself pretty comfortable, eh?" Sir James observed. "But it
+isn't likely anybody would be here while he was out, at the time that
+bracelet went."
+
+"No," replied Hewitt, meditatively. "No, I suppose not."
+
+He stared thoughtfully out of the window, and then, still deep in thought,
+rattled at the wires of the cage with a quill toothpick and played a
+moment with the parrot. Then, looking up at the window again, he said:
+"That is Mr. Lloyd, isn't it, coming back in a fly?"
+
+"Yes, I think so. Is there anything else you would care to see here?"
+
+"No, thank you," Hewitt replied; "I don't think there is."
+
+They went down to the smoking-room, and Sir James went away to speak to
+his secretary. When he returned, Hewitt said quietly: "I think, Sir
+James--I _think_ that I shall be able to give you your thief presently."
+
+"What! Have you a clue? Who do you think? I began to believe you were
+hopelessly stumped."
+
+"Well, yes. I have rather a good clue, although I can't tell you much
+about it just yet. But it is so good a clue that I should like to know now
+whether you are determined to prosecute when you have the criminal?"
+
+"Why, bless me, of course," Sir James replied, with surprise. "It doesn't
+rest with me, you know--the property belongs to my friends. And even if
+they were disposed to let the thing slide, I shouldn't allow it--I
+couldn't, after they had been robbed in my house."
+
+"Of course, of course! Then, if I can, I should like to send a message to
+Twyford by somebody perfectly trustworthy--not a servant. Could anybody
+go?"
+
+"Well, there's Lloyd, although he's only just back from his journey. But,
+if it's important, he'll go."
+
+"It is important. The fact is we must have a policeman or two here this
+evening, and I'd like Mr. Lloyd to fetch them without telling anybody
+else."
+
+Sir James rang, and, in response to his message, Mr. Lloyd appeared. While
+Sir James gave his secretary his instructions, Hewitt strolled to the door
+of the smoking-room, and intercepted the latter as he came out.
+
+"I'm sorry to give you this trouble, Mr. Lloyd," he said, "but I must stay
+here myself for a little, and somebody who can be trusted must go. Will
+you just bring back a police-constable with you? or rather two--two would
+be better. That is all that is wanted. You won't let the servants know,
+will you? Of course there will be a female searcher at the Twyford
+police-station? Ah--of course. Well, you needn't bring her, you know. That
+sort of thing is done at the station." And, chatting thus confidentially,
+Martin Hewitt saw him off.
+
+When Hewitt returned to the smoking-room, Sir James said, suddenly: "Why,
+bless my soul, Mr. Hewitt, we haven't fed you! I'm awfully sorry. We came
+in rather late for lunch, you know, and this business has bothered me so I
+clean forgot everything else. There's no dinner till seven, so you'd
+better let me give you something now. I'm really sorry. Come along."
+
+"Thank you, Sir James," Hewitt replied; "I won't take much. A few
+biscuits, perhaps, or something of that sort. And, by the by, if you don't
+mind, I rather think I should like to take it alone. The fact is I want to
+go over this case thoroughly by myself. Can you put me in a room?"
+
+"Any room you like. Where will you go? The dining-room's rather large, but
+there's my study, that's pretty snug, or----"
+
+"Perhaps I can go into Mr. Lloyd's room for half an hour or so; I don't
+think he'll mind, and it's pretty comfortable."
+
+"Certainly, if you'd like. I'll tell them to send you whatever they've
+got."
+
+"Thank you very much. Perhaps they'll also send me a lump of sugar and a
+walnut; it's--it's a little fad of mine."
+
+"A--what? A lump of sugar and a walnut?" Sir James stopped for a moment,
+with his hand on the bell-rope. "Oh, certainly, if you'd like it;
+certainly," he added, and stared after this detective with curious tastes
+as he left the room.
+
+When the vehicle, bringing back the secretary and the policeman, drew up
+on the drive, Martin Hewitt left the room on the first floor and proceeded
+down-stairs. On the landing he met Sir James Norris and Mrs. Cazenove, who
+stared with astonishment on perceiving that the detective carried in his
+hand the parrot-cage.
+
+"I think our business is about brought to a head now," Hewitt remarked, on
+the stairs. "Here are the police officers from Twyford." The men were
+standing in the hall with Mr. Lloyd, who, on catching sight of the cage in
+Hewitt's hand, paled suddenly.
+
+"This is the person who will be charged, I think," Hewitt pursued,
+addressing the officers, and indicating Lloyd with his finger.
+
+"What, Lloyd?" gasped Sir James, aghast. "No--not Lloyd--nonsense!"
+
+"He doesn't seem to think it nonsense himself, does he?" Hewitt placidly
+observed. Lloyd had sank on a chair, and, gray of face, was staring
+blindly at the man he had run against at the office door that morning. His
+lips moved in spasms, but there was no sound. The wilted flower fell from
+his button-hole to the floor, but he did not move.
+
+"This is his accomplice," Hewitt went on, placing the parrot and cage on
+the hall table, "though I doubt whether there will be any use in charging
+_him_. Eh, Polly?"
+
+The parrot put his head aside and chuckled. "Hullo, Polly!" it quietly
+gurgled. "Come along!"
+
+Sir James Norris was hopelessly bewildered. "Lloyd--Lloyd," he said, under
+his breath. "Lloyd--and that!"
+
+"This was his little messenger, his useful Mercury," Hewitt explained,
+tapping the cage complacently; "in fact, the actual lifter. Hold him up!"
+
+The last remark referred to the wretched Lloyd, who had fallen forward
+with something between a sob and a loud sigh. The policemen took him by
+the arms and propped him in his chair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"System?" said Hewitt, with a shrug of the shoulders, an hour or two after
+in Sir James' study. "I can't say I have a system. I call it nothing but
+common-sense and a sharp pair of eyes. Nobody using these could help
+taking the right road in this case. I began at the match, just as the
+Scotland Yard man did, but I had the advantage of taking a line through
+three cases. To begin with, it was plain that that match, being left there
+in daylight, in Mrs. Cazenove's room, could not have been used to light
+the table-top, in the full glare of the window; therefore it had been used
+for some other purpose--_what_ purpose I could not, at the moment, guess.
+Habitual thieves, you know, often have curious superstitions, and some
+will never take anything without leaving something behind--a pebble or a
+piece of coal, or something like that--in the premises they have been
+robbing. It seemed at first extremely likely that this was a case of that
+kind. The match had clearly been _brought in_--because, when I asked for
+matches, there were none in the stand, not even an empty box, and the room
+had not been disturbed. Also the match probably had not been struck there,
+nothing having been heard, although, of course, a mistake in this matter
+was just possible. This match, then, it was fair to assume, had been lit
+somewhere else and blown out immediately--I remarked at the time that it
+was very little burned. Plainly it could not have been treated thus for
+nothing, and the only possible object would have been to prevent it
+igniting accidentally. Following on this, it became obvious that the match
+was used, for whatever purpose, not _as_ a match, but merely as a
+convenient splinter of wood.
+
+"So far so good. But on examining the match very closely I observed, as
+you can see for yourself, certain rather sharp indentations in the wood.
+They are very small, you see, and scarcely visible, except upon narrow
+inspection; but there they are, and their positions are regular. See,
+there are two on each side, each opposite the corresponding mark of the
+other pair. The match, in fact, would seem to have been gripped in some
+fairly sharp instrument, holding it at two points above and two below--an
+instrument, as it may at once strike you, not unlike the beak of a bird.
+
+"Now here was an idea. What living creature but a bird could possibly have
+entered Mrs. Heath's window without a ladder--supposing no ladder to have
+been used--or could have got into Mrs. Armitage's window without lifting
+the sash higher than the eight or ten inches it was already open? Plainly,
+nothing. Further, it is significant that only _one_ article was stolen at
+a time, although others were about. A human being could have carried any
+reasonable number, but a bird could only take one at a time. But why
+should a bird carry a match in its beak? Certainly it must have been
+trained to do that for a purpose, and a little consideration made that
+purpose pretty clear. A noisy, chattering bird would probably betray
+itself at once. Therefore it must be trained to keep quiet both while
+going for and coming away with its plunder. What readier or more probably
+effectual way than, while teaching it to carry without dropping, to teach
+it also to keep quiet while carrying? The one thing would practically
+cover the other.
+
+"I thought at once, of course, of a jackdaw or a magpie--these birds'
+thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match
+were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I
+conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived
+near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity of a little chat with your
+groom on the subject of dogs and pets in general, and ascertained that
+there was no tame raven in the place. I also, incidentally, by getting a
+light from the coach-house box of matches, ascertained that the match
+found was of the sort generally used about the establishment--the large,
+thick, red-topped English match. But I further found that Mr. Lloyd had a
+parrot which was a most intelligent pet, and had been trained into
+comparative quietness--for a parrot. Also, I learned that more than once
+the groom had met Mr. Lloyd carrying his parrot under his coat, it having,
+as its owner explained, learned the trick of opening its cage-door and
+escaping.
+
+"I said nothing, of course, to you of all this, because I had as yet
+nothing but a train of argument and no results. I got to Lloyd's room as
+soon as possible. My chief object in going there was achieved when I
+played with the parrot, and induced it to bite a quill toothpick.
+
+"When you left me in the smoking-room, I compared the quill and the match
+very carefully, and found that the marks corresponded exactly. After this
+I felt very little doubt indeed. The fact of Lloyd having met the ladies
+walking before dark on the day of the first robbery proved nothing,
+because, since it was clear that the match had _not_ been used to procure
+a light, the robbery might as easily have taken place in daylight as
+not--must have so taken place, in fact, if my conjectures were right. That
+they were right I felt no doubt. There could be no other explanation.
+
+"When Mrs. Heath left her window open and her door shut, anybody climbing
+upon the open sash of Lloyd's high window could have put the bird upon the
+sill above. The match placed in the bird's beak for the purpose I have
+indicated, and struck first, in case by accident it should ignite by
+rubbing against something and startle the bird--this match would, of
+course, be dropped just where the object to be removed was taken up; as
+you know, in every case the match was found almost upon the spot where the
+missing article had been left--scarcely a likely triple coincidence had
+the match been used by a human thief. This would have been done as soon
+after the ladies had left as possible, and there would then have been
+plenty of time for Lloyd to hurry out and meet them before
+dark--especially plenty of time to meet them _coming back_, as they must
+have been, since they were carrying their ferns. The match was an article
+well chosen for its purpose, as being a not altogether unlikely thing to
+find on a dressing-table, and, if noticed, likely to lead to the wrong
+conclusions adopted by the official detective.
+
+"In Mrs. Armitage's case the taking of an inferior brooch and the leaving
+of a more valuable ring pointed clearly either to the operator being a
+fool or unable to distinguish values, and certainly, from other
+indications, the thief seemed no fool. The door was locked, and the
+gas-fitter, so to speak, on guard, and the window was only eight or ten
+inches open and propped with a brush. A human thief entering the window
+would have disturbed this arrangement, and would scarcely risk discovery
+by attempting to replace it, especially a thief in so great a hurry as to
+snatch the brooch up without unfastening the pin. The bird could pass
+through the opening as it was, and _would have_ to tear the pin-cushion to
+pull the brooch off, probably holding the cushion down with its claw the
+while.
+
+"Now in yesterday's case we had an alteration of conditions. The window
+was shut and fastened, but the door was open--but only left for a few
+minutes, during which time no sound was heard either of coming or going.
+Was it not possible, then, that the thief was _already_ in the room, in
+hiding, while Mrs. Cazenove was there, and seized its first opportunity on
+her temporary absence? The room is full of draperies, hangings, and what
+not, allowing of plenty of concealment for a bird, and a bird could leave
+the place noiselessly and quickly. That the whole scheme was strange
+mattered not at all. Robberies presenting such unaccountable features must
+have been effected by strange means of one sort or another. There was no
+improbability. Consider how many hundreds of examples of infinitely higher
+degrees of bird-training are exhibited in the London streets every week
+for coppers.
+
+"So that, on the whole, I felt pretty sure of my ground. But before taking
+any definite steps I resolved to see if Polly could not be persuaded to
+exhibit his accomplishments to an indulgent stranger. For that purpose I
+contrived to send Lloyd away again and have a quiet hour alone with his
+bird. A piece of sugar, as everybody knows, is a good parrot bribe; but a
+walnut, split in half, is a better--especially if the bird be used to it;
+so I got you to furnish me with both. Polly was shy at first, but I
+generally get along very well with pets, and a little perseverance soon
+led to a complete private performance for my benefit. Polly would take the
+match, mute as wax, jump on the table, pick up the brightest thing he
+could see, in a great hurry, leave the match behind, and scuttle away
+round the room; but at first wouldn't give up the plunder to _me_. It was
+enough. I also took the liberty, as you know, of a general look round, and
+discovered that little collection of Brummagem rings and trinkets that you
+have just seen--used in Polly's education, no doubt. When we sent Lloyd
+away, it struck me that he might as well be usefully employed as not, so I
+got him to fetch the police, deluding him a little, I fear, by talking
+about the servants and a female searcher. There will be no trouble about
+evidence; he'll confess. Of that I'm sure. I know the sort of man. But I
+doubt if you'll get Mrs. Cazenove's brooch back. You see, he has been to
+London to-day, and by this time the swag is probably broken up."
+
+Sir James listened to Hewitt's explanation with many expressions of assent
+and some of surprise. When it was over, he smoked a few whiffs and then
+said: "But Mrs. Armitage's brooch was pawned, and by a woman."
+
+"Exactly. I expect our friend Lloyd was rather disgusted at his small
+luck--probably gave the brooch to some female connection in London, and
+she realized on it. Such persons don't always trouble to give a correct
+address."
+
+The two smoked in silence for a few minutes, and then Hewitt continued: "I
+don't expect our friend has had an easy job altogether with that bird. His
+successes at most have only been three, and I suspect he had many failures
+and not a few anxious moments that we know nothing of. I should judge as
+much merely from what the groom told me of frequently meeting Lloyd with
+his parrot. But the plan was not a bad one--not at all. Even if the bird
+had been caught in the act, it would only have been 'That mischievous
+parrot!' you see. And his master would only have been looking for him."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT.
+
+It was, of course, always a part of Martin Hewitt's business to be
+thoroughly at home among any and every class of people, and to be able to
+interest himself intelligently, or to appear to do so, in their various
+pursuits. In one of the most important cases ever placed in his hands he
+could have gone but a short way toward success had he not displayed some
+knowledge of the more sordid aspects of professional sport, and a great
+interest in the undertakings of a certain dealer therein.
+
+The great case itself had nothing to do with sport, and, indeed, from a
+narrative point of view, was somewhat uninteresting, but the man who alone
+held the one piece of information wanted was a keeper, backer, or "gaffer"
+of professional pedestrians, and it was through the medium of his
+pecuniary interest in such matters that Hewitt was enabled to strike a
+bargain with him.
+
+The man was a publican on the outskirts of Padfield, a northern town,
+pretty famous for its sporting tastes, and to Padfield, therefore, Hewitt
+betook himself, and, arrayed in a way to indicate some inclination of his
+own toward sport, he began to frequent the bar of the Hare and Hounds.
+Kentish, the landlord, was a stout, bull-necked man, of no great
+communicativeness at first; but after a little acquaintance he opened out
+wonderfully, became quite a jolly (and rather intelligent) companion, and
+came out with innumerable anecdotes of his sporting adventures. He could
+put a very decent dinner on the table, too, at the Hare and Hounds, and
+Hewitt's frequent invitation to him to join therein and divide a bottle of
+the best in the cellar soon put the two on the very best of terms. Good
+terms with Mr. Kentish was Hewitt's great desire, for the information he
+wanted was of a sort that could never be extracted by casual questioning,
+but must be a matter of open communication by the publican, extracted in
+what way it might be.
+
+"Look here," said Kentish one day, "I'll put you on to a good thing, my
+boy--a real good thing. Of course you know all about the Padfield 135
+Yards Handicap being run off now?"
+
+"Well, I haven't looked into it much," Hewitt replied. "Ran the first
+round of heats last Saturday and Monday, didn't they?"
+
+"They did. Well"--Kentish spoke in a stage whisper as he leaned over and
+rapped the table--"I've got the final winner in this house." He nodded his
+head, took a puff at his cigar, and added, in his ordinary voice. "Don't
+say nothing."
+
+"No, of course not. Got something on, of course?"
+
+"Rather! What do you think? Got any price I liked. Been saving him up for
+this. Why, he's got twenty-one yards, and he can do even time all the way!
+Fact! Why, he could win runnin' back'ards. He won his heat on Monday
+like--like--like that!" The gaffer snapped his fingers, in default of a
+better illustration, and went on. "He might ha' took it a little easier,
+_I_ think; it's shortened his price, of course, him jumpin' in by two
+yards. But you can get decent odds now, if you go about it right. You take
+my tip--back him for his heat next Saturday, in the second round, and for
+the final. You'll get a good price for the final, if you pop it down at
+once. But don't go makin' a song of it, will you, now? I'm givin' you a
+tip I wouldn't give anybody else."
+
+"Thanks, very much; it's awfully good of you. I'll do what you advise. But
+isn't there a dark horse anywhere else?"
+
+"Not dark to me, my boy, not dark to me. I know every man runnin' like a
+book. Old Taylor--him over at the Cop--he's got a very good lad at
+eighteen yards, a very good lad indeed; and he's a tryer this time, I
+know. But, bless you, my lad could give him ten, instead o' taking three,
+and beat him then! When I'm runnin' a real tryer, I'm generally runnin'
+something very near a winner, you bet; and this time, mind _this_ time,
+I'm runnin' the certainest winner I _ever_ run--and I don't often make a
+mistake. You back him."
+
+"I shall, if you're as sure as that. But who is he?"
+
+"Oh, Crockett's his name--Sammy Crockett. He's quite a new lad. I've got
+young Steggles looking after him--sticks to him like wax. Takes his little
+breathers in my bit o' ground at the back here. I've got a cinder-sprint
+path there, over behind the trees. I don't let him out o' sight much, I
+can tell you. He's a straight lad, and he knows it'll be worth his while
+to stick to me; but there's some 'ud poison him, if they thought he'd
+spoil their books."
+
+Soon afterward the two strolled toward the taproom. "I expect Sammy'll be
+there," the landlord said, "with Steggles. I don't hide him too
+much--they'd think I'd got something extra on if I did."
+
+In the tap-room sat a lean, wire-drawn-looking youth, with sloping
+shoulders and a thin face, and by his side was a rather short, thick-set
+man, who had an odd air, no matter what he did, of proprietorship and
+surveillance of the lean youth. Several other men sat about, and there was
+loud laughter, under which the lean youth looked sheepishly angry.
+
+"'Tarn't no good, Sammy, lad," some one was saying, "you a-makin' after
+Nancy Webb--she'll ha' nowt to do with 'ee."
+
+"Don' like 'em so thread-papery," added another. "No, Sammy, you aren't
+the lad for she. I see her----"
+
+"What about Nancy Webb?" asked Kentish, pushing open the door. "Sammy's
+all right, any way. You keep fit, my lad, an' go on improving, and some
+day you'll have as good a house as me. Never mind the lasses. Had his
+glass o' beer, has he?" This to Raggy Steggles, who, answering in the
+affirmative, viewed his charge as though he were a post, and the beer a
+recent coat of paint.
+
+"Has two glasses of mild a day," the landlord said to Hewitt. "Never puts
+on flesh, so he can stand it. Come out now." He nodded to Steggles, who
+rose and marched Sammy Crockett away for exercise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following afternoon (it was Thursday), as Hewitt and Kentish
+chatted in the landlord's own snuggery, Steggles burst into the room in a
+great state of agitation and spluttered out: "He--he's bolted; gone away!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sammy--gone! Hooked it! _I_ can't find him."
+
+The landlord stared blankly at the trainer, who stood with a sweater
+dangling from his hand and stared blankly back. "What d'ye mean?" Kentish
+said, at last. "Don't be a fool! He's in the place somewhere. Find him!"
+
+But this Steggles defied anybody to do. He had looked already. He had left
+Crockett at the cinder-path behind the trees in his running-gear, with the
+addition of the long overcoat and cap he used in going between the path
+and the house to guard against chill. "I was goin' to give him a bust or
+two with the pistol," the trainer explained, "but, when we got over
+t'other side, 'Raggy,' ses he, 'it's blawin' a bit chilly. I think I'll
+ha' a sweater. There's one on my box, ain't there?' So in I coomes for the
+sweater, and it weren't on his box, and, when I found it and got back--he
+weren't there. They'd seen nowt o' him in t' house, and he weren't
+nowhere."
+
+Hewitt and the landlord, now thoroughly startled, searched everywhere, but
+to no purpose. "What should he go off the place for?" asked Kentish, in a
+sweat of apprehension. "'Tain't chilly a bit--it's warm. He didn't want no
+sweater; never wore one before. It was a piece of kid to be able to clear
+out. Nice thing, this is. I stand to win two years' takings over him.
+Here--you'll have to find him."
+
+"Ah, but how?" exclaimed the disconcerted trainer, dancing about
+distractedly. "I've got all I could scrape on him myself. Where can I
+look?"
+
+Here was Hewitt's opportunity. He took Kentish aside and whispered. What
+he said startled the landlord considerably. "Yes, I'll tell you all about
+that," he said, "if that's all you want. It's no good or harm to me
+whether I tell or no. But can you find him?"
+
+"That I can't promise, of course. But you know who I am now, and what I'm
+here for. If you like to give me the information I want, I'll go into the
+case for you, and, of course, I shan't charge any fee. I may have luck,
+you know, but I can't promise, of course."
+
+The landlord looked in Hewitt's face for a moment. Then he said: "Done!
+It's a deal."
+
+"Very good," Hewitt replied; "get together the one or two papers you have,
+and we'll go into my business in the evening. As to Crockett, don't say a
+word to anybody. I'm afraid it must get out, since they all know about it
+in the house, but there's no use in making any unnecessary noise. Don't
+make hedging bets or do anything that will attract notice. Now we'll go
+over to the back and look at this cinder-path of yours."
+
+Here Steggles, who was still standing near, was struck with an idea. "How
+about old Taylor, at the Cop, guv'nor, eh?" he said, meaningly. "His lad's
+good enough to win with Sammy out, and Taylor is backing him plenty. Think
+he knows any thing o' this?"
+
+"That's likely," Hewitt observed, before Kentish could reply. "Yes. Look
+here--suppose Steggles goes and keeps his eye on the Cop for an hour or
+two, in case there's anything to be heard of? Don't show yourself, of
+course."
+
+Kentish agreed, and the trainer went. When Hewitt and Kentish arrived at
+the path behind the trees, Hewitt at once began examining the ground. One
+or two rather large holes in the cinders were made, as the publican
+explained, by Crockett, in practicing getting off his mark. Behind these
+were several fresh tracks of spiked shoes. The tracks led up to within a
+couple of yards of the high fence bounding the ground, and there stopped
+abruptly and entirely. In the fence, a little to the right of where the
+tracks stopped, there was a stout door. This Hewitt tried, and found ajar.
+
+"That's always kept bolted," Kentish said. "He's gone out that way--he
+couldn't have gone any other without comin' through the house."
+
+"But he isn't in the habit of making a step three yards long, is he?"
+Hewitt asked, pointing at the last footmark and then at the door, which
+was quite that distance away from it. "Besides," he added, opening the
+door, "there's no footprint here nor outside."
+
+The door opened on a lane, with another fence and a thick plantation of
+trees at the other side. Kentish looked at the footmarks, then at the
+door, then down the lane, and finally back toward the house. "That's a
+licker!" he said.
+
+"This is a quiet sort of lane," was Hewitt's next remark. "No houses in
+sight. Where does it lead?"
+
+"That way it goes to the Old Kilns--disused. This way down to a turning
+off the Padfield and Catton road."
+
+Hewitt returned to the cinder-path again, and once more examined the
+footmarks. He traced them back over the grass toward the house.
+"Certainly," he said, "he hasn't gone back to the house. Here is the
+double line of tracks, side by side, from the house--Steggles' ordinary
+boots with iron tips, and Crockett's running pumps; thus they came out.
+Here is Steggles' track in the opposite direction alone, made when he went
+back for the sweater. Crockett remained; you see various prints in those
+loose cinders at the end of the path where he moved this way and that, and
+then two or three paces toward the fence--not directly toward the door,
+you notice--and there they stop dead, and there are no more, either back
+or forward. Now, if he had wings, I should be tempted to the opinion that
+he flew straight away in the air from that spot--unless the earth
+swallowed him and closed again without leaving a wrinkle on its face."
+
+Kentish stared gloomily at the tracks and said nothing.
+
+"However," Hewitt resumed, "I think I'll take a little walk now and think
+over it. You go into the house and show yourself at the bar. If anybody
+wants to know how Crockett is, he's pretty well, thank you. By the by, can
+I get to the Cop--this place of Taylor's--by this back lane?"
+
+"Yes, down to the end leading to the Catton road, turn to the left and
+then first on the right. Any one'll show you the Cop," and Kentish shut
+the door behind the detective, who straightway walked--toward the Old
+Kilns.
+
+In little more than an hour he was back. It was now becoming dusk, and the
+landlord looked out papers from a box near the side window of his
+snuggery, for the sake of the extra light. "I've got these papers together
+for you," he said, as Hewitt entered. "Any news?"
+
+"Nothing very great. Here's a bit of handwriting I want you to recognize,
+if you can. Get a light."
+
+Kentish lit a lamp, and Hewitt laid upon the table half a dozen small
+pieces of torn paper, evidently fragments of a letter which had been torn
+up, here reproduced in fac-simile:
+
+[Illustration: six scraps of paper: mmy, throw them ou, right away, left
+hi, hate his, lane wr]
+
+The landlord turned the scraps over, regarding them dubiously. "These
+aren't much to recognize, anyhow. _I_ don't know the writing. Where did
+you find 'em?"
+
+"They were lying in the lane at the back, a little way down. Plainly they
+are pieces of a note addressed to some one called Sammy or something very
+like it. See the first piece, with its 'mmy'? That is clearly from the
+beginning of the note, because there is no line between it and the smooth,
+straight edge of the paper above; also, nothing follows on the same line.
+Some one writes to Crockett--presuming it to be a letter addressed to him,
+as I do for other reasons--as Sammy. It is a pity that there is no more of
+the letter to be found than these pieces. I expect the person who tore it
+up put the rest in his pocket and dropped these by accident."
+
+Kentish, who had been picking up and examining each piece in turn, now
+dolorously broke out:
+
+"Oh, it's plain he's sold us--bolted and done us; me as took him out o'
+the gutter, too. Look here--'throw them over'; that's plain enough--can't
+mean anything else. Means throw _me_ over, and my friends--me, after what
+I've done for him! Then 'right away'--go right away, I s'pose, as he has
+done. Then"--he was fiddling with the scraps and finally fitted two
+together--"why, look here, this one with 'lane' on it fits over the one
+about throwing over, and it says 'poor f' where its torn; that means 'poor
+fool,' I s'pose--_me_, or 'fathead,' or something like that. That's nice.
+Why, I'd twist his neck if I could get hold of him; and I will!"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "Perhaps it's not quite so uncomplimentary, after all," he
+said. "If you can't recognize the writing, never mind. But, if he's gone
+away to sell you, it isn't much use finding him, is it? He won't win if he
+doesn't want to."
+
+"Why, he wouldn't dare to rope under my very eyes. I'd--I'd----"
+
+"Well, well; perhaps we'll get him to run, after all, and as well as he
+can. One thing is certain--he left this place of his own will. Further, I
+think he is in Padfield now; he went toward the town, I believe. And I
+don't think he means to sell you."
+
+"Well, he shouldn't. I've made it worth his while to stick to me. I've put
+a fifty on for him out of my own pocket, and told him so; and, if he won,
+that would bring him a lump more than he'd probably get by going crooked,
+besides the prize money and anything I might give him over. But it seems
+to me he's putting me in the cart altogether."
+
+"That we shall see. Meantime, don't mention anything I've told you to any
+one--not even to Steggles. He can't help us, and he might blurt things out
+inadvertently. Don't say anything about these pieces of paper, which I
+shall keep myself. By-the-by, Steggles is indoors, isn't he? Very well,
+keep him in. Don't let him be seen hunting about this evening. I'll stay
+here to-night and we'll proceed with Crockett's business in the morning.
+And now we'll settle _my_ business, please."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning Hewitt took his breakfast in the snuggery, carefully
+listening to any conversation that might take place at the bar. Soon after
+nine o'clock a fast dog-cart stopped outside, and a red-faced, loud-voiced
+man swaggered in, greeting Kentish with boisterous cordiality. He had a
+drink with the landlord, and said: "How's things? Fancy any of 'em for the
+sprint handicap? Got a lad o' your own in, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Kentish replied. "Crockett. Only a young un not got to his
+proper mark yet, I reckon. I think old Taylor's got No. 1 this time."
+
+"Capital lad," the other replied, with a confidential nod. "Shouldn't
+wonder at all. Want to do anything yourself over it?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. I'm not on at present. Might have a little flutter
+on the grounds just for fun; nothing else."
+
+There were a few more casual remarks, and then the red-faced man drove
+away.
+
+"Who was that?" asked Hewitt, who had watched the visitor through the
+snuggery window.
+
+"That's Danby--bookmaker. Cute chap. He's been told Crockett's missing,
+I'll bet anything, and come here to pump me. No good, though. As a matter
+of fact, I've worked Sammy Crockett into his books for about half I'm in
+for altogether--through third parties, of course."
+
+Hewitt reached for his hat. "I'm going out for half an hour now," he said.
+"If Steggles wants to go out before I come back, don't let him. Let him go
+and smooth over all those tracks on the cinder-path, very carefully. And,
+by the by, could you manage to have your son about the place to-day, in
+case I happen to want a little help out of doors?"
+
+"Certainly; I'll get him to stay in. But what do you want the cinders
+smoothed for?"
+
+Hewitt smiled, and patted his host's shoulder. "I'll explain all my tricks
+when the job's done," he said, and went out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lane from Padfield to Sedby village stood the Plough beer-house,
+wherein J. Webb was licensed to sell by retail beer to be consumed on the
+premises or off, as the thirsty list. Nancy Webb, with a very fine color,
+a very curly fringe, and a wide smiling mouth revealing a fine set of
+teeth, came to the bar at the summons of a stoutish old gentleman in
+spectacles who walked with a stick.
+
+The stoutish old gentleman had a glass of bitter beer, and then said in
+the peculiarly quiet voice of a very deaf man: "Can you tell me, if you
+please, the way into the main Catton road?"
+
+"Down the lane, turn to the right at the cross-roads, then first to the
+left."
+
+The old gentleman waited with his hand to his ear for some few seconds
+after she had finished speaking, and then resumed in his whispering voice:
+"I'm afraid I'm very deaf this morning." He fumbled in his pocket and
+produced a note-book and pencil. "May I trouble you to write it down? I'm
+so very deaf at times that I--Thank you."
+
+The girl wrote the direction, and the old gentleman bade her good-morning
+and left. All down the lane he walked slowly with his stick. At the
+cross-roads he turned, put the stick under his arm, thrust his spectacles
+into his pocket, and strode away in the ordinary guise of Martin Hewitt.
+He pulled out his note-book, examined Miss Webb's direction very
+carefully, and then went off another way altogether, toward the Hare and
+Hounds.
+
+Kentish lounged moodily in his bar. "Well, my boy," said Hewitt, "has
+Steggles wiped out the tracks?"
+
+"Not yet; I haven't told him. But he's somewhere about; I'll tell him
+now."
+
+"No, don't. I don't think we'll have that done, after all. I expect he'll
+want to go out soon--at any rate, some time during the day. Let him go
+whenever he likes. I'll sit upstairs a bit in the club-room."
+
+"Very well. But how do you know Steggles will be going out?"
+
+"Well, he's pretty restless after his lost _protégé_, isn't he? I don't
+suppose he'll be able to remain idle long."
+
+"And about Crockett. Do you give him up?"
+
+"Oh, no! Don't you be impatient. I can't say I'm quite confident yet of
+laying hold of him--the time is so short, you see--but I think I shall at
+least have news for you by the evening."
+
+Hewitt sat in the club-room until the afternoon, taking his lunch there.
+At length he saw, through the front window, Raggy Steggles walking down
+the road. In an instant Hewitt was down-stairs and at the door. The road
+bent eighty yards away, and as soon as Steggles passed the bend the
+detective hurried after him.
+
+All the way to Padfield town and more than half through it Hewitt dogged
+the trainer. In the end Steggles stopped at a corner and gave a note to a
+small boy who was playing near. The boy ran with the note to a bright,
+well-kept house at the opposite corner. Martin Hewitt was interested to
+observe the legend, "H. Danby, Contractor," on a board over a gate in the
+side wall of the garden behind this house. In five minutes a door in the
+side gate opened, and the head and shoulders of the red-faced man emerged.
+Steggles immediately hurried across and disappeared through the gate.
+
+This was both interesting and instructive. Hewitt took up a position in
+the side street and waited. In ten minutes the trainer reappeared and
+hurried off the way he had come, along the street Hewitt had considerately
+left clear for him. Then Hewitt strolled toward the smart house and took a
+good look at it. At one corner of the small piece of forecourt garden,
+near the railings, a small, baize-covered, glass-fronted notice-board
+stood on two posts. On its top edge appeared the words, "H. Danby. Houses
+to be Sold or Let." But the only notice pinned to the green baize within
+was an old and dusty one, inviting tenants for three shops, which were
+suitable for any business, and which would be fitted to suit tenants.
+Apply within.
+
+Hewitt pushed open the front gate and rang the door-bell. "There are some
+shops to let, I see," he said, when a maid appeared. "I should like to see
+them, if you will let me have the key."
+
+"Master's out, sir. You can't see the shops till Monday."
+
+"Dear me, that's unfortunate, I'm afraid I can't wait till Monday. Didn't
+Mr. Danby leave any instructions, in case anybody should inquire?"
+
+"Yes, sir--as I've told you. He said anybody who called about 'em must
+come again on Monday."
+
+"Oh, very well, then; I suppose I must try. One of the shops is in High
+Street, isn't it?"
+
+"No, sir; they're all in the new part--Granville Road."
+
+"Ah, I'm afraid that will scarcely do. But I'll see. Good-day."
+
+Martin Hewitt walked away a couple of streets' lengths before he inquired
+the way to Granville Road. When at last he found that thoroughfare, in a
+new and muddy suburb, crowded with brick-heaps and half-finished streets,
+he took a slow walk along its entire length. It was a melancholy example
+of baffled enterprise. A row of a dozen or more shops had been built
+before any population had arrived to demand goods. Would-be tradesmen had
+taken many of these shops, and failure and disappointment stared from the
+windows. Some were half covered by shutters, because the scanty stock
+scarce sufficed to fill the remaining half. Others were shut almost
+altogether, the inmates only keeping open the door for their own
+convenience, and, perhaps, keeping down a shutter for the sake of a little
+light. Others, again, had not yet fallen so low, but struggled bravely
+still to maintain a show of business and prosperity, with very little
+success. Opposite the shops there still remained a dusty, ill-treated
+hedge and a forlorn-looking field, which an old board offered on building
+leases. Altogether a most depressing spot.
+
+There was little difficulty in identifying the three shops offered for
+letting by Mr. H. Danby. They were all together near the middle of the
+row, and were the only ones that appeared not yet to have been occupied. A
+dusty "To Let" bill hung in each window, with written directions to
+inquire of Mr. H. Danby or at No. 7. Now No. 7 was a melancholy baker's
+shop, with a stock of three loaves and a plate of stale buns. The
+disappointed baker assured Hewitt that he usually kept the keys of the
+shops, but that the landlord, Mr. Danby, had taken them away the day
+before to see how the ceilings were standing, and had not returned them.
+"But if you was thinking of taking a shop here," the poor baker added,
+with some hesitation, "I--I--if you'll excuse my advising you--I shouldn't
+recommend it. I've had a sickener of it myself."
+
+Hewitt thanked the baker for his advice, wished him better luck in future,
+and left. To the Hare and Hounds his pace was brisk. "Come," he said, as
+he met Kentish's inquiring glance, "this has been a very good day, on the
+whole. I know where our man is now, and I think we can get him, by a
+little management."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Oh, down in Padfield. As a matter of fact, he's being kept there against
+his will, we shall find. I see that your friend Mr. Danby is a builder as
+well as a bookmaker."
+
+"Not a regular builder. He speculates in a street of new houses now and
+again, that's all. But is he in it?"
+
+"He's as deep in it as anybody, I think. Now, don't fly into a passion.
+There are a few others in it as well, but you'll do harm if you don't keep
+quiet."
+
+"But go and get the police; come and fetch him, if you know where they're
+keeping him. Why----"
+
+"So we will, if we can't do it without them. But it's quite possible we
+can, and without all the disturbance and, perhaps, delay that calling in
+the police would involve. Consider, now, in reference to your own
+arrangements. Wouldn't it pay you better to get him back quietly, without
+a soul knowing--perhaps not even Danby knowing--till the heat is run
+to-morrow?"
+
+"Well, yes, it would, of course."
+
+"Very good, then, so be it. Remember what I have told you about keeping
+your mouth shut; say nothing to Steggles or anybody. Is there a cab or
+brougham your son and I can have for the evening?"
+
+"There's an old hiring landau in the stables you can shut up into a cab,
+if that'll do."
+
+"Excellent. We'll run down to the town in it as soon as it's ready. But,
+first, a word about Crockett. What sort of a lad is he? Likely to give
+them trouble, show fight, and make a disturbance?"
+
+"No, I should say not. He's no plucked un, certainly; all his manhood's in
+his legs, I believe. You see, he ain't a big sort o' chap at best, and
+he'd be pretty easy put upon--at least, I guess so."
+
+"Very good, so much the better, for then he won't have been damaged, and
+they will probably only have one man to guard him. Now the carriage,
+please."
+
+Young Kentish was a six-foot sergeant of grenadiers home on furlough, and
+luxuriating in plain clothes. He and Hewitt walked a little way toward the
+town, allowing the landau to catch them up. They traveled in it to within
+a hundred yards of the empty shops and then alighted, bidding the driver
+wait.
+
+"I shall show you three empty shops," Hewitt said, as he and young Kentish
+walked down Granville Road. "I am pretty sure that Sammy Crockett is in
+one of them, and I am pretty sure that that is the middle one. Take a look
+as we go past."
+
+When the shops had been slowly passed, Hewitt resumed: "Now, did you see
+anything about those shops that told a tale of any sort?"
+
+"No," Sergeant Kentish replied. "I can't say I noticed anything beyond the
+fact that they were empty--and likely to stay so, I should think."
+
+"We'll stroll back, and look in at the windows, if nobody's watching us,"
+Hewitt said. "You see, it's reasonable to suppose they've put him in the
+middle one, because that would suit their purpose best. The shops at each
+side of the three are occupied, and, if the prisoner struggled, or
+shouted, or made an uproar, he might be heard if he were in one of the
+shops next those inhabited. So that the middle shop is the most likely.
+Now, see there," he went on, as they stopped before the window of the shop
+in question, "over at the back there's a staircase not yet partitioned
+off. It goes down below and up above. On the stairs and on the floor near
+them there are muddy footmarks. These must have been made to-day, else
+they would not be muddy, but dry and dusty, since there hasn't been a
+shower for a week till to-day. Move on again. Then you noticed that there
+were no other such marks in the shop. Consequently the man with the muddy
+feet did not come in by the front door, but by the back; otherwise he
+would have made a trail from the door. So we will go round to the back
+ourselves."
+
+It was now growing dusk. The small pieces of ground behind the shops were
+bounded by a low fence, containing a door for each house.
+
+"This door is bolted inside, of course," Hewitt said, "but there is no
+difficulty in climbing. I think we had better wait in the garden till
+dark. In the meantime, the jailer, whoever he is, may come out; in which
+case we shall pounce on him as soon as he opens the door. You have that
+few yards of cord in your pocket, I think? And my handkerchief, properly
+rolled, will make a very good gag. Now over."
+
+They climbed the fence and quietly approached the house, placing
+themselves in the angle of an outhouse out of sight from the windows.
+There was no sound, and no light appeared. Just above the ground about a
+foot of window was visible, with a grating over it, apparently lighting a
+basement. Suddenly Hewitt touched his companion's arm and pointed toward
+the window. A faint rustling sound was perceptible, and, as nearly as
+could be discerned in the darkness, some white blind or covering was
+placed over the glass from the inside. Then came the sound of a striking
+match, and at the side edge of the window there was a faint streak of
+light.
+
+"That's the place," Hewitt whispered. "Come, we'll make a push for it. You
+stand against the wall at one side of the door and I'll stand at the
+other, and we'll have him as he comes out. Quietly, now, and I'll startle
+them."
+
+He took a stone from among the rubbish littering the garden and flung it
+crashing through the window. There was a loud exclamation from within, the
+blind fell, and somebody rushed to the back door and flung it open.
+Instantly Kentish let fly a heavy right-hander, and the man went over like
+a skittle. In a moment Hewitt was upon him and the gag in his mouth.
+
+"Hold him," Hewitt whispered, hurriedly. "I'll see if there are others."
+
+He peered down through the low window. Within Sammy Crockett, his bare
+legs dangling from beneath his long overcoat, sat on a packing-box,
+leaning with his head on his hand and his back toward the window. A
+guttering candle stood on the mantel-piece, and the newspaper which had
+been stretched across the window lay in scattered sheets on the floor. No
+other person besides Sammy was visible.
+
+They led their prisoner indoors. Young Kentish recognized him as a
+public-house loafer and race-course ruffian, well known in the
+neighborhood.
+
+"So it's you, is it, Browdie?" he said. "I've caught you one hard clump,
+and I've half a mind to make it a score more. But you'll get it pretty
+warm one way or another before this job's forgotten."
+
+Sammy Crockett was overjoyed at his rescue. He had not been ill-treated,
+he explained, but had been thoroughly cowed by Browdie, who had from time
+to time threatened him savagely with an iron bar by way of persuading him
+to quietness and submission. He had been fed, and had taken no worse harm
+than a slight stiffness from his adventure, due to his light under-attire
+of jersey and knee-shorts.
+
+Sergeant Kentish tied Browdie's elbows firmly together behind, and carried
+the line round the ankles, bracing all up tight. Then he ran a knot from
+one wrist to the other over the back of the neck, and left the prisoner,
+trussed and helpless, on the heap of straw that had been Sammy's bed.
+
+"You won't be very jolly, I expect," Kentish said, "for some time. You
+can't shout and you can't walk, and I know you can't untie yourself.
+You'll get a bit hungry, too, perhaps, but that'll give you an appetite. I
+don't suppose you'll be disturbed till some time to-morrow, unless our
+friend Danby turns up in the meantime. But you can come along to jail
+instead, if you prefer it."
+
+They left him where he lay, and took Sammy to the old landau. Sammy walked
+in slippers, carrying his spiked shoes, hanging by the lace, in his hand.
+
+"Ah," said Hewitt, "I think I know the name of the young lady who gave you
+those slippers."
+
+Crockett looked ashamed and indignant. "Yes," he said, "they've done me
+nicely between 'em. But I'll pay her--I'll----"
+
+"Hush, hush!" Hewitt said; "you mustn't talk unkindly of a lady, you know.
+Get into this carriage, and we'll take you home. We'll see if I can tell
+you your adventures without making a mistake. First, you had a note from
+Miss Webb, telling you that you were mistaken in supposing she had
+slighted you, and that, as a matter of fact, she had quite done with
+somebody else--left him--of whom you were jealous. Isn't that so?"
+
+"Well, yes," young Crockett answered, blushing deeply under the
+carriage-lamp; "but I don't see how you come to know that."
+
+"Then she went on to ask you to get rid of Steggles on Thursday afternoon
+for a few minutes, and speak to her in the back lane. Now, your running
+pumps, with their thin soles, almost like paper, no heels and long spikes,
+hurt your feet horribly if you walk on hard ground, don't they?"
+
+"Ay, that they do--enough to cripple you. I'd never go on much hard ground
+with 'em."
+
+"They're not like cricket shoes, I see."
+
+"Not a bit. Cricket shoes you can walk anywhere in!"
+
+"Well, she knew this--I think I know who told her--and she promised to
+bring you a new pair of slippers, and to throw them over the fence for you
+to come out in."
+
+"I s'pose she's been tellin' you all this?" Crockett said, mournfully.
+"You couldn't ha' seen the letter; I saw her tear it up and put the bits
+in her pocket. She asked me for it in the lane, in case Steggles saw it."
+
+"Well, at any rate, you sent Steggles away, and the slippers did come
+over, and you went into the lane. You walked with her as far as the road
+at the end, and then you were seized and gagged, and put into a carriage."
+
+"That was Browdie did that," said Crockett, "and another chap I don't
+know. But--why, this is Padfield High Street?" He looked through the
+window and regarded the familiar shops with astonishment.
+
+"Of course it is. Where did you think it was?"
+
+"Why, where was that place you found me in?"
+
+"Granville Road, Padfield. I suppose they told you you were in another
+town?"
+
+"Told me it was Newstead Hatch. They drove for about three or four hours,
+and kept me down on the floor between the seats so as I couldn't see where
+we was going."
+
+"Done for two reasons," said Hewitt. "First, to mystify you, and prevent
+any discovery of the people directing the conspiracy; and second, to be
+able to put you indoors at night and unobserved. Well, I think I have told
+you all you know yourself now as far as the carriage.
+
+"But there is the Hare and Hounds just in front. We'll pull up here, and
+I'll get out and see if the coast is clear. I fancy Mr. Kentish would
+rather you came in unnoticed."
+
+In a few seconds Hewitt was back, and Crockett was conveyed indoors by a
+side entrance. Hewitt's instructions to the landlord were few, but
+emphatic. "Don't tell Steggles about it," he said; "make an excuse to get
+rid of him, and send him out of the house. Take Crockett into some other
+bedroom, not his own, and let your son look after him. Then come here, and
+I'll tell you all about it."
+
+Sammy Crockett was undergoing a heavy grooming with white embrocation at
+the hands of Sergeant Kentish when the landlord returned to Hewitt. "Does
+Danby know you've got him?" he asked. "How did you do it?"
+
+"Danby doesn't know yet, and with luck he won't know till he sees Crockett
+running to-morrow. The man who has sold you is Steggles."
+
+"Steggles?"
+
+"Steggles it is. At the very first, when Steggles rushed in to report
+Sammy Crockett missing, I suspected him. You didn't, I suppose?"
+
+"No. He's always been considered a straight man, and he looked as startled
+as anybody."
+
+"Yes, I must say he acted it very well. But there was something suspicious
+in his story. What did he say? Crockett had remarked a chilliness, and
+asked for a sweater, which Steggles went to fetch. Now, just think. You
+understand these things. Would any trainer who knew his business (as
+Steggles does) have gone to bring out a sweater for his man to change for
+his jersey in the open air, at the very time the man was complaining of
+chilliness? Of course not. He would have taken his man indoors again and
+let him change there under shelter. Then supposing Steggles had really
+been surprised at missing Crockett, wouldn't he have looked about, found
+the gate open, and _told_ you it was open when he first came in? He said
+nothing of that--we found the gate open for ourselves. So that from the
+beginning I had a certain opinion of Steggles."
+
+"What you say seems pretty plain now, although it didn't strike me at the
+time. But, if Steggles was selling us, why couldn't he have drugged the
+lad? That would have been a deal simpler."
+
+"Because Steggles is a good trainer, and has a certain reputation to keep
+up. It would have done him no good to have had a runner drugged while
+under his care; certainly it would have cooked his goose with _you_. It
+was much the safer thing to connive at kidnapping. That put all the active
+work into other hands, and left him safe, even if the trick failed. Now,
+you remember that we traced the prints of Crockett's spiked shoes to
+within a couple of yards from the fence, and that there they ceased
+suddenly?"
+
+"Yes. You said it looked as though he had flown up into the air; and so it
+did."
+
+"But I was sure that it was by that gate that Crockett had left, and by no
+other. He couldn't have got through the house without being seen, and
+there was no other way--let alone the evidence of the unbolted gate.
+Therefore, as the footprints ceased where they did, and were not repeated
+anywhere in the lane, I knew that he had taken his spiked shoes
+off--probably changed them for something else, because a runner anxious as
+to his chances would never risk walking on bare feet, with a chance of
+cutting them. Ordinary, broad, smooth-soled slippers would leave no
+impression on the coarse cinders bordering the track, and nothing short of
+spiked shoes would leave a mark on the hard path in the lane behind. The
+spike-tracks were leading, not directly toward the door, but in the
+direction of the fence, when they stopped; somebody had handed, or thrown,
+the slippers over the fence, and he had changed them on the spot. The
+enemy had calculated upon the spikes leaving a track in the lane that
+might lead us in our search, and had arranged accordingly.
+
+"So far so good. I could see no footprints near the gate in the lane. You
+will remember that I sent Steggles off to watch at the Cop before I went
+out to the back--merely, of course, to get him out of the way. I went out
+into the lane, leaving you behind, and walked its whole length, first
+toward the Old Kilns and then back toward the road. I found nothing to
+help me except these small pieces of paper--which are here in my
+pocket-book, by the by. Of course this 'mmy' might have meant 'Jimmy' or
+'Tommy' as possibly as 'Sammy,' but they were not to be rejected on that
+account. Certainly Crockett had been decoyed out of your ground, not taken
+by force, or there would have been marks of a scuffle in the cinders. And
+as his request for a sweater was probably an excuse--because it was not at
+all a cold afternoon--he must have previously designed going out.
+Inference, a letter received; and here were pieces of a letter. Now, in
+the light of what I have said, look at these pieces. First, there is the
+'mmy'--that I have dealt with. Then see this 'throw them ov'--clearly a
+part of 'throw them over'; exactly what had probably been done with the
+slippers. Then the 'poor f,' coming just on the line before, and seen, by
+joining up with this other piece, might easily be a reference to 'poor
+feet.' These coincidences, one on the other, went far to establish the
+identity of the letter, and to confirm my previous impressions. But then
+there is something else. Two other pieces evidently mean 'left him,' and
+'right away,' perhaps; but there is another, containing almost all of the
+words 'hate his,' with the word 'hate' underlined. Now, who writes 'hate'
+with the emphasis of underscoring--who but a woman? The writing is large
+and not very regular; it might easily be that of a half-educated woman.
+Here was something more--Sammy had been enticed away by a woman.
+
+"Now, I remembered that, when we went into the tap-room on Wednesday, some
+of his companions were chaffing Crockett about a certain Nancy Webb, and
+the chaff went home, as was plain to see. The woman, then, who could most
+easily entice Sammy Crockett away was Nancy Webb. I resolved to find who
+Nancy Webb was and learn more of her.
+
+"Meantime, I took a look at the road at the end of the lane. It was damper
+than the lane, being lower, and overhung by trees. There were many
+wheel-tracks, but only one set that turned in the road and went back the
+way it came, toward the town; and they were narrow wheels--carriage
+wheels. Crockett tells me now that they drove him about for a long time
+before shutting him up; probably the inconvenience of taking him straight
+to the hiding-place didn't strike them when they first drove off.
+
+"A few inquiries soon set me in the direction of the Plough and Miss Nancy
+Webb. I had the curiosity to look around the place as I approached, and
+there, in the garden behind the house, were Steggles and the young lady in
+earnest confabulation!
+
+"Every conjecture became a certainty. Steggles was the lover of whom
+Crockett was jealous, and he had employed the girl to bring Sammy out. I
+watched Steggles home, and gave you a hint to keep him there.
+
+"But the thing that remained was to find Steggles' employer in this
+business. I was glad to be in when Danby called. He came, of course, to
+hear if you would blurt out anything, and to learn, if possible, what
+steps you were taking. He failed. By way of making assurance doubly sure I
+took a short walk this morning in the character of a deaf gentleman, and
+got Miss Webb to write me a direction that comprised three of the words on
+these scraps of paper--'left,' 'right,' and 'lane'; see, they correspond,
+the peculiar 'f's,' 't's,' and all.
+
+"Now, I felt perfectly sure that Steggles would go for his pay to-day. In
+the first place, I knew that people mixed up with shady transactions in
+professional pedestrianism are not apt to trust one another far--they know
+better. Therefore Steggles wouldn't have had his bribe first. But he would
+take care to get it before the Saturday heats were run, because once they
+were over the thing was done, and the principal conspirator might have
+refused to pay up, and Steggles couldn't have helped himself. Again I
+hinted he should not go out till I could follow him, and this afternoon,
+when he went, follow him I did. I saw him go into Danby's house by the
+side way and come away again. Danby it was, then, who had arranged the
+business; and nobody was more likely, considering his large pecuniary
+stake against Crockett's winning this race.
+
+"But now how to find Crockett? I made up my mind he wouldn't be in Danby's
+own house. That would be a deal too risky, with servants about and so on.
+I saw that Danby was a builder, and had three shops to let--it was on a
+paper before his house. What more likely prison than an empty house? I
+knocked at Danby's door and asked for the keys of those shops. I couldn't
+have them. The servant told me Danby was out (a manifest lie, for I had
+just seen him), and that nobody could see the shops till Monday. But I got
+out of her the address of the shops, and that was all I wanted at the
+time.
+
+"Now, why was nobody to see those shops till Monday? The interval was
+suspicious--just enough to enable Crockett to be sent away again and cast
+loose after the Saturday racing, supposing him to be kept in one of the
+empty buildings. I went off at once and looked at the shops, forming my
+conclusions as to which would be the most likely for Danby's purpose. Here
+I had another confirmation of my ideas. A poor, half-bankrupt baker in one
+of the shops had, by the bills, the custody of a set of keys; but he, too,
+told me I couldn't have them; Danby had taken them away--and on Thursday,
+the very day--with some trivial excuse, and hadn't brought them back. That
+was all I wanted or could expect in the way of guidance. The whole thing
+was plain. The rest you know all about."
+
+"Well, you're certainly as smart as they give you credit for, I must say.
+But suppose Danby had taken down his 'To Let' notice, what would you have
+done, then?"
+
+"We had our course, even then. We should have gone to Danby, astounded him
+by telling him all about his little games, terrorized him with threats of
+the law, and made him throw up his hand and send Crockett back. But, as it
+is, you see, he doesn't know at this moment--probably won't know till
+to-morrow afternoon--that the lad is safe and sound here. You will
+probably use the interval to make him pay for losing the game--by some of
+the ingenious financial devices you are no doubt familiar with."
+
+"Ay, that I will. He'll give any price against Crockett now, so long as
+the bet don't come direct from me."
+
+"But about Crockett, now," Hewitt went on. "Won't this confinement be
+likely to have damaged his speed for a day or two?"
+
+"Ah, perhaps," the landlord replied; "but, bless ye, that won't matter.
+There's four more in his heat to-morrow. Two I know aren't tryers, and the
+other two I can hold in at a couple of quid apiece any day. The third
+round and final won't be till to-morrow week, and he'll be as fit as ever
+by then. It's as safe as ever it was. How much are you going to have on?
+I'll lump it on for you safe enough. This is a chance not to be missed;
+it's picking money up."
+
+"Thank you; I don't think I'll have anything to do with it. This
+professional pedestrian business doesn't seem a pretty one at all. I don't
+call myself a moralist, but, if you'll excuse my saying so, the thing is
+scarcely the game I care to pick tap money at in any way."
+
+"Oh, very well! if you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't think
+so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't quarrel;
+you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I
+aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you've
+got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll pay it
+like a lord, and feel a deal more pleased than if you made a favor of
+it--not that I'm above a favor, of course. But I'd prefer paying, and
+that's a fact."
+
+"My dear sir, you have paid," Hewitt said, with a smile. "You paid in
+advance. It was a bargain, wasn't it, that I should do your business if
+you would help me in mine? Very well; a bargain's a bargain, and we've
+both performed our parts. And you mustn't be offended at what I said just
+now."
+
+"That I won't! But as to that Raggy Steggles, once those heats are over
+to-morrow, I'll--well----"
+
+It was on the following Sunday week that Martin Hewitt, in his rooms in
+London, turned over his paper and read, under the head "Padfield Annual
+135 Yards Handicap," this announcement: "Final heat: Crockett, first;
+Willis, second; Trewby, third; Owen, 0; Howell, 0. A runaway win by nearly
+three yards."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT.
+
+Almost the only dogmatism that Martin Hewitt permitted himself in regard
+to his professional methods was one on the matter of accumulative
+probabilities. Often when I have remarked upon the apparently trivial
+nature of the clews by which he allowed himself to be guided--sometimes,
+to all seeming, in the very face of all likelihood--he has replied that
+two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became at once, by their
+mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important
+considerations. "If I were in search of a man," he would say, "of whom I
+knew nothing but that he squinted, bore a birthmark on his right hand, and
+limped, and I observed a man who answered to the first peculiarity, so far
+the clue would be trivial, because thousands of men squint. Now, if that
+man presently moved and exhibited a birthmark on his right hand, the
+value of that squint and that mark would increase at once a hundred or
+a thousand fold. Apart they are little; together much. The weight of
+evidence is not doubled merely; it would be only doubled if half the men
+who squinted had right-hand birthmarks; whereas the proportion, if it
+could be ascertained, would be, perhaps, more like one in ten thousand.
+The two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become very strong
+evidence. And, when the man is seen to walk with a limp, that limp
+(another triviality), re-enforcing the others, brings the matter to the
+rank of a practical certainty. The Bertillon system of identification--what
+is it but a summary of trivialities? Thousands of men are of the same
+height, thousands of the same length of foot, thousands of the same girth
+of head--thousands correspond in any separate measurement you may name. It
+is when the measurements are taken _together_ that you have your man
+identified forever. Just consider how few, if any, of your friends
+correspond exactly in any two personal peculiarities." Hewitt's dogma
+received its illustration unexpectedly close at home.
+
+The old house wherein my chambers and Hewitt's office were situated
+contained, besides my own, two or three more bachelors' dens, in addition
+to the offices on the ground and first and second floors. At the very top
+of all, at the back, a fat, middle-aged man, named Foggatt, occupied a set
+of four rooms. It was only after a long residence, by an accidental remark
+of the housekeeper's, that I learned the man's name, which was not painted
+on his door or displayed, with all the others, on the wall of the
+ground-floor porch.
+
+Mr. Foggatt appeared to have few friends, but lived in something as nearly
+approaching luxury as an old bachelor living in chambers can live. An
+ascending case of champagne was a common phenomenon of the staircase, and
+I have more than once seen a picture, destined for the top floor, of a
+sort that went far to awaken green covetousness in the heart of a poor
+journalist.
+
+The man himself was not altogether prepossessing. Fat as he was, he had a
+way of carrying his head forward on his extended neck and gazing widely
+about with a pair of the roundest and most prominent eyes I remember to
+have ever seen, except in a fish. On the whole, his appearance was rather
+vulgar, rather arrogant, and rather suspicious, without any very
+pronounced quality of any sort. But certainly he was not pretty. In the
+end, however, he was found shot dead in his sitting-room.
+
+It was in this way: Hewitt and I had dined together at my club, and late
+in the evening had returned to my rooms to smoke and discuss whatever came
+uppermost. I had made a bargain that day with two speculative odd lots at
+a book sale, each of which contained a hidden prize. We sat talking and
+turning over these books while time went unperceived, when suddenly we
+were startled by a loud report. Clearly it was in the building. We
+listened for a moment, but heard nothing else, and then Hewitt expressed
+his opinion that the report was that of a gunshot. Gunshots in residential
+chambers are not common things, wherefore I got up and went to the
+landing, looking up the stairs and down.
+
+At the top of the next flight I saw Mrs. Clayton, the housekeeper. She
+appeared to be frightened, and told me that the report came from Mr.
+Foggatt's room. She thought he might have had an accident with the pistol
+that usually lay on his mantel-piece. We went upstairs with her, and she
+knocked at Mr. Foggatt's door.
+
+There was no reply. Through the ventilating fanlight over the door it
+could be seen that there were lights within, a sign, Mrs. Clayton
+maintained, that Mr. Foggatt was not out. We knocked again, much more
+loudly, and called, but still ineffectually. The door was locked, and an
+application of the housekeeper's key proved that the tenant's key had been
+left in the lock inside. Mrs. Clayton's conviction that "something had
+happened" became distressing, and in the end Hewitt pried open the door
+with a small poker.
+
+Something _had_ happened. In the sitting-room Mr. Foggatt sat with his
+head bowed over the table, quiet and still. The head was ill to look at,
+and by it lay a large revolver, of the full-sized army pattern. Mrs.
+Clayton ran back toward the landing with faint screams.
+
+"Run, Brett!" said Hewitt; "a doctor and a policeman!"
+
+I bounced down the stairs half a flight at a time. "First," I thought, "a
+doctor. He may not be dead." I could think of no doctor in the immediate
+neighborhood, but ran up the street away from the Strand, as being the
+more likely direction for the doctor, although less so for the policeman.
+It took me a good five minutes to find the medico, after being led astray
+by a red lamp at a private hotel, and another five to get back, with a
+policeman.
+
+Foggatt was dead, without a doubt. Probably had shot himself, the doctor
+thought, from the powder-blackening and other circumstances. Certainly
+nobody could have left the room by the door, or he must have passed my
+landing, while the fact of the door being found locked from the inside
+made the thing impossible. There were two windows to the room, both of
+which were shut, one being fastened by the catch, while the catch of the
+other was broken--an old fracture. Below these windows was a sheer drop of
+fifty feet or more, without a foot or hand-hold near. The windows in the
+other rooms were shut and fastened. Certainly it seemed suicide--unless it
+were one of those accidents that will occur to people who fiddle
+ignorantly with firearms. Soon the rooms were in possession of the police,
+and we were turned out.
+
+We looked in at the housekeeper's kitchen, where her daughter was reviving
+and calming Mrs. Clayton with gin and water.
+
+"You mustn't upset yourself, Mrs. Clayton," Hewitt said, "or what will
+become of us all? The doctor thinks it was an accident."
+
+He took a small bottle of sewing-machine oil from his pocket and handed it
+to the daughter, thanking her for the loan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was little evidence at the inquest. The shot had been heard, the
+body had been found--that was the practical sum of the matter. No friends
+or relatives of the dead man came forward. The doctor gave his opinion as
+to the probability of suicide or an accident, and the police evidence
+tended in the same direction. Nothing had been found to indicate that any
+other person had been near the dead man's rooms on the night of the
+fatality. On the other hand, his papers, bankbook, etc., proved him to be
+a man of considerable substance, with no apparent motive for suicide. The
+police had been unable to trace any relatives, or, indeed, any nearer
+connections than casual acquaintances, fellow-clubmen, and so on. The jury
+found that Mr. Foggatt had died by accident.
+
+"Well, Brett," Hewitt asked me afterward, "what do you think of the
+verdict?"
+
+I said that it seemed to be the most reasonable one possible, and to
+square with the common-sense view of the case.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "perhaps it does. From the point of view of the jury,
+and on their information, their verdict was quite reasonable.
+Nevertheless, Mr. Foggatt did not shoot himself. He was shot by a rather
+tall, active young man, perhaps a sailor, but certainly a gymnast--a young
+man whom I think I could identify if I saw him."
+
+"But how do you know this?"
+
+"By the simplest possible inferences, which you may easily guess, if you
+will but think."
+
+"But, then, why didn't you say this at the inquest?"
+
+"My dear fellow, they don't want any inferences and conjectures at an
+inquest; they only want evidence. If I had traced the murderer, of course
+then I should have communicated with the police. As a matter of fact, it
+is quite possible that the police have observed and know as much as I
+do--or more. They don't give everything away at an inquest, you know. It
+wouldn't do."
+
+"But, if you are right, how did the man get away?"
+
+"Come, we are near home now. Let us take a look at the back of the house.
+He _couldn't_ have left by Foggatt's landing door, as we know; and as he
+_was_ there (I am certain of that), and as the chimney is out of the
+question--for there was a good fire in the grate--he must have gone out by
+the window. Only one window is possible--that with the broken catch--for
+all the others were fastened inside. Out of that window, then, he went."
+
+"But how? The window is fifty feet up."
+
+"Of course it is. But why _will_ you persist in assuming that the only way
+of escape by a window is downward? See, now, look up there. The window is
+at the top floor, and it has a very broad sill. Over the window is nothing
+but the flat face of the gable-end; but to the right, and a foot or two
+above the level of the top of the window, an iron gutter ends. Observe, it
+is not of lead composition, but a strong iron gutter, supported, just at
+its end, by an iron bracket. If a tall man stood on the end of the
+window-sill, steadying himself by the left hand and leaning to the right,
+he could just touch the end of this gutter with his right hand. The full
+stretch, toe to finger, is seven feet three inches. I have measured it. An
+active gymnast, or a sailor, could catch the gutter with a slight spring,
+and by it draw himself upon the roof. You will say he would have to be
+_very_ active, dexterous, and cool. So he would. And that very fact helps
+us, because it narrows the field of inquiry. We know the sort of man to
+look for. Because, being certain (as I am) that the man was in the room, I
+_know_ that he left in the way I am telling you. He must have left in some
+way, and, all the other ways being impossible, this alone remains,
+difficult as the feat may seem. The fact of his shutting the window behind
+him further proves his coolness and address at so great a height from the
+ground."
+
+All this was very plain, but the main point was still dark.
+
+"You say you _know_ that another man was in the room," I said; "how do you
+know that?"
+
+"As I said, by an obvious inference. Come, now, you shall guess how I
+arrived at that inference. You often speak of your interest in my work,
+and the attention with which you follow it. This shall be a simple
+exercise for you. You saw everything in the room as plainly as I myself.
+Bring the scene back to your memory, and think over the various small
+objects littering about, and how they would affect the case. Quick
+observation is the first essential for my work. Did you see a newspaper,
+for instance?"
+
+"Yes. There was an evening paper on the floor, but I didn't examine it."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"On the table there was a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand
+on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as
+though only one person were present."
+
+"So it did, perhaps, although the inference wouldn't be very strong. Go
+on!"
+
+"There was a fruit-stand on the sideboard, with a plate beside it
+containing a few nutshells, a piece of apple, a pair of nut-crackers, and,
+I think, some orange peel. There was, of course, all the ordinary
+furniture, but no chair pulled up to the table, except that used by
+Foggatt himself. That's all I noticed, I think. Stay--there was an
+ash-tray on the table, and a partly burned cigar near it--only one cigar,
+though."
+
+"Excellent--excellent, indeed, as far as memory and simple observation go.
+You saw everything plainly, and you remember everything. Surely _now_ you
+know how I found out that another man had just left?"
+
+"No, I don't; unless there were different kinds of ash in the ash-tray."
+
+"That is a fairly good suggestion, but there were not--there was only a
+single ash, corresponding in every way to that on the cigar. Don't you
+remember everything that I did as we went down-stairs?"
+
+"You returned a bottle of oil to the housekeeper's daughter, I think."
+
+"I did. Doesn't that give you a hint? Come, you surely have it now?"
+
+"I haven't."
+
+"Then I sha'n't tell you; you don't deserve it. Think, and don't mention
+the subject again till you have at least one guess to make. The thing
+stares you in the face; you see it, you remember it, and yet you _won't_
+see it. I won't encourage your slovenliness of thought, my boy, by telling
+you what you can know for yourself if you like. Good-by--I'm off now.
+There's a case in hand I can't neglect."
+
+"Don't you propose to go further into this, then?"
+
+Hewitt shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not a policeman," he said. "The case
+is in very good hands. Of course, if anybody comes to me to do it as a
+matter of business, I'll take it up. It's very interesting, but I can't
+neglect my regular work for it. Naturally, I shall keep my eyes open and
+my memory in order. Sometimes these things come into the hands by
+themselves, as it were; in that case, of course, I am a loyal citizen, and
+ready to help the law. _Au revoir_!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am a busy man myself, and thought little more of Hewitt's conundrum for
+some time; indeed, when I did think, I saw no way to the answer. A week
+after the inquest I took a holiday (I had written my nightly leaders
+regularly every day for the past five years), and saw no more of Hewitt
+for six weeks. After my return, with still a few days of leave to run, one
+evening we together turned into Luzatti's, off Coventry Street, for
+dinner.
+
+"I have been here several times lately," Hewitt said; "they feed you very
+well. No, not that table"--he seized my arm as I turned to an unoccupied
+corner--"I fancy it's draughty." He led the way to a longer table where a
+dark, lithe, and (as well as could be seen) tall young man already sat,
+and took chairs opposite him.
+
+We had scarcely seated ourselves before Hewitt broke into a torrent of
+conversation on the subject of bicycling. As our previous conversation had
+been of a literary sort, and as I had never known Hewitt at any other time
+to show the slightest interest in bicycling, this rather surprised me. I
+had, however, such a general outsider's grasp of the subject as is usual
+in a journalist-of-all-work, and managed to keep the talk going from my
+side. As we went on I could see the face of the young man opposite
+brighten with interest. He was a rather fine-looking fellow, with a dark,
+though very clear skin, but had a hard, angry look of eye, a prominence of
+cheek-bone, and a squareness of jaw that gave him a rather uninviting
+aspect. As Hewitt rattled on, however, our neighbor's expression became
+one of pleasant interest merely.
+
+"Of course," Hewitt said, "we've a number of very capital men just now,
+but I believe a deal in the forgotten riders of five, ten, and fifteen
+years back. Osmond, I believe, was better than any man riding now, and I
+think it would puzzle some of them to beat Furnivall as he was, at his
+best. But poor old Cortis--really, I believe he was as good as anybody.
+Nobody ever beat Cortis--except--let me see--I think somebody beat Cortis
+once--who was it now? I can't remember."
+
+"Liles," said the young man opposite, looking up quickly.
+
+"Ah, yes--Liles it was; Charley Liles. Wasn't it a championship?"
+
+"Mile championship, 1880; Cortis won the other three, though."
+
+"Yes, so he did. I saw Cortis when he first broke the old 2.46 mile
+record." And straightway Hewitt plunged into a whirl of talk of bicycles,
+tricycles, records, racing cyclists, Hillier, and Synyer and Noel Whiting,
+Taylerson and Appleyard--talk wherein the young man opposite bore an
+animated share, while I was left in the cold.
+
+Our new friend, it seems, had himself been a prominent racing bicyclist a
+few years back, and was presently, at Hewitt's request, exhibiting a neat
+gold medal that hung at his watch-guard. That was won, he explained, in
+the old tall bicycle days, the days of bad tracks, when every racing
+cyclist carried cinder scars on his face from numerous accidents. He
+pointed to a blue mark on his forehead, which, he told us, was a track
+scar, and described a bad fall that had cost him two teeth, and broken
+others. The gaps among his teeth were plain to see as he smiled.
+
+Presently the waiter brought dessert, and the young man opposite took an
+apple. Nut-crackers and a fruit-knife lay on our side of the stand, and
+Hewitt turned the stand to offer him the knife.
+
+"No, thanks," he said; "I only polish a good apple, never peel it. It's a
+mistake, except with thick-skinned foreign ones."
+
+And he began to munch the apple as only a boy or a healthy athlete can.
+Presently he turned his head to order coffee. The waiter's back was
+turned, and he had to be called twice. To my unutterable amazement Hewitt
+reached swiftly across the table, snatched the half-eaten apple from the
+young man's plate and pocketed it, gazing immediately, with an abstracted
+air, at a painted Cupid on the ceiling.
+
+Our neighbor turned again, looked doubtfully at his plate and the
+table-cloth about it, and then shot a keen glance in the direction of
+Hewitt. He said nothing, however, but took his coffee and his bill,
+deliberately drank the former, gazing quietly at Hewitt as he did it, paid
+the latter, and left.
+
+Immediately Hewitt was on his feet and, taking an umbrella, which stood
+near, followed. Just as he reached the door he met our late neighbor, who
+had turned suddenly back.
+
+"Your umbrella, I think?" Hewitt asked, offering it.
+
+"Yes, thanks." But the man's eye had more than its former hardness, and
+his jaw muscles tightened as I looked. He turned and went. Hewitt came
+back to me. "Pay the bill," he said, "and go back to your rooms; I will
+come on later. I must follow this man--it's the Foggatt case." As he went
+out I heard a cab rattle away, and immediately after it another.
+
+I paid the bill and went home. It was ten o'clock before Hewitt turned up,
+calling in at his office below on his way up to me.
+
+"Mr. Sidney Mason," he said, "is the gentleman the police will be wanting
+to-morrow, I expect, for the Foggatt murder. He is as smart a man as I
+remember ever meeting, and has done me rather neatly twice this evening."
+
+"You mean the man we sat opposite at Luzatti's, of course?"
+
+"Yes, I got his name, of course, from the reverse of that gold medal he
+was good enough to show me. But I fear he has bilked me over the address.
+He suspected me, that was plain, and left his umbrella by way of
+experiment to see if I were watching him sharply enough to notice the
+circumstance, and to avail myself of it to follow him. I was hasty and
+fell into the trap. He cabbed it away from Luzatti's, and I cabbed it
+after him. He has led me a pretty dance up and down London to-night, and
+two cabbies have made quite a stroke of business out of us. In the end he
+entered a house of which, of course, I have taken the address, but I
+expect he doesn't live there. He is too smart a man to lead me to his den;
+but the police can certainly find something of him at the house he went in
+at--and, I expect, left by the back way. By the way, you never guessed
+that simple little puzzle as to how I found that this _was_ a murder, did
+you? You see it now, of course?"
+
+"Something to do with that apple you stole, I suppose?"
+
+"Something to do with it? I should think so, you worthy innocent. Just
+ring your bell; we'll borrow Mrs. Clayton's sewing-machine oil again. On
+the night we broke into Foggatt's room you saw the nutshells and the
+bitten remains of an apple on the sideboard, and you remembered it; and
+yet you couldn't see that in that piece of apple possibly lay an important
+piece of evidence. Of course I never expected you to have arrived at any
+conclusion, as I had, because I had ten minutes in which to examine that
+apple, and to do what I did with it. But, at least, you should have seen
+the possibility of evidence in it.
+
+"First, now, the apple was white. A bitten apple, as you must have
+observed, turns of a reddish brown color if left to stand long. Different
+kinds of apples brown with different rapidities, and the browning always
+begins at the core. This is one of the twenty thousand tiny things that
+few people take the trouble to notice, but which it is useful for a man in
+my position to know. A russet will brown quite quickly. The apple on the
+sideboard was, as near as I could tell, a Newtown pippin or other apple of
+that kind, which will brown at the core in from twenty minutes to half an
+hour, and in other parts in a quarter of an hour more. When we saw it, it
+was white, with barely a tinge of brown about the exposed core. Inference,
+somebody had been eating it fifteen or twenty minutes before, perhaps a
+little longer--an inference supported by the fact that it was only partly
+eaten.
+
+"I examined that apple, and found it bore marks of very irregular teeth.
+While you were gone, I oiled it over, and, rushing down to my rooms, where
+I always have a little plaster of Paris handy for such work, took a mold
+of the part where the teeth had left the clearest marks. I then returned
+the apple to its place for the police to use if they thought fit. Looking
+at my mold, it was plain that the person who had bitten that apple had
+lost two teeth, one at top and one below, not exactly opposite, but nearly
+so. The other teeth, although they would appear to have been fairly sound,
+were irregular in size and line. Now, the dead man had, as I saw, a very
+excellent set of false teeth, regular and sharp, with none missing.
+Therefore it was plain that somebody _else_ had been eating that apple. Do
+I make myself clear?"
+
+"Quite! Go on!"
+
+"There were other inferences to be made--slighter, but all pointing the
+same way. For instance, a man of Foggatt's age does not, as a rule, munch
+an unpeeled apple like a school-boy. Inference, a young man, and healthy.
+Why I came to the conclusion that he was tall, active, a gymnast, and
+perhaps a sailor, I have already told you, when we examined the outside of
+Foggatt's window. It was also pretty clear that robbery was not the
+motive, since nothing was disturbed, and that a friendly conversation had
+preceded the murder--witness the drinking and the eating of the apple.
+Whether or not the police noticed these things I can't say. If they had
+had their best men on, they certainly would, I think; but the case, to a
+rough observer, looked so clearly one of accident or suicide that possibly
+they didn't.
+
+"As I said, after the inquest I was unable to devote any immediate time to
+the case, but I resolved to keep my eyes open. The man to look for was
+tall, young, strong and active, with a very irregular set of teeth, a
+tooth missing from the lower jaw just to the left of the center, and
+another from the upper jaw a little farther still toward the left. He
+might possibly be a person I had seen about the premises (I have a good
+memory for faces), or, of course, he possibly might not.
+
+"Just before you returned from your holiday I noticed a young man at
+Luzatti's whom I remembered to have seen somewhere about the offices in
+this building. He was tall, young, and so on, but I had a client with me,
+and was unable to examine him more narrowly; indeed, as I was not exactly
+engaged on the case, and as there are several tall young men about, I took
+little trouble. But to-day, finding the same young man with a vacant seat
+opposite him, I took the opportunity of making a closer acquaintance."
+
+"You certainly managed to draw him out."
+
+"Oh, yes; the easiest person in the world to draw out is a cyclist. The
+easiest cyclist to draw out is, of course, the novice, but the next
+easiest is the veteran. When you see a healthy, well-trained-looking man,
+who, nevertheless, has a slight stoop in the shoulders, and, maybe, a
+medal on his watch-guard, it is always a safe card to try him first with a
+little cycle-racing talk. I soon brought Mr. Mason out of his shell, read
+his name on his medal, and had a chance of observing his teeth--indeed, he
+spoke of them himself. Now, as I observed just now, there are several
+tall, athletic young men about, and also there are several men who have
+lost teeth. But now I saw that this tall and athletic young man had lost
+exactly _two_ teeth--one from the lower jaw, just to the left of the
+center, and another from the upper jaw, farther still toward the left!
+Trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became important
+considerations. More, his teeth were irregular throughout, and, as nearly
+as I could remember it, looked remarkably like this little plaster mold of
+mine."
+
+He produced from his pocket an irregular lump of plaster, about three
+inches long. On one side of this appeared in relief the likeness of two
+irregular rows of six or eight teeth, minus one in each row, where a deep
+gap was seen, in the position spoken of by my friend. He proceeded:
+
+"This was enough at least to set me after this young man. But he gave me
+the greatest chance of all when he turned and left his apple (eaten
+unpeeled, remember!--another important triviality) on his plate. I'm
+afraid I wasn't at all polite, and I ran the risk of arousing his
+suspicions, but I couldn't resist the temptation to steal it. I did, as
+you saw, and here it is."
+
+He brought the apple from his coat-pocket. One bitten side, placed against
+the upper half of the mold, fitted precisely, a projection of apple
+filling exactly the deep gap. The other side similarly fitted the lower
+half.
+
+"There's no getting behind that, you see," Hewitt remarked. "Merely
+observing the man's teeth was a guide, to some extent, but this is as
+plain as his signature or his thumb impression. You'll never find two men
+_bite_ exactly alike, no matter whether they leave distinct teeth-marks or
+not. Here, by the by, is Mrs. Clayton's oil. We'll take another mold from
+this apple, and compare _them_."
+
+He oiled the apple, heaped a little plaster in a newspaper, took my
+water-jug, and rapidly pulled off a hard mold. The parts corresponding to
+the merely broken places in the apple were, of course, dissimilar; but as
+to the teeth-marks, the impressions were identical.
+
+"That will do, I think," Hewitt said. "Tomorrow morning, Brett, I shall
+put up these things in a small parcel, and take them round to Bow Street."
+
+"But are they sufficient evidence?"
+
+"Quite sufficient for the police purpose. There is the man, and all the
+rest--his movements on the day and so forth--are simple matters of
+inquiry; at any rate, that is police business."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had scarcely sat down to my breakfast on the following morning when
+Hewitt came into the room and put a long letter before me.
+
+"From our friend of last night," he said; "read it."
+
+This letter began abruptly, and undated, and was as follows:
+
+
+"TO MARTIN HEWITT, ESQ.
+
+"SIR: I must compliment you on the adroitness you exhibited this evening
+in extracting from me my name. The address I was able to balk you of for
+the time being, although by the time you read this you will probably have
+found it through the _Law List_, as I am an admitted solicitor. That,
+however, will be of little use to you, for I am removing myself, I think,
+beyond the reach even of your abilities of search. I knew you well by
+sight, and was, perhaps, foolish to allow myself to be drawn as I did.
+Still, I had no idea that it would be dangerous, especially after seeing
+you, as a witness with very little to say, at the inquest upon the
+scoundrel I shot. Your somewhat discourteous seizure of my apple at first
+amazed me--indeed, I was a little doubtful as to whether you had really
+taken it--but it was my first warning that you might be playing a deep
+game against me, incomprehensible as the action was to my mind. I
+subsequently reflected that I had been eating an apple, instead of taking
+the drink he first offered me, in the dead wretch's rooms on the night he
+came to his merited end. From this I assume that your design was in some
+way to compare what remained of the two apples--although I do not presume
+to fathom the depths of your detective system. Still, I have heard of many
+of your cases, and profoundly admire the keenness you exhibit. I am
+thought to be a keen man myself, but, although I was able, to some extent,
+to hold my own to-night, I admit that your acumen in this case alone is
+something beyond me.
+
+"I do not know by whom you are commissioned to hunt me, nor to what extent
+you may be acquainted with my connection with the creature I killed. I
+have sufficient respect for you, however, to wish that you should not
+regard me as a vicious criminal, and a couple of hours to spare in which
+to offer you an explanation that will convince you that such is not
+altogether the case. A hasty and violent temper I admit possessing; but
+even now I can not forget the one crime it has led me into--for it is, I
+suppose, strictly speaking, a crime. For it was the man Foggatt who made a
+felon of my father before the eyes of the world, and killed him with
+shame. It was he who murdered my mother, and none the less murdered her
+because she died of a broken heart. That he was also a thief and a
+hypocrite might have concerned me little but for that.
+
+"Of my father I remember very little. He must, I fear, have been a weak
+and incapable man in many respects. He had no business abilities--in fact,
+was quite unable to understand the complicated business matters in which
+he largely dealt. Foggatt was a consummate master of all those arts of
+financial jugglery that make so many fortunes, and ruin so many others, in
+matters of company promoting, stocks, and shares. He was unable to
+exercise them, however, because of a great financial disaster in which he
+had been mixed up a few years before, and which made his name one to be
+avoided in future. In these circumstances he made a sort of secret and
+informal partnership with my father, who, ostensibly alone in the
+business, acted throughout on the directions of Foggatt, understanding as
+little what he did, poor, simple man, as a schoolboy would have done. The
+transactions carried on went from small to large, and, unhappily from
+honorable to dishonorable. My father relied on the superior abilities of
+Foggatt with an absolute trust, carrying out each day the directions given
+him privately the previous evening, buying, selling, printing
+prospectuses, signing whatever had to be signed, all with sole
+responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the scenes
+absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and foolish
+father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled
+all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible. At last
+three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible,
+came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all their history,
+and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was left to meet
+ruin, disgrace, and imprisonment. From beginning to end he, and he only,
+was responsible. There was no shred of evidence to connect Foggatt with
+the matter, and no means of escape from the net drawn about my father. He
+lived through three years of imprisonment, and then, entirely abandoned by
+the man who had made use of his simplicity, he died--of nothing but shame
+and a broken heart.
+
+"Of this I knew nothing at the time. Again and again, as a small boy, I
+remember asking of my mother why I had no father at home, as other boys
+had--unconscious of the stab I thus inflicted on her gentle heart. Of her
+my earliest, as well as my latest, memory is that of a pale, weeping
+woman, who grudged to let me out of her sight.
+
+"Little by little I learned the whole cause of my mother's grief, for she
+had no other confidant, and I fear my character developed early, for my
+first coherent remembrance of the matter is that of a childish design to
+take a table-knife and kill the bad man who had made my father die in
+prison and caused my mother to cry.
+
+"One thing, however, I never knew--the name of that bad man. Again and
+again, as I grew older, I demanded to know, but my mother always withheld
+it from me, with a gentle reminder that vengeance was for a greater hand
+than mine.
+
+"I was seventeen years of age when my mother died. I believe that nothing
+but her strong attachment to myself and her desire to see me safely
+started in life kept her alive so long. Then I found that through all
+those years of narrowed means she had contrived to scrape and save a
+little money--sufficient, as it afterward proved, to see me through the
+examinations for entrance to my profession, with the generous assistance
+of my father's old legal advisers, who gave me my articles, and who have
+all along treated me with extreme kindness.
+
+"For most of the succeeding years my life does not concern the matter in
+hand. I was a lawyer's clerk in my benefactors' service, and afterward a
+qualified man among their assistants. All through the firm were careful,
+in pursuance of my poor mother's wishes, that I should not learn the name
+or whereabouts of the man who had wrecked her life and my father's. I
+first met the man himself at the Clifton Club, where I had gone with an
+acquaintance who was a member. It was not till afterward that I understood
+his curious awkwardness on that occasion. A week later I called (as I had
+frequently done) at the building in which your office is situated, on
+business with a solicitor who has an office on the floor above your own.
+On the stairs I almost ran against Mr. Foggatt. He started and turned
+pale, exhibiting signs of alarm that I could not understand, and asked me
+if I wished to see him.
+
+"'No,' I replied, 'I didn't know you lived here. I am after somebody else
+just now. Aren't you well?'
+
+"He looked at me rather doubtfully, and said he was _not_ very well.
+
+"I met him twice or thrice after that, and on each occasion his manner
+grew more friendly, in a servile, flattering, and mean sort of way--a
+thing unpleasant enough in anybody, but doubly so in the intercourse of a
+man with another young enough to be his own son. Still, of course, I
+treated the man civilly enough. On one occasion he asked me into his rooms
+to look at a rather fine picture he had lately bought, and observed
+casually, lifting a large revolver from the mantel-piece:
+
+"'You see, I am prepared for any unwelcome visitors to my little den! He!
+He!' Conceiving him, of course, to refer to burglars, I could not help
+wondering at the forced and hollow character of his laugh. As we went down
+the stairs he said: 'I think we know one another pretty well now, Mr.
+Mason, eh? And if I could do anything to advance your professional
+prospects, I should be glad of the chance, of course. I understand the
+struggles of a young professional man--he! he!' It was the forced laugh
+again, and the man spoke nervously. 'I think,' he added, 'that if you will
+drop in to-morrow evening, perhaps I may have a little proposal to make.
+Will you?'
+
+"I assented, wondering what this proposal could be. Perhaps this eccentric
+old gentleman was a good fellow, after all, anxious to do me a good turn,
+and his awkwardness was nothing but a natural delicacy in breaking the
+ice. I was not so flush of good friends as to be willing to lose one. He
+might be desirous of putting business in my way.
+
+"I went, and was received with cordiality that even then seemed a little
+over-effusive. We sat and talked of one thing and another for a long
+while, and I began to wonder when Mr. Foggatt was coming to the point that
+most interested me. Several times he invited me to drink and smoke, but
+long usage to athletic training has given me a distaste for both
+practices, and I declined. At last he began to talk about myself. He was
+afraid that my professional prospects in this country were not great, but
+he had heard that in some of the colonies--South Africa, for
+example--young lawyers had brilliant opportunities.
+
+"'If you'd like to go there,' he said, 'I've no doubt, with a little
+capital, a clever man like you could get a grand practice together very
+soon. Or you might buy a share in some good established practice. I should
+be glad to let you have £500, or even a little more, if that wouldn't
+satisfy you, and----'
+
+"I stood aghast. Why should this man, almost a stranger, offer me £500, or
+even more, 'if that wouldn't satisfy' me? What claim had I on him? It was
+very generous of him, of course, but out of the question. I was, at least,
+a gentleman, and had a gentleman's self-respect. Meanwhile, he had gone
+maundering on, in a halting sort of way, and presently let slip a sentence
+that struck me like a blow between the eyes.
+
+"'I shouldn't like you to bear ill-will because of what has happened in
+the past,' he said. 'Your late--your late lamented mother--I'm afraid--she
+had unworthy suspicions--I'm sure--it was best for all parties--your
+father always appreciated----'
+
+"I set back my chair and stood erect before him. This groveling wretch,
+forcing the words through his dry lips, was the thief who had made another
+of my father and had brought to miserable ends the lives of both my
+parents! Everything was clear. The creature went in fear of me, never
+imagining that I did not know him, and sought to buy me off--to buy me
+from the remembrance of my dead mother's broken heart for £500--£500 that
+he had made my father steal for him! I said not a word. But the memory of
+all my mother's bitter years, and a savage sense of this crowning insult
+to myself, took a hold upon me, and I was a tiger. Even then I verily
+believe that one word of repentance, one tone of honest remorse, would
+have saved him. But he drooped his eyes, snuffled excuses, and stammered
+of 'unworthy suspicions' and 'no ill-will.' I let him stammer. Presently
+he looked up and saw my face; and fell back in his chair, sick with
+terror. I snatched the pistol from the mantel-piece, and, thrusting it in
+his face, shot him where he sat.
+
+"My subsequent coolness and quietness surprise me now. I took my hat and
+stepped toward the door. But there were voices on the stairs. The door was
+locked on the inside, and I left it so. I went back and quietly opened a
+window. Below was a clear drop into darkness, and above was plain wall;
+but away to one side, where the slope of the gable sprang from the roof,
+an iron gutter ended, supported by a strong bracket. It was the only way.
+I got upon the sill and carefully shut the window behind me, for people
+were already knocking at the lobby door. From the end of the sill, holding
+on by the reveal of the window with one hand, leaning and stretching my
+utmost, I caught the gutter, swung myself clear, and scrambled on the
+roof. I climbed over many roofs before I found, in an adjoining street, a
+ladder lashed perpendicularly against the front of a house in course of
+repair. This, to me, was an easy opportunity of descent, notwithstanding
+the boards fastened over the face of the ladder, and I availed myself of
+it.
+
+"I have taken some time and trouble in order that you (so far as I am
+aware the only human being beside myself who knows me to be the author of
+Foggatt's death) shall have at least the means of appraising my crime at
+its just value of culpability. How much you already know of what I have
+told you I can not guess. I am wrong, hardened, and flagitious, I make no
+doubt, but I speak of the facts as they are. You see the thing, of course,
+from your own point of view--I from mine. And I remember my mother!
+
+"Trusting that you will forgive the odd freak of a man--a criminal, let us
+say--who makes a confidant of the man set to hunt him down, I beg leave to
+be, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"SIDNEY MASON."
+
+I read the singular document through and handed it back to Hewitt.
+
+"How does it strike you?" Hewitt asked.
+
+"Mason would seem to be a man of very marked character," I said.
+"Certainly no fool. And, if his tale is true, Foggatt is no great loss to
+the world."
+
+"Just so--if the tale is true. Personally I am disposed to believe it is."
+
+"Where was the letter posted?"
+
+"It wasn't posted. It was handed in with the others from the front-door
+letter-box this morning in an unstamped envelope. He must have dropped it
+in himself during the night. Paper," Hewitt proceeded, holding it up to
+the light, "Turkey mill, ruled foolscap. Envelope, blue, official shape,
+Pirie's watermark. Both quite ordinary and no special marks."
+
+"Where do you suppose he's gone?"
+
+"Impossible to guess. Some might think he meant suicide by the expression
+'beyond the reach even of your abilities of search,' but I scarcely think
+he is the sort of man to do that. No, there is no telling. Something may
+be got by inquiring at his late address, of course; but, when such a man
+tells you he doesn't think you will find him, you may count upon its being
+a difficult job. His opinion is not to be despised."
+
+"What shall you do?"
+
+"Put the letter in the box with the casts for the police. _Fiat justitia_,
+you know, without any question of sentiment. As to the apple, I really
+think, if the police will let me, I'll make you a present of it. Keep it
+somewhere as a souvenir of your absolute deficiency in reflective
+observation in this case, and look at it whenever you feel yourself
+growing dangerously conceited. It should cure you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the history of the withered and almost petrified half apple that
+stands in my cabinet among a number of flint implements and one or two
+rather fine old Roman vessels. Of Mr. Sidney Mason we never heard another
+word. The police did their best, but he had left not a track behind him.
+His rooms were left almost undisturbed, and he had gone without anything
+in the way of elaborate preparation for his journey, and without leaving a
+trace of his intentions.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO.
+
+Hewitt was very apt, in conversation, to dwell upon the many curious
+chances and coincidences that he had observed, not only in connection with
+his own cases, but also in matters dealt with by the official police, with
+whom he was on terms of pretty regular, and, indeed, friendly,
+acquaintanceship. He has told me many an anecdote of singular happenings
+to Scotland Yard officials with whom he has exchanged experiences. Of
+Inspector Nettings, for instance, who spent many weary months in a search
+for a man wanted by the American Government, and in the end found, by the
+merest accident (a misdirected call), that the man had been lodging next
+door to himself the whole of the time; just as ignorant, of course, as was
+the inspector himself as to the enemy at the other side of the party-wall.
+Also of another inspector, whose name I can not recall, who, having been
+given rather meager and insufficient details of a man whom he anticipated
+having great difficulty in finding, went straight down the stairs of the
+office where he had received instructions, and actually _fell over_ the
+man near the door, where he had stooped down to tie his shoe-lace! There
+were cases, too, in which, when a great and notorious crime had been
+committed, and various persons had been arrested on suspicion, some were
+found among them who had long been badly wanted for some other crime
+altogether. Many criminals had met their deserts by venturing out of their
+own particular line of crime into another; often a man who got into
+trouble over something comparatively small found himself in for a
+startlingly larger trouble, the result of some previous misdeed that
+otherwise would have gone unpunished. The ruble note-forger Mirsky might
+never have been handed over to the Russian authorities had he confined his
+genius to forgery alone. It was generally supposed at the time of his
+extradition that he had communicated with the Russian Embassy, with a view
+to giving himself up--a foolish proceeding on his part, it would seem,
+since his whereabouts, indeed even his identity as the forger, had not
+been suspected. He _had_ communicated with the Russian Embassy, it is
+true, but for quite a different purpose, as Martin Hewitt well understood
+at the time. What that purpose was is now for the first time published.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The time was half-past one in the afternoon, and Hewitt sat in his inner
+office examining and comparing the handwriting of two letters by the aid
+of a large lens. He put down the lens and glanced at the clock on the
+mantel-piece with a premonition of lunch; and as he did so his clerk
+quietly entered the room with one of those printed slips which were kept
+for the announcement of unknown visitors. It was filled up in a hasty and
+almost illegible hand, thus:
+
+Name of visitor: _F. Graham Dixon_.
+
+Address: _Chancery Lane_.
+
+Business: _Private and urgent_.
+
+"Show Mr. Dixon in," said Martin Hewitt.
+
+Mr. Dixon was a gaunt, worn-looking man of fifty or so, well, although
+rather carelessly, dressed, and carrying in his strong, though drawn, face
+and dullish eyes the look that characterizes the life-long strenuous
+brain-worker. He leaned forward anxiously in the chair which Hewitt
+offered him, and told his story with a great deal of very natural
+agitation.
+
+"You may possibly have heard, Mr. Hewitt--I know there are rumors--of the
+new locomotive torpedo which the government is about adopting; it is, in
+fact, the Dixon torpedo, my own invention, and in every respect--not
+merely in my own opinion, but in that of the government experts--by far
+the most efficient and certain yet produced. It will travel at least four
+hundred yards farther than any torpedo now made, with perfect accuracy of
+aim (a very great desideratum, let me tell you), and will carry an
+unprecedentedly heavy charge. There are other advantages--speed, simple
+discharge, and so forth--that I needn't bother you about. The machine is
+the result of many years of work and disappointment, and its design has
+only been arrived at by a careful balancing of principles and means, which
+are expressed on the only four existing sets of drawings. The whole thing,
+I need hardly tell you, is a profound secret, and you may judge of my
+present state of mind when I tell you that one set of drawings has been
+stolen."
+
+"From your house?"
+
+"From my office, in Chancery Lane, this morning. The four sets of drawings
+were distributed thus: Two were at the Admiralty Office, one being a
+finished set on thick paper, and the other a set of tracings therefrom;
+and the other two were at my own office, one being a penciled set,
+uncolored--a sort of finished draft, you understand--and the other a set
+of tracings similar to those at the Admiralty. It is this last set that
+has gone. The two sets were kept together in one drawer in my room. Both
+were there at ten this morning; of that I am sure, for I had to go to that
+very drawer for something else when I first arrived. But at twelve the
+tracings had vanished."
+
+"You suspect somebody, probably?"
+
+"I can not. It is a most extraordinary thing. Nobody has left the office
+(except myself, and then only to come to you) since ten this morning, and
+there has been no visitor. And yet the drawings are gone!"
+
+"But have you searched the place?"
+
+"Of course I have! It was twelve o'clock when I first discovered my loss,
+and I have been turning the place upside down ever since--I and my
+assistants. Every drawer has been emptied, every desk and table turned
+over, the very carpet and linoleum have been taken up, but there is not a
+sign of the drawings. My men even insisted on turning all their pockets
+inside out, although I never for a moment suspected either of them, and it
+would take a pretty big pocket to hold the drawings, doubled up as small
+as they might be."
+
+"You say your men--there are two, I understand--had neither left the
+office?"
+
+"Neither; and they are both staying in now. Worsfold suggested that it
+would be more satisfactory if they did not leave till something was done
+toward clearing the mystery up, and, although, as I have said, I don't
+suspect either in the least, I acquiesced."
+
+"Just so. Now--I am assuming that you wish me to undertake the recovery of
+these drawings?"
+
+The engineer nodded hastily.
+
+"Very good; I will go round to your office. But first perhaps you can tell
+me something about your assistants--something it might be awkward to tell
+me in their presence, you know. Mr. Worsfold, for instance?"
+
+"He is my draughtsman--a very excellent and intelligent man, a very smart
+man, indeed, and, I feel sure, quite beyond suspicion. He has prepared
+many important drawings for me (he has been with me nearly ten years now),
+and I have always found him trustworthy. But, of course, the temptation in
+this case would be enormous. Still, I can not suspect Worsfold. Indeed,
+how can I suspect anybody in the circumstances?"
+
+"The other, now?"
+
+"His name's Ritter. He is merely a tracer, not a fully skilled
+draughtsman. He is quite a decent young fellow, and I have had him two
+years. I don't consider him particularly smart, or he would have learned a
+little more of his business by this time. But I don't see the least reason
+to suspect him. As I said before, I can't reasonably suspect anybody."
+
+"Very well; we will get to Chancery Lane now, if you please, and you can
+tell me more as we go."
+
+"I have a cab waiting. What else can I tell you?"
+
+"I understand the position to be succinctly this: The drawings were in the
+office when you arrived. Nobody came out, and nobody went in; and _yet_
+they vanished. Is that so?"
+
+"That is so. When I say that absolutely nobody came in, of course I except
+the postman. He brought a couple of letters during the morning. I mean
+that absolutely nobody came past the barrier in the outer office--the
+usual thing, you know, like a counter, with a frame of ground glass over
+it."
+
+"I quite understand that. But I think you said that the drawings were in a
+drawer in your _own_ room--not the outer office, where the draughtsmen
+are, I presume?"
+
+"That is the case. It is an inner room, or, rather, a room parallel with
+the other, and communicating with it; just as your own room is, which we
+have just left."
+
+"But, then, you say you never left your office, and yet the drawings
+vanished--apparently by some unseen agency--while you were there in the
+room?"
+
+"Let me explain more clearly." The cab was bowling smoothly along the
+Strand, and the engineer took out a pocket-book and pencil. "I fear," he
+proceeded, "that I am a little confused in my explanation--I am naturally
+rather agitated. As you will see presently, my offices consist of three
+rooms, two at one side of a corridor, and the other opposite--thus." He
+made a rapid pencil sketch.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"In the outer office my men usually work. In the inner office I work
+myself. These rooms communicate, as you see, by a door. Our ordinary way
+in and out of the place is by the door of the outer office leading into
+the corridor, and we first pass through the usual lifting flap in the
+barrier. The door leading from the _inner_ office to the corridor is
+always kept locked on the inside, and I don't suppose I unlock it once in
+three months. It has not been unlocked all the morning. The drawer in
+which the missing drawings were kept, and in which I saw them at ten
+o'clock this morning, is at the place marked D; it is a large chest of
+shallow drawers in which the plans lie flat."
+
+"I quite understand. Then there is the private room opposite. What of
+that?"
+
+"That is a sort of private sitting-room that I rarely use, except for
+business interviews of a very private nature. When I said I never left my
+office, I did not mean that I never stirred out of the inner office. I was
+about in one room and another, both the outer and the inner offices, and
+once I went into the private room for five minutes, but nobody came either
+in or out of any of the rooms at that time, for the door of the private
+room was wide open, and I was standing at the book-case (I had gone to
+consult a book), just inside the door, with a full view of the doors
+opposite. Indeed, Worsfold was at the door of the outer office most of the
+short time. He came to ask me a question."
+
+"Well," Hewitt replied, "it all comes to the simple first statement. You
+know that nobody left the place or arrived, except the postman, who
+couldn't get near the drawings, and yet the drawings went. Is this your
+office?"
+
+The cab had stopped before a large stone building. Mr. Dixon alighted and
+led the way to the first-floor. Hewitt took a casual glance round each of
+the three rooms. There was a sort of door in the frame of ground glass
+over the barrier to admit of speech with visitors. This door Hewitt pushed
+wide open, and left so.
+
+He and the engineer went into the inner office. "Would you like to ask
+Worsfold and Ritter any questions?" Mr. Dixon inquired.
+
+"Presently. Those are their coats, I take it, hanging just to the right of
+the outer office door, over the umbrella stand?"
+
+"Yes, those are all their things--coats, hats, stick, and umbrella."
+
+"And those coats were searched, you say?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And this is the drawer--thoroughly searched, of course?"
+
+"Oh, certainly; every drawer was taken out and turned over."
+
+"Well, of course I must assume you made no mistake in your hunt. Now tell
+me, did anybody know where these plans were, beyond yourself and your two
+men?"
+
+"As far as I can tell, not a soul."
+
+"You don't keep an office boy?"
+
+"No. There would be nothing for him to do except to post a letter now and
+again, which Ritter does quite well for."
+
+"As you are quite sure that the drawings were there at ten o'clock,
+perhaps the thing scarcely matters. But I may as well know if your men
+have keys of the office?"
+
+"Neither. I have patent locks to each door and I keep all the keys myself.
+If Worsfold or Ritter arrive before me in the morning they have to wait to
+be let in; and I am always present myself when the rooms are cleaned. I
+have not neglected precautions, you see."
+
+"No. I suppose the object of the theft--assuming it is a theft--is pretty
+plain: the thief would offer the drawings for sale to some foreign
+government?"
+
+"Of course. They would probably command a great sum. I have been looking,
+as I need hardly tell you, to that invention to secure me a very large
+fortune, and I shall be ruined, indeed, if the design is taken abroad. I
+am under the strictest engagements to secrecy with the Admiralty, and not
+only should I lose all my labor, but I should lose all the confidence
+reposed in me at headquarters; should, in fact, be subject to penalties
+for breach of contract, and my career stopped forever. I can not tell you
+what a serious business this is for me. If you can not help me, the
+consequences will be terrible. Bad for the service of the country, too, of
+course."
+
+"Of course. Now tell me this: It would, I take it, be necessary for the
+thief to _exhibit_ these drawings to anybody anxious to buy the secret--I
+mean, he couldn't describe the invention by word of mouth."
+
+"Oh, no, that would be impossible. The drawings are of the most
+complicated description, and full of figures upon which the whole thing
+depends. Indeed, one would have to be a skilled expert to properly
+appreciate the design at all. Various principles of hydrostatics,
+chemistry, electricity, and pneumatics are most delicately manipulated and
+adjusted, and the smallest error or omission in any part would upset the
+whole. No, the drawings are necessary to the thing, and they are gone."
+
+At this moment the door of the outer office was heard to open and somebody
+entered. The door between the two offices was ajar, and Hewitt could see
+right through to the glass door left open over the barrier and into the
+space beyond. A well-dressed, dark, bushy-bearded man stood there carrying
+a hand-bag, which he placed on the ledge before him. Hewitt raised his
+hand to enjoin silence. The man spoke in a rather high-pitched voice and
+with a slight accent. "Is Mr. Dixon now within?" he asked.
+
+"He is engaged," answered one of the draughtsmen; "very particularly
+engaged. I am afraid you won't be able to see him this afternoon. Can I
+give him any message?"
+
+"This is two--the second time I have come to-day. Not two hours ago Mr.
+Dixon himself tells me to call again. I have a very important--very
+excellent steam-packing to show him that is very cheap and the best of the
+market." The man tapped his bag. "I have just taken orders from the
+largest railway companies. Can not I see him, for one second only? I will
+not detain him."
+
+"Really, I'm sure you can't this afternoon; he isn't seeing anybody. But
+if you'll leave your name----"
+
+"My name is Hunter; but what the good of that? He ask me to call a little
+later, and I come, and now he is engaged. It is a very great pity." And
+the man snatched up his bag and walking-stick, and stalked off,
+indignantly.
+
+Hewitt stood still, gazing through the small aperture in the doorway.
+
+"You'd scarcely expect a man with such a name as Hunter to talk with that
+accent, would you?" he observed, musingly. "It isn't a French accent, nor
+a German; but it seems foreign. You don't happen to know him, I suppose?"
+
+"No, I don't. He called here about half-past twelve, just while we were in
+the middle of our search and I was frantic over the loss of the drawings.
+I was in the outer office myself, and told him to call later. I have lots
+of such agents here, anxious to sell all sorts of engineering appliances.
+But what will you do now? Shall you see my men?"
+
+"I think," said Hewitt, rising--"I think I'll get you to question them
+yourself."
+
+"Myself?"
+
+"Yes, I have a reason. Will you trust me with the 'key' of the private
+room opposite? I will go over there for a little, while you talk to your
+men in this room. Bring them in here and shut the door; I can look after
+the office from across the corridor, you know. Ask them each to detail his
+exact movements about the office this morning, and get them to recall each
+visitor who has been here from the beginning of the week. I'll let you
+know the reason of this later. Come across to me in a few minutes."
+
+Hewitt took the key and passed through the outer office into the corridor.
+
+Ten minutes later Mr. Dixon, having questioned his draughtsmen, followed
+him. He found Hewitt standing before the table in the private room, on
+which lay several drawings on tracing-paper.
+
+"See here, Mr. Dixon," said Hewitt, "I think these are the drawings you
+are anxious about?"
+
+The engineer sprang toward them with a cry of delight. "Why, yes, yes," he
+exclaimed, turning them over, "every one of them! But where--how--they
+must have been in the place after all, then? What a fool I have been!"
+
+Hewitt shook his head. "I'm afraid you're not quite so lucky as you think,
+Mr. Dixon," he said. "These drawings have most certainly been out of the
+house for a little while. Never mind how--we'll talk of that after. There
+is no time to lose. Tell me--how long would it take a good draughtsman to
+copy them?"
+
+"They couldn't possibly be traced over properly in less than two or two
+and a half long days of very hard work," Dixon replied with eagerness.
+
+"Ah! then it is as I feared. These tracings have been photographed, Mr.
+Dixon, and our task is one of every possible difficulty. If they had been
+copied in the ordinary way, one might hope to get hold of the copy. But
+photography upsets everything. Copies can be multiplied with such amazing
+facility that, once the thief gets a decent start, it is almost hopeless
+to checkmate him. The only chance is to get at the negatives before copies
+are taken. I must act at once; and I fear, between ourselves, it may be
+necessary for me to step very distinctly over the line of the law in the
+matter. You see, to get at those negatives may involve something very like
+house-breaking. There must be no delay, no waiting for legal procedure, or
+the mischief is done. Indeed, I very much question whether you have any
+legal remedy, strictly speaking."
+
+"Mr. Hewitt, I implore you, do what you can. I need not say that all I
+have is at your disposal. I will guarantee to hold you harmless for
+anything that may happen. But do, I entreat you, do everything possible.
+Think of what the consequences may be!"
+
+"Well, yes, so I do," Hewitt remarked, with a smile. "The consequences to
+me, if I were charged with house-breaking, might be something that no
+amount of guarantee could mitigate. However, I will do what I can, if only
+from patriotic motives. Now, I must see your tracer, Ritter. He is the
+traitor in the camp."
+
+"Ritter? But how?"
+
+"Never mind that now. You are upset and agitated, and had better not know
+more than is necessary for a little while, in case you say or do something
+unguarded. With Ritter I must take a deep course; what I don't know I must
+appear to know, and that will seem more likely to him if I disclaim
+acquaintance with what I do know. But first put these tracings safely away
+out of sight."
+
+Dixon slipped them behind his book-case.
+
+"Now," Hewitt pursued, "call Mr. Worsfold and give him something to do
+that will keep him in the inner office across the way, and tell him to
+send Ritter here."
+
+Mr. Dixon called his chief draughtsman and requested him to put in order
+the drawings in the drawers of the inner room that had been disarranged by
+the search, and to send Ritter, as Hewitt had suggested.
+
+Ritter walked into the private room with an air of respectful attention.
+He was a puffy-faced, unhealthy-looking young man, with very small eyes
+and a loose, mobile mouth.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Ritter," Hewitt said, in a stern voice. "Your recent
+transactions with your friend Mr. Hunter are well known both to Mr. Dixon
+and myself."
+
+Ritter, who had at first leaned easily back in his chair, started forward
+at this, and paled.
+
+"You are surprised, I observe; but you should be more careful in your
+movements out of doors if you do not wish your acquaintances to be known.
+Mr. Hunter, I believe, has the drawings which Mr. Dixon has lost, and, if
+so, I am certain that you have given them to him. That, you know, is
+theft, for which the law provides a severe penalty."
+
+Ritter broke down completely and turned appealingly to Mr. Dixon.
+
+"Oh, sir," he pleaded, "it isn't so bad, I assure you. I was tempted, I
+confess, and hid the drawings; but they are still in the office, and I can
+give them to you--really, I can."
+
+"Indeed?" Hewitt went on. "Then, in that case, perhaps you'd better get
+them at once. Just go and fetch them in; we won't trouble to observe your
+hiding-place. I'll only keep this door open, to be sure you don't lose
+your way, you know--down the stairs, for instance."
+
+The wretched Ritter, with hanging head, slunk into the office opposite.
+Presently he reappeared, looking, if possible, ghastlier than before. He
+looked irresolutely down the corridor, as if meditating a run for it, but
+Hewitt stepped toward him and motioned him back to the private room.
+
+"You mustn't try any more of that sort of humbug," Hewitt said with
+increased severity. "The drawings are gone, and you have stolen them; you
+know that well enough. Now attend to me. If you received your deserts, Mr.
+Dixon would send for a policeman this moment, and have you hauled off to
+the jail that is your proper place. But, unfortunately, your accomplice,
+who calls himself Hunter--but who has other names besides that--as I
+happen to know--has the drawings, and it is absolutely necessary that
+these should be recovered. I am afraid that it will be necessary,
+therefore, to come to some arrangement with this scoundrel--to square him,
+in fact. Now, just take that pen and paper, and write to your confederate
+as I dictate. You know the alternative if you cause any difficulty."
+
+Ritter reached tremblingly for the pen.
+
+"Address him in your usual way," Hewitt proceeded. "Say this: 'There has
+been an alteration in the plans.' Have you got that? 'There has been an
+alteration in the plans. I shall be alone here at six o'clock. Please
+come, without fail.' Have you got it? Very well; sign it, and address the
+envelope. He must come here, and then we may arrange matters. In the
+meantime, you will remain in the inner office opposite."
+
+The note was written, and Martin Hewitt, without glancing at the address,
+thrust it into his pocket. When Ritter was safely in the inner office,
+however, he drew it out and read the address. "I see," he observed, "he
+uses the same name, Hunter; 27 Little Carton Street, Westminster, is the
+address, and there I shall go at once with the note. If the man comes
+here, I think you had better lock him in with Ritter, and send for a
+policeman--it may at least frighten him. My object is, of course, to get
+the man away, and then, if possible, to invade his house, in some way or
+another, and steal or smash his negatives if they are there and to be
+found. Stay here, in any case, till I return. And don't forget to lock up
+those tracings."
+
+ *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about six o'clock when Hewitt returned, alone, but with a smiling
+face that told of good fortune at first sight.
+
+"First, Mr. Dixon," he said, as he dropped into an easy chair in the
+private room, "let me ease your mind by the information that I have been
+most extraordinarily lucky; in fact, I think you have no further cause for
+anxiety. Here are the negatives. They were not all quite dry when I--well,
+what?--stole them, I suppose I must say; so that they have stuck together
+a bit, and probably the films are damaged. But you don't mind that, I
+suppose?"
+
+He laid a small parcel, wrapped in a newspaper, on the table. The engineer
+hastily tore away the paper and took up five or six glass photographic
+negatives, of a half-plate size, which were damp, and stuck together by
+the gelatine films in couples. He held them, one after another, up to the
+light of the window, and glanced through them. Then, with a great sigh of
+relief, he placed them on the hearth and pounded them to dust and
+fragments with the poker.
+
+For a few seconds neither spoke. Then Dixon, flinging himself into a
+chair, said:
+
+"Mr. Hewitt, I can't express my obligation to you. What would have
+happened if you had failed, I prefer not to think of. But what shall we do
+with Ritter now? The other man hasn't been here yet, by the by."
+
+"No; the fact is I didn't deliver the letter. The worthy gentleman saved
+me a world of trouble by taking himself out of the way." Hewitt laughed.
+"I'm afraid he has rather got himself into a mess by trying two kinds of
+theft at once, and you may not be sorry to hear that his attempt on your
+torpedo plans is likely to bring him a dose of penal servitude for
+something else. I'll tell you what has happened.
+
+"Little Carton Street, Westminster, I found to be a seedy sort of
+place--one of those old streets that have seen much better days. A good
+many people seem to live in each house--they are fairly large houses, by
+the way--and there is quite a company of bell-handles on each doorpost,
+all down the side like organ-stops. A barber had possession of the ground
+floor front of No. 27 for trade purposes, so to him I went. 'Can you tell
+me,' I said, 'where in this house I can find Mr. Hunter?' He looked
+doubtful, so I went on: 'His friend will do, you know--I can't think of
+his name; foreign gentleman, dark, with a bushy beard.'
+
+"The barber understood at once. 'Oh, that's Mirsky, I expect,' he said.
+'Now, I come to think of it, he has had letters addressed to Hunter once
+or twice; I've took 'em in. Top floor back.'
+
+"This was good so far. I had got at 'Mr. Hunter's' other alias. So, by way
+of possessing him with the idea that I knew all about him, I determined to
+ask for him as Mirsky before handing over the letter addressed to him as
+Hunter. A little bluff of that sort is invaluable at the right time. At
+the top floor back I stopped at the door and tried to open it at once, but
+it was locked. I could hear somebody scuttling about within, as though
+carrying things about, and I knocked again. In a little while the door
+opened about a foot, and there stood Mr. Hunter--or Mirsky, as you
+like--the man who, in the character of a traveler in steam-packing, came
+here twice to-day. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and cuddled something
+under his arm, hastily covered with a spotted pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"'I have called to see M. Mirsky," I said, 'with a confidential
+letter----'
+
+"'Oh, yas, yas,' he answered hastily; 'I know--I know. Excuse me one
+minute.' And he rushed off down-stairs with his parcel.
+
+"Here was a noble chance. For a moment I thought of following him, in case
+there might be something interesting in the parcel. But I had to decide in
+a moment, and I decided on trying the room. I slipped inside the door,
+and, finding the key on the inside, locked it. It was a confused sort of
+room, with a little iron bedstead in one corner and a sort of rough
+boarded inclosure in another. This I rightly conjectured to be the
+photographic dark-room, and made for it at once.
+
+"There was plenty of light within when the door was left open, and I made
+at once for the drying-rack that was fastened over the sink. There were a
+number of negatives in it, and I began hastily examining them one after
+another. In the middle of this our friend Mirsky returned and tried the
+door. He rattled violently at the handle and pushed. Then he called.
+
+"At this moment I had come upon the first of the negatives you have just
+smashed. The fixing and washing had evidently only lately been completed,
+and the negative was drying on the rack. I seized it, of course, and the
+others which stood by it.
+
+"'Who are you, there, inside?' Mirsky shouted indignantly from the
+landing. 'Why for you go in my room like that? Open this door at once, or
+I call the police!'
+
+"I took no notice. I had got the full number of negatives, one for each
+drawing, but I was not by any means sure that he had not taken an extra
+set; so I went on hunting down the rack. There were no more, so I set to
+work to turn out all the undeveloped plates. It was quite possible, you
+see, that the other set, if it existed, had not yet been developed.
+
+"Mirsky changed his tune. After a little more banging and shouting I could
+hear him kneel down and try the key-hole. I had left the key there, so
+that he could see nothing. But he began talking softly and rapidly through
+the hole in a foreign language. I did not know it in the least, but I
+believe it was Russian. What had led him to believe I understood Russian I
+could not at the time imagine, though I have a notion now. I went on
+ruining his stock of plates. I found several boxes, apparently of new
+plates, but, as there was no means of telling whether they were really
+unused or were merely undeveloped, but with the chemical impress of your
+drawings on them, I dragged every one ruthlessly from its hiding-place and
+laid it out in the full glare of the sunlight--destroying it thereby, of
+course, whether it was unused or not.
+
+"Mirsky left off talking, and I heard him quietly sneaking off. Perhaps
+his conscience was not sufficiently clear to warrant an appeal to the
+police, but it seemed to me rather probable at the time that that was what
+he was going for. So I hurried on with my work. I found three dark
+slides--the parts that carried the plates in the back of the camera, you
+know--one of them fixed in the camera itself. These I opened, and exposed
+the plates to ruination as before. I suppose nobody ever did so much
+devastation in a photographic studio in ten minutes as I managed.
+
+"I had spoiled every plate I could find, and had the developed negatives
+safely in my pocket, when I happened to glance at a porcelain washing-well
+under the sink. There was one negative in that, and I took it up. It was
+_not_ a negative of a drawing of yours, but of a Russian twenty-ruble
+note!"
+
+This _was_ a discovery. The only possible reason any man could have for
+photographing a bank-note was the manufacture of an etched plate for the
+production of forged copies. I was almost as pleased as I had been at the
+discovery of _your_ negatives. He might bring the police now as soon as he
+liked; I could turn the tables on him completely. I began to hunt about
+for anything else relating to this negative.
+
+"I found an inking-roller, some old pieces of blanket (used in printing
+from plates), and in a corner on the floor, heaped over with newspapers
+and rubbish, a small copying-press. There was also a dish of acid, but not
+an etched plate or a printed note to be seen. I was looking at the press,
+with the negative in one hand and the inking-roller in the other, when I
+became conscious of a shadow across the window. I looked up quickly, and
+there was Mirsky hanging over from some ledge or projection to the side of
+the window, and staring straight at me, with a look of unmistakable terror
+and apprehension.
+
+"The face vanished immediately. I had to move a table to get at the
+window, and by the time I had opened it there was no sign or sound of the
+rightful tenant of the room. I had no doubt now of his reason for carrying
+a parcel down-stairs. He probably mistook me for another visitor he was
+expecting, and, knowing he must take this visitor into his room, threw the
+papers and rubbish over the press, and put up his plates and papers in a
+bundle and secreted them somewhere down-stairs, lest his occupation should
+be observed.
+
+"Plainly, my duty now was to communicate with the police. So, by the help
+of my friend the barber down-stairs, a messenger was found and a note sent
+over to Scotland Yard. I awaited, of course, for the arrival of the
+police, and occupied the interval in another look round--finding nothing
+important, however. When the official detective arrived, he recognized at
+once the importance of the case. A large number of forged Russian notes
+have been put into circulation on the Continent lately, it seems, and it
+was suspected that they came from London. The Russian Government have been
+sending urgent messages to the police here on the subject.
+
+"Of course I said nothing about your business; but, while I was talking
+with the Scotland Yard man, a letter was left by a messenger, addressed to
+Mirsky. The letter will be examined, of course, by the proper authorities,
+but I was not a little interested to perceive that the envelope bore the
+Russian imperial arms above the words 'Russian Embassy.' Now, why should
+Mirsky communicate with the Russian Embassy? Certainly not to let the
+officials know that he was carrying on a very extensive and lucrative
+business in the manufacture of spurious Russian notes. I think it is
+rather more than possible that he wrote--probably before he actually got
+your drawings--to say that he could sell information of the highest
+importance, and that this letter was a reply. Further, I think it quite
+possible that, when I asked for him by his Russian name and spoke of 'a
+confidential letter,' he at once concluded that _I_ had come from the
+embassy in answer to his letter. That would account for his addressing me
+in Russian through the key-hole; and, of course, an official from the
+Russian Embassy would be the very last person in the world whom he would
+like to observe any indications of his little etching experiments. But,
+anyhow, be that as it may," Hewitt concluded, "your drawings are safe now,
+and if once Mirsky is caught, and I think it likely, for a man in his
+shirt-sleeves, with scarcely any start, and, perhaps, no money about him,
+hasn't a great chance to get away--if he is caught, I say, he will
+probably get something handsome at St. Petersburg in the way of
+imprisonment, or Siberia, or what not; so that you will be amply avenged."
+
+"Yes, but I don't at all understand this business of the drawings even
+now. How in the world were they taken out of the place, and how in the
+world did you find it out?"
+
+"Nothing could be simpler; and yet the plan was rather ingenious. I'll
+tell you exactly how the thing revealed itself to me. From your original
+description of the case many people would consider that an impossibility
+had been performed. Nobody had gone out and nobody had come in, and yet
+the drawings had been taken away. But an impossibility is an
+impossibility, after all, and as drawings don't run away of themselves,
+plainly somebody had taken them, unaccountable as it might seem. Now, as
+they were in your inner office, the only people who could have got at them
+besides yourself were your assistants, so that it was pretty clear that
+one of them, at least, had something to do with the business. You told me
+that Worsfold was an excellent and intelligent draughtsman. Well, if such
+a man as that meditated treachery, he would probably be able to carry away
+the design in his head--at any rate, a little at a time--and would be
+under no necessity to run the risk of stealing a set of the drawings. But
+Ritter, you remarked, was an inferior sort of man. 'Not particularly
+smart,' I think, were your words--only a mechanical sort of tracer. _He_
+would be unlikely to be able to carry in his head the complicated details
+of such designs as yours, and, being in a subordinate position, and
+continually overlooked, he would find it impossible to make copies of the
+plans in the office. So that, to begin with, I thought I saw the most
+probable path to start on.
+
+"When I looked round the rooms, I pushed open the glass door of the
+barrier and left the door to the inner office ajar, in order to be able to
+see any thing that _might_ happen in any part of the place, without
+actually expecting any definite development. While we were talking, as it
+happened, our friend Mirsky (or Hunter--as you please) came into the outer
+office, and my attention was instantly called to him by the first thing he
+did. Did you notice anything peculiar yourself?"
+
+"No, really, I can't say I did. He seemed to behave much as any traveler
+or agent might."
+
+"Well, what I noticed was the fact that as soon as he entered the place he
+put his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand over there by the door,
+close by where he stood, a most unusual thing for a casual caller to do,
+before even knowing whether you were in. This made me watch him closely. I
+perceived with increased interest that the stick was exactly of the same
+kind and pattern as one already standing there, also a curious thing. I
+kept my eyes carefully on those sticks, and was all the more interested
+and edified to see, when he left, that he took the _other_ stick--not the
+one he came with--from the stand, and carried it away, leaving his own
+behind. I might have followed him, but I decided that more could be
+learned by staying, as, in fact, proved to be the case. This, by the by,
+is the stick he carried away with him. I took the liberty of fetching it
+back from Westminster, because I conceive it to be Ritier's property."
+
+Hewitt produced the stick. It was an ordinary, thick Malacca cane, with a
+buck-horn handle and a silver band. Hewitt bent it across his knee and
+laid it on the table.
+
+"Yes," Dixon answered, "that is Ritter's stick. I think I have often seen
+it in the stand. But what in the world----"
+
+"One moment; I'll just fetch the stick Mirsky left behind." And Hewitt
+stepped across the corridor.
+
+He returned with another stick, apparently an exact fac-simile of the
+other, and placed it by the side of the other.
+
+"When your assistants went into the inner room, I carried this stick off
+for a minute or two. I knew it was not Worsfold's, because there was an
+umbrella there with his initial on the handle. Look at this."
+
+Martin Hewitt gave the handle a twist and rapidly unscrewed it from the
+top. Then it was seen that the stick was a mere tube of very thin metal,
+painted to appear like a Malacca cane.
+
+"It was plain at once that this was no Malacca cane--it wouldn't bend.
+Inside it I found your tracings, rolled up tightly. You can get a
+marvelous quantity of thin tracing-paper into a small compass by tight
+rolling."
+
+"And this--this was the way they were brought back!" the engineer
+exclaimed. "I see that clearly. But how did they get away? That's as
+mysterious as ever."
+
+"Not a bit of it! See here. Mirsky gets hold of Ritter, and they agree to
+get your drawings and photograph them. Ritter is to let his confederate
+have the drawings, and Mirsky is to bring them back as soon as possible,
+so that they sha'n't be missed for a moment. Ritter habitually carries
+this Malacca cane, and the cunning of Mirsky at once suggests that this
+tube should be made in outward fac-simile. This morning Mirsky keeps the
+actual stick, and Ritter comes to the office with the tube. He seizes the
+first opportunity--probably when you were in this private room, and
+Worsfold was talking to you from the corridor--to get at the tracings,
+roll them up tightly, and put them in the tube, putting the tube back into
+the umbrella-stand. At half-past twelve, or whenever it was, Mirsky turns
+up for the first time with the actual stick and exchanges them, just as he
+afterward did when he brought the drawings back."
+
+"Yes, but Mirsky came half an hour after they were--Oh, yes, I see. What a
+fool I was! I was forgetting. Of course, when I first missed the tracings,
+they were in this walking-stick, safe enough, and I was tearing my hair
+out within arm's reach of them!"
+
+"Precisely. And Mirsky took them away before your very eyes. I expect
+Ritter was in a rare funk when he found that the drawings were missed. He
+calculated, no doubt, on your not wanting them for the hour or two they
+would be out of the office."
+
+"How lucky that it struck me to jot a pencil-note on one of them! I might
+easily have made my note somewhere else, and then I should never have
+known that they had been away."
+
+"Yes, they didn't give you any too much time to miss them. Well, I think
+the rest pretty clear. I brought the tracings in here, screwed up the sham
+stick and put it back. You identified the tracings and found none missing,
+and then my course was pretty clear, though it looked difficult. I knew
+you would be very naturally indignant with Ritter, so, as I wanted to
+manage him myself, I told you nothing of what he had actually done, for
+fear that, in your agitated state, you might burst out with something that
+would spoil my game. To Ritter I pretended to know nothing of the return
+of the drawings or _how_ they had been stolen--the only things I did know
+with certainty. But I _did_ pretend to know all about Mirsky--or
+Hunter--when, as a matter of fact, I knew nothing at all, except that he
+probably went under more than one name. That put Ritter into my hands
+completely. When he found the game was up, he began with a lying
+confession. Believing that the tracings were still in the stick and that
+we knew nothing of their return, he said that they had not been away, and
+that he would fetch them--as I had expected he would. I let him go for
+them alone, and, when he returned, utterly broken up by the discovery that
+they were not there, I had him altogether at my mercy. You see, if he had
+known that the drawings were all the time behind your book-case, he might
+have brazened it out, sworn that the drawings had been there all the time,
+and we could have done nothing with him. We couldn't have sufficiently
+frightened him by a threat of prosecution for theft, because there the
+things were in your possession, to his knowledge.
+
+"As it was he answered the helm capitally: gave us Mirsky's address on the
+envelope, and wrote the letter that was to have got him out of the way
+while I committed burglary, if that disgraceful expedient had not been
+rendered unnecessary. On the whole, the case has gone very well."
+
+"It has gone marvelously well, thanks to yourself. But what shall I do
+with Ritter?"
+
+"Here's his stick--knock him down-stairs with it, if you like. I should
+keep the tube, if I were you, as a memento. I don't suppose the
+respectable Mirsky will ever call to ask for it. But I should certainly
+kick Ritter out of doors--or out of window, if you like--without delay."
+
+Mirsky was caught, and, after two remands at the police-court, was
+extradited on the charge of forging Russian notes. It came out that he had
+written to the embassy, as Hewitt had surmised, stating that he had
+certain valuable information to offer, and the letter which Hewitt had
+seen delivered was an acknowledgment, and a request for more definite
+particulars. This was what gave rise to the impression that Mirsky had
+himself informed the Russian authorities of his forgeries. His real intent
+was very different, but was never guessed.
+
+ *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wonder," Hewitt has once or twice observed, "whether, after all, it
+would not have paid the Russian authorities better on the whole if I had
+never investigated Mirsky's little note factory. The Dixon torpedo was
+worth a good many twenty-ruble notes."
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR.
+
+It was comparatively rarely that Hewitt came into contact with members of
+the regular criminal class--those, I mean, who are thieves, of one sort or
+another, by exclusive profession. Still, nobody could have been better
+prepared than Hewitt for encountering this class when it became necessary.
+By some means, which I never quite understood, he managed to keep abreast
+of the very latest fashions in the ever-changing slang dialect of the
+fraternity, and he was a perfect master of the more modern and debased
+form of Romany. So much so that frequently a gypsy who began (as they
+always do) by pretending that he understood nothing, and never heard of a
+gypsy language, ended by confessing that Hewitt could _rokker_ better than
+most Romany _chals_ themselves.
+
+By this acquaintance with their habits and talk Hewitt was sometimes able
+to render efficient service in cases of especial importance. In the
+Quinton jewel affair Hewitt came into contact with a very accomplished
+thief.
+
+The case will probably be very well remembered. Sir Valentine Quinton,
+before he married, had been as poor as only a man of rank with an old
+country establishment to keep up can be. His marriage, however, with the
+daughter of a wealthy financier had changed all that, and now the Quinton
+establishment was carried on on as lavish a scale as might be; and,
+indeed, the extravagant habits of Lady Quinton herself rendered it an
+extremely lucky thing that she had brought a fortune with her.
+
+Among other things her jewels made quite a collection, and chief among
+them was the great ruby, one of the very few that were sent to this
+country to be sold (at an average price of somewhere about twenty thousand
+pounds apiece, I believe) by the Burmese king before the annexation of his
+country. Let but a ruby be of a great size and color, and no equally fine
+diamond can approach its value. Well, this great ruby (which was set in a
+pendant, by the by), together with a necklace, brooches, bracelets,
+ear-rings--indeed, the greater part of Lady Quinton's collection--were
+stolen. The robbery was effected at the usual time and in the usual way in
+cases of carefully planned jewelry robberies. The time was early
+evening--dinner-time, in fact--and an entrance had been made by the window
+to Lady Quinton's dressing-room, the door screwed up on the inside, and
+wires artfully stretched about the grounds below to overset anybody who
+might observe and pursue the thieves.
+
+On an investigation by London detectives, however, a feature of
+singularity was brought to light. There had plainly been only one thief at
+work at Radcot Hall, and no other had been inside the grounds. Alone he
+had planted the wires, opened the window, screwed the door, and picked the
+lock of the safe. Clearly this was a thief of the most accomplished
+description.
+
+Some few days passed, and, although the police had made various arrests,
+they appeared to be all mistakes, and the suspected persons were released
+one after another. I was talking of the robbery with Hewitt at lunch, and
+asked him if he had received any commission to hunt for the missing
+jewels.
+
+"No," Hewitt replied, "I haven't been commissioned. They are offering an
+immense reward however--a very pleasant sum, indeed. I have had a short
+note from Radcot Hall informing me of the amount, and that's all. Probably
+they fancy that I may take the case up as a speculation, but that is a
+great mistake. I'm not a beginner, and I must be commissioned in a regular
+manner, hit or miss, if I am to deal with the case. I've quite enough
+commissions going now, and no time to waste hunting for a problematical
+reward."
+
+But we were nearer a clue to the Quinton jewels than we then supposed.
+
+We talked of other things, and presently rose and left the restaurant,
+strolling quietly toward home. Some little distance from the Strand, and
+near our own door, we passed an excited Irishman--without doubt an
+Irishman by appearance and talk--who was pouring a torrent of angry
+complaints in the ears of a policeman. The policeman obviously thought
+little of the man's grievances, and with an amused smile appeared to be
+advising him to go home quietly and think no more about it. We passed on
+and mounted our stairs. Something interesting in our conversation made me
+stop for a little while at Hewitt's office door on my way up, and, while I
+stood there, the Irishman we had seen in the street mounted the stairs. He
+was a poorly dressed but sturdy-looking fellow, apparently a laborer, in a
+badly-worn best suit of clothes. His agitation still held him, and without
+a pause he immediately burst out:
+
+"Which of ye jintlemen will be Misther Hewitt, sor?"
+
+"This is Mr. Hewitt," I said. "Do you want him?"
+
+"It's protecshin I want, sor--protecshin! I spake to the polis, an' they
+laff at me, begob. Foive days have I lived in London, an' 'tis nothin' but
+battle, murdher, an' suddhen death for me here all day an' ivery day! An'
+the polis say I'm dhrunk!"
+
+He gesticulated wildly, and to me it seemed just possible that the police
+might be right.
+
+"They say I'm drunk, sor," he continued, "but, begob, I b'lieve they think
+I'm mad. An' me being thracked an' folleyed an' dogged an' waylaid an'
+poisoned an' blandandhered an' kidnapped an' murdhered, an' for why I do
+not know!"
+
+"And who's doing all this?'
+
+"Sthrangers, sor--sthrangers. 'Tis a sthranger here I am mesilf, an' fwy
+they do it bates me, onless I do be so like the Prince av Wales or other
+crowned head they thry to slaughter me. They're layin' for me in the
+sthreet now, I misdoubt not, and fwat they may thry next I can tell no
+more than the Lord Mayor. An' the polis won't listen to me!"
+
+This, I thought, must be one of the very common cases of mental
+hallucination which one hears of every day--the belief of the sufferer
+that he is surrounded by enemies and followed by spies. It is probably the
+most usual delusion of the harmless lunatic.
+
+"But what have these people done?" Hewitt asked, looking rather
+interested, although amused. "What actual assaults have they committed,
+and when? And who told you to come here?"
+
+"Who towld me, is ut? Who but the payler outside--in the street below! I
+explained to 'um, an' sez he: 'Ah, you go an' take a slape,' sez he; 'you
+go an' take a good slape, an' they'll be all gone whin ye wake up.' 'But
+they'll murdher me,' sez I. 'Oh, no!' sez he, smilin' behind av his ugly
+face. 'Oh, no, they won't; you take ut aisy, me frind, an' go home!' 'Take
+it aisy, is ut, an' go home!' sez I; 'why, that's just where they've been
+last, a-ruinationin' an' a-turnin' av the place upside down, an' me strook
+on the head onsensible a mile away. Take ut aisy, is ut, ye say, whin all
+the demons in this unholy place is jumpin' on me every minut in places
+promiscuous till I can't tell where to turn, descendin' an' vanishin'
+marvelious an' onaccountable? Take ut aisy, is ut?' sez I. 'Well, me
+frind,' sez he, 'I can't help ye; that's the marvelious an' onaccountable
+departmint up the stairs forninst ye. Misther Hewitt ut is,' sez he, 'that
+attinds to the onaccountable departmint, him as wint by a minut ago. You
+go an' bother him.' That's how I was towld, sor."
+
+Hewitt smiled.
+
+"Very good," he said; "and now what are these extraordinary troubles of
+yours? Don't declaim," he added, as the Irishman raised his hand and
+opened his mouth, preparatory to another torrent of complaint; "just say
+in ten words, if you can, what they've done to you."
+
+"I will, sor. Wan day had I been in London, sor--wan day only, an' a low
+scutt thried to poison me dhrink; next day some udther thief av sin shoved
+me off av a railway platform undher a train, malicious and purposeful;
+glory be, he didn't kill me! but the very docther that felt me bones
+thried to pick me pockut, I du b'lieve. Sunday night I was grabbed
+outrageous in a darrk turnin', rowled on the groun', half strangled, an'
+me pockuts nigh ripped out av me trousies. An' this very blessed mornin'
+av light I was strook onsensible an' left a livin' corpse, an' my lodgin's
+penethrated an' all the thruck mishandled an' bruk up behind me back. Is
+that a panjandhery for the polis to laff at, sor?"
+
+Had Hewitt not been there I think I should have done my best to quiet the
+poor fellow with a few soothing words and to persuade him to go home to
+his friends. His excited and rather confused manner, his fantastic story
+of a sort of general conspiracy to kill him, and the absurd reference to
+the doctor who tried to pick his pocket seemed to me plainly to confirm my
+first impression that he was insane. But Hewitt appeared strangely
+interested.
+
+"Did they steal anything?" he asked.
+
+"Divil a shtick but me door-key, an' that they tuk home an' lift in the
+door."
+
+Hewitt opened his office door.
+
+"Come in," he said, "and tell me all about this. You come, too, Brett."
+
+The Irishman and I followed him into the inner office, where, shutting the
+door, Hewitt suddenly turned on the Irishman and exclaimed sharply: "_Then
+you've still got it_?"
+
+He looked keenly in the man's eyes, but the only expression there was one
+of surprise.
+
+"Got ut?" said the Irishman. "Got fwhat, sor? Is ut you're thinkin' I've
+got the horrors, as well as the polis?"
+
+Hewitt's gaze relaxed. "Sit down, sit down!" he said. "You've still got
+your watch and money, I suppose, since you weren't robbed?"
+
+"Oh, that? Glory be, I have ut still! though for how long--or me own head,
+for that matter--in this state of besiegement, I can not say."
+
+"Now," said Hewitt, "I want a full, true, and particular account of
+yourself and your doings for the last week. First, your name?"
+
+"Leamy's my name, sor--Michael Leamy."
+
+"Lately from Ireland?"
+
+"Over from Dublin this last blessed Wednesday, and a crooil bad
+poundherin' tit was in the boat, too--shpakin'av that same."
+
+"Looking for work?"
+
+"That is my purshuit at prisint, sor."
+
+"Did anything noticeable happen before these troubles of yours
+began--anything here in London or on the journey?"
+
+"Sure," the Irishman smiled, "part av the way I thraveled first-class by
+favor av the gyard, an' I got a small job before I lift the train."
+
+"How was that? Why did you travel first-class part of the way?"
+
+"There was a station fwhere we shtopped afther a long run, an' I got down
+to take the cramp out av me joints, an' take a taste av dhrink. I
+over-shtayed somehow, an', whin I got to the train, begob, it was on the
+move. There was a first-class carr'ge door opin right forninst me, an'
+into that the gyard crams me holus-bolus. There was a juce of a foine
+jintleman sittin' there, an' he stares at me umbrageous, but I was not
+dishcommoded, bein' onbashful by natur'. We thravelled along a heap av
+miles more, till we came near London. Afther we had shtopped at a station
+where they tuk tickets we wint ahead again, an' prisintly, as we rips
+through some udther station, up jumps the jintleman opposite, swearin'
+hard undher his tongue, an' looks out at the windy. 'I thought this train
+shtopped here,' sez he."
+
+"Chalk Farm," observed Hewitt, with a nod.
+
+"The name I do not know, sor, but that's fwhat he said. Then he looks at
+me onaisy for a little, an' at last he sez: 'Wud ye loike a small job, me
+good man, well paid?'
+
+"'Faith,' sez I, ''tis that will suit me well.'
+
+"'Then, see here,' sez he, 'I should have got out at that station, havin'
+particular business; havin' missed, I must sen' a telegrammer from Euston.
+Now, here's a bag,' sez he, 'a bag full of imporrtant papers for my
+solicitor--imporrtant to me, ye ondershtand, not worth the shine av a
+brass farden to a sowl else--an' I want 'em tuk on to him. Take you this
+bag,' he sez, 'an' go you straight out wid it at Euston an' get a cab. I
+shall stay in the station a bit to see to the telegrammer. Dhrive out av
+the station, across the road outside, an' wait there five minuts by the
+clock. Ye ondershtand? Wait five minuts, an, maybe I'll come an' join ye.
+If I don't 'twill be bekase I'm detained onexpected, an' then ye'll dhrive
+to my solicitor straight. Here's his address, if ye can read writin',' an'
+he put ut on a piece av paper. He gave me half-a-crown for the cab, an' I
+tuk his bag."
+
+"One moment--have you the paper with the address now?"
+
+"I have not, sor. I missed ut afther the blayguards overset me yesterday;
+but the solicitor's name was Hollams, an' a liberal jintleman wid his
+money he was, too, by that same token."
+
+"What was his address?"
+
+"'Twas in Chelsea, and 'twas Gold or Golden something, which I know by the
+good token av fwhat he gave me; but the number I misremember."
+
+Hewitt turned to his directory. "Gold Street is the place, probably," he
+said, "and it seems to be a street chiefly of private houses. You would be
+able to point out the house if you were taken there, I suppose?"
+
+"I should that, sor; indade, I was thinkin' av goin' there an' tellin'
+Misther Hollams all my throubles, him havin' been so kind."
+
+"Now tell me exactly what instructions the man in the train gave you, and
+what happened?"
+
+"He sez: 'You ask for Misther Hollams, an' see nobody else. Tell him ye've
+brought the sparks from Misther W.'"
+
+I fancied I could see a sudden twinkle in Hewitt's eye, but he made no
+other sign, and the Irishman proceeded.
+
+"'Sparks?' sez I. 'Yes, sparks,' sez he. 'Misther Hollams will know; 'tis
+our jokin' word for 'em; sometimes papers is sparks when they set a
+lawsuit ablaze,' and he laffed. 'But be sure ye say the _sparks from
+Misther W._,' he sez again, 'bekase then he'll know ye're jinuine an'
+he'll pay ye han'some. Say Misther W. sez you're to have your reg'lars, if
+ye like. D'ye mind that?'
+
+"'Ay,' sez I, 'that I'm to have my reg'lars.'
+
+"Well, sor, I tuk the bag and wint out of the station, tuk the cab, an'
+did all as he towld me. I waited the foive minuts, but he niver came, so
+off I druv to Misther Hollams, and he threated me han'some, sor."
+
+"Yes, but tell me exactly all he did."
+
+"'Misther Hollams, sor?' sez I. 'Who are ye?' sez he. 'Mick Leamy, sor,'
+sez I, 'from Misther W. wid the sparks.' 'Oh,' sez he, 'thin come in.' I
+wint in. 'They're in here, are they?' sez he, takin' the bag. 'They are,
+sor,' sez I, 'an' Misther W. sez I'm to have me reg'lars.' 'You shall,'
+sez he. 'What shall we say, now--afinnip?' 'Fwhat's that, sor?' sez I.
+'Oh,' sez he, 'I s'pose ye're a new hand; five quid--ondershtand that?'"
+
+"Begob, I did ondershtand it, an' moighty plazed I was to have come to a
+place where they pay five-pun' notes for carryin' bags. So whin he asked
+me was I new to London an' shud I kape in the same line av business, I
+towld him I shud for certin, or any thin' else payin' like it. 'Right,'
+sez he; 'let me know whin ye've got any thin'--ye'll find me all right.'
+An' he winked frindly. 'Faith, that I know I shall, sor,' sez I, wid the
+money safe in me pockut; an' I winked him back, conjanial. 'I've a smart
+family about me,' sez he, 'an' I treat 'em all fair an' liberal.' An',
+saints, I thought it likely his family 'ud have all they wanted, seein' he
+was so free-handed wid a stranger. Thin he asked me where I was a livin'
+in London, and, when I towld him nowhere, he towld me av a room in Musson
+Street, here by Drury Lane, that was to let, in a house his fam'ly knew
+very well, an' I wint straight there an' tuk ut, an' there I do be stayin'
+still, sor."
+
+I hadn't understood at first why Hewitt took so much interest in the
+Irishman's narrative, but the latter part of it opened my eyes a little.
+It seemed likely that Leamy had, in his innocence, been made a conveyer of
+stolen property. I knew enough of thieves' slang to know that "sparks"
+meant diamonds or other jewels; that "regulars" was the term used for a
+payment made to a brother thief who gave assistance in some small way,
+such as carrying the booty; and that the "family" was the time-honored
+expression for a gang of thieves.
+
+"This was all on Wednesday, I understand," said Hewitt. "Now tell me what
+happened on Thursday--the poisoning, or drugging, you know?"
+
+"Well, sor, I was walking out, an' toward the evenin' I lost mesilf. Up
+comes a man, seemin'ly a sthranger, and shmacks me on the showldher. 'Why,
+Mick!' sez he; 'it's Mick Leamy, I du b'lieve!'
+
+"'I am that,' sez I, 'but you I do not know.'
+
+"'Not know me?' sez he. 'Why, I wint to school wid ye.' An' wid that he
+hauls me off to a bar, blarneyin' and minowdherin', an' orders dhrinks.
+
+"Can ye rache me a poipe-loight?' sez he, an' I turned to get ut, but,
+lookin' back suddent, there was that onblushin' thief av the warl' tippin'
+a paperful of phowder stuff into me glass."
+
+"What did you do?" Hewitt asked.
+
+"I knocked the dhirty face av him, sor, an' can ye blame me? A mane scutt,
+thryin' for to poison a well-manin' sthranger. I knocked the face av him,
+an' got away home."
+
+"Now the next misfortune?"
+
+"Faith, that was av a sort likely to turn out the last of all misfortunes.
+I wint that day to the Crystial Palace, bein' dishposed for a little
+sphort, seein' as I was new to London. Comin' home at night, there was a
+juce av a crowd on the station platform, consekins of a late thrain.
+Sthandin' by the edge av the platform at the fore end, just as thrain came
+in, some onvisible murdherer gives me a stupenjus drive in the back, and
+over I wint on the line, mid-betwixt the rails. The engine came up an'
+wint half over me widout givin' me a scratch, bekase av my centraleous
+situation, an' then the porther-men pulled me out, nigh sick wid fright,
+sor, as ye may guess. A jintleman in the crowd sings out: 'I'm a medical
+man!' an' they tuk me in the waitin'-room, an' he investigated me, havin'
+turned everybody else out av the room. There wuz no bones bruk, glory be!
+and the docthor-man he was tellin' me so, after feelin' me over, whin I
+felt his hand in me waistcoat pockut.
+
+"'An' fwhat's this, sor?' sez I. 'Do you be lookin' for your fee that
+thief's way?'
+
+"He laffed, and said: 'I want no fee from ye, me man, an' I did but feel
+your ribs,' though on me conscience he had done that undher me waistcoat
+already. An' so I came home."
+
+"What did they do to you on Saturday?"
+
+"Saturday, sor, they gave me a whole holiday, and I began to think less of
+things; but on Saturday night, in a dark place, two blayguards tuk me
+throat from behind, nigh choked me, flung me down, an' wint through all me
+pockuts in about a quarter av a minut."
+
+"And they took nothing, you say?"
+
+"Nothing, sor. But this mornin' I got my worst dose. I was trapesing along
+distreshful an' moighty sore, in a street just away off the Strand here,
+when I obsarved the docthor-man that was at the Crystial Palace station
+a-smilin' an' beckonin' at me from a door.
+
+"'How are ye now?' sez he. 'Well,' sez I, 'I'm moighty sore an' sad
+bruised,' sez I. 'Is that so?' sez he. 'Sthep in here.' So I sthepped in,
+an' before I could wink there dhropped a crack on the back av me head that
+sent me off as unknowledgable as a corrpse. I knew no more for a while,
+sor, whether half an hour or an hour, an' thin I got up in a room av the
+place, marked 'To Let.' 'Twas a house full av offices, by the same token,
+like this. There was a sore bad lump on me head--see ut, sor?--an' the
+whole warl' was shpinnin' roun' rampageous. The things out av me pockuts
+were lyin' on the flure by me--all barrin' the key av me room. So that the
+demons had been through me posseshins again, bad luck to 'em."
+
+"You are quite sure, are you, that everything was there except the key?"
+Hewitt asked.
+
+"Certin, sor? Well, I got along to me room, sick an' sorry enough, an'
+doubtsome whether I might get in wid no key. But there was the key in the
+open door, an', by this an' that, all the shtuff in the room--chair,
+table, bed, an' all--was shtandin' on their heads twisty-ways, an' the
+bedclothes an' every thin' else; such a disgraceful stramash av
+conglomerated thruck as ye niver dhreamt av. The chist av drawers was
+lyin' on uts face, wid all the dhrawers out an' emptied on the flure.
+'Twas as though an arrmy had been lootin', sor!"
+
+"But still nothing was gone?"
+
+"Nothin', so far as I investigated, sor. But I didn't shtay. I came out to
+spake to the polis, an' two av them laffed at me--wan afther another!"
+
+"It has certainly been no laughing matter for you. Now, tell me--have you
+anything in your possession--documents, or valuables, or anything--that
+any other person, to your knowledge, is anxious to get hold of!"
+
+"I have not, sor--divil a document! As to valuables, thim an' me is the
+cowldest av sthrangers."
+
+"Just call to mind, now, the face of the man who tried to put powder in
+your drink, and that of the doctor who attended to you in the railway
+station. Were they at all alike, or was either like anybody you have seen
+before?"
+
+Leamy puckered his forehead and thought.
+
+"Faith," he said presently, "they were a bit alike, though one had a beard
+an' the udther whiskers only."
+
+"Neither happened to look like Mr. Hollams, for instance?"
+
+Leamy started. "Begob, but they did! They'd ha' been mortal like him if
+they'd been shaved." Then, after a pause, he suddenly added: "Holy saints!
+is ut the fam'ly he talked av?"
+
+Hewitt laughed. "Perhaps it is," he said. "Now, as to the man who sent you
+with the bag. Was it an old bag?"
+
+"Bran' cracklin' new--a brown leather bag."
+
+"Locked?"
+
+"That I niver thried, sor. It was not my consarn."
+
+"True. Now, as to this Mr. W. himself." Hewitt had been rummaging for some
+few minutes in a portfolio, and finally produced a photograph, and held it
+before the Irishman's eye. "Is that like him?" he asked.
+
+"Shure it's the man himself! Is he a friend av yours, sor?"
+
+"No, he's not exactly a friend of mine," Hewitt answered, with a grim
+chuckle. "I fancy he's one of that very respectable _family_ you heard
+about at Mr. Hollams'. Come along with me now to Chelsea, and see if you
+can point out that house in Gold Street. I'll send for a cab."
+
+He made for the outer office, and I went with him.
+
+"What is all this, Hewitt?" I asked. "A gang of thieves with stolen
+property?"
+
+Hewitt looked in my face and replied: "_It's the Quinton ruby_!"
+
+"What! The ruby? Shall you take the case up, then?"
+
+"I shall. It is no longer a speculation."
+
+"Then do you expect to find it at Hollams' house in Chelsea?" I asked.
+
+"No, I don't, because it isn't there--else why are they trying to get it
+from this unlucky Irishman? There has been bad faith in Hollams' gang, I
+expect, and Hollams has missed the ruby and suspects Leamy of having taken
+it from the bag."
+
+"Then who is this Mr. W. whose portrait you have in your possession?"
+
+"See here!" Hewitt turned over a small pile of recent newspapers and
+selected one, pointing at a particular paragraph. "I kept that in my mind,
+because to me it seemed to be the most likely arrest of the lot," he said.
+
+It was an evening paper of the previous Thursday, and the paragraph was a
+very short one, thus:
+
+"The man Wilks, who was arrested at Euston Station yesterday, in
+connection with the robbery of Lady Quinton's jewels, has been released,
+nothing being found to incriminate him."
+
+"How does that strike you?" asked Hewitt. "Wilks is a man well known to
+the police--one of the most accomplished burglars in this country, in
+fact. I have had no dealings with him as yet, but I found means, some time
+ago, to add his portrait to my little collection, in case I might want it,
+and to-day it has been quite useful."
+
+The thing was plain now. Wilks must have been bringing his booty to town,
+and calculated on getting out at Chalk Farm and thus eluding the watch
+which he doubtless felt pretty sure would be kept (by telegraphic
+instruction) at Euston for suspicious characters arriving from the
+direction of Radcot. His transaction with Leamy was his only possible
+expedient to save himself from being hopelessly taken with the swag in his
+possession. The paragraph told me why Leamy had waited in vain for "Mr.
+W." in the cab.
+
+"What shall you do now?" I asked.
+
+"I shall go to the Gold Street house and find out what I can as soon as
+this cab turns up."
+
+There seemed a possibility of some excitement in the adventure, so I
+asked: "Will you want any help?"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "I _think_ I can get through it alone," he said.
+
+"Then may I come to look on?" I said. "Of course I don't want to be in
+your way, and the result of the business, whatever it is, will be to your
+credit alone. But I am curious."
+
+"Come, then, by all means. The cab will be a four-wheeler, and there will
+be plenty of room."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gold Street was a short street of private houses of very fair size and of
+a half-vanished pretension to gentility. We drove slowly through, and
+Leamy had no difficulty in pointing out the house wherein he had been paid
+five pounds for carrying a bag. At the end the cab turned the corner and
+stopped, while Hewitt wrote a short note to an official of Scotland Yard.
+
+"Take this note," he instructed Leamy, "to Scotland Yard in the cab, and
+then go home. I will pay the cabman now."
+
+"I will, sor. An' will I be protected?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Stay at home for the rest of the day, and I expect you'll be
+left alone in future. Perhaps I shall have something to tell you in a day
+or two; if I do, I'll send. Good-by."
+
+The cab rolled off, and Hewitt and I strolled back along Gold Street. "I
+think," Hewitt said, "we will drop in on Mr. Hollams for a few minutes
+while we can. In a few hours I expect the police will have him, and his
+house, too, if they attend promptly to my note."
+
+"Have you ever seen him?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge, though I may know him by some other name. Wilks I
+know by sight, though he doesn't know me."
+
+"What shall we say?"
+
+"That will depend on circumstances. I may not get my cue till the door
+opens, or even till later. At worst, I can easily apply for a reference as
+to Leamy, who, you remember, is looking for work."
+
+But we were destined not to make Mr. Hollams' acquaintance, after all. As
+we approached the house a great uproar was heard from the lower part
+giving on to the area, and suddenly a man, hatless, and with a sleeve of
+his coat nearly torn away burst through the door and up the area steps,
+pursued by two others. I had barely time to observe that one of the
+pursuers carried a revolver, and that both hesitated and retired on seeing
+that several people were about the street, when Hewitt, gripping my arm
+and exclaiming: "That's our man!" started at a run after the fugitive.
+
+We turned the next corner and saw the man thirty yards before us, walking,
+and pulling up his sleeve at the shoulder, so as to conceal the rent.
+Plainly he felt safe from further molestation.
+
+"That's Sim Wilks," Hewitt explained, as we followed, "the 'juce of a
+foine jintleman' who got Leamy to carry his bag, and the man who knows
+where the Quinton ruby is, unless I am more than usually mistaken. Don't
+stare after him, in case he looks round. Presently, when we get into the
+busier streets, I shall have a little chat with him."
+
+But for some time the man kept to the back streets. In time, however, he
+emerged into the Buckingham Palace Road, and we saw him stop and look at a
+hat-shop. But after a general look over the window and a glance in at the
+door he went on.
+
+"Good sign!" observed Hewitt; "got no money with him--makes it easier for
+us."
+
+In a little while Wilks approached a small crowd gathered about a woman
+fiddler. Hewitt touched my arm, and a few quick steps took us past our man
+and to the opposite side of the crowd. When Wilks emerged, he met us
+coming in the opposite direction.
+
+"What, Sim!" burst out Hewitt with apparent delight. "I haven't piped your
+mug[A] for a stretch;[B] I thought you'd fell.[C] Where's your cady?"[D]
+
+[Footnote A: Seen your face.]
+
+[Footnote B: A year.]
+
+[Footnote C: Been imprisoned.]
+
+[Footnote D: Hat.]
+
+Wilks looked astonished and suspicious. "I don't know you," he said.
+"You've made a mistake."
+
+Hewitt laughed. "I'm glad you don't know me," he said. "If you don't, I'm
+pretty sure the reelers[A] won't. I think I've faked my mug pretty well,
+and my clobber,[B] too. Look here: I'll stand you a new cady. Strange
+blokes don't do that, eh?"
+
+[Footnote A: Police.]
+
+[Footnote B: Clothes.]
+
+Wilks was still suspicious. "I don't know what you mean," he said. Then,
+after a pause, he added: "Who are you, then?"
+
+Hewitt winked and screwed his face genially aside. "Hooky!" he said. "I've
+had a lucky touch[A] and I'm Mr. Smith till I've melted the pieces.[B] You
+come and damp it."
+
+[Footnote A: Robbery.]
+
+[Footnote B: Spent the money.]
+
+"I'm off," Wilks replied. "Unless you're pal enough to lend me a quid," he
+added, laughing.
+
+"I am that," responded Hewitt, plunging his hand in his pocket. "I'm
+flush, my boy, flush, and I've been wetting it pretty well to-day. I feel
+pretty jolly now, and I shouldn't wonder if I went home cannon.[A] Only a
+quid? Have two, if you want 'em--or three; there's plenty more, and you'll
+do the same for me some day. Here y'are."
+
+[Footnote A: Drunk.]
+
+Hewitt had, of a sudden, assumed the whole appearance, manners, and
+bearing of a slightly elevated rowdy. Now he pulled his hand from his
+pocket and extended it, full of silver, with five or six sovereigns
+interspersed, toward Wilks.
+
+"I'll have three quid," Wilks said, with decision, taking the money; "but
+I'm blowed if I remember you. Who's your pal?"
+
+Hewitt jerked his hand in my direction, winked, and said, in a low voice:
+"He's all right. Having a rest. Can't stand Manchester," and winked again.
+
+Wilks laughed and nodded, and I understood from that that Hewitt had very
+flatteringly given me credit for being "wanted" by the Manchester police.
+
+We lurched into a public house, and drank a very little very bad whisky
+and water. Wilks still regarded us curiously, and I could see him again
+and again glancing doubtfully in Hewitt's face. But the loan of three
+pounds had largely reassured him. Presently Hewitt said:
+
+"How about our old pal down in Gold Street? Do anything with him now? Seen
+him lately?"
+
+Wilks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
+
+"That's a good job. It 'ud be awkward if you were about there to-day, I
+can tell you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Never mind, so long as you're not there. I know something, if I _have_
+been away. I'm glad I haven't had any truck with Gold Street lately,
+that's all."
+
+"D'you mean the reelers are on it?"
+
+Hewitt looked cautiously over his shoulder, leaned toward Wilks, and said:
+"Look here: this is the straight tip. I know this--I got it from the very
+nark[A] that's given the show away: By six o'clock No. 8 Gold Street will
+be turned inside out, like an old glove, and everyone in the place will
+be----" He finished the sentence by crossing his wrists like a handcuffed
+man. "What's more," he went on, "they know all about what's gone on there
+lately, and everybody that's been in or out for the last two moons[B] will
+be wanted particular--and will be found, I'm told." Hewitt concluded with
+a confidential frown, a nod, and a wink, and took another mouthful of
+whisky. Then he added, as an after-thought: "So I'm glad you haven't been
+there lately."
+
+[Footnote A: Police spy.]
+
+[Footnote B: Months.]
+
+Wilks looked in Hewitt's face and asked: "Is that straight?"
+
+"_Is_ it?" replied Hewitt with emphasis. "You go and have a look, if you
+ain't afraid of being smugged yourself. Only _I_ shan't go near No. 8 just
+yet--I know that."
+
+Wilks fidgeted, finished his drink, and expressed his intention of going.
+"Very well, if you _won't_ have another----" replied Hewitt. But he had
+gone.
+
+"Good!" said Hewitt, moving toward the door; "he has suddenly developed a
+hurry. I shall keep him in sight, but you had better take a cab and go
+straight to Euston. Take tickets to the nearest station to
+Radcot--Kedderby, I think it is--and look up the train arrangements. Don't
+show yourself too much, and keep an eye on the entrance. Unless I am
+mistaken, Wilks will be there pretty soon, and I shall be on his heels. If
+I _am_ wrong, then you won't see the end of the fun, that's all."
+
+Hewitt hurried after Wilks, and I took the cab and did as he wished. There
+was an hour and a few minutes, I found, to wait for the next train, and
+that time I occupied as best I might, keeping a sharp lookout across the
+quadrangle. Barely five minutes before the train was to leave, and just as
+I was beginning to think about the time of the next, a cab dashed up and
+Hewitt alighted. He hurried in, found me, and drew me aside into a recess,
+just as another cab arrived.
+
+"Here he is," Hewitt said. "I followed him as far as Euston Road and then
+got my cabby to spurt up and pass him. He had had his mustache shaved off,
+and I feared you mightn't recognize him, and so let him see you."
+
+From our retreat we could see Wilks hurry into the booking-office. We
+watched him through to the platform and followed. He wasted no time, but
+made the best of his way to a third-class carriage at the extreme fore end
+of the train.
+
+"We have three minutes," Hewitt said, "and everything depends on his not
+seeing us get into this train. Take this cap. Fortunately, we're both in
+tweed suits."
+
+He had bought a couple of tweed cricket caps, and these we assumed,
+sending our "bowler" hats to the cloak-room. Hewitt also put on a pair of
+blue spectacles, and then walked boldly up the platform and entered a
+first-class carriage. I followed close on his heels, in such a manner that
+a person looking from the fore end of the train would be able to see but
+very little of me.
+
+"So far so good," said Hewitt, when we were seated and the train began to
+move off. "I must keep a lookout at each station, in case our friend goes
+off unexpectedly."
+
+"I waited some time," I said; "where did you both go to?"
+
+"First he went and bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some
+distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets
+in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor's
+shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat
+mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way
+up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber's shop. I took a
+cautious peep at the window, saw two or three other customers also
+waiting, and took the opportunity to rush over to a 'notion' shop and buy
+these blue spectacles, and to a hatter's for these caps--of which I regret
+to observe that yours is too big. He was rather a long while in the
+barber's, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache. This was
+a good indication. It made it plainer than ever that he had believed my
+warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street and its
+frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was quite
+true. The rest you know. He cabbed to the station, and so did I."
+
+"And now perhaps," I said, "after giving me the character of a thief
+wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in
+exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London
+without any definite idea of when I'm coming back, perhaps you'll tell me
+what we're after?"
+
+Hewitt laughed. "You wanted to join in, you know," he said, "and you must
+take your luck as it comes. As a matter of fact there is scarcely anything
+in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this watching and
+following business. Often it lasts for weeks. When we alight, we shall
+have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult possible conditions,
+in the country. There it is often quite impossible to follow a man
+unobserved. It is only because it is the only way that I am undertaking it
+now. As to what we're after, you know that as well as I--the Quinton ruby.
+Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would be impossible to find
+it. We are following him so that he will find it for us."
+
+"He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?"
+
+"Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the
+bag to direct Hollams's suspicion to him. Hollams found out by his
+repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and this
+morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks' possession with
+a revolver. We saw the upshot of that."
+
+Kedderby Station was about forty miles out. At each intermediate stopping
+station Hewitt watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train. "What I
+fear," Hewitt observed, "is that at Kedderby he may take a fly. To stalk a
+man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you _can't_ follow one
+vehicle in another without being spotted. But if he's so smart as I think,
+he won't do it. A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered in
+these places."
+
+He did _not_ take a fly. At Kedderby we saw him jump out quickly and
+hasten from the station. The train stood for a few minutes, and he was out
+of the station before we alighted. Through the railings behind the
+platform we could see him walking briskly away to the right. From the
+ticket collector we ascertained that Radcot lay in that direction, three
+miles off.
+
+To my dying day I shall never forget that three miles. They seemed three
+hundred. In the still country almost every footfall seemed audible for any
+distance, and in the long stretches of road one could see half a mile
+behind or before. Hewitt was cool and patient, but I got into a fever of
+worry, excitement, want of breath, and back-ache. At first, for a little,
+the road zig-zagged, and then the chase was comparatively easy. We waited
+behind one bend till Wilks had passed the next, and then hurried in his
+trail, treading in the dustiest parts of the road or on the side grass,
+when there was any, to deaden the sound of our steps.
+
+At the last of these short bends we looked ahead and saw a long, white
+stretch of road with the dark form of Wilks a couple of hundred yards in
+front. It would never do to let him get to the end of this great stretch
+before following, as he might turn off at some branch road out of sight
+and be lost. So we jumped the hedge and scuttled along as we best might on
+the other side, with backs bent, and our feet often many inches deep in
+wet clay. We had to make continual stoppages to listen and peep out, and
+on one occasion, happening, incautiously, to stand erect, looking after
+him, I was much startled to see Wilks, with his face toward me, gazing
+down the road. I ducked like lightning, and, fortunately, he seemed not to
+have observed me, but went on as before. He had probably heard some slight
+noise, but looked straight along the road for its explanation, instead of
+over the hedge. At hilly parts of the road there was extreme difficulty;
+indeed, on approaching a rise it was usually necessary to lie down under
+the hedge till Wilks had passed the top, since from the higher ground he
+could have seen us easily. This improved neither my clothes, my comfort,
+nor my temper. Luckily we never encountered the difficulty of a long and
+high wall, but once we were nearly betrayed by a man who shouted to order
+us off his field.
+
+At last we saw, just ahead, the square tower of an old church, set about
+with thick trees. Opposite this Wilks paused, looked irresolutely up and
+down the road, and then went on. We crossed the road, availed ourselves of
+the opposite hedge, and followed. The village was to be seen some three or
+four hundred yards farther along the road, and toward it Wilks sauntered
+slowly. Before he actually reached the houses he stopped and turned back.
+
+"The churchyard!" exclaimed Hewitt, under his breath. "Lie close and let
+him pass."
+
+Wilks reached the churchyard gate, and again looked irresolutely about
+him. At that moment a party of children, who had been playing among the
+graves, came chattering and laughing toward and out of the gate, and Wilks
+walked hastily away again, this time in the opposite direction.
+
+"That's the place, clearly," Hewitt said. "We must slip across quietly, as
+soon as he's far enough down the road. Now!"
+
+We hurried stealthily across, through the gate, and into the churchyard,
+where Hewitt threw his blue spectacles away. It was now nearly eight in
+the evening, and the sun was setting. Once again Wilks approached the
+gate, and did not enter, because a laborer passed at the time. Then he
+came back and slipped through.
+
+The grass about the graves was long, and under the trees it was already
+twilight. Hewitt and I, two or three yards apart, to avoid falling over
+one another in case of sudden movement, watched from behind gravestones.
+The form of Wilks stood out large and black against the fading light in
+the west as he stealthily approached through the long grass. A light cart
+came clattering along the road, and Wilks dropped at once and crouched on
+his knees till it had passed. Then, staring warily about him, he made
+straight for the stone behind which Hewitt waited.
+
+I saw Hewitt's dark form swing noiselessly round to the other side of the
+stone. Wilks passed on and dropped on his knee beside a large,
+weather-worn slab that rested on a brick under-structure a foot or so
+high. The long grass largely hid the bricks, and among it Wilks plunged
+his hand, feeling along the brick surface. Presently he drew out a loose
+brick, and laid it on the slab. He felt again in the place, and brought
+forth a small dark object. I saw Hewitt rise erect in the gathering dusk,
+and with extended arm step noiselessly toward the stooping man. Wilks made
+a motion to place the dark object in his pocket, but checked himself, and
+opened what appeared to be a lid, as though to make sure of the safety of
+the contents. The last light, straggling under the trees, fell on a
+brilliantly sparkling object within, and like a flash Hewitt's hand shot
+over Wilks' shoulder and snatched the jewel.
+
+The man actually screamed--one of those curious sharp little screams that
+one may hear from a woman very suddenly alarmed. But he sprang at Hewitt
+like a cat, only to meet a straight drive of the fist that stretched him
+on his back across the slab. I sprang from behind my stone, and helped
+Hewitt to secure his wrists with a pocket-handkerchief. Then we marched
+him, struggling and swearing, to the village.
+
+When, in the lights of the village, he recognized us, he had a perfect fit
+of rage, but afterward he calmed down, and admitted that it was a "very
+clean cop." There was some difficulty in finding the village constable,
+and Sir Valentine Quinton was dining out and did not arrive for at least
+an hour. In the interval Wilks grew communicative.
+
+"How much d'ye think I'll get?" he asked.
+
+"Can't guess," Hewitt replied. "And as we shall probably have to give
+evidence, you'll be giving yourself away if you talk too much."
+
+"Oh, I don't care; that'll make no difference. It's a fair cop, and I'm in
+for it. You got at me nicely, lending me three quid. I never knew a reeler
+do that before. That blinded me. But was it kid about Gold Street?"
+
+"No, it wasn't. Mr. Hollams is safely shut up by this time, I expect, and
+you are avenged for your little trouble with him this afternoon."
+
+"What did you know about that? Well, you've got it up nicely for me, I
+must say. S'pose you've been following me all the time?"
+
+"Well, yes; I haven't been far off. I guessed you'd want to clear out of
+town if Hollams was taken, and I knew this"--Hewitt tapped his breast
+pocket--"was what you'd take care to get hold of first. You hid it, of
+course, because you knew that Hollams would probably have you searched for
+it if he got suspicious?"
+
+"Yes, he did, too. Two blokes went over my pockets one night, and somebody
+got into my room. But I expected that, Hollams is such a greedy pig. Once
+he's got you under his thumb he don't give you half your makings, and, if
+you kick, he'll have you smugged. So that I wasn't going to give him
+_that_ if I could help it. I s'pose it ain't any good asking how you got
+put on to our mob?"
+
+"No," said Hewitt, "it isn't."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We didn't get back till the next day, staying for the night, despite an
+inconvenient want of requisites, at the Hall. There were, in fact, no late
+trains. We told Sir Valentine the story of the Irishman, much to his
+amusement.
+
+"Leamy's tale sounded unlikely, of course," Hewitt said, "but it was
+noticeable that every one of his misfortunes pointed in the same
+direction--that certain persons were tremendously anxious to get at
+something they supposed he had. When he spoke of his adventure with the
+bag, I at once remembered Wilks' arrest and subsequent release. It was a
+curious coincidence, to say the least, that this should happen at the very
+station to which the proceeds of this robbery must come, if they came to
+London at all, and on the day following the robbery itself. Kedderby is
+one of the few stations on this line where no trains would stop after the
+time of the robbery, so that the thief would have to wait till the next
+day to get back. Leamy's recognition of Wilks' portrait made me feel
+pretty certain. Plainly, he had carried stolen property; the poor,
+innocent fellow's conversation with Hollams showed that, as, in fact, did
+the sum, five pounds, paid to him by way of 'regulars,' or customary toll,
+from the plunder of services of carriage. Hollams obviously took Leamy for
+a criminal friend of Wilks', because of his use of the thieves'
+expressions 'sparks' and 'regulars,' and suggested, in terms which Leamy
+misunderstood, that he should sell any plunder he might obtain to himself,
+Hollams. Altogether it would have been very curious if the plunder were
+_not_ that from Radcot Hall, especially as no other robbery had been
+reported at the time.
+
+"Now, among the jewels taken, only one was of a very pre-eminent
+value--the famous ruby. It was scarcely likely that Hollams would go to so
+much trouble and risk, attempting to drug, injuring, waylaying, and
+burgling the rooms of the unfortunate Leamy, for a jewel of small
+value--for any jewel, in fact, but the ruby. So that I felt a pretty
+strong presumption, at all events, that it was the ruby Hollams was after.
+Leamy had not had it, I was convinced, from his tale and his manner, and
+from what I judged of the man himself. The only other person was Wilks,
+and certainly he had a temptation to keep this to himself, and avoid, if
+possible, sharing with his London director, or principal; while the
+carriage of the bag by the Irishman gave him a capital opportunity to put
+suspicion on him, with the results seen. The most daring of Hollams'
+attacks on Leamy was doubtless the attempted maiming or killing at the
+railway station, so as to be able, in the character of a medical man, to
+search his pockets. He was probably desperate at the time, having, I have
+no doubt, been following Leamy about all day at the Crystal Palace without
+finding an opportunity to get at his pockets.
+
+"The struggle and flight of Wilks from Hollams' confirmed my previous
+impressions. Hollams, finally satisfied that very morning that Leamy
+certainly had not the jewel, either on his person or at his lodging, and
+knowing, from having so closely watched him, that he had been nowhere
+where it could be disposed of, concluded that Wilks was cheating him, and
+attempted to extort the ruby from him by the aid of another ruffian and a
+pistol. The rest of my way was plain. Wilks, I knew, would seize the
+opportunity of Hollams' being safely locked up to get at and dispose of
+the ruby. I supplied him with funds and left him to lead us to his
+hiding-place. He did it, and I think that's all."
+
+"He must have walked straight away from my house to the churchyard," Sir
+Valentine remarked, "to hide that pendant. That was fairly cool."
+
+"Only a cool hand could carry out such a robbery single-handed," Hewitt
+answered. "I expect his tools were in the bag that Leamy carried, as well
+as the jewels. They must have been a small and neat set."
+
+They were. We ascertained on our return to town the next day that the bag,
+with all its contents intact, including the tools, had been taken by the
+police at their surprise visit to No. 8 Gold Street, as well as much other
+stolen property.
+
+Hollams and Wilks each got very wholesome doses of penal servitude, to the
+intense delight of Mick Leamy. Leamy himself, by the by, is still to be
+seen, clad in a noble uniform, guarding the door of a well-known London
+restaurant. He has not had any more five-pound notes for carrying bags,
+but knows London too well now to expect it.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY.
+
+It is now a fair number of years back since the loss of the famous Stanway
+Cameo made its sensation, and the only person who had the least interest
+in keeping the real facts of the case secret has now been dead for some
+time, leaving neither relatives nor other representatives. Therefore no
+harm will be done in making the inner history of the case public; on the
+contrary, it will afford an opportunity of vindicating the professional
+reputation of Hewitt, who is supposed to have completely failed to make
+anything of the mystery surrounding the case. At the present time
+connoisseurs in ancient objects of art are often heard regretfully to
+wonder whether the wonderful cameo, so suddenly discovered and so quickly
+stolen, will ever again be visible to the public eye. Now this question
+need be asked no longer.
+
+The cameo, as may be remembered from the many descriptions published at
+the time, was said to be absolutely the finest extant. It was a sardonyx
+of three strata--one of those rare sardonyx cameos in which it has been
+possible for the artist to avail himself of three different colors of
+superimposed stone--the lowest for the ground and the two others for the
+middle and high relief of the design. In size it was, for a cameo,
+immense, measuring seven and a half inches by nearly six. In subject it
+was similar to the renowned Gonzaga Cameo--now the property of the Czar of
+Russia--a male and a female head with imperial insignia; but in this case
+supposed to represent Tiberius Claudius and Messalina. Experts considered
+it probably to be the work of Athenion, a famous gem-cutter of the first
+Christian century, whose most notable other work now extant is a smaller
+cameo, with a mythological subject, preserved in the Vatican.
+
+The Stanway Cameo had been discovered in an obscure Italian village by one
+of those traveling agents who scour all Europe for valuable antiquities
+and objects of art. This man had hurried immediately to London with his
+prize, and sold it to Mr. Claridge of St. James Street, eminent as a
+dealer in such objects. Mr. Claridge, recognizing the importance and value
+of the article, lost no opportunity of making its existence known, and
+very soon the Claudius Cameo, as it was at first usually called, was as
+famous as any in the world. Many experts in ancient art examined it, and
+several large bids were made for its purchase.
+
+In the end it was bought by the Marquis of Stanway for five thousand
+pounds for the purpose of presentation to the British Museum. The marquis
+kept the cameo at his town house for a few days, showing it to his
+friends, and then returned it to Mr. Claridge to be finally and carefully
+cleaned before passing into the national collection. Two nights after Mr.
+Claridge's premises were broken into and the cameo stolen.
+
+Such, in outline, was the generally known history of the Stanway Cameo.
+The circumstances of the burglary in detail were these: Mr. Claridge had
+himself been the last to leave the premises at about eight in the evening,
+at dusk, and had locked the small side door as usual. His assistant, Mr.
+Cutler, had left an hour and a half earlier. When Mr. Claridge left,
+everything was in order, and the policeman on fixed-point duty just
+opposite, who bade Mr. Claridge good-evening as he left, saw nothing
+suspicious during the rest of his term of duty, nor did his successors at
+the point throughout the night.
+
+In the morning, however, Mr. Cutler, the assistant, who arrived first,
+soon after nine o'clock, at once perceived that something unlooked-for had
+happened. The door, of which he had a key, was still fastened, and had not
+been touched; but in the room behind the shop Mr. Claridge's private desk
+had been broken open, and the contents turned out in confusion. The door
+leading on to the staircase had also been forced. Proceeding up the
+stairs, Mr. Cutler found another door open, leading from the top landing
+to a small room; this door had been opened by the simple expedient of
+unscrewing and taking off the lock, which had been on the inside. In the
+ceiling of this room was a trap-door, and this was six or eight inches
+open, the edge resting on the half-wrenched-off bolt, which had been torn
+away when the trap was levered open from the outside.
+
+Plainly, then, this was the path of the thief or thieves. Entrance had
+been made through the trap-door, two more doors had been opened, and then
+the desk had been ransacked. Mr. Cutler afterward explained that at this
+time he had no precise idea what had been stolen, and did not know where
+the cameo had been left on the previous evening. Mr. Claridge had himself
+undertaken the cleaning, and had been engaged on it, the assistant said,
+when he left.
+
+There was no doubt, however, after Mr. Claridge's arrival at ten
+o'clock--the cameo was gone. Mr. Claridge, utterly confounded at his loss,
+explained incoherently, and with curses on his own carelessness, that he
+had locked the precious article in his desk on relinquishing work on it
+the previous evening, feeling rather tired, and not taking the trouble to
+carry it as far as the safe in another part of the house.
+
+The police were sent for at once, of course, and every investigation made,
+Mr. Claridge offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the recovery of
+the cameo. The affair was scribbled off at large in the earliest editions
+of the evening papers, and by noon all the world was aware of the
+extraordinary theft of the Stanway Cameo, and many people were discussing
+the probabilities of the case, with very indistinct ideas of what a
+sardonyx cameo precisely was.
+
+It was in the afternoon of this day that Lord Stanway called on Martin
+Hewitt. The marquis was a tall, upstanding man of spare figure and active
+habits, well known as a member of learned societies and a great patron of
+art. He hurried into Hewitt's private room as soon as his name had been
+announced, and, as soon as Hewitt had given him a chair, plunged into
+business.
+
+"Probably you already guess my business with you, Mr. Hewitt--you have
+seen the early evening papers? Just so; then I needn't tell you again what
+you already know. My cameo is gone, and I badly want it back. Of course
+the police are hard at work at Claridge's, but I'm not quite satisfied. I
+have been there myself for two or three hours, and can't see that they
+know any more about it than I do myself. Then, of course, the police,
+naturally and properly enough from their point of view, look first to find
+the criminal, regarding the recovery of the property almost as a secondary
+consideration. Now, from _my_ point of view, the chief consideration is
+the property. Of course I want the thief caught, if possible, and properly
+punished; but still more I want the cameo."
+
+"Certainly it is a considerable loss. Five thousand pounds----"
+
+"Ah, but don't misunderstand me! It isn't the monetary value of the thing
+that I regret. As a matter of fact, I am indemnified for that already.
+Claridge has behaved most honorably--more than honorably. Indeed, the
+first intimation I had of the loss was a check from him for five thousand
+pounds, with a letter assuring me that the restoration to me of the amount
+I had paid was the least he could do to repair the result of what he
+called his unpardonable carelessness. Legally, I'm not sure that I could
+demand anything of him, unless I could prove very flagrant neglect indeed
+to guard against theft."
+
+"Then I take it, Lord Stanway," Hewitt observed, "that you much prefer the
+cameo to the money?"
+
+"Certainly. Else I should never have been willing to pay the money for the
+cameo. It was an enormous price--perhaps much above the market value, even
+for such a valuable thing--but I was particularly anxious that it should
+not go out of the country. Our public collections here are not so
+fortunate as they should be in the possession of the very finest examples
+of that class of work. In short, I had determined on the cameo, and,
+fortunately, happen to be able to carry out determinations of that sort
+without regarding an extra thousand pounds or so as an obstacle. So that,
+you see, what I want is not the value, but the thing itself. Indeed, I
+don't think I can possibly keep the money Claridge has sent me; the affair
+is more his misfortune than his fault. But I shall say nothing about
+returning it for a little while; it may possibly have the effect of
+sharpening everybody in the search."
+
+"Just so. Do I understand that you would like me to look into the case
+independently, on your behalf?"
+
+"Exactly. I want you, if you can, to approach the matter entirely from my
+point of view--your sole object being to find the cameo. Of course, if you
+happen on the thief as well, so much the better. Perhaps, after all,
+looking for the one is the same thing as looking for the other?"
+
+"Not always; but usually it is, or course; even if they are not together,
+they certainly _have_ been at one time, and to have one is a very long
+step toward having the other. Now, to begin with, is anybody suspected?"
+
+"Well, the police are reserved, but I believe the fact is they've nothing
+to say. Claridge won't admit that he suspects any one, though he believes
+that whoever it was must have watched him yesterday evening through the
+back window of his room, and must have seen him put the cameo away in his
+desk; because the thief would seem to have gone straight to the place. But
+I half fancy that, in his inner mind, he is inclined to suspect one of two
+people. You see, a robbery of this sort is different from others. That
+cameo would never be stolen, I imagine, with the view of its being
+sold--it is much too famous a thing; a man might as well walk about
+offering to sell the Tower of London. There are only a very few people who
+buy such things, and every one of them knows all about it. No dealer would
+touch it; he could never even show it, much less sell it, without being
+called to account. So that it really seems more likely that it has been
+taken by somebody who wishes to keep it for mere love of the thing--a
+collector, in fact--who would then have to keep it secretly at home, and
+never let a soul besides himself see it, living in the consciousness that
+at his death it must be found and this theft known; unless, indeed, an
+ordinary vulgar burglar has taken it without knowing its value."
+
+"That isn't likely," Hewitt replied. "An ordinary burglar, ignorant of its
+value, wouldn't have gone straight to the cameo and have taken it in
+preference to many other things of more apparent worth, which must be
+lying near in such a place as Claridge's."
+
+"True--I suppose he wouldn't. Although the police seem to think that the
+breaking in is clearly the work of a regular criminal--from the
+jimmy-marks, you know, and so on."
+
+"Well, but what of the two people you think Mr. Claridge suspects?"
+
+"Of course I can't say that he does suspect them--I only fancied from his
+tone that it might be possible; he himself insists that he can't, in
+justice, suspect anybody. One of these men is Hahn, the traveling agent
+who sold him the cameo. This man's character does not appear to be
+absolutely irreproachable; no dealer trusts him very far. Of course
+Claridge doesn't say what he paid him for the cameo; these dealers are
+very reticent about their profits, which I believe are as often something
+like five hundred per cent as not. But it seems Hahn bargained to have
+something extra, depending on the amount Claridge could sell the carving
+for. According to the appointment he should have turned up this morning,
+but he hasn't been seen, and nobody seems to know exactly where he is."
+
+"Yes; and the other person?"
+
+"Well, I scarcely like mentioning him, because he is certainly a
+gentleman, and I believe, in the ordinary way, quite incapable of anything
+in the least degree dishonorable; although, of course, they say a
+collector has no conscience in the matter of his own particular hobby, and
+certainly Mr. Wollett is as keen a collector as any man alive. He lives in
+chambers in the next turning past Claridge's premises--can, in fact, look
+into Claridge's back windows if he likes. He examined the cameo several
+times before I bought it, and made several high offers--appeared, in fact,
+very anxious indeed to get it. After I had bought it he made, I
+understand, some rather strong remarks about people like myself 'spoiling
+the market' by paying extravagant prices, and altogether cut up 'crusty,'
+as they say, at losing the specimen." Lord Stanway paused a few seconds,
+and then went on: "I'm not sure that I ought to mention Mr. Woollett's
+name for a moment in connection with such a matter; I am personally
+perfectly certain that he is as incapable of anything like theft as
+myself. But I am telling you all I know."
+
+"Precisely. I can't know too much in a case like this. It can do no harm
+if I know all about fifty innocent people, and may save me from the risk
+of knowing nothing about the thief. Now, let me see: Mr. Wollett's rooms,
+you say, are near Mr. Claridge's place of business? Is there any means of
+communication between the roofs?"
+
+"Yes, I am told that it is perfectly possible to get from one place to the
+other by walking along the leads."
+
+"Very good! Then, unless you can think of any other information that may
+help me, I think, Lord Stanway, I will go at once and look at the place."
+
+"Do, by all means. I think I'll come back with you. Somehow, I don't like
+to feel idle in the matter, though I suppose I can't do much. As to more
+information, I don't think there is any."
+
+"In regard to Mr. Claridge's assistant, now: Do you know anything of him?"
+
+"Only that he has always seemed a very civil and decent sort of man.
+Honest, I should say, or Claridge wouldn't have kept him so many
+years--there are a good many valuable things about at Claridge's. Besides,
+the man has keys of the place himself, and, even if he were a thief, he
+wouldn't need to go breaking in through the roof."
+
+"So that," said Hewitt, "we have, directly connected with this cameo,
+besides yourself, these people: Mr. Claridge, the dealer; Mr. Cutler, the
+assistant in Mr. Claridge's business; Hahn, who sold the article to
+Claridge, and Mr. Woollett, who made bids for it. These are all?"
+
+"All that I know of. Other gentlemen made bids, I believe, but I don't
+know them."
+
+"Take these people in their order. Mr. Claridge is out of the question, as
+a dealer with a reputation to keep up would be, even if he hadn't
+immediately sent you this five thousand pounds--more than the market
+value, I understand, of the cameo. The assistant is a reputable man,
+against whom nothing is known, who would never need to break in, and who
+must understand his business well enough to know that he could never
+attempt to sell the missing stone without instant detection. Hahn is a man
+of shady antecedents, probably clever enough to know as well as anybody
+how to dispose of such plunder--if it be possible to dispose of it at all;
+also, Hahn hasn't been to Claridge's to-day, although he had an
+appointment to take money. Lastly, Mr. Woollett is a gentleman of the most
+honorable record, but a perfectly rabid collector, who had made every
+effort to secure the cameo before you bought it; who, moreover, could have
+seen Mr. Claridge working in his back room, and who has perfectly easy
+access to Mr. Claridge's roof. If we find it can't be none of these, then
+we must look where circumstances indicate."
+
+There was unwonted excitement at Mr. Claridge's place when Hewitt and his
+client arrived. It was a dull old building, and in the windows there was
+never more show than an odd blue china vase or two, or, mayhap, a few old
+silver shoe-buckles and a curious small sword. Nine men out of ten would
+have passed it without a glance; but the tenth at least would probably
+know it for a place famous through the world for the number and value of
+the old and curious objects of art that had passed through it.
+
+On this day two or three loiterers, having heard of the robbery, extracted
+what gratification they might from staring at nothing between the railings
+guarding the windows. Within, Mr. Claridge, a brisk, stout, little old
+man, was talking earnestly to a burly police-inspector in uniform, and Mr.
+Cutler, who had seized the opportunity to attempt amateur detective work
+on his own account, was groveling perseveringly about the floor, among old
+porcelain and loose pieces of armor, in the futile hope of finding any
+clue that the thieves might have considerately dropped.
+
+Mr. Claridge came forward eagerly.
+
+"The leather case has been found, I am pleased to be able to tell you,
+Lord Stanway, since you left."
+
+"Empty, of course?"
+
+"Unfortunately, yes. It had evidently been thrown away by the thief behind
+a chimney-stack a roof or two away, where the police have found it. But it
+is a clue, of course."
+
+"Ah, then this gentleman will give me his opinion of it," Lord Stanway
+said, turning to Hewitt. "This, Mr. Claridge, is Mr. Martin Hewitt, who
+has been kind enough to come with me here at a moment's notice. With the
+police on the one hand and Mr. Hewitt on the other we shall certainly
+recover that cameo, if it is to be recovered, I think."
+
+Mr. Claridge bowed, and beamed on Hewitt through his spectacles. "I'm very
+glad Mr. Hewitt has come," he said. "Indeed, I had already decided to give
+the police till this time to-morrow, and then, if they had found nothing,
+to call in Mr. Hewitt myself."
+
+Hewitt bowed in his turn, and then asked: "Will you let me see the various
+breakages? I hope they have not been disturbed."
+
+"Nothing whatever has been disturbed. Do exactly as seems best. I need
+scarcely say that everything here is perfectly at your disposal. You know
+all the circumstances, of course?"
+
+"In general, yes. I suppose I am right in the belief that you have no
+resident housekeeper?"
+
+"No," Claridge replied, "I haven't. I had one housekeeper who sometimes
+pawned my property in the evening, and then another who used to break my
+most valuable china, till I could never sleep or take a moment's ease at
+home for fear my stock was being ruined here. So I gave up resident
+housekeepers. I felt some confidence in doing it because of the policeman
+who is always on duty opposite."
+
+"Can I see the broken desk?"
+
+Mr. Claridge led the way into the room behind the shop. The desk was
+really a sort of work-table, with a lifting top and a lock. The top had
+been forced roughly open by some instrument which had been pushed in below
+it and used as a lever, so that the catch of the lock was torn away.
+Hewitt examined the damaged parts and the marks of the lever, and then
+looked out at the back window.
+
+"There are several windows about here," he remarked, "from which it might
+be possible to see into this room. Do you know any of the people who live
+behind them?"
+
+"Two or three I know," Mr. Claridge answered, "but there are two
+windows--the pair almost immediately before us--belonging to a room or
+office which is to let. Any stranger might get in there and watch."
+
+"Do the roofs above any of those windows communicate in any way with
+yours?"
+
+"None of those directly opposite. Those at the left do; you may walk all
+the way along the leads."
+
+"And whose windows are they?"
+
+Mr. Claridge hesitated. "Well," he said, "they're Mr. Woollett's, an
+excellent customer of mine. But he's a gentleman, and--well, I really
+think it's absurd to suspect him."
+
+"In a case like this," Hewitt answered, "one must disregard nothing but
+the impossible. Somebody--whether Mr. Woollett himself or another
+person--could possibly have seen into this room from those windows, and
+equally possibly could have reached this room from that one. Therefore we
+must not forget Mr. Woollett. Have any of your neighbors been burgled
+during the night? I mean that strangers anxious to get at your trap-door
+would probably have to begin by getting into some other house close by, so
+as to reach your roof."
+
+"No," Mr. Claridge replied; "there has been nothing of that sort. It was
+the first thing the police ascertained."
+
+Hewitt examined the broken door and then made his way up the stairs with
+the others. The unscrewed lock of the door of the top back-room required
+little examination. In the room below the trap-door was a dusty table on
+which stood a chair, and at the other side of the table sat
+Detective-Inspector Plummer, whom Hewitt knew very well, and who bade him
+"good-day" and then went on with his docket.
+
+"This chair and table were found as they are now, I take it?" Hewitt
+asked.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Claridge; "the thieves, I should think, dropped in through
+the trap-door, after breaking it open, and had to place this chair where
+it is to be able to climb back."
+
+Hewitt scrambled up through the trap-way and examined it from the top. The
+door was hung on long external barn-door hinges, and had been forced open
+in a similar manner to that practiced on the desk. A jimmy had been pushed
+between the frame and the door near the bolt, and the door had been pried
+open, the bolt being torn away from the screws in the operation.
+
+Presently Inspector Plummer, having finished his docket, climbed up to the
+roof after Hewitt, and the two together went to the spot, close under a
+chimney-stack on the next roof but one, where the case had been found.
+Plummer produced the case, which he had in his coat-tail pocket, for
+Hewitt's inspection.
+
+"I don't see anything particular about it; do you?" he said. "It shows us
+the way they went, though, being found just here."
+
+"Well, yes," Hewitt said; "if we kept on in this direction, we should be
+going toward Mr. Woollett's house, and _his_ trap-door, shouldn't we!"
+
+The inspector pursed his lips, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. "Of
+course we haven't waited till now to find that out," he said.
+
+"No, of course. And, as you say, I didn't think there is much to be
+learned from this leather case. It is almost new, and there isn't a mark
+on it." And Hewitt handed it back to the inspector.
+
+"Well," said Plummer, as he returned the case to his pocket, "what's your
+opinion?"
+
+"It's rather an awkward case."
+
+"Yes, it is. Between ourselves--I don't mind telling you--I'm having a
+sharp lookout kept over there"--Plummer jerked his head in the direction
+of Mr. Woollett's chambers--"because the robbery's an unusual one. There's
+only two possible motives--the sale of the cameo or the keeping of it. The
+sale's out of the question, as you know; the thing's only salable to those
+who would collar the thief at once, and who wouldn't have the thing in
+their places now for anything. So that it must be taken to keep, and
+that's a thing nobody but the maddest of collectors would do, just such
+persons as--" and the inspector nodded again toward Mr. Woollett's
+quarters. "Take that with the other circumstances," he added, "and I think
+you'll agree it's worth while looking a little farther that way. Of course
+some of the work--taking off the lock and so on--looks rather like a
+regular burglar, but it's just possible that any one badly wanting the
+cameo would like to hire a man who was up to the work."
+
+"Yes, it's possible."
+
+"Do you know anything of Hahn, the agent?" Plummer asked, a moment later.
+
+"No, I don't. Have you found him yet?"
+
+"I haven't yet, but I'm after him. I've found he was at Charing Cross a
+day or two ago, booking a ticket for the Continent. That and his failing
+to turn up to-day seem to make it worth while not to miss _him_ if we can
+help it. He isn't the sort of man that lets a chance of drawing a bit of
+money go for nothing."
+
+They returned to the room. "Well," said Lord Stanway, "what's the result
+of the consultation? We've been waiting here very patiently, while you two
+clever men have been discussing the matter on the roof."
+
+On the wall just beneath the trap-door a very dusty old tall hat hung on a
+peg. This Hewitt took down and examined very closely, smearing his fingers
+with the dust from the inside lining. "Is this one of your valuable and
+crusted old antiques?" he asked, with a smile, of Mr. Claridge.
+
+"That's only an old hat that I used to keep here for use in bad weather,"
+Mr. Claridge said, with some surprise at the question. "I haven't touched
+it for a year or more."
+
+"Oh, then it couldn't have been left here by your last night's visitor,"
+Hewitt replied, carelessly replacing it on the hook. "You left here at
+eight last night, I think?"
+
+"Eight exactly--or within a minute or two."
+
+"Just so. I think I'll look at the room on the opposite side of the
+landing, if you'll let me."
+
+"Certainly, if you'd like to," Claridge replied; "but they haven't been
+there--it is exactly as it was left. Only a lumber-room, you see," he
+concluded, flinging the door open.
+
+A number of partly broken-up packing-cases littered about this room, with
+much other rubbish. Hewitt took the lid of one of the newest-looking
+packing-cases, and glanced at the address label. Then he turned to a rusty
+old iron box that stood against a wall. "I should like to see behind
+this," he said, tugging at it with his hands. "It is heavy and dirty. Is
+there a small crowbar about the house, or some similar lever?"
+
+Mr. Claridge shook his head. "Haven't such a thing in the place," he said.
+
+"Never mind," Hewitt replied, "another time will do to shift that old box,
+and perhaps, after all, there's little reason for moving it. I will just
+walk round to the police-station, I think, and speak to the constables who
+were on duty opposite during the night. I think, Lord Stanway, I have seen
+all that is necessary here."
+
+"I suppose," asked Mr. Claridge, "it is too soon yet to ask if you have
+formed any theory in the matter?"
+
+"Well--yes, it is," Hewitt answered. "But perhaps I may be able to
+surprise you in an hour or two; but that I don't promise. By the by," he
+added suddenly, "I suppose you're sure the trap-door was bolted last
+night?"
+
+"Certainly," Mr. Claridge answered, smiling. "Else how could the bolt have
+been broken? As a matter of fact, I believe the trap hasn't been opened
+for months. Mr. Cutler, do you remember when the trap-door was last
+opened?"
+
+Mr. Cutler shook his head. "Certainly not for six months," he said.
+
+"Ah, very well; it's not very important," Hewitt replied.
+
+As they reached the front shop a fiery-faced old gentleman bounced in at
+the street door, stumbling over an umbrella that stood in a dark corner,
+and kicking it three yards away.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean," he roared at Mr. Claridge, "by sending these
+police people smelling about my rooms and asking questions of my servants?
+What do you mean, sir, by treating me as a thief? Can't a gentleman come
+into this place to look at an article without being suspected of stealing
+it, when it disappears through your wretched carelessness? I'll ask my
+solicitor, sir, if there isn't a remedy for this sort of thing. And if I
+catch another of your spy fellows on my staircase, or crawling about my
+roof, I'll--I'll shoot him!"
+
+"Really, Mr. Woollett----" began Mr. Claridge, somewhat abashed, but the
+angry old man would hear nothing.
+
+"Don't talk to me, sir; you shall talk to my solicitor. And am I to
+understand, my lord"--turning to Lord Stanway--"that these things are
+being done with your approval?"
+
+"Whatever is being done," Lord Stanway answered, "is being done by the
+police on their own responsibility, and entirely without prompting, I
+believe, by Mr. Claridge--certainly without a suggestion of any sort from
+myself. I think that the personal opinion of Mr. Claridge--certainly my
+own--is that anything like a suspicion of your position in this wretched
+matter is ridiculous. And if you will only consider the matter calmly----"
+
+"Consider it calmly? Imagine yourself considering such a thing calmly,
+Lord Stanway. I _won't_ consider it calmly. I'll--I'll--I won't have it.
+And if I find another man on my roof, I'll pitch him off!" And Mr.
+Woollett bounced into the street again.
+
+"Mr. Woollett is annoyed," Hewitt observed, with a smile. "I'm afraid
+Plummer has a clumsy assistant somewhere."
+
+Mr. Claridge said nothing, but looked rather glum, for Mr. Woollett was a
+most excellent customer.
+
+Lord Stanwood and Hewitt walked slowly down the street, Hewitt staring at
+the pavement in profound thought. Once or twice Lord Stanway glanced at
+his face, but refrained from disturbing him. Presently, however, he
+observed: "You seem, at least, Mr. Hewitt, to have noticed something that
+has set you thinking. Does it look like a clue?"
+
+Hewitt came out of his cogitation at once. "A clue?" he said; "the case
+bristles with clues. The extraordinary thing to me is that Plummer,
+usually a smart man, doesn't seem to have seen one of them. He must be out
+of sorts, I'm afraid. But the case is decidedly a most remarkable one."
+
+"Remarkable in what particular way?"
+
+"In regard to motive. Now it would seem, as Plummer was saying to me just
+now on the roof, that there were only two possible motives for such a
+robbery. Either the man who took all this trouble and risk to break into
+Claridge's place must have desired to sell the cameo at a good price, or
+he must have desired to keep it for himself, being a lover of such things.
+But neither of these has been the actual motive."
+
+"Perhaps he thinks he can extort a good sum from me by way of ransom?"
+
+"No, it isn't that. Nor is it jealousy, nor spite, nor anything of that
+kind. I know the motive, I _think_--but I wish we could get hold of Hahn.
+I will shut myself up alone and turn it over in my mind for half an hour
+presently."
+
+"Meanwhile, what I want to know is, apart from all your professional
+subtleties--which I confess I can't understand--can you get back the
+cameo?"
+
+"That," said Hewitt, stopping at the corner of the street, "I am rather
+afraid I can not--nor anybody else. But I am pretty sure I know the
+thief."
+
+"Then surely that will lead you to the cameo?"
+
+"It _may_, of course; but, then, it is just possible that by this evening
+you may not want to have it back, after all."
+
+Lord Stanway stared in amazement.
+
+"Not want to have it back!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course I shall want to
+have it back. I don't understand you in the least; you talk in conundrums.
+Who is the thief you speak of?"
+
+"I think, Lord Stanway," Hewitt said, "that perhaps I had better not say
+until I have quite finished my inquiries, in case of mistakes. The case is
+quite an extraordinary one, and of quite a different character from what
+one would at first naturally imagine, and I must be very careful to guard
+against the possibility of error. I have very little fear of a mistake,
+however, and I hope I may wait on you in a few hours at Piccadilly with
+news. I have only to see the policemen."
+
+"Certainly, come whenever you please. But why see the policemen? They have
+already most positively stated that they saw nothing whatever suspicious
+in the house or near it."
+
+"I shall not ask them anything at all about the house," Hewitt responded.
+"I shall just have a little chat with them--about the weather." And with a
+smiling bow he turned away, while Lord Stanway stood and gazed after him,
+with an expression that implied a suspicion that his special detective was
+making a fool of him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In rather more than an hour Hewitt was back in Mr. Claridge's shop. "Mr.
+Claridge," he said, "I think I must ask you one or two questions in
+private. May I see you in your own room?"
+
+They went there at once, and Hewitt, pulling a chair before the window,
+sat down with his back to the light. The dealer shut the door, and sat
+opposite him, with the light full in his face.
+
+"Mr. Claridge," Hewitt proceeded slowly, "_when did you first find that
+Lord Stanway's cameo was a forgery_?"
+
+Claridge literally bounced in his chair. His face paled, but he managed to
+stammer sharply: "What--what--what d'you mean? Forgery? Do you mean to say
+I sell forgeries? Forgery? It wasn't a forgery!"
+
+"Then," continued Hewitt in the same deliberate tone, watching the other's
+face the while, "if it wasn't a forgery, _why did you destroy it and burst
+your trap-door and desk to imitate a burglary_?"
+
+The sweat stood thick on the dealer's face, and he gasped. But he
+struggled hard to keep his faculties together, and ejaculated hoarsely:
+"Destroy it? What--what--I didn't--didn't destroy it!"
+
+"Threw it into the river, then--don't prevaricate about details."
+
+"No--no--it's a lie! Who says that? Go away! You're insulting me!"
+Claridge almost screamed.
+
+"Come, come, Mr. Claridge," Hewitt said more placably, for he had gained
+his point; "don't distress yourself, and don't attempt to deceive me--you
+can't, I assure you. I know everything you did before you left here last
+night--everything."
+
+Claridge's face worked painfully. Once or twice he appeared to be on the
+point of returning an indignant reply, but hesitated, and finally broke
+down altogether.
+
+"Don't expose me, Mr. Hewitt!" he pleaded; "I beg you won't expose me! I
+haven't harmed a soul but myself. I've paid Lord Stanway every penny back,
+and I never knew the thing was a forgery till I began to clean it. I'm an
+old man, Mr. Hewitt, and my professional reputation has been spotless
+until now. I beg you won't expose me."
+
+Hewitt's voice softened. "Don't make an unnecessary trouble of it," he
+said. "I see a decanter on your sideboard--let me give you a little brandy
+and water. Come, there's nothing criminal, I believe, in a man's breaking
+open his own desk, or his own trap-door, for that matter. Of course I'm
+acting for Lord Stanway in this affair, and I must, in duty, report to him
+without reserve. But Lord Stanway is a gentleman, and I'll undertake he'll
+do nothing inconsiderate of your feelings, if you're disposed to be frank.
+Let us talk the affair over; tell me about it."
+
+"It was that swindler Hahn who deceived me in the beginning," Claridge
+said. "I have never made a mistake with a cameo before, and I never
+thought so close an imitation was possible. I examined it most carefully,
+and was perfectly satisfied, and many experts examined it afterward, and
+were all equally deceived. I felt as sure as I possibly could feel that I
+had bought one of the finest, if not actually the finest, cameos known to
+exist. It was not until after it had come back from Lord Stanway's, and I
+was cleaning it the evening before last, that in course of my work it
+became apparent that the thing was nothing but a consummately clever
+forgery. It was made of three layers of molded glass, nothing more nor
+less. But the glass was treated in a way I had never before known of, and
+the surface had been cunningly worked on till it defied any ordinary
+examination. Some of the glass imitation cameos made in the latter part of
+the last century, I may tell you, are regarded as marvelous pieces of
+work, and, indeed, command very fair prices, but this was something quite
+beyond any of those.
+
+"I was amazed and horrified. I put the thing away and went home. All that
+night I lay awake in a state of distraction, quite unable to decide what
+to do. To let the cameo go out of my possession was impossible. Sooner or
+later the forgery would be discovered, and my reputation--the highest in
+these matters in this country, I may safely claim, and the growth of
+nearly fifty years of honest application and good judgment--this
+reputation would be gone forever. But without considering this, there was
+the fact that I had taken five thousand pounds of Lord Stanway's money for
+a mere piece of glass, and that money I must, in mere common honesty as
+well as for my own sake, return. But how? The name of the Stanway Cameo
+had become a household word, and to confess that the whole thing was a
+sham would ruin my reputation and destroy all confidence--past, present,
+and future--in me and in my transactions. Either way spelled ruin. Even if
+I confided in Lord Stanway privately, returned his money, and destroyed
+the cameo, what then? The sudden disappearance of an article so famous
+would excite remark at once. It had been presented to the British Museum,
+and if it never appeared in that collection, and no news were to be got of
+it, people would guess at the truth at once. To make it known that I
+myself had been deceived would have availed nothing. It is my business
+_not_ to be deceived; and to have it known that my most expensive
+specimens might be forgeries would equally mean ruin, whether I sold them
+cunningly as a rogue or ignorantly as a fool. Indeed, my pride, my
+reputation as a connoisseur, is a thing near to my heart, and it would be
+an unspeakable humiliation to me to have it known that I had been imposed
+on by such a forgery. What could I do? Every expedient seemed useless but
+one--the one I adopted. It was not straightforward, I admit; but, oh! Mr.
+Hewitt, consider the temptation--and remember that it couldn't do a soul
+any harm. No matter who might be suspected, I knew there could not
+possibly be evidence to make them suffer. All the next day--yesterday--I
+was anxiously worrying out the thing in my mind and carefully devising
+the--the trick, I'm afraid you'll call it, that you by some extraordinary
+means have seen through. It seemed the only thing--what else was there?
+More I needn't tell you; you know it. I have only now to beg that you will
+use your best influence with Lord Stanway to save me from public derision
+and exposure. I will do anything--pay anything--anything but exposure, at
+my age, and with my position."
+
+"Well, you see," Hewitt replied thoughtfully, "I've no doubt Lord Stanway
+will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to
+save you in the circumstances; though you must remember that you _have_
+done some harm--you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest
+man. But as to reputation, I've a professional reputation of my own. If I
+help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed
+in _my_ part of the business."
+
+"But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt. Consider. You are not
+expected--it would be impossible--to succeed invariably; and there are
+only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other
+conspicuous successes----"
+
+"Well, well, we shall see. One thing I don't know, though--whether you
+climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got up
+through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through the
+jamb, so as to bolt it after you."
+
+"There was no available window. I used the string, as you say. My poor
+little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours of
+thought over the question of the trap-door--how to break it open so as to
+leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after I
+had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility of
+suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension. How,
+to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery? Did
+you ever see it?"
+
+"Never. And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to
+express an opinion on it; I'm not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I
+_didn't_ know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I knew
+in the first place was that it was _you_ who had broken into the house. It
+was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain amount of
+thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of the
+question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo again,
+and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway's money. I knew enough of
+your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal of a great
+theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for yourself, when
+you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble and mystery.
+Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first another motive
+seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all this trouble to
+lose five thousand pounds? You had nothing to gain; perhaps you had
+something to save--your professional reputation, for instance. Looking at
+it so, it was plain that you were _suppressing_ the cameo--burking it;
+since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never come to light again.
+That suggested the solution of the mystery at once--you had discovered,
+after the sale, that the cameo was not genuine."
+
+"Yes, yes--I see; but you say you began with the knowledge that I broke
+into the place myself. How did you know that? I can not imagine a
+trace----"
+
+"My dear sir, you left traces everywhere. In the first place, it struck me
+as curious, before I came here, that you had sent off that check for five
+thousand pounds to Lord Stanway an hour or so after the robbery was
+discovered; it looked so much as though you were sure of the cameo never
+coming back, and were in a hurry to avert suspicion. Of course I
+understood that, so far as I then knew the case, you were the most
+unlikely person in the world, and that your eagerness to repay Lord
+Stanway might be the most creditable thing possible. But the point was
+worth remembering, and I remembered it.
+
+"When I came here, I saw suspicious indications in many directions, but
+the conclusive piece of evidence was that old hat hanging below the
+trap-door."
+
+"But I never touched it; I assure you, Mr. Hewitt, I never touched the
+hat; haven't touched it for months----"
+
+"Of course. If you _had_ touched it, I might never have got the clue. But
+we'll deal with the hat presently; that wasn't what struck me at first.
+The trap-door first took my attention. Consider, now: Here was a
+trap-door, most insecurely hung on _external_ hinges; the burglar had a
+screwdriver, for he took off the door-lock below with it. Why, then,
+didn't he take this trap off by the hinges, instead of making a noise and
+taking longer time and trouble to burst the bolt from its fastenings? And
+why, if he were a stranger, was he able to plant his jimmy from the
+outside just exactly opposite the interior bolt? There was only one mark
+on the frame, and that precisely in the proper place.
+
+"After that I saw the leather case. It had not been thrown away, or some
+corner would have shown signs of the fall. It had been put down carefully
+where it was found. These things, however, were of small importance
+compared with the hat. The hat, as you know, was exceedingly thick with
+dust--the accumulation of months. But, on the top side, presented toward
+the trap-door, were a score or so of _raindrop marks_. That was all. They
+were new marks, for there was no dust over them; they had merely had time
+to dry and cake the dust they had fallen on. _Now, there had been no rain
+since a sharp shower just after seven o'clock last night_. At that time
+you, by your own statement, were in the place. You left at eight, and the
+rain was all over at ten minutes or a quarter past seven. The trap-door,
+you also told me, had not been opened for months. The thing was plain.
+You, or somebody who was here when you were, had opened that trap-door
+during, or just before, that shower. I said little then, but went, as soon
+as I had left, to the police-station. There I made perfectly certain that
+there had been no rain during the night by questioning the policemen who
+were on duty outside all the time. There had been none. I knew everything.
+
+"The only other evidence there was pointed with all the rest. There were
+no rain-marks on the leather case; it had been put on the roof as an
+after-thought when there was no rain. A very poor after-thought, let me
+tell you, for no thief would throw away a useful case that concealed his
+booty and protected it from breakage, and throw it away just so as to
+leave a clue as to what direction he had gone in. I also saw, in the
+lumber-room, a number of packing-cases--one with a label dated two days
+back--which had been opened with an iron lever; and yet, when I made an
+excuse to ask for it, you said there was no such thing in the place.
+Inference, you didn't want me to compare it with the marks on the desks
+and doors. That is all, I think."
+
+Mr. Claridge looked dolorously down at the floor. "I'm afraid," he said,
+"that I took an unsuitable rôle when I undertook to rely on my wits to
+deceive men like you. I thought there wasn't a single vulnerable spot in
+my defense, but you walk calmly through it at the first attempt. Why did I
+never think of those raindrops?"
+
+"Come," said Hewitt, with a smile, "that sounds unrepentant. I am going,
+now, to Lord Stanway's. If I were you, I think I should apologize to Mr.
+Woollett in some way."
+
+Lord Stanway, who, in the hour or two of reflection left him after parting
+with Hewitt, had come to the belief that he had employed a man whose mind
+was not always in order, received Hewitt's story with natural
+astonishment. For some time he was in doubt as to whether he would be
+doing right in acquiescing in anything but a straightforward public
+statement of the facts connected with the disappearance of the cameo, but
+in the end was persuaded to let the affair drop, on receiving an assurance
+from Mr. Woollett that he unreservedly accepted the apology offered him by
+Mr. Claridge.
+
+As for the latter, he was at least sufficiently punished in loss of money
+and personal humiliation for his escapade. But the bitterest and last blow
+he sustained when the unblushing Hahn walked smilingly into his office two
+days later to demand the extra payment agreed on in consideration of the
+sale. He had been called suddenly away, he exclaimed, on the day he should
+have come, and hoped his missing the appointment had occasioned no
+inconvenience. As to the robbery of the cameo, of course he was very
+sorry, but "pishness was pishness," and he would be glad of a check for
+the sum agreed on. And the unhappy Claridge was obliged to pay it, knowing
+that the man had swindled him, but unable to open his mouth to say so.
+
+The reward remained on offer for a long time; indeed, it was never
+publicly withdrawn, I believe, even at the time of Claridge's death. And
+several intelligent newspapers enlarged upon the fact that an ordinary
+burglar had completely baffled and defeated the boasted acumen of Mr.
+Martin Hewitt, the well-known private detective.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE.
+
+Very often Hewitt was tempted, by the fascination of some particularly odd
+case, to neglect his other affairs to follow up a matter that from a
+business point of view was of little or no value to him. As a rule, he had
+a sufficient regard for his own interests to resist such temptations, but
+in one curious case, at least, I believe he allowed it largely to
+influence him. It was certainly an extremely odd case--one of those
+affairs that, coming to light at intervals, but more often remaining
+unheard of by the general public, convince one that, after all, there is
+very little extravagance about Mr. R.L. Stevenson's bizarre imaginings of
+doings in London in his "New Arabian Nights." "There is nothing in this
+world that is at all possible," I have often heard Martin Hewitt say,
+"that has not happened or is not happening in London." Certainly he had
+opportunities of knowing.
+
+The case I have referred to occurred some time before my own acquaintance
+with him began--in 1878, in fact. He had called one Monday morning at an
+office in regard to something connected with one of those uninteresting,
+though often difficult, cases which formed, perhaps, the bulk of his
+practice, when he was informed of a most mysterious murder that had taken
+place in another part of the same building on the previous Saturday
+afternoon. Owing to the circumstances of the case, only the vaguest
+account had appeared in the morning papers, and even this, as it chanced,
+Hewitt had not read.
+
+The building was one of a new row in a partly rebuilt street near the
+National Gallery. The whole row had been built by a speculator for the
+purpose of letting out in flats, suites of chambers, and in one or two
+cases, on the ground floors, offices. The rooms had let very well, and to
+desirable tenants, as a rule. The least satisfactory tenant, the
+proprietor reluctantly admitted, was a Mr. Rameau, a negro gentleman,
+single, who had three rooms on the top floor but one of the particular
+building that Hewitt was visiting. His rent was paid regularly, but his
+behavior had produced complaints from other tenants. He got uproariously
+drunk, and screamed and howled in unknown tongues. He fell asleep on the
+staircase, and ladies were afraid to pass. He bawled rough chaff down the
+stairs and along the corridors at butcher-boys and messengers, and played
+on errand-boys brutal practical jokes that ended in police-court
+summonses. He once had a way of sliding down the balusters, shouting: "Ho!
+ho! ho! yah!" as he went, but as he was a big, heavy man, and the
+balusters had been built for different treatment, he had very soon and
+very firmly been requested to stop it. He had plenty of money, and spent
+it freely; but it was generally felt that there was too much of the
+light-hearted savage about him to fit him to live among quiet people.
+
+How much longer the landlord would have stood this sort of thing, Hewitt's
+informant said, was a matter of conjecture, for on the Saturday afternoon
+in question the tenancy had come to a startling full-stop. Rameau had been
+murdered in his room, and the body had, in the most unaccountable fashion,
+been secretly removed from the premises.
+
+The strongest possible suspicion pointed to a man who had been employed in
+shoveling and carrying coals, cleaning windows, and chopping wood for
+several of the buildings, and who had left that very Saturday. The crime
+had, in fact, been committed with this man's chopper, and the man himself
+had been heard, again and again, to threaten Rameau, who, in his brutal
+fashion, had made a butt of him. This man was a Frenchman, Victor Goujon
+by name, who had lost his employment as a watchmaker by reason of an
+injury to his right hand, which destroyed its steadiness, and so he had
+fallen upon evil days and odd jobs.
+
+He was a little man of no great strength, but extraordinarily excitable,
+and the coarse gibes and horse-play of the big negro drove him almost to
+madness. Rameau would often, after some more than ordinarily outrageous
+attack, contemptuously fling Goujon a shilling, which the little
+Frenchman, although wanting a shilling badly enough, would hurl back in
+his face, almost weeping with impotent rage. "Pig! _Canaille_!" he would
+scream. "Dirty pig of Africa! Take your sheelin' to vere you 'ave stole
+it! _Voleur_! Pig!"
+
+There was a tortoise living in the basement, of which Goujon had made
+rather a pet, and the negro would sometimes use this animal as a missile,
+flinging it at the little Frenchman's head. On one such occasion the
+tortoise struck the wall so forcibly as to break its shell, and then
+Goujon seized a shovel and rushed at his tormentor with such blind fury
+that the latter made a bolt of it. These were but a few of the passages
+between Rameau and the fuel-porter, but they illustrate the state of
+feeling between them.
+
+Goujon, after correspondence with a relative in France who offered him
+work, gave notice to leave, which expired on the day of the crime. At
+about three that afternoon a housemaid, proceeding toward Rameau's rooms,
+met Goujon as he was going away. Goujon bade her good-by, and, pointing in
+the direction of Rameau's rooms, said exultantly: "Dere shall be no more
+of the black pig for me; vit 'im I 'ave done for. Zut! I mock me of 'im!
+'E vill never _tracasser_ me no more." And he went away.
+
+The girl went to the outer door of Rameau's rooms, knocked, and got no
+reply. Concluding that the tenant was out, she was about to use her keys,
+when she found that the door was unlocked. She passed through the lobby
+and into the sitting-room, and there fell in a dead faint at the sight
+that met her eyes. Rameau lay with his back across the sofa and his
+head--drooping within an inch of the ground. On the head was a fearful
+gash, and below it was a pool of blood.
+
+The girl must have lain unconscious for about ten minutes. When she came
+to her senses, she dragged herself, terrified, from the room and up to the
+housekeeper's apartments, where, being an excitable and nervous creature,
+she only screamed "Murder!" and immediately fell in a fit of hysterics
+that lasted three-quarters of an hour. When at last she came to herself,
+she told her story, and, the hall-porter having been summoned, Rameau's
+rooms were again approached.
+
+The blood still lay on the floor, and the chopper, with which the crime
+had evidently been committed, rested against the fender; but the body had
+vanished! A search was at once made, but no trace of it could be seen
+anywhere. It seemed impossible that it could have been carried out of the
+building, for the hall-porter must at once have noticed anybody leaving
+with so bulky a burden. Still, in the building it was not to be found.
+
+When Hewitt was informed of these things on Monday, the police were, of
+course, still in possession of Rameau's rooms. Inspector Nettings, Hewitt
+was told, was in charge of the case, and as the inspector was an
+acquaintance of his, and was then in the rooms upstairs, Hewitt went up to
+see him.
+
+Nettings was pleased to see Hewitt, and invited him to look around the
+rooms. "Perhaps you can spot something we have overlooked," he said.
+"Though it's not a case there can be much doubt about."
+
+"You think it's Goujon, don't you?"
+
+"Think? Well, rather! Look here! As soon as we got here on Saturday, we
+found this piece of paper and pin on the floor. We showed it to the
+housemaid, and then she remembered--she was too much upset to think of it
+before--that when she was in the room the paper was laying on the dead
+man's chest--pinned there, evidently. It must have dropped off when they
+removed the body. It's a case of half-mad revenge on Goujon's part,
+plainly. See it; you read French, don't you?"
+
+The paper was a plain, large half-sheet of note-paper, on which a sentence
+in French was scrawled in red ink in a large, clumsy hand, thus:
+
+  _puni par un vengeur de la tortue_.
+
+"_Puni par un vengeur de la tortue_," Hewitt repeated musingly. "'Punished
+by an avenger of the tortoise,' That seems odd."
+
+"Well, rather odd. But you understand the reference, of course. Have they
+told you about Rameau's treatment of Goujon's pet tortoise?"
+
+"I think it was mentioned among his other pranks. But this is an extreme
+revenge for a thing of that sort, and a queer way of announcing it."
+
+"Oh, he's mad--mad with Rameau's continual ragging and baiting," Nettings
+answered. "Anyway, this is a plain indication--plain as though he'd left
+his own signature. Besides, it's in his own language--French. And there's
+his chopper, too."
+
+"Speaking of signatures," Hewitt remarked, "perhaps you have already
+compared this with other specimens of Goujon's writing?"
+
+"I did think of it, but they don't seem to have a specimen to hand, and,
+anyway, it doesn't seem very important. There's 'avenger of the tortoise'
+plain enough, in the man's own language, and that tells everything.
+Besides, handwritings are easily disguised."
+
+"Have you got Goujon?"
+
+"Well, no; we haven't. There seems to be some little difficulty about
+that. But I expect to have him by this time to-morrow. Here comes Mr.
+Styles, the landlord."
+
+Mr. Styles was a thin, querulous, and withered-looking little man, who
+twitched his eyebrows as he spoke, and spoke in short, jerky phrases.
+
+"No news, eh, inspector, eh? eh? Found out nothing else, eh? Terrible
+thing for my property--terrible! Who's your friend?"
+
+Nettings introduced Hewitt.
+
+"Shocking thing this, eh, Mr. Hewitt? Terrible! Comes of having anything
+to do with these blood-thirsty foreigners, eh? New buildings and
+all--character ruined. No one come to live here now, eh? Tenants--noisy
+niggers--murdered by my own servants--terrible! _You_ formed any opinion,
+eh?"
+
+"I dare say I might if I went into the case."
+
+"Yes, yes--same opinion as inspector's, eh? I mean an opinion of your
+own?" The old man scrutinized Hewitt's face sharply.
+
+"If you'd like me to look into the matter----" Hewitt began.
+
+"Eh? Oh, look into it! Well, I can't commission you, you know--matter for
+the police. Mischief's done. Police doing very well, I think--must be
+Goujon. But look about the place, certainly, if you like. If you see
+anything likely to serve _my_ interests, tell me, and--and--perhaps I'll
+employ you, eh, eh? Good-afternoon."
+
+The landlord vanished, and the inspector laughed. "Likes to see what he's
+buying, does Mr. Styles," he said.
+
+Hewitt's first impulse was to walk out of the place at once. But his
+interest in the case had been roused, and he determined, at any rate, to
+examine the rooms, and this he did very minutely. By the side of the lobby
+was a bath-room, and in this was fitted a tip-up wash-basin, which Hewitt
+inspected with particular attention. Then he called the housekeeper, and
+made inquiries about Rameau's clothes and linen. The housekeeper could
+give no idea of how many overcoats or how much linen he had had. He had
+all a negro's love of display, and was continually buying new clothes,
+which, indeed, were lying, hanging, littering, and choking up the bedroom
+in all directions. The housekeeper, however, on Hewitt's inquiring after
+such a garment in particular, did remember one heavy black ulster, which
+Rameau had very rarely worn--only in the coldest weather.
+
+"After the body was discovered," Hewitt asked the housekeeper, "was any
+stranger observed about the place--whether carrying anything or not?"
+
+"No, sir," the housekeeper replied. "There's been particular inquiries
+about that. Of course, after we knew what was wrong and the body was gone,
+nobody was seen, or he'd have been stopped. But the hall-porter says he's
+certain no stranger came or went for half an hour or more before that--the
+time about when the housemaid saw the body and fainted."
+
+At this moment a clerk from the landlord's office arrived and handed
+Nettings a paper. "Here you are," said Nettings to Hewitt; "they've found
+a specimen of Goujon's handwriting at last, if you'd like to see it. I
+don't want it; I'm not a graphologist, and the case is clear enough for me
+anyway."
+
+Hewitt took the paper. "This" he said, "is a different sort of handwriting
+from that on the paper. The red-ink note about the avenger of the tortoise
+is in a crude, large, clumsy, untaught style of writing. This is small,
+neat, and well formed--except that it is a trifle shaky, probably because
+of the hand injury."
+
+"That's nothing," contended Nettings. "handwriting clues are worse than
+useless, as a rule. It's so easy to disguise and imitate writing; and
+besides, if Goujon is such a good penman as you seem to say, why, he could
+all the easier alter his style. Say now yourself, can any fiddling
+question of handwriting get over this thing about 'avenging the
+tortoise'--practically a written confession--to say nothing of the
+chopper, and what he said to the housemaid as he left?"
+
+"Well," said Hewitt, "perhaps not; but we'll see. Meantime"--turning to
+the landlord's clerk--"possibly you will be good enough to tell me one or
+two things. First, what was Goujon's character?"
+
+"Excellent, as far as we know. We never had a complaint about him except
+for little matters of carelessness--leaving coal-scuttles on the
+staircases for people to fall over, losing shovels, and so on. He was
+certainly a bit careless, but, as far as we could see, quite a decent
+little fellow. One would never have thought him capable of committing
+murder for the sake of a tortoise, though he was rather fond of the
+animal."
+
+"The tortoise is dead now, I understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you a lift in this building?"
+
+"Only for coals and heavy parcels. Goujon used to work it, sometimes going
+up and down in it himself with coals, and so on; it goes into the
+basement."
+
+"And are the coals kept under this building?"
+
+"No. The store for the whole row is under the next two houses--the
+basements communicate."
+
+"Do you know Rameau's other name?"
+
+"César Rameau he signed in our agreement."
+
+"Did he ever mention his relations?"
+
+"No. That is to say, he did say something one day when he was very drunk;
+but, of course, it was all rot. Some one told him not to make such a
+row--he was a beastly tenant--and he said he was the best man in the
+place, and his brother was Prime Minister, and all sorts of things. Mere
+drunken rant! I never heard of his saying anything sensible about
+relations. We know nothing of his connections; he came here on a banker's
+reference."
+
+"Thanks. I think that's all I want to ask. You notice," Hewitt proceeded,
+turning to Nettings, "the only ink in this place is scented and violet, and
+the only paper is tinted and scented, too, with a monogram--characteristic
+of a negro with money. The paper that was pinned on Rameau's breast is
+in red ink on common and rather grubby paper, therefore it was written
+somewhere else and brought here. Inference, premeditation."
+
+"Yes, yes. But are you an inch nearer with all these speculations? Can you
+get nearer than I am now without them?"
+
+"Well, perhaps not," Hewitt replied. "I don't profess at this moment to
+know the criminal; you do. I'll concede you that point for the present.
+But you don't offer an opinion as to who removed Rameau's body--which I
+think I know."
+
+"Who was it, then?"
+
+"Come, try and guess that yourself. It wasn't Goujon; I don't mind letting
+you know that. But it was a person quite within your knowledge of the
+case. You've mentioned the person's name more than once."
+
+Nettings stared blankly. "I don't understand you in the least," he said.
+"But, of course, you mean that this mysterious person you speak of as
+having moved the body committed the murder?"
+
+"No, I don't. Nobody could have been more innocent of that."
+
+"Well," Nettings concluded with resignation, "I'm afraid one of us is
+rather thick-headed. What will you do?"
+
+"Interview the person who took away the body," Hewitt replied, with a
+smile.
+
+"But, man alive, why? Why bother about the person if it isn't the
+criminal?"
+
+"Never mind--never mind; probably the person will be a most valuable
+witness."
+
+"Do you mean you think this person--whoever it is--saw the crime?"
+
+"I think it very probable indeed."
+
+"Well, I won't ask you any more. I shall get hold of Goujon; that's simple
+and direct enough for me. I prefer to deal with the heart of the case--the
+murder itself--when there's such clear evidence as I have."
+
+"I shall look a little into that, too, perhaps," Hewitt said, "and, if you
+like, I'll tell you the first thing I shall do."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I shall have a good look at a map of the West Indies, and I advise you to
+do the same. Good-morning."
+
+Nettings stared down the corridor after Hewitt, and continued staring for
+nearly two minutes after he had disappeared. Then he said to the clerk,
+who had remained: "What was he talking about?"
+
+"Don't know," replied the clerk. "Couldn't make head nor tail of it."
+
+"I don't believe there _is_ a head to it," declared Nettings; "nor a tail
+either. He's kidding us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nettings was better than his word, for within two hours of his
+conversation with Hewitt, Goujon was captured and safe in a cab bound for
+Bow Street. He had been stopped at Newhaven in the morning on his way to
+Dieppe, and was brought back to London. But now Nettings met a check.
+
+Late that afternoon he called on Hewitt to explain matters. "We've got
+Goujon," he said, gloomily, "but there's a difficulty. He's got two
+friends who can swear an _alibi_. Rameau was seen alive at half-past one
+on Saturday, and the girl found him dead about three. Now, Goujon's two
+friends, it seems, were with him from one o'clock till four in the
+afternoon, with the exception of five minutes when the girl saw him, and
+then he left them to take a key or something to the housekeeper before
+finally leaving. They were waiting on the landing below when Goujon spoke
+to the housemaid, heard him speaking, and had seen him go all the way up
+to the housekeeper's room and back, as they looked up the wide well of the
+staircase. They are men employed near the place, and seem to have good
+characters. But perhaps we shall find something unfavorable about them.
+They were drinking with Goujon, it seems, by way of 'seeing him off.'"
+
+"Well," Hewitt said, "I scarcely think you need trouble to damage these
+men's characters. They are probably telling the truth. Come, now, be
+plain. You've come here to get a hint as to whether my theory of the case
+helps you, haven't you?"
+
+"Well, if you can give me a friendly hint, although, of course, I may be
+right, after all. Still, I wish you'd explain a bit as to what you meant
+by looking at a map and all that mystery. Nice thing for me to be taking a
+lesson in my own business after all these years! But perhaps I deserve
+it."
+
+"See, now," quoth Hewitt, "you remember what map I told you to look at?"
+
+"The West Indies."
+
+"Right! Well, here you are." Hewitt reached an atlas from his book-shelf.
+"Now, look here: the biggest island of the lot on this map, barring Cuba,
+is Hayti. You know as well as I do that the western part of that island is
+peopled by the black republic of Hayti, and that the country is in a
+degenerate state of almost unexampled savagery, with a ridiculous show of
+civilization. There are revolutions all the time; the South American
+republics are peaceful and prosperous compared to Hayti. The state of the
+country is simply awful--read Sir Spenser St. John's book on it. President
+after president of the vilest sort forces his way to power and commits the
+most horrible and bloodthirsty excesses, murdering his opponents by the
+hundred and seizing their property for himself and his satellites, who are
+usually as bad, if not worse, than the president himself. Whole
+families--men, women, and children--are murdered at the instance of these
+ruffians, and, as a consequence, the most deadly feuds spring up, and the
+presidents and their followers are always themselves in danger of
+reprisals from others. Perhaps the very worst of these presidents in
+recent times has been the notorious Domingue, who was overthrown by an
+insurrection, as they all are sooner or later, and compelled to fly the
+country. Domingue and his nephews, one of whom was Chief Minister, while
+in power committed the cruellest bloodshed, and many members of the
+opposite party sought refuge in a small island lying just to the north of
+Hayti, but were sought out there and almost exterminated. Now, I will show
+you that island on the map. What is its name?"
+
+"Tortuga."
+
+"It is. 'Tortuga,' however, is only the old Spanish name; the Haytians
+speak French--Creole French. Here is a French atlas: now see the name of
+that island."
+
+"La Tortue!"
+
+"La Tortue it is--the tortoise. Tortuga means the same thing in Spanish.
+But that island is always spoken of in Hayti as La Tortue. Now, do you see
+the drift of that paper pinned to Rameau's breast?"
+
+"Punished by an avenger of--or from--the tortoise or La Tortue--clear
+enough. It would seem that the dead man had something to do with the
+massacre there, and somebody from the island is avenging it. The thing's
+most extraordinary."
+
+"And now listen. The name of Domingue's nephew, who was Chief Minister,
+was _Septimus Rameau_."
+
+"And this was César Rameau--his brother, probably. I see. Well, this _is_
+a case."
+
+"I think the relationship probable. Now you understand why I was inclined
+to doubt that Goujon was the man you wanted."
+
+"Of course, of course! And now I suppose I must try to get a nigger--the
+chap who wrote that paper. I wish he hadn't been such an ignorant nigger.
+If he'd only have put the capitals to the words 'La Tortue,' I might have
+thought a little more about them, instead of taking it for granted that
+they meant that wretched tortoise in the basement of the house. Well, I've
+made a fool of a start, but I'll be after that nigger now."
+
+"And I, as I said before," said Hewitt, "shall be after the person that
+carried off Rameau's body. I have had something else to do this afternoon,
+or I should have begun already."
+
+"You said you thought he saw the crime. How did you judge that?"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "I think I'll keep that little secret to myself for the
+present," he said. "You shall know soon."
+
+"Very well," Nettings replied, with resignation. "I suppose I mustn't
+grumble if you don't tell me everything. I feel too great a fool
+altogether over this case to see any farther than you show me." And
+Inspector Nettings left on his search; while Martin Hewitt, as soon as he
+was alone, laughed joyously and slapped his thigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a cab-rank and shelter at the end of the street where Mr.
+Styles' building stood, and early that evening a man approached it and
+hailed the cabmen and the waterman. Any one would have known the new-comer
+at once for a cabman taking a holiday. The brim of the hat, the bird's-eye
+neckerchief, the immense coat-buttons, and, more than all, the rolling
+walk and the wrinkled trousers, marked him out distinctly.
+
+"Watcheer!" he exclaimed, affably, with the self-possessed nod only
+possible to cabbies and 'busmen. "I'm a-lookin' for a bilker. I'm told one
+o' the blokes off this rank carried 'im last Saturday, and I want to know
+where he went. I ain't 'ad a chance o' gettin' 'is address yet. Took a cab
+just as it got dark, I'm told. Tallish chap, muffled up a lot, in a long
+black overcoat. Any of ye seen 'im?"
+
+The cabbies looked at one another and shook their heads; it chanced that
+none of them had been on that particular rank at that time. But the
+waterman said: "'Old on--I bet 'e's the bloke wot old Bill Stammers took.
+Yorkey was fust on the rank, but the bloke wouldn't 'ave a 'ansom--wanted
+a four-wheeler, so old Bill took 'im. Biggish chap in a long black coat,
+collar up an' muffled thick; soft wide-awake 'at, pulled over 'is eyes;
+and he was in a 'urry, too. Jumped in sharp as a weasel."
+
+"Didn't see 'is face, did ye?"
+
+"No--not an inch of it; too much muffled. Couldn't tell if he 'ad a face."
+
+"Was his arm in a sling?"
+
+"Ay, it looked so. Had it stuffed through the breast of his coat, like as
+though there might be a sling inside."
+
+"That's 'im. Any of ye tell me where I might run across old Bill Stammers?
+He'll tell me where my precious bilker went to."
+
+As to this there was plenty of information, and in five minutes Martin
+Hewitt, who had become an unoccupied cabman for the occasion, was on his
+way to find old Bill Stammers. That respectable old man gave him full
+particulars as to the place in the East End where he had driven his
+muffled fare on Saturday, and Hewitt then begun an eighteen, or twenty
+hours' search beyond Whitechapel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At about three on Tuesday afternoon, as Nettings was in the act of leaving
+Bow Street Police Station, Hewitt drove up in a four-wheeler. Some
+prisoner appeared to be crouching low in the vehicle, but, leaving him to
+take care of himself, Hewitt hurried into the station and shook Nettings
+by the hand. "Well," he said, "have you got the murderer of Rameau yet?"
+
+"No," Nettings growled. "Unless--well, Goujon's under remand still, and,
+after all, I've been thinking that he may know something----"
+
+"Pooh, nonsense!" Hewitt answered. "You'd better let him go. Now, I _have_
+got somebody." Hewitt laughed and slapped the inspector's shoulder. "I've
+got the man who carried Rameau's body away!"
+
+"The deuce you have! Where? Bring him in. We must have him----"
+
+"All right, don't be in a hurry; he won't bolt." And Hewitt stepped out to
+the cab and produced his prisoner, who, pulling his hat farther over his
+eyes, hurried furtively into the station. One hand was stowed in the
+breast of his long coat, and below the wide brim of his hat a small piece
+of white bandage could be seen; and, as he lifted his face, it was seen to
+be that of a negro.
+
+"Inspector Nettings," Hewitt said ceremoniously, "allow me to introduce
+Mr. César Rameau!"
+
+Netting's gasped.
+
+"What!" he at length ejaculated. "What! You--you're Rameau?"
+
+The negro looked round nervously, and shrank farther from the door.
+
+"Yes," he said; "but please not so loud--please not loud. Zey may be near,
+and I'm 'fraid."
+
+"You will certify, will you not," asked Hewitt, with malicious glee, "not
+only that you were not murdered last Saturday by Victor Goujon, but that,
+in fact, you were not murdered at all? Also, that you carried your own
+body away in the usual fashion, on your own legs."
+
+"Yes, yes," responded Rameau, looking haggardly about; "but is not
+zis--zis room publique? I should not be seen."
+
+"Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger and
+your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe
+enough."
+
+"I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind
+something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose--why, hang it, you must
+have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting
+upstairs, and walked out. They say there's nothing so hard as a nigger's
+skull, and yours has certainly made a fool of me. But, then, _somebody_
+must have chopped you over the head; who was it?"
+
+"My enemies--my great enemies--enemies politique. I am a great man"--this
+with a faint revival of vanity amid his fear--"a great man in my countree.
+Zey have great secret club-sieties to kill me--me and my fren's; and one
+enemy coming in my rooms does zis--one, two"--he indicated wrist and
+head--"wiz a choppa."
+
+Rameau made the case plain to Nettings, so far as the actual circumstances
+of the assault on himself were concerned. A negro whom he had noticed near
+the place more than once during the previous day or two had attacked him
+suddenly in his rooms, dealing him two savage blows with a chopper. The
+first he had caught on his wrist, which was seriously damaged, as well as
+excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken effect on his head. His
+assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving him for dead; but, as a
+matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock, and had, thanks to the
+adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the ill-direction of the
+chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being no more than grazed.
+He had lain insensible for some time, and must have come to his senses
+soon after the housemaid had left the room. Terrified at the knowledge
+that his enemies had found him out, his only thought was to get away and
+hide himself. He hastily washed and tied up his head, enveloped himself in
+the biggest coat he could find, and let himself down into the basement by
+the coal-lift, for fear of observation. He waited in the basement of one
+of the adjoining buildings till dark and then got away in a cab, with the
+idea of hiding himself in the East End. He had had very little money with
+him on his flight, and it was by reason of this circumstance that Hewitt,
+when he found him, had prevailed on him to leave his hiding-place, since
+it would be impossible for him to touch any of the large sums of money in
+the keeping of his bank so long as he was supposed to be dead. With much
+difficulty, and the promise of ample police protection, he was at last
+convinced that it would be safe to declare himself and get his property,
+and then run away and hide wherever he pleased.
+
+Nettings and Hewitt strolled off together for a few minutes and chatted,
+leaving the wretched Rameau to cower in a corner among several policemen.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hewitt," Nettings said, "this case has certainly been a
+shocking beating for me. I must have been as blind as a bat when I started
+on it. And yet I don't see that you had a deal to go on, even now. What
+struck you first?"
+
+"Well, in the beginning it seemed rather odd to me that the body should
+have been taken away, as I had been told it was, after the written paper
+had been pinned on it. Why should the murderer pin a label on the body of
+his victim if he meant carrying that body away? Who would read the label
+and learn of the nature of the revenge gratified? Plainly, that indicated
+that the person who had carried away the body was _not_ the person who had
+committed the murder. But as soon as I began to examine the place I saw
+the probability that there was no murder, after all. There were any number
+of indications of this fact, and I can't understand your not observing
+them. First, although there was a good deal of blood on the floor just
+below where the housemaid had seen Rameau lying, there was none between
+that place and the door. Now, if the body had been dragged, or even
+carried, to the door, blood must have become smeared about the floor, or
+at least there would have been drops, but there were none, and this seemed
+to hint that the corpse might have come to itself, sat up on the sofa,
+stanched the wound, and walked out. I reflected at once that Rameau was a
+full-blooded negro, and that a negro's head is very nearly invulnerable to
+anything short of bullets. Then, if the body had been dragged out--as such
+a heavy body must have been--almost of necessity the carpet and rugs would
+show signs of the fact, but there were no such signs. But beyond these
+there was the fact that no long black overcoat was left with the other
+clothes, although the housekeeper distinctly remembered Rameau's
+possession of such a garment. I judged he would use some such thing to
+assist his disguise, which was why I asked her. _Why_ he would want to
+disguise was plain, as you shall see presently. There were no towels left
+in the bath-room; inference, used for bandages. Everything seemed to show
+that the only person responsible for Rameau's removal was Rameau himself.
+Why, then, had he gone away secretly and hurriedly, without making
+complaint, and why had he stayed away? What reason would he have for doing
+this if it had been Goujon that had attacked him? None. Goujon was going
+to France. Clearly, Rameau was afraid of another attack from some
+implacable enemy whom he was anxious to avoid--one against whom he feared
+legal complaint or defense would be useless. This brought me at once to
+the paper found on the floor. If this were the work of Goujon and an open
+reference to his tortoise, why should he be at such pains to disguise his
+handwriting? He would have been already pointing himself out by the mere
+mention of the tortoise. And, if he could not avoid a shake in his
+natural, small handwriting, how could he have avoided it in a large,
+clumsy, slowly drawn, assumed hand? No, the paper was not Goujon's."
+
+"As to the writing on the paper," Nettings interposed, "I've told you how
+I made that mistake. I took the readiest explanation of the words, since
+they seemed so pat, and I wouldn't let anything else outweigh that. As to
+the other things--the evidences of Rameau's having gone off by
+himself--well, I don't usually miss such obvious things; but I never
+thought of the possibility of the _victim_ going away on the quiet and not
+coming back, as though _he'd_ done something wrong. Comes of starting with
+a set of fixed notions."
+
+"Well," answered Hewitt, "I fancy you must have been rather 'out of form,'
+as they say; everybody has his stupid days, and you can't keep up to
+concert pitch forever. To return to the case. The evidence of the chopper
+was very untrustworthy, especially when I had heard of Goujon's careless
+habits--losing shovels and leaving coal-scuttles on stairs. Nothing more
+likely than for the chopper to be left lying about, and a criminal who had
+calculated his chances would know the advantage to himself of using a
+weapon that belonged to the place, and leaving it behind to divert
+suspicion. It is quite possible, by the way, that the man who attacked
+Rameau got away down the coal-lift and out by an adjoining basement, just
+as did Rameau himself; this, however, is mere conjecture. The would-be
+murderer had plainly prepared for the crime: witness the previous
+preparation of the paper declaring his revenge, an indication of his pride
+at having run his enemy to earth at such a distant place as this--although
+I expect he was only in England by chance, for Haytians are not a
+persistently energetic race. In regard to the use of small instead of
+capital letters in the words 'La Tortue' on the paper, I observed, in the
+beginning, that the first letter of the whole sentence--the 'p' in
+'puni'--was a small one. Clearly, the writer was an illiterate man, and it
+was at once plain that he may have made the same mistake with ensuing
+words.
+
+"On the whole, it was plain that everybody had begun with a too ready
+disposition to assume that Goujon was guilty. Everybody insisted, too,
+that the body had been carried away--which was true, of course, although
+not in the sense intended--so I didn't trouble to contradict, or to say
+more than that I guessed who _had_ carried the body off. And, to tell you
+the truth, I was a little piqued at Mr. Styles' manner, and indisposed,
+interested in the case as I was, to give away my theories too freely.
+
+"The rest of the job was not very difficult. I found out the cabman who
+had taken Rameau away--you can always get readier help from cabbies if you
+go as one of themselves, especially if you are after a bilker--and from
+him got a sufficiently near East End direction to find Rameau after
+inquiries. I ventured, by the way, on a rather long shot. I described my
+man to the cabman as having an injured arm or wrist--and it turned out a
+correct guess. You see, a man making an attack with a chopper is pretty
+certain to make more than a single blow, and as there appeared to have
+been only a single wound on the head, it seemed probable that another had
+fallen somewhere else--almost certainly on the arm, as it would be raised
+to defend the head. At Limehouse I found he had had his head and wrist
+attended to at a local medico's, and a big nigger in a fright, with a long
+black coat, a broken head, and a lame hand, is not so difficult to find in
+a small area. How I persuaded him up here you know already; I think I
+frightened him a little, too, by explaining how easily I had tracked him,
+and giving him a hint that others might do the same. He is in a great
+funk. He seems to have quite lost faith in England as a safe asylum."
+
+The police failed to catch Rameau's assailant--chiefly because Rameau
+could not be got to give a proper description of him, nor to do anything
+except get out of the country in a hurry. In truth, he was glad to be quit
+of the matter with nothing worse than his broken head. Little Goujon made
+a wild storm about his arrest, and before he did go to France managed to
+extract twenty pounds from Rameau by way of compensation, in spite of the
+absence of any strictly legal claim against his old tormentor. So that, on
+the whole, Goujon was about the only person who derived any particular
+profit from the tortoise mystery.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"     content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Martin Hewitt, Investigator
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%; background-color: white}
+    H1,H2,H3 {text-align: center; }
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+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Martin Hewitt, Investigator
+
+Author: Arthur Morrison
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2004 [EBook #11252]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Andrea Ball and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+By<br />
+Arthur Morrison
+</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>
+1894
+</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH1">I. THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH2">II. THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH3">III. THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH4">IV. THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH5">V. THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH6">VI. THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#CH7">VII. THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE</a></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-1">
+clues (scraps of paper)
+</a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-2">
+corridor/rooms diagram
+</a>
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH1"></a>
+<h3>
+   I. THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty
+    years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary will
+    case, "Bartley <i>v</i>. Bartley and others," which occupied the Probate
+    Court for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public interest
+    rarely accorded to any but the cases considered in the other division
+    of the same court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity
+    of remarkable and unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff's
+    side&mdash;evidence that took the other party completely by surprise, and
+    overthrew their case like a house of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be
+    more readily recalled as the occasion of the sudden rise to eminence in
+    their profession of Messrs. Crellan, Hunt &amp; Crellan, solicitors for the
+    plaintiff&mdash;a result due entirely to the wonderful ability shown in this
+    case of building up, apparently out of nothing, a smashing weight of
+    irresistible evidence. That the firm has since maintained&mdash;indeed
+    enhanced&mdash;the position it then won for itself need scarcely be said here;
+    its name is familiar to everybody. But there are not many of the outside
+    public who know that the credit of the whole performance was primarily
+    due to a young clerk in the employ of Messrs. Crellan, who had been given
+    charge of the seemingly desperate task of collecting evidence in the
+    case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This Mr. Martin Hewitt had, however, full credit and reward for his
+    exploit from his firm and from their client, and more than one other firm
+    of lawyers engaged in contentious work made good offers to entice Hewitt
+    to change his employers. Instead of this, however, he determined to work
+    independently for the future, having conceived the idea of making a
+    regular business of doing, on behalf of such clients as might retain him,
+    similar work to that he had just done with such conspicuous success for
+    Messrs. Crellan, Hunt &amp; Crellan. This was the beginning of the private
+    detective business of Martin Hewitt, and his action at that time has been
+    completely justified by the brilliant professional successes he has since
+    achieved.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His business has always been conducted in the most private manner, and he
+    has always declined the help of professional assistants, preferring to
+    carry out himself such of the many investigations offered him as he could
+    manage. He has always maintained that he has never lost by this policy,
+    since the chance of his refusing a case begets competition for his
+    services, and his fees rise by a natural process. At the same time, no
+    man could know better how to employ casual assistance at the right time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some curiosity has been expressed as to Mr. Martin Hewitt's system, and,
+    as he himself always consistently maintains that he has no system beyond
+    a judicious use of ordinary faculties, I intend setting forth in detail a
+    few of the more interesting of his cases in order that the public may
+    judge for itself if I am right in estimating Mr. Hewitt's "ordinary
+    faculties" as faculties very extraordinary indeed. He is not a man who
+    has made many friendships (this, probably, for professional reasons),
+    notwithstanding his genial and companionable manners. I myself first made
+    his acquaintance as a result of an accident resulting in a fire at the
+    old house in which Hewitt's office was situated, and in an upper floor of
+    which I occupied bachelor chambers. I was able to help in saving a
+    quantity of extremely important papers relating to his business, and,
+    while repairs were being made, allowed him to lock them in an old
+    wall-safe in one of my rooms which the fire had scarcely damaged.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The acquaintance thus begun has lasted many years, and has become a
+    rather close friendship. I have even accompanied Hewitt on some of his
+    expeditions, and, in a humble way, helped him. Such of the cases,
+    however, as I personally saw nothing of I have put into narrative form
+    from the particulars given me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I consider you, Brett," he said, addressing me, "the most remarkable
+    journalist alive. Not because you're particularly clever, you know,
+    because, between ourselves, I hope you'll admit you're not; but because
+    you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and have
+    never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business secrets
+    you may have become acquainted with. I'm afraid you're not so
+    enterprising a journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you
+    shall write something&mdash;if you think it worth while."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing good-nature
+    that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger who thought of
+    him only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets and crimes.
+    Indeed, the man had always as little of the aspect of the conventional
+    detective as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less
+    observant in manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of
+    the eye&mdash;which might, after all, only be the twinkle of good humor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I <i>did</i> think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt's
+    investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    At the head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an
+    ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty
+    ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word
+    "Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters,
+    "Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in the
+    ground-floor offices had barely hung up their hats, a short, well-dressed
+    young man, wearing spectacles, hastening to open the dusty door, ran into
+    the arms of another man who suddenly issued from it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I beg pardon," the first said. "Is this Hewitt's Detective Agency
+    Office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I believe you will find it so," the other replied. He was a
+    stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round
+    countenance. "You'd better speak to the clerk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with inky
+    fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The printed
+    slip having been filled with the visitor's name and present business, and
+    conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with an invitation to
+    the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat the stoutish man
+    himself, who had only just advised an appeal to the clerk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good-morning, Mr. Lloyd&mdash;Mr. Vernon Lloyd," he said, affably, looking
+    again at the slip. "You'll excuse my care to start even with my
+    visitors&mdash;I must, you know. You come from Sir James Norris, I see."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; I am his secretary. I have only to ask you to go straight to Lenton
+    Croft at once, if you can, on very important business. Sir James would
+    have wired, but had not your precise address. Can you go by the next
+    train? Eleven-thirty is the first available from Paddington."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite possibly. Do you know any thing of the business?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is a case of a robbery in the house, or, rather, I fancy, of several
+    robberies. Jewelry has been stolen from rooms occupied by visitors to the
+    Croft. The first case occurred some months ago&mdash;nearly a year ago, in
+    fact. Last night there was another. But I think you had better get the
+    details on the spot. Sir James has told me to telegraph if you are
+    coming, so that he may meet you himself at the station; and I must
+    hurry, as his drive to the station will be rather a long one. Then I take
+    it you will go, Mr. Hewitt? Twyford is the station."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I shall come, and by the 11.30. Are you going by that train
+    yourself?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I have several things to attend to now I am in town. Good-morning; I
+    shall wire at once."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Martin Hewitt locked the drawer of his table and sent his clerk for a
+    cab.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At Twyford Station Sir James Norris was waiting with a dog-cart. Sir
+    James was a tall, florid man of fifty or thereabout, known away from home
+    as something of a county historian, and nearer his own parts as a great
+    supporter of the hunt, and a gentleman much troubled with poachers. As
+    soon as he and Hewitt had found one another the baronet hurried the
+    detective into his dog-cart. "We've something over seven miles to drive,"
+    he said, "and I can tell you all about this wretched business as we go.
+    That is why I came for you myself, and alone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have sent for you, as Lloyd probably told you, because of a robbery at
+    my place last evening. It appears, as far as I can guess, to be one of
+    three by the same hand, or by the same gang. Late yesterday afternoon&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Pardon me, Sir James," Hewitt interrupted, "but I think I must ask you
+    to begin at the first robbery and tell me the whole tale in proper order.
+    It makes things clearer, and sets them in their proper shape."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well! Eleven months ago, or thereabout, I had rather a large party
+    of visitors, and among them Colonel Heath and Mrs. Heath&mdash;the lady being
+    a relative of my own late wife. Colonel Heath has not been long retired,
+    you know&mdash;used to be political resident in an Indian native state. Mrs.
+    Heath had rather a good stock of jewelry of one sort and another, about
+    the most valuable piece being a bracelet set with a particularly fine
+    pearl&mdash;quite an exceptional pearl, in fact&mdash;that had been one of a heap
+    of presents from the maharajah of his state when Heath left India.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It was a very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere
+    feather-weight piece of native filigree work&mdash;almost too fragile to trust
+    on the wrist&mdash;and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality
+    not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening,
+    and after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by
+    themselves&mdash;shooting, I think&mdash;my daughter, my sister (who is very
+    often down here), and Mrs. Heath took it into their heads to go
+    walking&mdash;fern-hunting, and so on. My sister was rather long dressing,
+    and, while they waited, my daughter went into Mrs. Heath's room, where
+    Mrs. Heath turned over all her treasures to show her, as women do, you
+    know. When my sister was at last ready, they came straight away, leaving
+    the things littering about the room rather than stay longer to pack them
+    up. The bracelet, with other things, was on the dressing-table then."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One moment. As to the door?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They locked it. As they came away my daughter suggested turning the key,
+    as we had one or two new servants about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And the window?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That they left open, as I was going to tell you. Well, they went on
+    their walk and came back, with Lloyd (whom they had met somewhere)
+    carrying their ferns for them. It was dusk and almost dinner-time. Mrs.
+    Heath went straight to her room, and&mdash;the bracelet was gone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was the room disturbed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a bit. Everything was precisely where it had been left, except the
+    bracelet. The door hadn't been tampered with, but of course the window
+    was open, as I have told you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You called the police, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, and had a man from Scotland Yard down in the morning. He seemed a
+    pretty smart fellow, and the first thing he noticed on the
+    dressing-table, within an inch or two of where the bracelet had been,
+    was a match, which had been lit and thrown down. Now nobody about the
+    house had had occasion to use a match in that room that day, and, if they
+    had, certainly wouldn't have thrown it on the cover of the
+    dressing-table. So that, presuming the thief to have used that match, the
+    robbery must have been committed when the room was getting
+    dark&mdash;immediately before Mrs. Heath returned, in fact. The thief had
+    evidently struck the match, passed it hurriedly over the various trinkets
+    lying about, and taken the most valuable."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing else was even moved?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing at all. Then the thief must have escaped by the window, although
+    it was not quite clear how. The walking party approached the house with a
+    full view of the window, but saw nothing, although the robbery must have
+    been actually taking place a moment or two before they turned up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was no water-pipe within any practicable distance of the window,
+    but a ladder usually kept in the stable-yard was found lying along the
+    edge of the lawn. The gardener explained, however, that he had put the
+    ladder there after using it himself early in the afternoon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course it might easily have been used again after that and put back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just what the Scotland Yard man said. He was pretty sharp, too, on the
+    gardener, but very soon decided that he knew nothing of it. No stranger
+    had been seen in the neighborhood, nor had passed the lodge gates.
+    Besides, as the detective said, it scarcely seemed the work of a
+    stranger. A stranger could scarcely have known enough to go straight to
+    the room where a lady&mdash;only arrived the day before&mdash;had left a valuable
+    jewel, and away again without being seen. So all the people about the
+    house were suspected in turn. The servants offered, in a body, to have
+    their boxes searched, and this was done; everything was turned over, from
+    the butler's to the new kitchen-maid's. I don't know that I should have
+    had this carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but it was
+    my guest, and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's little
+    more to be said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it all, and
+    the thing's as great a mystery now as ever. I believe the Scotland Yard
+    man got as far as suspecting <i>me</i> before he gave it up altogether, but
+    give it up he did in the end. I think that's all I know about the first
+    robbery. Is it clear?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
+    the place, but they can wait. What next?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair, that I
+    should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been for one
+    circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of the
+    same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's disaster&mdash;in
+    February of this year, in fact&mdash;Mrs. Armitage, a young widow, who had
+    been a school-fellow of my daughter's, stayed with us for a week or so.
+    The girls don't trouble about the London season, you know, and I have no
+    town house, so they were glad to have their old friend here for a little
+    in the dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active young lady, and was
+    scarcely in the house half an hour before she arranged a drive in a
+    pony-cart with Eva&mdash;my daughter&mdash;to look up old people in the village
+    that she used to know before she was married. So they set off in the
+    afternoon, and made such a round of it that they were late for dinner.
+    Mrs. Armitage had a small plain gold brooch&mdash;not at all valuable, you
+    know; two or three pounds, I suppose&mdash;which she used to pin up a cloak or
+    anything of that sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the
+    pin-cushion on her dressing-table, and left a ring&mdash;rather a good one, I
+    believe&mdash;lying close by."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had occupied,
+    I take it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
+    went&mdash;taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when Mrs.
+    Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a little
+    tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the
+    curious thing was that the ring&mdash;worth a dozen of the brooch&mdash;was left
+    where it had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or not she
+    had locked the door herself, although she found it locked when she
+    returned; but my niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it
+    once&mdash;because she remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the landing
+    near by&mdash;and found it safely locked. The gas-fitter, whom we didn't know
+    at the time, but who since seems to be quite an honest fellow, was ready
+    to swear that nobody but my niece had been to the door while he was in
+    sight of it&mdash;which was almost all the time. As to the window, the
+    sash-line had broken that very morning, and Mrs. Armitage had propped
+    open the bottom half about eight or ten inches with a brush; and, when
+    she returned, that brush, sash, and all were exactly as she had left
+    them. Now I scarcely need tell <i>you</i> what an awkward job it must have
+    been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that unsupported window; and
+    how unlikely he would have been to replace it, with the brush, exactly as
+    he found it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. I suppose the brooch, was really gone? I mean, there was no
+    chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, none at all! There was a most careful search."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes," Sir James replied; "yes, perhaps it would. It was a
+    first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the
+    billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself&mdash;built it out from a
+    smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at the
+    window from the billiard-room roof. But, then," he added, "that couldn't
+    have been the way. Somebody or other was in the billiard-room the whole
+    time, and nobody could have got over the roof (which is nearly all
+    skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there myself for an hour or
+    two, taking a little practice."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, was anything done?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing came
+    of it. It was such a small matter that Mrs. Armitage wouldn't hear of my
+    calling in the police or anything of that sort, although I felt pretty
+    certain that there must be a dishonest servant about somewhere. A servant
+    might take a plain brooch, you know, who would feel afraid of a valuable
+    ring, the loss of which would be made a greater matter of."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, perhaps so, in the case of an inexperienced thief, who also
+    would be likely to snatch up whatever she took in a hurry. But I'm
+    doubtful. What made you connect these two robberies together?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing whatever&mdash;for some months. They seemed quite of a different
+    sort. But scarcely more than a month ago I met Mrs. Armitage at Brighton,
+    and we talked, among other things, of the previous robbery&mdash;that of Mrs.
+    Heath's bracelet. I described the circumstances pretty minutely, and,
+    when I mentioned the match found on the table, she said: 'How strange!
+    Why, <i>my</i> thief left a match on the dressing-table when he took my poor
+    little brooch!'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt nodded. "Yes," he said. "A spent match, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, of course, a spent match. She noticed it lying close by the
+    pin-cushion, but threw it away without mentioning the circumstance.
+    Still, it seemed rather curious to me that a match should be lit and
+    dropped, in each case, on the dressing-cover an inch from where the
+    article was taken. I mentioned it to Lloyd when I got back, and he agreed
+    that it seemed significant."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Scarcely," said Hewitt, shaking his head. "Scarcely, so far, to be
+    called significant, although worth following up. Everybody uses matches
+    in the dark, you know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, at any rate, the coincidence appealed to me so far that it struck
+    me it might be worth while to describe the brooch to the police in order
+    that they could trace it if it had been pawned. They had tried that, of
+    course, over the bracelet without any result, but I fancied the shot
+    might be worth making, and might possibly lead us on the track of the
+    more serious robbery."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite so. It was the right thing to do. Well?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, they found it. A woman had pawned it in London&mdash;at a shop in
+    Chelsea. But that was some time before, and the pawnbroker had clean
+    forgotten all about the woman's appearance. The name and address she gave
+    were false. So that was the end of that business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Had any of the servants left you between the time the brooch was lost
+    and the date of the pawn ticket?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Were all your servants at home on the day the brooch was pawned?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes! I made that inquiry myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good! What next?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yesterday&mdash;and this is what made me send for you. My late wife's sister
+    came here last Tuesday, and we gave her the room from which Mrs. Heath
+    lost her bracelet. She had with her a very old-fashioned brooch,
+    containing a miniature of her father, and set in front with three very
+    fine brilliants and a few smaller stones. Here we are, though, at the
+    Croft. I'll tell you the rest indoors."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laid his hand on the baronet's arm. "Don't pull up, Sir James," he
+    said. "Drive a little farther. I should like to have a general idea of
+    the whole case before we go in."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good!" Sir James Norris straightened the horse's head again and
+    went on. "Late yesterday afternoon, as my sister-in-law was changing her
+    dress, she left her room for a moment to speak to my daughter in her
+    room, almost adjoining. She was gone no more than three minutes, or five
+    at most, but on her return the brooch, which had been left on the table,
+    had gone. Now the window was shut fast, and had not been tampered with.
+    Of course the door was open, but so was my daughter's, and anybody
+    walking near must have been heard. But the strangest circumstance, and
+    one that almost makes me wonder whether I have been awake to-day or not,
+    was that there lay <i>a used match</i> on the very spot, as nearly as
+    possible, where the brooch had been&mdash;and it was broad daylight!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt rubbed his nose and looked thoughtfully before him. "Um&mdash;curious,
+    certainly," he said, "Anything else?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing more than you shall see for yourself. I have had the room locked
+    and watched till you could examine it. My sister-in-law had heard of your
+    name, and suggested that you should be called in; so, of course, I did
+    exactly as she wanted. That she should have lost that brooch, of all
+    things, in my house is most unfortunate; you see, there was some small
+    difference about the thing between my late wife and her sister when their
+    mother died and left it. It's almost worse than the Heaths' bracelet
+    business, and altogether I'm not pleased with things, I can assure you.
+    See what a position it is for me! Here are three ladies, in the space of
+    one year, robbed one after another in this mysterious fashion in my
+    house, and I can't find the thief! It's horrible! People will be afraid
+    to come near the place. And I can do nothing!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, well, we'll see. Perhaps we had better turn back now. By-the-by,
+    were you thinking of having any alterations or additions made to your
+    house?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. What makes you ask?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think you might at least consider the question of painting and
+    decorating, Sir James&mdash;or, say, putting up another coach-house, or
+    something. Because I should like to be (to the servants) the
+    architect&mdash;or the builder, if you please&mdash;come to look around. You
+    haven't told any of them about this business?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a word. Nobody knows but my relatives and Lloyd. I took every
+    precaution myself, at once. As to your little disguise, be the architect
+    by all means, and do as you please. If you can only find this thief and
+    put an end to this horrible state of affairs, you'll do me the greatest
+    service I've ever asked for&mdash;and as to your fee, I'll gladly make it
+    whatever is usual, and three hundred in addition."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Martin Hewitt bowed. "You're very generous, Sir James, and you may be
+    sure I'll do what I can. As a professional man, of course, a good fee
+    always stimulates my interest, although this case of yours certainly
+    seems interesting enough by itself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Most extraordinary! Don't you think so? Here are three persons, all
+    ladies, all in my house, two even in the same room, each successively
+    robbed of a piece of jewelry, each from a dressing-table, and a used
+    match left behind in every case. All in the most difficult&mdash;one would say
+    impossible&mdash;circumstances for a thief, and yet there is no clue!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, we won't say that just yet, Sir James; we must see. And we must
+    guard against any undue predisposition to consider the robberies in a
+    lump. Here we are at the lodge gate again. Is that your gardener&mdash;the man
+    who left the ladder by the lawn on the first occasion you spoke of?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Hewitt nodded in the direction of a man who was clipping a box
+    border.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; will you ask him anything?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, no; at any rate, not now. Remember the building alterations. I
+    think, if there is no objection, I will look first at the room that the
+    lady&mdash;Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;" Hewitt looked up, inquiringly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My sister-in-law? Mrs. Cazenove. Oh, yes! you shall come to her room at
+    once."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you. And I think Mrs. Cazenove had better be there."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They alighted, and a boy from the lodge led the horse and dog-cart away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mrs. Cazenove was a thin and faded, but quick and energetic, lady of
+    middle age. She bent her head very slightly on learning Martin Hewitt's
+    name, and said: "I must thank you, Mr. Hewitt, for your very prompt
+    attention. I need scarcely say that any help you can afford in tracing
+    the thief who has my property&mdash;whoever it may be&mdash;will make me most
+    grateful. My room is quite ready for you to examine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The room was on the second floor&mdash;the top floor at that part of the
+    building. Some slight confusion of small articles of dress was observable
+    in parts of the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This, I take it," inquired Hewitt, "is exactly as it was at the time the
+    brooch was missed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely," Mrs. Cazenove answered. "I have used another room, and put
+    myself to some other inconveniences, to avoid any disturbance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt stood before the dressing-table. "Then this is the used match," he
+    observed, "exactly where it was found?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where was the brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I should say almost on the very same spot. Certainly no more than a very
+    few inches away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt examined the match closely. "It is burned very little," he
+    remarked. "It would appear to have gone out at once. Could you hear it
+    struck?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I heard nothing whatever; absolutely nothing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you will step into Miss Norris' room now for a moment," Hewitt
+    suggested, "we will try an experiment. Tell me if you hear matches
+    struck, and how many. Where is the match-stand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The match-stand proved to be empty, but matches were found in Miss
+    Norris' room, and the test was made. Each striking could be heard
+    distinctly, even with one of the doors pushed to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Both your own door and Miss Norris' were open, I understand; the window
+    shut and fastened inside as it is now, and nothing but the brooch was
+    disturbed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, that was so."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you, Mrs. Cazenove. I don't think I need trouble you any further
+    just at present. I think, Sir James," Hewitt added, turning to the
+    baronet, who was standing by the door&mdash;&mdash;"I think we will see the other
+    room and take a walk outside the house, if you please. I suppose, by the
+    by, that there is no getting at the matches left behind on the first and
+    second occasions?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Sir James answered. "Certainly not here. The Scotland Yard man may
+    have kept his."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The room that Mrs. Armitage had occupied presented no peculiar feature. A
+    few feet below the window the roof of the billiard-room was visible,
+    consisting largely of skylight. Hewitt glanced casually about the walls,
+    ascertained that the furniture and hangings had not been materially
+    changed since the second robbery, and expressed his desire to see the
+    windows from the outside. Before leaving the room, however, he wished to
+    know the names of any persons who were known to have been about the
+    house on the occasions of all three robberies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just carry your mind back, Sir James," he said. "Begin with yourself,
+    for instance. Where were you at these times?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet, I was in Tagley Wood all the
+    afternoon. When Mrs. Armitage was robbed, I believe I was somewhere about
+    the place most of the time she was out. Yesterday I was down at the
+    farm." Sir James' face broadened. "I don't know whether you call those
+    suspicious movements," he added, and laughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not at all; I only asked you so that, remembering your own movements,
+    you might the better recall those of the rest of the household. Was
+    anybody, to your knowledge&mdash;<i>anybody</i>, mind&mdash;in the house on all three
+    occasions?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you know, it's quite impossible to answer for all the servants.
+    You'll only get that by direct questioning&mdash;I can't possibly remember
+    things of that sort. As to the family and visitors&mdash;why, you don't
+    suspect any of them, do you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't suspect a soul, Sir James," Hewitt answered, beaming genially,
+    "not a soul. You see, I can't suspect people till I know something about
+    where they were. It's quite possible there will be independent evidence
+    enough as it is, but you must help me if you can. The visitors, now. Was
+    there any visitor here each time&mdash;or even on the first and last occasions
+    only?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, not one. And my own sister, perhaps you will be pleased to know, was
+    only there at the time of the first robbery."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so! And your daughter, as I have gathered, was clearly absent from
+    the spot each time&mdash;indeed, was in company with the party robbed. Your
+    niece, now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why hang it all, Mr. Hewitt, I can't talk of my niece as a suspected
+    criminal! The poor girl's under my protection, and I really can't
+    allow&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt raised his hand, and shook his head deprecatingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear sir, haven't I said that I don't suspect a soul? <i>Do</i> let me
+    know how the people were distributed, as nearly as possible. Let me see.
+    It was your, niece, I think, who found that Mrs. Armitage's door was
+    locked&mdash;this door, in fact&mdash;on the day she lost her brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it was."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so&mdash;at the time when Mrs. Armitage herself had forgotten whether
+    she locked it or not. And yesterday&mdash;was she out then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I think not. Indeed, she goes out very little&mdash;her health is usually
+    bad. She was indoors, too, at the time of the Heath robbery, since you
+    ask. But come, now, I don't like this. It's ridiculous to suppose that
+    <i>she</i> knows anything of it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't suppose it, as I have said. I am only asking for information.
+    That is all your resident family, I take it, and you know nothing of
+    anybody else's movements&mdash;except, perhaps, Mr. Lloyd's?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lloyd? Well, you know yourself that he was out with the ladies when the
+    first robbery took place. As to the others, I don't remember. Yesterday
+    he was probably in his room, writing. I think that acquits <i>him</i>, eh?"
+    Sir James looked quizzically into the broad face of the affable
+    detective, who smiled and replied:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, of course nobody can be in two places at once, else what would
+    become of the <i>alibi</i> as an institution? But, as I have said, I am only
+    setting my facts in order. Now, you see, we get down to the
+    servants&mdash;unless some stranger is the party wanted. Shall we go outside
+    now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lenton Croft was a large, desultory sort of house, nowhere more than
+    three floors high, and mostly only two. It had been added to bit by bit,
+    till it zigzagged about its site, as Sir James Norris expressed it, "like
+    a game of dominoes." Hewitt scrutinized its external features carefully
+    as they strolled around, and stopped some little while before the windows
+    of the two bed-rooms he had just seen from the inside. Presently they
+    approached the stables and coach-house, where a groom was washing the
+    wheels of the dog-cart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mind my smoking?" Hewitt asked Sir James. "Perhaps you will take
+    a cigar yourself&mdash;they are not so bad, I think. I will ask your man for a
+    light."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James felt for his own match-box, but Hewitt had gone, and was
+    lighting his cigar with a match from a box handed him by the groom. A
+    smart little terrier was trotting about by the coach-house, and Hewitt
+    stooped to rub its head. Then he made some observation about the dog,
+    which enlisted the groom's interest, and was soon absorbed in a chat with
+    the man. Sir James, waiting a little way off, tapped the stones rather
+    impatiently with his foot, and presently moved away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For full a quarter of an hour Hewitt chatted with the groom, and, when at
+    last he came away and overtook Sir James, that gentleman was about
+    re-entering the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I beg your pardon, Sir James," Hewitt said, "for leaving you in that
+    unceremonious fashion to talk to your groom, but a dog, Sir James&mdash;a good
+    dog&mdash;will draw me anywhere."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh!" replied Sir James, shortly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There is one other thing," Hewitt went on, disregarding the other's
+    curtness, "that I should like to know: There are two windows directly
+    below that of the room occupied yesterday by Mrs. Cazenove&mdash;one on each
+    floor. What rooms do they light?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That on the ground floor is the morning-room; the other is Mr.
+    Lloyd's&mdash;my secretary. A sort of study or sitting-room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now you will see at once, Sir James," Hewitt pursued, with an affable
+    determination to win the baronet back to good-humor&mdash;"you will see at
+    once that, if a ladder had been used in Mrs. Heath's case, anybody
+    looking from either of these rooms would have seen it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course! The Scotland Yard man questioned everybody as to that, but
+    nobody seemed to have been in either of the rooms when the thing
+    occurred; at any rate, nobody saw anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Still, I think I should like to look out of those windows myself; it
+    will, at least, give me an idea of what <i>was</i> in view and what was not,
+    if anybody had been there."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James Norris led the way to the morning-room. As they reached the
+    door a young lady, carrying a book and walking very languidly, came out.
+    Hewitt stepped aside to let her pass, and afterward said interrogatively:
+    "Miss Norris, your daughter, Sir James?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, my niece. Do you want to ask her anything? Dora, my dear," Sir
+    James added, following her in the corridor, "this is Mr. Hewitt, who is
+    investigating these wretched robberies for me. I think he would like to
+    hear if you remember anything happening at any of the three times."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lady bowed slightly, and said in a plaintive drawl: "I, uncle?
+    Really, I don't remember anything; nothing at all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You found Mrs. Armitage's door locked, I believe," asked Hewitt, "when
+    you tried it, on the afternoon when she lost her brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; I believe it was locked. Yes, it was."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Had the key been left in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The key? Oh, no! I think not; no."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you remember anything out of the common happening&mdash;anything whatever,
+    no matter how trivial&mdash;on the day Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, really, I don't. I can't remember at all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nor yesterday?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, nothing. I don't remember anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you," said Hewitt, hastily; "thank you. Now the morning-room, Sir
+    James."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning-room Hewitt stayed but a few seconds, doing little more
+    than casually glance out of the windows. In the room above he took a
+    little longer time. It was a comfortable room, but with rather effeminate
+    indications about its contents. Little pieces of draped silk-work hung
+    about the furniture, and Japanese silk fans decorated the mantel-piece.
+    Near the window was a cage containing a gray parrot, and the
+    writing-table was decorated with two vases of flowers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lloyd makes himself pretty comfortable, eh?" Sir James observed. "But it
+    isn't likely anybody would be here while he was out, at the time that
+    bracelet went."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," replied Hewitt, meditatively. "No, I suppose not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He stared thoughtfully out of the window, and then, still deep in
+    thought, rattled at the wires of the cage with a quill toothpick and
+    played a moment with the parrot. Then, looking up at the window again, he
+    said: "That is Mr. Lloyd, isn't it, coming back in a fly?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I think so. Is there anything else you would care to see here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, thank you," Hewitt replied; "I don't think there is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They went down to the smoking-room, and Sir James went away to speak to
+    his secretary. When he returned, Hewitt said quietly: "I think, Sir
+    James&mdash;I <i>think</i> that I shall be able to give you your thief presently."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What! Have you a clue? Who do you think? I began to believe you were
+    hopelessly stumped."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes. I have rather a good clue, although I can't tell you much
+    about it just yet. But it is so good a clue that I should like to know
+    now whether you are determined to prosecute when you have the criminal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, bless me, of course," Sir James replied, with surprise. "It doesn't
+    rest with me, you know&mdash;the property belongs to my friends. And even if
+    they were disposed to let the thing slide, I shouldn't allow it&mdash;I
+    couldn't, after they had been robbed in my house."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, of course! Then, if I can, I should like to send a message to
+    Twyford by somebody perfectly trustworthy&mdash;not a servant. Could anybody
+    go?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, there's Lloyd, although he's only just back from his journey. But,
+    if it's important, he'll go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is important. The fact is we must have a policeman or two here this
+    evening, and I'd like Mr. Lloyd to fetch them without telling anybody
+    else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James rang, and, in response to his message, Mr. Lloyd appeared.
+    While Sir James gave his secretary his instructions, Hewitt strolled to
+    the door of the smoking-room, and intercepted the latter as he came out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm sorry to give you this trouble, Mr. Lloyd," he said, "but I must
+    stay here myself for a little, and somebody who can be trusted must go.
+    Will you just bring back a police-constable with you? or rather two&mdash;two
+    would be better. That is all that is wanted. You won't let the servants
+    know, will you? Of course there will be a female searcher at the Twyford
+    police-station? Ah&mdash;of course. Well, you needn't bring her, you know.
+    That sort of thing is done at the station." And, chatting thus
+    confidentially, Martin Hewitt saw him off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Hewitt returned to the smoking-room, Sir James said, suddenly: "Why,
+    bless my soul, Mr. Hewitt, we haven't fed you! I'm awfully sorry. We came
+    in rather late for lunch, you know, and this business has bothered me so
+    I clean forgot everything else. There's no dinner till seven, so you'd
+    better let me give you something now. I'm really sorry. Come along."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you, Sir James," Hewitt replied; "I won't take much. A few
+    biscuits, perhaps, or something of that sort. And, by the by, if you
+    don't mind, I rather think I should like to take it alone. The fact is I
+    want to go over this case thoroughly by myself. Can you put me in a
+    room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Any room you like. Where will you go? The dining-room's rather large,
+    but there's my study, that's pretty snug, or&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps I can go into Mr. Lloyd's room for half an hour or so; I don't
+    think he'll mind, and it's pretty comfortable."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, if you'd like. I'll tell them to send you whatever they've
+    got."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you very much. Perhaps they'll also send me a lump of sugar and a
+    walnut; it's&mdash;it's a little fad of mine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A&mdash;what? A lump of sugar and a walnut?" Sir James stopped for a moment,
+    with his hand on the bell-rope. "Oh, certainly, if you'd like it;
+    certainly," he added, and stared after this detective with curious tastes
+    as he left the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the vehicle, bringing back the secretary and the policeman, drew up
+    on the drive, Martin Hewitt left the room on the first floor and
+    proceeded down-stairs. On the landing he met Sir James Norris and Mrs.
+    Cazenove, who stared with astonishment on perceiving that the detective
+    carried in his hand the parrot-cage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think our business is about brought to a head now," Hewitt remarked,
+    on the stairs. "Here are the police officers from Twyford." The men were
+    standing in the hall with Mr. Lloyd, who, on catching sight of the cage
+    in Hewitt's hand, paled suddenly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is the person who will be charged, I think," Hewitt pursued,
+    addressing the officers, and indicating Lloyd with his finger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What, Lloyd?" gasped Sir James, aghast. "No&mdash;not Lloyd&mdash;nonsense!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He doesn't seem to think it nonsense himself, does he?" Hewitt placidly
+    observed. Lloyd had sank on a chair, and, gray of face, was staring
+    blindly at the man he had run against at the office door that morning.
+    His lips moved in spasms, but there was no sound. The wilted flower fell
+    from his button-hole to the floor, but he did not move.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is his accomplice," Hewitt went on, placing the parrot and cage on
+    the hall table, "though I doubt whether there will be any use in charging
+    <i>him</i>. Eh, Polly?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The parrot put his head aside and chuckled. "Hullo, Polly!" it quietly
+    gurgled. "Come along!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James Norris was hopelessly bewildered. "Lloyd&mdash;Lloyd," he said,
+    under his breath. "Lloyd&mdash;and that!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was his little messenger, his useful Mercury," Hewitt explained,
+    tapping the cage complacently; "in fact, the actual lifter. Hold him up!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The last remark referred to the wretched Lloyd, who had fallen forward
+    with something between a sob and a loud sigh. The policemen took him by
+    the arms and propped him in his chair.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    "System?" said Hewitt, with a shrug of the shoulders, an hour or two
+    after in Sir James' study. "I can't say I have a system. I call it
+    nothing but common-sense and a sharp pair of eyes. Nobody using these
+    could help taking the right road in this case. I began at the match, just
+    as the Scotland Yard man did, but I had the advantage of taking a line
+    through three cases. To begin with, it was plain that that match, being
+    left there in daylight, in Mrs. Cazenove's room, could not have been used
+    to light the table-top, in the full glare of the window; therefore it had
+    been used for some other purpose&mdash;<i>what</i> purpose I could not, at the
+    moment, guess. Habitual thieves, you know, often have curious
+    superstitions, and some will never take anything without leaving
+    something behind&mdash;a pebble or a piece of coal, or something like that&mdash;in
+    the premises they have been robbing. It seemed at first extremely likely
+    that this was a case of that kind. The match had clearly been <i>brought
+    in</i>&mdash;because, when I asked for matches, there were none in the stand, not
+    even an empty box, and the room had not been disturbed. Also the match
+    probably had not been struck there, nothing having been heard, although,
+    of course, a mistake in this matter was just possible. This match, then,
+    it was fair to assume, had been lit somewhere else and blown out
+    immediately&mdash;I remarked at the time that it was very little burned.
+    Plainly it could not have been treated thus for nothing, and the only
+    possible object would have been to prevent it igniting accidentally.
+    Following on this, it became obvious that the match was used, for
+    whatever purpose, not <i>as</i> a match, but merely as a convenient splinter
+    of wood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So far so good. But on examining the match very closely I observed, as
+    you can see for yourself, certain rather sharp indentations in the wood.
+    They are very small, you see, and scarcely visible, except upon narrow
+    inspection; but there they are, and their positions are regular. See,
+    there are two on each side, each opposite the corresponding mark of the
+    other pair. The match, in fact, would seem to have been gripped in some
+    fairly sharp instrument, holding it at two points above and two below&mdash;an
+    instrument, as it may at once strike you, not unlike the beak of a bird.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now here was an idea. What living creature but a bird could possibly
+    have entered Mrs. Heath's window without a ladder&mdash;supposing no ladder to
+    have been used&mdash;or could have got into Mrs. Armitage's window without
+    lifting the sash higher than the eight or ten inches it was already
+    open? Plainly, nothing. Further, it is significant that only <i>one</i>
+    article was stolen at a time, although others were about. A human being
+    could have carried any reasonable number, but a bird could only take one
+    at a time. But why should a bird carry a match in its beak? Certainly it
+    must have been trained to do that for a purpose, and a little
+    consideration made that purpose pretty clear. A noisy, chattering bird
+    would probably betray itself at once. Therefore it must be trained to
+    keep quiet both while going for and coming away with its plunder. What
+    readier or more probably effectual way than, while teaching it to carry
+    without dropping, to teach it also to keep quiet while carrying? The one
+    thing would practically cover the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I thought at once, of course, of a jackdaw or a magpie&mdash;these birds'
+    thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match
+    were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I
+    conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived
+    near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity of a little chat with your
+    groom on the subject of dogs and pets in general, and ascertained that
+    there was no tame raven in the place. I also, incidentally, by getting a
+    light from the coach-house box of matches, ascertained that the match
+    found was of the sort generally used about the establishment&mdash;the large,
+    thick, red-topped English match. But I further found that Mr. Lloyd had a
+    parrot which was a most intelligent pet, and had been trained into
+    comparative quietness&mdash;for a parrot. Also, I learned that more than once
+    the groom had met Mr. Lloyd carrying his parrot under his coat, it
+    having, as its owner explained, learned the trick of opening its
+    cage-door and escaping.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I said nothing, of course, to you of all this, because I had as yet
+    nothing but a train of argument and no results. I got to Lloyd's room as
+    soon as possible. My chief object in going there was achieved when I
+    played with the parrot, and induced it to bite a quill toothpick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When you left me in the smoking-room, I compared the quill and the match
+    very carefully, and found that the marks corresponded exactly. After this
+    I felt very little doubt indeed. The fact of Lloyd having met the ladies
+    walking before dark on the day of the first robbery proved nothing,
+    because, since it was clear that the match had <i>not</i> been used to procure
+    a light, the robbery might as easily have taken place in daylight as
+    not&mdash;must have so taken place, in fact, if my conjectures were right.
+    That they were right I felt no doubt. There could be no other
+    explanation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When Mrs. Heath left her window open and her door shut, anybody
+    climbing upon the open sash of Lloyd's high window could have put the
+    bird upon the sill above. The match placed in the bird's beak for the
+    purpose I have indicated, and struck first, in case by accident it should
+    ignite by rubbing against something and startle the bird&mdash;this match
+    would, of course, be dropped just where the object to be removed was
+    taken up; as you know, in every case the match was found almost upon the
+    spot where the missing article had been left&mdash;scarcely a likely triple
+    coincidence had the match been used by a human thief. This would have
+    been done as soon after the ladies had left as possible, and there would
+    then have been plenty of time for Lloyd to hurry out and meet them before
+    dark&mdash;especially plenty of time to meet them <i>coming back</i>, as they must
+    have been, since they were carrying their ferns. The match was an article
+    well chosen for its purpose, as being a not altogether unlikely thing to
+    find on a dressing-table, and, if noticed, likely to lead to the wrong
+    conclusions adopted by the official detective.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In Mrs. Armitage's case the taking of an inferior brooch and the leaving
+    of a more valuable ring pointed clearly either to the operator being a
+    fool or unable to distinguish values, and certainly, from other
+    indications, the thief seemed no fool. The door was locked, and the
+    gas-fitter, so to speak, on guard, and the window was only eight or ten
+    inches open and propped with a brush. A human thief entering the window
+    would have disturbed this arrangement, and would scarcely risk discovery
+    by attempting to replace it, especially a thief in so great a hurry as to
+    snatch the brooch up without unfastening the pin. The bird could pass
+    through the opening as it was, and <i>would have</i> to tear the pin-cushion
+    to pull the brooch off, probably holding the cushion down with its claw
+    the while.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now in yesterday's case we had an alteration of conditions. The window
+    was shut and fastened, but the door was open&mdash;but only left for a few
+    minutes, during which time no sound was heard either of coming or going.
+    Was it not possible, then, that the thief was <i>already</i> in the room, in
+    hiding, while Mrs. Cazenove was there, and seized its first opportunity
+    on her temporary absence? The room is full of draperies, hangings, and
+    what not, allowing of plenty of concealment for a bird, and a bird could
+    leave the place noiselessly and quickly. That the whole scheme was
+    strange mattered not at all. Robberies presenting such unaccountable
+    features must have been effected by strange means of one sort or
+    another. There was no improbability. Consider how many hundreds of
+    examples of infinitely higher degrees of bird-training are exhibited in
+    the London streets every week for coppers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So that, on the whole, I felt pretty sure of my ground. But before
+    taking any definite steps I resolved to see if Polly could not be
+    persuaded to exhibit his accomplishments to an indulgent stranger. For
+    that purpose I contrived to send Lloyd away again and have a quiet hour
+    alone with his bird. A piece of sugar, as everybody knows, is a good
+    parrot bribe; but a walnut, split in half, is a better&mdash;especially if the
+    bird be used to it; so I got you to furnish me with both. Polly was shy
+    at first, but I generally get along very well with pets, and a little
+    perseverance soon led to a complete private performance for my benefit.
+    Polly would take the match, mute as wax, jump on the table, pick up the
+    brightest thing he could see, in a great hurry, leave the match behind,
+    and scuttle away round the room; but at first wouldn't give up the
+    plunder to <i>me</i>. It was enough. I also took the liberty, as you know, of
+    a general look round, and discovered that little collection of Brummagem
+    rings and trinkets that you have just seen&mdash;used in Polly's education, no
+    doubt. When we sent Lloyd away, it struck me that he might as well be
+    usefully employed as not, so I got him to fetch the police, deluding him
+    a little, I fear, by talking about the servants and a female searcher.
+    There will be no trouble about evidence; he'll confess. Of that I'm sure.
+    I know the sort of man. But I doubt if you'll get Mrs. Cazenove's brooch
+    back. You see, he has been to London to-day, and by this time the swag is
+    probably broken up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir James listened to Hewitt's explanation with many expressions of
+    assent and some of surprise. When it was over, he smoked a few whiffs and
+    then said: "But Mrs. Armitage's brooch was pawned, and by a woman."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly. I expect our friend Lloyd was rather disgusted at his small
+    luck&mdash;probably gave the brooch to some female connection in London, and
+    she realized on it. Such persons don't always trouble to give a correct
+    address."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two smoked in silence for a few minutes, and then Hewitt continued:
+    "I don't expect our friend has had an easy job altogether with that bird.
+    His successes at most have only been three, and I suspect he had many
+    failures and not a few anxious moments that we know nothing of. I should
+    judge as much merely from what the groom told me of frequently meeting
+    Lloyd with his parrot. But the plan was not a bad one&mdash;not at all. Even
+    if the bird had been caught in the act, it would only have been 'That
+    mischievous parrot!' you see. And his master would only have been looking
+    for him."
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH2"></a>
+<h3>
+   II. THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It was, of course, always a part of Martin Hewitt's business to be
+    thoroughly at home among any and every class of people, and to be able to
+    interest himself intelligently, or to appear to do so, in their various
+    pursuits. In one of the most important cases ever placed in his hands he
+    could have gone but a short way toward success had he not displayed some
+    knowledge of the more sordid aspects of professional sport, and a great
+    interest in the undertakings of a certain dealer therein.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great case itself had nothing to do with sport, and, indeed, from a
+    narrative point of view, was somewhat uninteresting, but the man who
+    alone held the one piece of information wanted was a keeper, backer, or
+    "gaffer" of professional pedestrians, and it was through the medium of
+    his pecuniary interest in such matters that Hewitt was enabled to strike
+    a bargain with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man was a publican on the outskirts of Padfield, a northern town,
+    pretty famous for its sporting tastes, and to Padfield, therefore, Hewitt
+    betook himself, and, arrayed in a way to indicate some inclination of
+    his own toward sport, he began to frequent the bar of the Hare and
+    Hounds. Kentish, the landlord, was a stout, bull-necked man, of no great
+    communicativeness at first; but after a little acquaintance he opened out
+    wonderfully, became quite a jolly (and rather intelligent) companion, and
+    came out with innumerable anecdotes of his sporting adventures. He could
+    put a very decent dinner on the table, too, at the Hare and Hounds, and
+    Hewitt's frequent invitation to him to join therein and divide a bottle
+    of the best in the cellar soon put the two on the very best of terms.
+    Good terms with Mr. Kentish was Hewitt's great desire, for the
+    information he wanted was of a sort that could never be extracted by
+    casual questioning, but must be a matter of open communication by the
+    publican, extracted in what way it might be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here," said Kentish one day, "I'll put you on to a good thing, my
+    boy&mdash;a real good thing. Of course you know all about the Padfield 135
+    Yards Handicap being run off now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I haven't looked into it much," Hewitt replied. "Ran the first
+    round of heats last Saturday and Monday, didn't they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They did. Well"&mdash;Kentish spoke in a stage whisper as he leaned over and
+    rapped the table&mdash;"I've got the final winner in this house." He nodded
+    his head, took a puff at his cigar, and added, in his ordinary voice.
+    "Don't say nothing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, of course not. Got something on, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Rather! What do you think? Got any price I liked. Been saving him up for
+    this. Why, he's got twenty-one yards, and he can do even time all the
+    way! Fact! Why, he could win runnin' back'ards. He won his heat on Monday
+    like&mdash;like&mdash;like that!" The gaffer snapped his fingers, in default of a
+    better illustration, and went on. "He might ha' took it a little easier,
+    <i>I</i> think; it's shortened his price, of course, him jumpin' in by two
+    yards. But you can get decent odds now, if you go about it right. You
+    take my tip&mdash;back him for his heat next Saturday, in the second round,
+    and for the final. You'll get a good price for the final, if you pop it
+    down at once. But don't go makin' a song of it, will you, now? I'm givin'
+    you a tip I wouldn't give anybody else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thanks, very much; it's awfully good of you. I'll do what you advise.
+    But isn't there a dark horse anywhere else?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not dark to me, my boy, not dark to me. I know every man runnin' like a
+    book. Old Taylor&mdash;him over at the Cop&mdash;he's got a very good lad at
+    eighteen yards, a very good lad indeed; and he's a tryer this time, I
+    know. But, bless you, my lad could give him ten, instead o' taking three,
+    and beat him then! When I'm runnin' a real tryer, I'm generally runnin'
+    something very near a winner, you bet; and this time, mind <i>this</i> time,
+    I'm runnin' the certainest winner I <i>ever</i> run&mdash;and I don't often make a
+    mistake. You back him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall, if you're as sure as that. But who is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Crockett's his name&mdash;Sammy Crockett. He's quite a new lad. I've got
+    young Steggles looking after him&mdash;sticks to him like wax. Takes his
+    little breathers in my bit o' ground at the back here. I've got a
+    cinder-sprint path there, over behind the trees. I don't let him out o'
+    sight much, I can tell you. He's a straight lad, and he knows it'll be
+    worth his while to stick to me; but there's some 'ud poison him, if they
+    thought he'd spoil their books."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Soon afterward the two strolled toward the taproom. "I expect Sammy'll be
+    there," the landlord said, "with Steggles. I don't hide him too
+    much&mdash;they'd think I'd got something extra on if I did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the tap-room sat a lean, wire-drawn-looking youth, with sloping
+    shoulders and a thin face, and by his side was a rather short, thick-set
+    man, who had an odd air, no matter what he did, of proprietorship and
+    surveillance of the lean youth. Several other men sat about, and there
+    was loud laughter, under which the lean youth looked sheepishly angry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Tarn't no good, Sammy, lad," some one was saying, "you a-makin' after
+    Nancy Webb&mdash;she'll ha' nowt to do with 'ee."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' like 'em so thread-papery," added another. "No, Sammy, you aren't
+    the lad for she. I see her&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What about Nancy Webb?" asked Kentish, pushing open the door. "Sammy's
+    all right, any way. You keep fit, my lad, an' go on improving, and some
+    day you'll have as good a house as me. Never mind the lasses. Had his
+    glass o' beer, has he?" This to Raggy Steggles, who, answering in the
+    affirmative, viewed his charge as though he were a post, and the beer a
+    recent coat of paint.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Has two glasses of mild a day," the landlord said to Hewitt. "Never puts
+    on flesh, so he can stand it. Come out now." He nodded to Steggles, who
+    rose and marched Sammy Crockett away for exercise.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    On the following afternoon (it was Thursday), as Hewitt and Kentish
+    chatted in the landlord's own snuggery, Steggles burst into the room in a
+    great state of agitation and spluttered out: "He&mdash;he's bolted; gone
+    away!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sammy&mdash;gone! Hooked it! <i>I</i> can't find him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord stared blankly at the trainer, who stood with a sweater
+    dangling from his hand and stared blankly back. "What d'ye mean?" Kentish
+    said, at last. "Don't be a fool! He's in the place somewhere. Find him!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this Steggles defied anybody to do. He had looked already. He had
+    left Crockett at the cinder-path behind the trees in his running-gear,
+    with the addition of the long overcoat and cap he used in going between
+    the path and the house to guard against chill. "I was goin' to give him a
+    bust or two with the pistol," the trainer explained, "but, when we got
+    over t'other side, 'Raggy,' ses he, 'it's blawin' a bit chilly. I think
+    I'll ha' a sweater. There's one on my box, ain't there?' So in I coomes
+    for the sweater, and it weren't on his box, and, when I found it and got
+    back&mdash;he weren't there. They'd seen nowt o' him in t' house, and he
+    weren't nowhere."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt and the landlord, now thoroughly startled, searched everywhere,
+    but to no purpose. "What should he go off the place for?" asked Kentish,
+    in a sweat of apprehension. "'Tain't chilly a bit&mdash;it's warm. He didn't
+    want no sweater; never wore one before. It was a piece of kid to be able
+    to clear out. Nice thing, this is. I stand to win two years' takings over
+    him. Here&mdash;you'll have to find him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, but how?" exclaimed the disconcerted trainer, dancing about
+    distractedly. "I've got all I could scrape on him myself. Where can I
+    look?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here was Hewitt's opportunity. He took Kentish aside and whispered. What
+    he said startled the landlord considerably. "Yes, I'll tell you all about
+    that," he said, "if that's all you want. It's no good or harm to me
+    whether I tell or no. But can you find him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That I can't promise, of course. But you know who I am now, and what I'm
+    here for. If you like to give me the information I want, I'll go into the
+    case for you, and, of course, I shan't charge any fee. I may have luck,
+    you know, but I can't promise, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord looked in Hewitt's face for a moment. Then he said: "Done!
+    It's a deal."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," Hewitt replied; "get together the one or two papers you
+    have, and we'll go into my business in the evening. As to Crockett, don't
+    say a word to anybody. I'm afraid it must get out, since they all know
+    about it in the house, but there's no use in making any unnecessary
+    noise. Don't make hedging bets or do anything that will attract notice.
+    Now we'll go over to the back and look at this cinder-path of yours."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here Steggles, who was still standing near, was struck with an idea. "How
+    about old Taylor, at the Cop, guv'nor, eh?" he said, meaningly. "His
+    lad's good enough to win with Sammy out, and Taylor is backing him
+    plenty. Think he knows any thing o' this?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's likely," Hewitt observed, before Kentish could reply. "Yes. Look
+    here&mdash;suppose Steggles goes and keeps his eye on the Cop for an hour or
+    two, in case there's anything to be heard of? Don't show yourself, of
+    course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish agreed, and the trainer went. When Hewitt and Kentish arrived at
+    the path behind the trees, Hewitt at once began examining the ground. One
+    or two rather large holes in the cinders were made, as the publican
+    explained, by Crockett, in practicing getting off his mark. Behind these
+    were several fresh tracks of spiked shoes. The tracks led up to within a
+    couple of yards of the high fence bounding the ground, and there stopped
+    abruptly and entirely. In the fence, a little to the right of where the
+    tracks stopped, there was a stout door. This Hewitt tried, and found
+    ajar.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's always kept bolted," Kentish said. "He's gone out that way&mdash;he
+    couldn't have gone any other without comin' through the house."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But he isn't in the habit of making a step three yards long, is he?"
+    Hewitt asked, pointing at the last footmark and then at the door, which
+    was quite that distance away from it. "Besides," he added, opening the
+    door, "there's no footprint here nor outside."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The door opened on a lane, with another fence and a thick plantation of
+    trees at the other side. Kentish looked at the footmarks, then at the
+    door, then down the lane, and finally back toward the house. "That's a
+    licker!" he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is a quiet sort of lane," was Hewitt's next remark. "No houses in
+    sight. Where does it lead?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That way it goes to the Old Kilns&mdash;disused. This way down to a turning
+    off the Padfield and Catton road."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt returned to the cinder-path again, and once more examined the
+    footmarks. He traced them back over the grass toward the house.
+    "Certainly," he said, "he hasn't gone back to the house. Here is the
+    double line of tracks, side by side, from the house&mdash;Steggles' ordinary
+    boots with iron tips, and Crockett's running pumps; thus they came out.
+    Here is Steggles' track in the opposite direction alone, made when he
+    went back for the sweater. Crockett remained; you see various prints in
+    those loose cinders at the end of the path where he moved this way and
+    that, and then two or three paces toward the fence&mdash;not directly toward
+    the door, you notice&mdash;and there they stop dead, and there are no more,
+    either back or forward. Now, if he had wings, I should be tempted to the
+    opinion that he flew straight away in the air from that spot&mdash;unless the
+    earth swallowed him and closed again without leaving a wrinkle on its
+    face."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish stared gloomily at the tracks and said nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "However," Hewitt resumed, "I think I'll take a little walk now and think
+    over it. You go into the house and show yourself at the bar. If anybody
+    wants to know how Crockett is, he's pretty well, thank you. By the by,
+    can I get to the Cop&mdash;this place of Taylor's&mdash;by this back lane?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, down to the end leading to the Catton road, turn to the left and
+    then first on the right. Any one'll show you the Cop," and Kentish shut
+    the door behind the detective, who straightway walked&mdash;toward the Old
+    Kilns.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In little more than an hour he was back. It was now becoming dusk, and
+    the landlord looked out papers from a box near the side window of his
+    snuggery, for the sake of the extra light. "I've got these papers
+    together for you," he said, as Hewitt entered. "Any news?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing very great. Here's a bit of handwriting I want you to recognize,
+    if you can. Get a light."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish lit a lamp, and Hewitt laid upon the table half a dozen small
+    pieces of torn paper, evidently fragments of a letter which had been torn
+    up, here reproduced in fac-simile:
+</p>
+<a name="image-1"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/058.jpg" width="231" height="88"
+alt="scraps of paper: mmy, throw them ou, right away,
+ left hi, hate his, lane wr" >
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord turned the scraps over, regarding them dubiously. "These
+    aren't much to recognize, anyhow. <i>I</i> don't know the writing. Where did
+    you find 'em?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They were lying in the lane at the back, a little way down. Plainly they
+    are pieces of a note addressed to some one called Sammy or something very
+    like it. See the first piece, with its 'mmy'? That is clearly from the
+    beginning of the note, because there is no line between it and the
+    smooth, straight edge of the paper above; also, nothing follows on the
+    same line. Some one writes to Crockett&mdash;presuming it to be a letter
+    addressed to him, as I do for other reasons&mdash;as Sammy. It is a pity that
+    there is no more of the letter to be found than these pieces. I expect
+    the person who tore it up put the rest in his pocket and dropped these by
+    accident."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish, who had been picking up and examining each piece in turn, now
+    dolorously broke out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, it's plain he's sold us&mdash;bolted and done us; me as took him out o'
+    the gutter, too. Look here&mdash;'throw them over'; that's plain enough&mdash;can't
+    mean anything else. Means throw <i>me</i> over, and my friends&mdash;me, after what
+    I've done for him! Then 'right away'&mdash;go right away, I s'pose, as he has
+    done. Then"&mdash;he was fiddling with the scraps and finally fitted two
+    together&mdash;"why, look here, this one with 'lane' on it fits over the one
+    about throwing over, and it says 'poor f' where its torn; that means
+    'poor fool,' I s'pose&mdash;<i>me</i>, or 'fathead,' or something like that. That's
+    nice. Why, I'd twist his neck if I could get hold of him; and I will!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled. "Perhaps it's not quite so uncomplimentary, after all," he
+    said. "If you can't recognize the writing, never mind. But, if he's gone
+    away to sell you, it isn't much use finding him, is it? He won't win if
+    he doesn't want to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, he wouldn't dare to rope under my very eyes. I'd&mdash;I'd&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, well; perhaps we'll get him to run, after all, and as well as he
+    can. One thing is certain&mdash;he left this place of his own will. Further, I
+    think he is in Padfield now; he went toward the town, I believe. And I
+    don't think he means to sell you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, he shouldn't. I've made it worth his while to stick to me. I've
+    put a fifty on for him out of my own pocket, and told him so; and, if he
+    won, that would bring him a lump more than he'd probably get by going
+    crooked, besides the prize money and anything I might give him over. But
+    it seems to me he's putting me in the cart altogether."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That we shall see. Meantime, don't mention anything I've told you to any
+    one&mdash;not even to Steggles. He can't help us, and he might blurt things
+    out inadvertently. Don't say anything about these pieces of paper, which
+    I shall keep myself. By-the-by, Steggles is indoors, isn't he? Very well,
+    keep him in. Don't let him be seen hunting about this evening. I'll stay
+    here to-night and we'll proceed with Crockett's business in the morning.
+    And now we'll settle <i>my</i> business, please."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    In the morning Hewitt took his breakfast in the snuggery, carefully
+    listening to any conversation that might take place at the bar. Soon
+    after nine o'clock a fast dog-cart stopped outside, and a red-faced,
+    loud-voiced man swaggered in, greeting Kentish with boisterous
+    cordiality. He had a drink with the landlord, and said: "How's things?
+    Fancy any of 'em for the sprint handicap? Got a lad o' your own in,
+    haven't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes," Kentish replied. "Crockett. Only a young un not got to his
+    proper mark yet, I reckon. I think old Taylor's got No. 1 this time."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Capital lad," the other replied, with a confidential nod. "Shouldn't
+    wonder at all. Want to do anything yourself over it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't think so. I'm not on at present. Might have a little flutter
+    on the grounds just for fun; nothing else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There were a few more casual remarks, and then the red-faced man drove
+    away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who was that?" asked Hewitt, who had watched the visitor through the
+    snuggery window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's Danby&mdash;bookmaker. Cute chap. He's been told Crockett's missing,
+    I'll bet anything, and come here to pump me. No good, though. As a matter
+    of fact, I've worked Sammy Crockett into his books for about half I'm in
+    for altogether&mdash;through third parties, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt reached for his hat. "I'm going out for half an hour now," he
+    said. "If Steggles wants to go out before I come back, don't let him. Let
+    him go and smooth over all those tracks on the cinder-path, very
+    carefully. And, by the by, could you manage to have your son about the
+    place to-day, in case I happen to want a little help out of doors?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly; I'll get him to stay in. But what do you want the cinders
+    smoothed for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled, and patted his host's shoulder. "I'll explain all my
+    tricks when the job's done," he said, and went out.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    On the lane from Padfield to Sedby village stood the Plough beer-house,
+    wherein J. Webb was licensed to sell by retail beer to be consumed on the
+    premises or off, as the thirsty list. Nancy Webb, with a very fine color,
+    a very curly fringe, and a wide smiling mouth revealing a fine set of
+    teeth, came to the bar at the summons of a stoutish old gentleman in
+    spectacles who walked with a stick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The stoutish old gentleman had a glass of bitter beer, and then said in
+    the peculiarly quiet voice of a very deaf man: "Can you tell me, if you
+    please, the way into the main Catton road?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Down the lane, turn to the right at the cross-roads, then first to the
+    left."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman waited with his hand to his ear for some few seconds
+    after she had finished speaking, and then resumed in his whispering
+    voice: "I'm afraid I'm very deaf this morning." He fumbled in his pocket
+    and produced a note-book and pencil. "May I trouble you to write it down?
+    I'm so very deaf at times that I&mdash;Thank you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl wrote the direction, and the old gentleman bade her good-morning
+    and left. All down the lane he walked slowly with his stick. At the
+    cross-roads he turned, put the stick under his arm, thrust his spectacles
+    into his pocket, and strode away in the ordinary guise of Martin Hewitt.
+    He pulled out his note-book, examined Miss Webb's direction very
+    carefully, and then went off another way altogether, toward the Hare and
+    Hounds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kentish lounged moodily in his bar. "Well, my boy," said Hewitt, "has
+    Steggles wiped out the tracks?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not yet; I haven't told him. But he's somewhere about; I'll tell him
+    now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, don't. I don't think we'll have that done, after all. I expect he'll
+    want to go out soon&mdash;at any rate, some time during the day. Let him go
+    whenever he likes. I'll sit upstairs a bit in the club-room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well. But how do you know Steggles will be going out?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, he's pretty restless after his lost <i>protégé</i>, isn't he? I don't
+    suppose he'll be able to remain idle long."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And about Crockett. Do you give him up?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no! Don't you be impatient. I can't say I'm quite confident yet of
+    laying hold of him&mdash;the time is so short, you see&mdash;but I think I shall at
+    least have news for you by the evening."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt sat in the club-room until the afternoon, taking his lunch there.
+    At length he saw, through the front window, Raggy Steggles walking down
+    the road. In an instant Hewitt was down-stairs and at the door. The road
+    bent eighty yards away, and as soon as Steggles passed the bend the
+    detective hurried after him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All the way to Padfield town and more than half through it Hewitt dogged
+    the trainer. In the end Steggles stopped at a corner and gave a note to a
+    small boy who was playing near. The boy ran with the note to a bright,
+    well-kept house at the opposite corner. Martin Hewitt was interested to
+    observe the legend, "H. Danby, Contractor," on a board over a gate in the
+    side wall of the garden behind this house. In five minutes a door in the
+    side gate opened, and the head and shoulders of the red-faced man
+    emerged. Steggles immediately hurried across and disappeared through the
+    gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was both interesting and instructive. Hewitt took up a position in
+    the side street and waited. In ten minutes the trainer reappeared and
+    hurried off the way he had come, along the street Hewitt had
+    considerately left clear for him. Then Hewitt strolled toward the smart
+    house and took a good look at it. At one corner of the small piece of
+    forecourt garden, near the railings, a small, baize-covered,
+    glass-fronted notice-board stood on two posts. On its top edge appeared
+    the words, "H. Danby. Houses to be Sold or Let." But the only notice
+    pinned to the green baize within was an old and dusty one, inviting
+    tenants for three shops, which were suitable for any business, and which
+    would be fitted to suit tenants. Apply within.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt pushed open the front gate and rang the door-bell. "There are some
+    shops to let, I see," he said, when a maid appeared. "I should like to
+    see them, if you will let me have the key."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Master's out, sir. You can't see the shops till Monday."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dear me, that's unfortunate, I'm afraid I can't wait till Monday. Didn't
+    Mr. Danby leave any instructions, in case anybody should inquire?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir&mdash;as I've told you. He said anybody who called about 'em must
+    come again on Monday."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, very well, then; I suppose I must try. One of the shops is in High
+    Street, isn't it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, sir; they're all in the new part&mdash;Granville Road."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, I'm afraid that will scarcely do. But I'll see. Good-day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Martin Hewitt walked away a couple of streets' lengths before he inquired
+    the way to Granville Road. When at last he found that thoroughfare, in a
+    new and muddy suburb, crowded with brick-heaps and half-finished streets,
+    he took a slow walk along its entire length. It was a melancholy example
+    of baffled enterprise. A row of a dozen or more shops had been built
+    before any population had arrived to demand goods. Would-be tradesmen
+    had taken many of these shops, and failure and disappointment stared
+    from the windows. Some were half covered by shutters, because the
+    scanty stock scarce sufficed to fill the remaining half. Others were
+    shut almost altogether, the inmates only keeping open the door for
+    their own convenience, and, perhaps, keeping down a shutter for the
+    sake of a little light. Others, again, had not yet fallen so low, but
+    struggled bravely still to maintain a show of business and prosperity,
+    with very little success. Opposite the shops there still remained a
+    dusty, ill-treated hedge and a forlorn-looking field, which an old board
+    offered on building leases. Altogether a most depressing spot.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was little difficulty in identifying the three shops offered for
+    letting by Mr. H. Danby. They were all together near the middle of the
+    row, and were the only ones that appeared not yet to have been occupied.
+    A dusty "To Let" bill hung in each window, with written directions to
+    inquire of Mr. H. Danby or at No. 7. Now No. 7 was a melancholy baker's
+    shop, with a stock of three loaves and a plate of stale buns. The
+    disappointed baker assured Hewitt that he usually kept the keys of the
+    shops, but that the landlord, Mr. Danby, had taken them away the day
+    before to see how the ceilings were standing, and had not returned them.
+    "But if you was thinking of taking a shop here," the poor baker added,
+    with some hesitation, "I&mdash;I&mdash;if you'll excuse my advising you&mdash;I
+    shouldn't recommend it. I've had a sickener of it myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt thanked the baker for his advice, wished him better luck in
+    future, and left. To the Hare and Hounds his pace was brisk. "Come," he
+    said, as he met Kentish's inquiring glance, "this has been a very good
+    day, on the whole. I know where our man is now, and I think we can get
+    him, by a little management."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, down in Padfield. As a matter of fact, he's being kept there against
+    his will, we shall find. I see that your friend Mr. Danby is a builder as
+    well as a bookmaker."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a regular builder. He speculates in a street of new houses now and
+    again, that's all. But is he in it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's as deep in it as anybody, I think. Now, don't fly into a passion.
+    There are a few others in it as well, but you'll do harm if you don't
+    keep quiet."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But go and get the police; come and fetch him, if you know where they're
+    keeping him. Why&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So we will, if we can't do it without them. But it's quite possible we
+    can, and without all the disturbance and, perhaps, delay that calling in
+    the police would involve. Consider, now, in reference to your own
+    arrangements. Wouldn't it pay you better to get him back quietly, without
+    a soul knowing&mdash;perhaps not even Danby knowing&mdash;till the heat is run
+    to-morrow?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, it would, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good, then, so be it. Remember what I have told you about keeping
+    your mouth shut; say nothing to Steggles or anybody. Is there a cab or
+    brougham your son and I can have for the evening?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There's an old hiring landau in the stables you can shut up into a cab,
+    if that'll do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Excellent. We'll run down to the town in it as soon as it's ready. But,
+    first, a word about Crockett. What sort of a lad is he? Likely to give
+    them trouble, show fight, and make a disturbance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I should say not. He's no plucked un, certainly; all his manhood's
+    in his legs, I believe. You see, he ain't a big sort o' chap at best, and
+    he'd be pretty easy put upon&mdash;at least, I guess so."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good, so much the better, for then he won't have been damaged, and
+    they will probably only have one man to guard him. Now the carriage,
+    please."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Young Kentish was a six-foot sergeant of grenadiers home on furlough, and
+    luxuriating in plain clothes. He and Hewitt walked a little way toward
+    the town, allowing the landau to catch them up. They traveled in it to
+    within a hundred yards of the empty shops and then alighted, bidding the
+    driver wait.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall show you three empty shops," Hewitt said, as he and young
+    Kentish walked down Granville Road. "I am pretty sure that Sammy Crockett
+    is in one of them, and I am pretty sure that that is the middle one.
+    Take a look as we go past."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the shops had been slowly passed, Hewitt resumed: "Now, did you see
+    anything about those shops that told a tale of any sort?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Sergeant Kentish replied. "I can't say I noticed anything beyond
+    the fact that they were empty&mdash;and likely to stay so, I should think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We'll stroll back, and look in at the windows, if nobody's watching us,"
+    Hewitt said. "You see, it's reasonable to suppose they've put him in the
+    middle one, because that would suit their purpose best. The shops at each
+    side of the three are occupied, and, if the prisoner struggled, or
+    shouted, or made an uproar, he might be heard if he were in one of the
+    shops next those inhabited. So that the middle shop is the most likely.
+    Now, see there," he went on, as they stopped before the window of the
+    shop in question, "over at the back there's a staircase not yet
+    partitioned off. It goes down below and up above. On the stairs and on
+    the floor near them there are muddy footmarks. These must have been made
+    to-day, else they would not be muddy, but dry and dusty, since there
+    hasn't been a shower for a week till to-day. Move on again. Then you
+    noticed that there were no other such marks in the shop. Consequently
+    the man with the muddy feet did not come in by the front door, but by the
+    back; otherwise he would have made a trail from the door. So we will go
+    round to the back ourselves."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was now growing dusk. The small pieces of ground behind the shops were
+    bounded by a low fence, containing a door for each house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This door is bolted inside, of course," Hewitt said, "but there is no
+    difficulty in climbing. I think we had better wait in the garden till
+    dark. In the meantime, the jailer, whoever he is, may come out; in which
+    case we shall pounce on him as soon as he opens the door. You have that
+    few yards of cord in your pocket, I think? And my handkerchief, properly
+    rolled, will make a very good gag. Now over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They climbed the fence and quietly approached the house, placing
+    themselves in the angle of an outhouse out of sight from the windows.
+    There was no sound, and no light appeared. Just above the ground about a
+    foot of window was visible, with a grating over it, apparently lighting a
+    basement. Suddenly Hewitt touched his companion's arm and pointed toward
+    the window. A faint rustling sound was perceptible, and, as nearly as
+    could be discerned in the darkness, some white blind or covering was
+    placed over the glass from the inside. Then came the sound of a striking
+    match, and at the side edge of the window there was a faint streak of
+    light.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's the place," Hewitt whispered. "Come, we'll make a push for it.
+    You stand against the wall at one side of the door and I'll stand at the
+    other, and we'll have him as he comes out. Quietly, now, and I'll startle
+    them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He took a stone from among the rubbish littering the garden and flung it
+    crashing through the window. There was a loud exclamation from within,
+    the blind fell, and somebody rushed to the back door and flung it open.
+    Instantly Kentish let fly a heavy right-hander, and the man went over
+    like a skittle. In a moment Hewitt was upon him and the gag in his mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hold him," Hewitt whispered, hurriedly. "I'll see if there are others."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He peered down through the low window. Within Sammy Crockett, his bare
+    legs dangling from beneath his long overcoat, sat on a packing-box,
+    leaning with his head on his hand and his back toward the window. A
+    guttering candle stood on the mantel-piece, and the newspaper which had
+    been stretched across the window lay in scattered sheets on the floor. No
+    other person besides Sammy was visible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They led their prisoner indoors. Young Kentish recognized him as a
+    public-house loafer and race-course ruffian, well known in the
+    neighborhood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So it's you, is it, Browdie?" he said. "I've caught you one hard clump,
+    and I've half a mind to make it a score more. But you'll get it pretty
+    warm one way or another before this job's forgotten."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sammy Crockett was overjoyed at his rescue. He had not been ill-treated,
+    he explained, but had been thoroughly cowed by Browdie, who had from time
+    to time threatened him savagely with an iron bar by way of persuading him
+    to quietness and submission. He had been fed, and had taken no worse harm
+    than a slight stiffness from his adventure, due to his light under-attire
+    of jersey and knee-shorts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sergeant Kentish tied Browdie's elbows firmly together behind, and
+    carried the line round the ankles, bracing all up tight. Then he ran a
+    knot from one wrist to the other over the back of the neck, and left the
+    prisoner, trussed and helpless, on the heap of straw that had been
+    Sammy's bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You won't be very jolly, I expect," Kentish said, "for some time. You
+    can't shout and you can't walk, and I know you can't untie yourself.
+    You'll get a bit hungry, too, perhaps, but that'll give you an appetite.
+    I don't suppose you'll be disturbed till some time to-morrow, unless our
+    friend Danby turns up in the meantime. But you can come along to jail
+    instead, if you prefer it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They left him where he lay, and took Sammy to the old landau. Sammy
+    walked in slippers, carrying his spiked shoes, hanging by the lace, in
+    his hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah," said Hewitt, "I think I know the name of the young lady who gave
+    you those slippers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Crockett looked ashamed and indignant. "Yes," he said, "they've done me
+    nicely between 'em. But I'll pay her&mdash;I'll&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hush, hush!" Hewitt said; "you mustn't talk unkindly of a lady, you
+    know. Get into this carriage, and we'll take you home. We'll see if I can
+    tell you your adventures without making a mistake. First, you had a note
+    from Miss Webb, telling you that you were mistaken in supposing she had
+    slighted you, and that, as a matter of fact, she had quite done with
+    somebody else&mdash;left him&mdash;of whom you were jealous. Isn't that so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes," young Crockett answered, blushing deeply under the
+    carriage-lamp; "but I don't see how you come to know that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then she went on to ask you to get rid of Steggles on Thursday afternoon
+    for a few minutes, and speak to her in the back lane. Now, your running
+    pumps, with their thin soles, almost like paper, no heels and long
+    spikes, hurt your feet horribly if you walk on hard ground, don't they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ay, that they do&mdash;enough to cripple you. I'd never go on much hard
+    ground with 'em."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They're not like cricket shoes, I see."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a bit. Cricket shoes you can walk anywhere in!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, she knew this&mdash;I think I know who told her&mdash;and she promised to
+    bring you a new pair of slippers, and to throw them over the fence for
+    you to come out in."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I s'pose she's been tellin' you all this?" Crockett said, mournfully.
+    "You couldn't ha' seen the letter; I saw her tear it up and put the bits
+    in her pocket. She asked me for it in the lane, in case Steggles saw it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, at any rate, you sent Steggles away, and the slippers did come
+    over, and you went into the lane. You walked with her as far as the road
+    at the end, and then you were seized and gagged, and put into a
+    carriage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That was Browdie did that," said Crockett, "and another chap I don't
+    know. But&mdash;why, this is Padfield High Street?" He looked through the
+    window and regarded the familiar shops with astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course it is. Where did you think it was?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, where was that place you found me in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Granville Road, Padfield. I suppose they told you you were in another
+    town?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Told me it was Newstead Hatch. They drove for about three or four hours,
+    and kept me down on the floor between the seats so as I couldn't see
+    where we was going."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Done for two reasons," said Hewitt. "First, to mystify you, and prevent
+    any discovery of the people directing the conspiracy; and second, to be
+    able to put you indoors at night and unobserved. Well, I think I have
+    told you all you know yourself now as far as the carriage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But there is the Hare and Hounds just in front. We'll pull up here, and
+    I'll get out and see if the coast is clear. I fancy Mr. Kentish would
+    rather you came in unnoticed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a few seconds Hewitt was back, and Crockett was conveyed indoors by a
+    side entrance. Hewitt's instructions to the landlord were few, but
+    emphatic. "Don't tell Steggles about it," he said; "make an excuse to get
+    rid of him, and send him out of the house. Take Crockett into some other
+    bedroom, not his own, and let your son look after him. Then come here,
+    and I'll tell you all about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sammy Crockett was undergoing a heavy grooming with white embrocation at
+    the hands of Sergeant Kentish when the landlord returned to Hewitt. "Does
+    Danby know you've got him?" he asked. "How did you do it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Danby doesn't know yet, and with luck he won't know till he sees
+    Crockett running to-morrow. The man who has sold you is Steggles."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Steggles?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Steggles it is. At the very first, when Steggles rushed in to report
+    Sammy Crockett missing, I suspected him. You didn't, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. He's always been considered a straight man, and he looked as
+    startled as anybody."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I must say he acted it very well. But there was something
+    suspicious in his story. What did he say? Crockett had remarked a
+    chilliness, and asked for a sweater, which Steggles went to fetch. Now,
+    just think. You understand these things. Would any trainer who knew his
+    business (as Steggles does) have gone to bring out a sweater for his man
+    to change for his jersey in the open air, at the very time the man was
+    complaining of chilliness? Of course not. He would have taken his man
+    indoors again and let him change there under shelter. Then supposing
+    Steggles had really been surprised at missing Crockett, wouldn't he have
+    looked about, found the gate open, and <i>told</i> you it was open when he
+    first came in? He said nothing of that&mdash;we found the gate open for
+    ourselves. So that from the beginning I had a certain opinion of
+    Steggles."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What you say seems pretty plain now, although it didn't strike me at the
+    time. But, if Steggles was selling us, why couldn't he have drugged the
+    lad? That would have been a deal simpler."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Because Steggles is a good trainer, and has a certain reputation to keep
+    up. It would have done him no good to have had a runner drugged while
+    under his care; certainly it would have cooked his goose with <i>you</i>. It
+    was much the safer thing to connive at kidnapping. That put all the
+    active work into other hands, and left him safe, even if the trick
+    failed. Now, you remember that we traced the prints of Crockett's spiked
+    shoes to within a couple of yards from the fence, and that there they
+    ceased suddenly?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. You said it looked as though he had flown up into the air; and so
+    it did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I was sure that it was by that gate that Crockett had left, and by
+    no other. He couldn't have got through the house without being seen, and
+    there was no other way&mdash;let alone the evidence of the unbolted gate.
+    Therefore, as the footprints ceased where they did, and were not repeated
+    anywhere in the lane, I knew that he had taken his spiked shoes
+    off&mdash;probably changed them for something else, because a runner anxious
+    as to his chances would never risk walking on bare feet, with a chance of
+    cutting them. Ordinary, broad, smooth-soled slippers would leave no
+    impression on the coarse cinders bordering the track, and nothing short
+    of spiked shoes would leave a mark on the hard path in the lane behind.
+    The spike-tracks were leading, not directly toward the door, but in the
+    direction of the fence, when they stopped; somebody had handed, or
+    thrown, the slippers over the fence, and he had changed them on the spot.
+    The enemy had calculated upon the spikes leaving a track in the lane that
+    might lead us in our search, and had arranged accordingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So far so good. I could see no footprints near the gate in the lane. You
+    will remember that I sent Steggles off to watch at the Cop before I went
+    out to the back&mdash;merely, of course, to get him out of the way. I went out
+    into the lane, leaving you behind, and walked its whole length, first
+    toward the Old Kilns and then back toward the road. I found nothing to
+    help me except these small pieces of paper&mdash;which are here in my
+    pocket-book, by the by. Of course this 'mmy' might have meant 'Jimmy' or
+    'Tommy' as possibly as 'Sammy,' but they were not to be rejected on that
+    account. Certainly Crockett had been decoyed out of your ground, not
+    taken by force, or there would have been marks of a scuffle in the
+    cinders. And as his request for a sweater was probably an excuse&mdash;because
+    it was not at all a cold afternoon&mdash;he must have previously designed
+    going out. Inference, a letter received; and here were pieces of a
+    letter. Now, in the light of what I have said, look at these pieces.
+    First, there is the 'mmy'&mdash;that I have dealt with. Then see this 'throw
+    them ov'&mdash;clearly a part of 'throw them over'; exactly what had probably
+    been done with the slippers. Then the 'poor f,' coming just on the line
+    before, and seen, by joining up with this other piece, might easily be a
+    reference to 'poor feet.' These coincidences, one on the other, went far
+    to establish the identity of the letter, and to confirm my previous
+    impressions. But then there is something else. Two other pieces evidently
+    mean 'left him,' and 'right away,' perhaps; but there is another,
+    containing almost all of the words 'hate his,' with the word 'hate'
+    underlined. Now, who writes 'hate' with the emphasis of underscoring&mdash;who
+    but a woman? The writing is large and not very regular; it might easily
+    be that of a half-educated woman. Here was something more&mdash;Sammy had been
+    enticed away by a woman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, I remembered that, when we went into the tap-room on Wednesday,
+    some of his companions were chaffing Crockett about a certain Nancy Webb,
+    and the chaff went home, as was plain to see. The woman, then, who could
+    most easily entice Sammy Crockett away was Nancy Webb. I resolved to find
+    who Nancy Webb was and learn more of her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meantime, I took a look at the road at the end of the lane. It was
+    damper than the lane, being lower, and overhung by trees. There were many
+    wheel-tracks, but only one set that turned in the road and went back the
+    way it came, toward the town; and they were narrow wheels&mdash;carriage
+    wheels. Crockett tells me now that they drove him about for a long time
+    before shutting him up; probably the inconvenience of taking him straight
+    to the hiding-place didn't strike them when they first drove off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A few inquiries soon set me in the direction of the Plough and Miss
+    Nancy Webb. I had the curiosity to look around the place as I approached,
+    and there, in the garden behind the house, were Steggles and the young
+    lady in earnest confabulation!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Every conjecture became a certainty. Steggles was the lover of whom
+    Crockett was jealous, and he had employed the girl to bring Sammy out. I
+    watched Steggles home, and gave you a hint to keep him there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But the thing that remained was to find Steggles' employer in this
+    business. I was glad to be in when Danby called. He came, of course, to
+    hear if you would blurt out anything, and to learn, if possible, what
+    steps you were taking. He failed. By way of making assurance doubly sure
+    I took a short walk this morning in the character of a deaf gentleman,
+    and got Miss Webb to write me a direction that comprised three of the
+    words on these scraps of paper&mdash;'left,' 'right,' and 'lane'; see, they
+    correspond, the peculiar 'f's,' 't's,' and all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, I felt perfectly sure that Steggles would go for his pay to-day. In
+    the first place, I knew that people mixed up with shady transactions in
+    professional pedestrianism are not apt to trust one another far&mdash;they
+    know better. Therefore Steggles wouldn't have had his bribe first. But he
+    would take care to get it before the Saturday heats were run, because
+    once they were over the thing was done, and the principal conspirator
+    might have refused to pay up, and Steggles couldn't have helped himself.
+    Again I hinted he should not go out till I could follow him, and this
+    afternoon, when he went, follow him I did. I saw him go into Danby's
+    house by the side way and come away again. Danby it was, then, who had
+    arranged the business; and nobody was more likely, considering his large
+    pecuniary stake against Crockett's winning this race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But now how to find Crockett? I made up my mind he wouldn't be in
+    Danby's own house. That would be a deal too risky, with servants about
+    and so on. I saw that Danby was a builder, and had three shops to let&mdash;it
+    was on a paper before his house. What more likely prison than an empty
+    house? I knocked at Danby's door and asked for the keys of those shops. I
+    couldn't have them. The servant told me Danby was out (a manifest lie,
+    for I had just seen him), and that nobody could see the shops till
+    Monday. But I got out of her the address of the shops, and that was all I
+    wanted at the time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, why was nobody to see those shops till Monday? The interval was
+    suspicious&mdash;just enough to enable Crockett to be sent away again and cast
+    loose after the Saturday racing, supposing him to be kept in one of the
+    empty buildings. I went off at once and looked at the shops, forming my
+    conclusions as to which would be the most likely for Danby's purpose.
+    Here I had another confirmation of my ideas. A poor, half-bankrupt baker
+    in one of the shops had, by the bills, the custody of a set of keys; but
+    he, too, told me I couldn't have them; Danby had taken them away&mdash;and on
+    Thursday, the very day&mdash;with some trivial excuse, and hadn't brought them
+    back. That was all I wanted or could expect in the way of guidance. The
+    whole thing was plain. The rest you know all about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you're certainly as smart as they give you credit for, I must say.
+    But suppose Danby had taken down his 'To Let' notice, what would you have
+    done, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We had our course, even then. We should have gone to Danby, astounded
+    him by telling him all about his little games, terrorized him with
+    threats of the law, and made him throw up his hand and send Crockett
+    back. But, as it is, you see, he doesn't know at this moment&mdash;probably
+    won't know till to-morrow afternoon&mdash;that the lad is safe and sound here.
+    You will probably use the interval to make him pay for losing the
+    game&mdash;by some of the ingenious financial devices you are no doubt
+    familiar with."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ay, that I will. He'll give any price against Crockett now, so long as
+    the bet don't come direct from me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But about Crockett, now," Hewitt went on. "Won't this confinement be
+    likely to have damaged his speed for a day or two?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, perhaps," the landlord replied; "but, bless ye, that won't matter.
+    There's four more in his heat to-morrow. Two I know aren't tryers, and
+    the other two I can hold in at a couple of quid apiece any day. The third
+    round and final won't be till to-morrow week, and he'll be as fit as ever
+    by then. It's as safe as ever it was. How much are you going to have on?
+    I'll lump it on for you safe enough. This is a chance not to be missed;
+    it's picking money up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thank you; I don't think I'll have anything to do with it. This
+    professional pedestrian business doesn't seem a pretty one at all. I
+    don't call myself a moralist, but, if you'll excuse my saying so, the
+    thing is scarcely the game I care to pick tap money at in any way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, very well! if you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't
+    think so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't
+    quarrel; you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only
+    feel I aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now,
+    you've got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll
+    pay it like a lord, and feel a deal more pleased than if you made a favor
+    of it&mdash;not that I'm above a favor, of course. But I'd prefer paying, and
+    that's a fact."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear sir, you have paid," Hewitt said, with a smile. "You paid in
+    advance. It was a bargain, wasn't it, that I should do your business if
+    you would help me in mine? Very well; a bargain's a bargain, and we've
+    both performed our parts. And you mustn't be offended at what I said just
+    now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That I won't! But as to that Raggy Steggles, once those heats are over
+    to-morrow, I'll&mdash;well&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was on the following Sunday week that Martin Hewitt, in his rooms in
+    London, turned over his paper and read, under the head "Padfield Annual
+    135 Yards Handicap," this announcement: "Final heat: Crockett, first;
+    Willis, second; Trewby, third; Owen, 0; Howell, 0. A runaway win by
+    nearly three yards."
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH3"></a>
+<h3>
+   III. THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Almost the only dogmatism that Martin Hewitt permitted himself in regard
+    to his professional methods was one on the matter of accumulative
+    probabilities. Often when I have remarked upon the apparently trivial
+    nature of the clews by which he allowed himself to be guided&mdash;sometimes,
+    to all seeming, in the very face of all likelihood&mdash;he has replied that
+    two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became at once, by
+    their mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important
+    considerations. "If I were in search of a man," he would say, "of whom I
+    knew nothing but that he squinted, bore a birthmark on his right hand,
+    and limped, and I observed a man who answered to the first peculiarity,
+    so far the clue would be trivial, because thousands of men squint. Now,
+    if that man presently moved and exhibited a birthmark on his right hand,
+    the value of that squint and that mark would increase at once a hundred
+    or a thousand fold. Apart they are little; together much. The weight of
+    evidence is not doubled merely; it would be only doubled if half the men
+    who squinted had right-hand birthmarks; whereas the proportion, if it
+    could be ascertained, would be, perhaps, more like one in ten thousand.
+    The two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become very
+    strong evidence. And, when the man is seen to walk with a limp, that
+    limp (another triviality), re-enforcing the others, brings the matter
+    to the rank of a practical certainty. The Bertillon system of
+    identification&mdash;what is it but a summary of trivialities? Thousands of
+    men are of the same height, thousands of the same length of foot,
+    thousands of the same girth of head&mdash;thousands correspond in any separate
+    measurement you may name. It is when the measurements are taken
+    <i>together</i> that you have your man identified forever. Just consider how
+    few, if any, of your friends correspond exactly in any two personal
+    peculiarities." Hewitt's dogma received its illustration unexpectedly
+    close at home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old house wherein my chambers and Hewitt's office were situated
+    contained, besides my own, two or three more bachelors' dens, in addition
+    to the offices on the ground and first and second floors. At the very top
+    of all, at the back, a fat, middle-aged man, named Foggatt, occupied a
+    set of four rooms. It was only after a long residence, by an accidental
+    remark of the housekeeper's, that I learned the man's name, which was
+    not painted on his door or displayed, with all the others, on the wall of
+    the ground-floor porch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Foggatt appeared to have few friends, but lived in something as
+    nearly approaching luxury as an old bachelor living in chambers can live.
+    An ascending case of champagne was a common phenomenon of the staircase,
+    and I have more than once seen a picture, destined for the top floor, of
+    a sort that went far to awaken green covetousness in the heart of a poor
+    journalist.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man himself was not altogether prepossessing. Fat as he was, he had a
+    way of carrying his head forward on his extended neck and gazing widely
+    about with a pair of the roundest and most prominent eyes I remember to
+    have ever seen, except in a fish. On the whole, his appearance was rather
+    vulgar, rather arrogant, and rather suspicious, without any very
+    pronounced quality of any sort. But certainly he was not pretty. In the
+    end, however, he was found shot dead in his sitting-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was in this way: Hewitt and I had dined together at my club, and late
+    in the evening had returned to my rooms to smoke and discuss whatever
+    came uppermost. I had made a bargain that day with two speculative odd
+    lots at a book sale, each of which contained a hidden prize. We sat
+    talking and turning over these books while time went unperceived, when
+    suddenly we were startled by a loud report. Clearly it was in the
+    building. We listened for a moment, but heard nothing else, and then
+    Hewitt expressed his opinion that the report was that of a gunshot.
+    Gunshots in residential chambers are not common things, wherefore I got
+    up and went to the landing, looking up the stairs and down.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the top of the next flight I saw Mrs. Clayton, the housekeeper. She
+    appeared to be frightened, and told me that the report came from Mr.
+    Foggatt's room. She thought he might have had an accident with the pistol
+    that usually lay on his mantel-piece. We went upstairs with her, and she
+    knocked at Mr. Foggatt's door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no reply. Through the ventilating fanlight over the door it
+    could be seen that there were lights within, a sign, Mrs. Clayton
+    maintained, that Mr. Foggatt was not out. We knocked again, much more
+    loudly, and called, but still ineffectually. The door was locked, and an
+    application of the housekeeper's key proved that the tenant's key had
+    been left in the lock inside. Mrs. Clayton's conviction that "something
+    had happened" became distressing, and in the end Hewitt pried open the
+    door with a small poker.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Something <i>had</i> happened. In the sitting-room Mr. Foggatt sat with his
+    head bowed over the table, quiet and still. The head was ill to look at,
+    and by it lay a large revolver, of the full-sized army pattern. Mrs.
+    Clayton ran back toward the landing with faint screams.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Run, Brett!" said Hewitt; "a doctor and a policeman!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I bounced down the stairs half a flight at a time. "First," I thought, "a
+    doctor. He may not be dead." I could think of no doctor in the immediate
+    neighborhood, but ran up the street away from the Strand, as being the
+    more likely direction for the doctor, although less so for the policeman.
+    It took me a good five minutes to find the medico, after being led astray
+    by a red lamp at a private hotel, and another five to get back, with a
+    policeman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Foggatt was dead, without a doubt. Probably had shot himself, the doctor
+    thought, from the powder-blackening and other circumstances. Certainly
+    nobody could have left the room by the door, or he must have passed my
+    landing, while the fact of the door being found locked from the inside
+    made the thing impossible. There were two windows to the room, both of
+    which were shut, one being fastened by the catch, while the catch of the
+    other was broken&mdash;an old fracture. Below these windows was a sheer drop
+    of fifty feet or more, without a foot or hand-hold near. The windows in
+    the other rooms were shut and fastened. Certainly it seemed
+    suicide&mdash;unless it were one of those accidents that will occur to people
+    who fiddle ignorantly with firearms. Soon the rooms were in possession of
+    the police, and we were turned out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We looked in at the housekeeper's kitchen, where her daughter was
+    reviving and calming Mrs. Clayton with gin and water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mustn't upset yourself, Mrs. Clayton," Hewitt said, "or what will
+    become of us all? The doctor thinks it was an accident."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He took a small bottle of sewing-machine oil from his pocket and handed
+    it to the daughter, thanking her for the loan.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    There was little evidence at the inquest. The shot had been heard, the
+    body had been found&mdash;that was the practical sum of the matter. No friends
+    or relatives of the dead man came forward. The doctor gave his opinion as
+    to the probability of suicide or an accident, and the police evidence
+    tended in the same direction. Nothing had been found to indicate that any
+    other person had been near the dead man's rooms on the night of the
+    fatality. On the other hand, his papers, bankbook, etc., proved him to be
+    a man of considerable substance, with no apparent motive for suicide.
+    The police had been unable to trace any relatives, or, indeed, any nearer
+    connections than casual acquaintances, fellow-clubmen, and so on. The
+    jury found that Mr. Foggatt had died by accident.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, Brett," Hewitt asked me afterward, "what do you think of the
+    verdict?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I said that it seemed to be the most reasonable one possible, and to
+    square with the common-sense view of the case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," he replied, "perhaps it does. From the point of view of the jury,
+    and on their information, their verdict was quite reasonable.
+    Nevertheless, Mr. Foggatt did not shoot himself. He was shot by a rather
+    tall, active young man, perhaps a sailor, but certainly a gymnast&mdash;a
+    young man whom I think I could identify if I saw him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But how do you know this?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By the simplest possible inferences, which you may easily guess, if you
+    will but think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, then, why didn't you say this at the inquest?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear fellow, they don't want any inferences and conjectures at an
+    inquest; they only want evidence. If I had traced the murderer, of course
+    then I should have communicated with the police. As a matter of fact, it
+    is quite possible that the police have observed and know as much as I
+    do&mdash;or more. They don't give everything away at an inquest, you know. It
+    wouldn't do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, if you are right, how did the man get away?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, we are near home now. Let us take a look at the back of the house.
+    He <i>couldn't</i> have left by Foggatt's landing door, as we know; and as he
+    <i>was</i> there (I am certain of that), and as the chimney is out of the
+    question&mdash;for there was a good fire in the grate&mdash;he must have gone out
+    by the window. Only one window is possible&mdash;that with the broken
+    catch&mdash;for all the others were fastened inside. Out of that window, then,
+    he went."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But how? The window is fifty feet up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course it is. But why <i>will</i> you persist in assuming that the only
+    way of escape by a window is downward? See, now, look up there. The
+    window is at the top floor, and it has a very broad sill. Over the window
+    is nothing but the flat face of the gable-end; but to the right, and a
+    foot or two above the level of the top of the window, an iron gutter
+    ends. Observe, it is not of lead composition, but a strong iron gutter,
+    supported, just at its end, by an iron bracket. If a tall man stood on
+    the end of the window-sill, steadying himself by the left hand and
+    leaning to the right, he could just touch the end of this gutter with his
+    right hand. The full stretch, toe to finger, is seven feet three inches.
+    I have measured it. An active gymnast, or a sailor, could catch the
+    gutter with a slight spring, and by it draw himself upon the roof. You
+    will say he would have to be <i>very</i> active, dexterous, and cool. So he
+    would. And that very fact helps us, because it narrows the field of
+    inquiry. We know the sort of man to look for. Because, being certain (as
+    I am) that the man was in the room, I <i>know</i> that he left in the way I am
+    telling you. He must have left in some way, and, all the other ways being
+    impossible, this alone remains, difficult as the feat may seem. The fact
+    of his shutting the window behind him further proves his coolness and
+    address at so great a height from the ground."
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this was very plain, but the main point was still dark.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You say you <i>know</i> that another man was in the room," I said; "how do
+    you know that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As I said, by an obvious inference. Come, now, you shall guess how I
+    arrived at that inference. You often speak of your interest in my work,
+    and the attention with which you follow it. This shall be a simple
+    exercise for you. You saw everything in the room as plainly as I myself.
+    Bring the scene back to your memory, and think over the various small
+    objects littering about, and how they would affect the case. Quick
+    observation is the first essential for my work. Did you see a newspaper,
+    for instance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. There was an evening paper on the floor, but I didn't examine it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Anything else?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the table there was a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand
+    on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as
+    though only one person were present."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So it did, perhaps, although the inference wouldn't be very strong. Go
+    on!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was a fruit-stand on the sideboard, with a plate beside it
+    containing a few nutshells, a piece of apple, a pair of nut-crackers,
+    and, I think, some orange peel. There was, of course, all the ordinary
+    furniture, but no chair pulled up to the table, except that used by
+    Foggatt himself. That's all I noticed, I think. Stay&mdash;there was an
+    ash-tray on the table, and a partly burned cigar near it&mdash;only one cigar,
+    though."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Excellent&mdash;excellent, indeed, as far as memory and simple observation
+    go. You saw everything plainly, and you remember everything. Surely <i>now</i>
+    you know how I found out that another man had just left?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't; unless there were different kinds of ash in the ash-tray."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is a fairly good suggestion, but there were not&mdash;there was only a
+    single ash, corresponding in every way to that on the cigar. Don't you
+    remember everything that I did as we went down-stairs?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You returned a bottle of oil to the housekeeper's daughter, I think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I did. Doesn't that give you a hint? Come, you surely have it now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I haven't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then I sha'n't tell you; you don't deserve it. Think, and don't mention
+    the subject again till you have at least one guess to make. The thing
+    stares you in the face; you see it, you remember it, and yet you <i>won't</i>
+    see it. I won't encourage your slovenliness of thought, my boy, by
+    telling you what you can know for yourself if you like. Good-by&mdash;I'm off
+    now. There's a case in hand I can't neglect."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you propose to go further into this, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not a policeman," he said. "The case
+    is in very good hands. Of course, if anybody comes to me to do it as a
+    matter of business, I'll take it up. It's very interesting, but I can't
+    neglect my regular work for it. Naturally, I shall keep my eyes open and
+    my memory in order. Sometimes these things come into the hands by
+    themselves, as it were; in that case, of course, I am a loyal citizen,
+    and ready to help the law. <i>Au revoir</i>!"
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    I am a busy man myself, and thought little more of Hewitt's conundrum for
+    some time; indeed, when I did think, I saw no way to the answer. A week
+    after the inquest I took a holiday (I had written my nightly leaders
+    regularly every day for the past five years), and saw no more of Hewitt
+    for six weeks. After my return, with still a few days of leave to run,
+    one evening we together turned into Luzatti's, off Coventry Street, for
+    dinner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have been here several times lately," Hewitt said; "they feed you very
+    well. No, not that table"&mdash;he seized my arm as I turned to an unoccupied
+    corner&mdash;"I fancy it's draughty." He led the way to a longer table where a
+    dark, lithe, and (as well as could be seen) tall young man already sat,
+    and took chairs opposite him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We had scarcely seated ourselves before Hewitt broke into a torrent of
+    conversation on the subject of bicycling. As our previous conversation
+    had been of a literary sort, and as I had never known Hewitt at any other
+    time to show the slightest interest in bicycling, this rather surprised
+    me. I had, however, such a general outsider's grasp of the subject as is
+    usual in a journalist-of-all-work, and managed to keep the talk going
+    from my side. As we went on I could see the face of the young man
+    opposite brighten with interest. He was a rather fine-looking fellow,
+    with a dark, though very clear skin, but had a hard, angry look of eye, a
+    prominence of cheek-bone, and a squareness of jaw that gave him a rather
+    uninviting aspect. As Hewitt rattled on, however, our neighbor's
+    expression became one of pleasant interest merely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course," Hewitt said, "we've a number of very capital men just now,
+    but I believe a deal in the forgotten riders of five, ten, and fifteen
+    years back. Osmond, I believe, was better than any man riding now, and I
+    think it would puzzle some of them to beat Furnivall as he was, at his
+    best. But poor old Cortis&mdash;really, I believe he was as good as anybody.
+    Nobody ever beat Cortis&mdash;except&mdash;let me see&mdash;I think somebody beat Cortis
+    once&mdash;who was it now? I can't remember."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Liles," said the young man opposite, looking up quickly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, yes&mdash;Liles it was; Charley Liles. Wasn't it a championship?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mile championship, 1880; Cortis won the other three, though."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, so he did. I saw Cortis when he first broke the old 2.46 mile
+    record." And straightway Hewitt plunged into a whirl of talk of bicycles,
+    tricycles, records, racing cyclists, Hillier, and Synyer and Noel
+    Whiting, Taylerson and Appleyard&mdash;talk wherein the young man opposite
+    bore an animated share, while I was left in the cold.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our new friend, it seems, had himself been a prominent racing bicyclist a
+    few years back, and was presently, at Hewitt's request, exhibiting a neat
+    gold medal that hung at his watch-guard. That was won, he explained, in
+    the old tall bicycle days, the days of bad tracks, when every racing
+    cyclist carried cinder scars on his face from numerous accidents. He
+    pointed to a blue mark on his forehead, which, he told us, was a track
+    scar, and described a bad fall that had cost him two teeth, and broken
+    others. The gaps among his teeth were plain to see as he smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently the waiter brought dessert, and the young man opposite took an
+    apple. Nut-crackers and a fruit-knife lay on our side of the stand, and
+    Hewitt turned the stand to offer him the knife.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, thanks," he said; "I only polish a good apple, never peel it. It's a
+    mistake, except with thick-skinned foreign ones."
+</p>
+<p>
+    And he began to munch the apple as only a boy or a healthy athlete can.
+    Presently he turned his head to order coffee. The waiter's back was
+    turned, and he had to be called twice. To my unutterable amazement Hewitt
+    reached swiftly across the table, snatched the half-eaten apple from the
+    young man's plate and pocketed it, gazing immediately, with an abstracted
+    air, at a painted Cupid on the ceiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our neighbor turned again, looked doubtfully at his plate and the
+    table-cloth about it, and then shot a keen glance in the direction of
+    Hewitt. He said nothing, however, but took his coffee and his bill,
+    deliberately drank the former, gazing quietly at Hewitt as he did it,
+    paid the latter, and left.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Immediately Hewitt was on his feet and, taking an umbrella, which stood
+    near, followed. Just as he reached the door he met our late neighbor, who
+    had turned suddenly back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Your umbrella, I think?" Hewitt asked, offering it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, thanks." But the man's eye had more than its former hardness, and
+    his jaw muscles tightened as I looked. He turned and went. Hewitt came
+    back to me. "Pay the bill," he said, "and go back to your rooms; I will
+    come on later. I must follow this man&mdash;it's the Foggatt case." As he went
+    out I heard a cab rattle away, and immediately after it another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I paid the bill and went home. It was ten o'clock before Hewitt turned
+    up, calling in at his office below on his way up to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Sidney Mason," he said, "is the gentleman the police will be wanting
+    to-morrow, I expect, for the Foggatt murder. He is as smart a man as I
+    remember ever meeting, and has done me rather neatly twice this evening."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean the man we sat opposite at Luzatti's, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I got his name, of course, from the reverse of that gold medal he
+    was good enough to show me. But I fear he has bilked me over the address.
+    He suspected me, that was plain, and left his umbrella by way of
+    experiment to see if I were watching him sharply enough to notice the
+    circumstance, and to avail myself of it to follow him. I was hasty and
+    fell into the trap. He cabbed it away from Luzatti's, and I cabbed it
+    after him. He has led me a pretty dance up and down London to-night, and
+    two cabbies have made quite a stroke of business out of us. In the end he
+    entered a house of which, of course, I have taken the address, but I
+    expect he doesn't live there. He is too smart a man to lead me to his
+    den; but the police can certainly find something of him at the house he
+    went in at&mdash;and, I expect, left by the back way. By the way, you never
+    guessed that simple little puzzle as to how I found that this <i>was</i> a
+    murder, did you? You see it now, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Something to do with that apple you stole, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Something to do with it? I should think so, you worthy innocent. Just
+    ring your bell; we'll borrow Mrs. Clayton's sewing-machine oil again. On
+    the night we broke into Foggatt's room you saw the nutshells and the
+    bitten remains of an apple on the sideboard, and you remembered it; and
+    yet you couldn't see that in that piece of apple possibly lay an
+    important piece of evidence. Of course I never expected you to have
+    arrived at any conclusion, as I had, because I had ten minutes in which
+    to examine that apple, and to do what I did with it. But, at least, you
+    should have seen the possibility of evidence in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "First, now, the apple was white. A bitten apple, as you must have
+    observed, turns of a reddish brown color if left to stand long. Different
+    kinds of apples brown with different rapidities, and the browning always
+    begins at the core. This is one of the twenty thousand tiny things that
+    few people take the trouble to notice, but which it is useful for a man
+    in my position to know. A russet will brown quite quickly. The apple on
+    the sideboard was, as near as I could tell, a Newtown pippin or other
+    apple of that kind, which will brown at the core in from twenty minutes
+    to half an hour, and in other parts in a quarter of an hour more. When we
+    saw it, it was white, with barely a tinge of brown about the exposed
+    core. Inference, somebody had been eating it fifteen or twenty minutes
+    before, perhaps a little longer&mdash;an inference supported by the fact that
+    it was only partly eaten.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I examined that apple, and found it bore marks of very irregular teeth.
+    While you were gone, I oiled it over, and, rushing down to my rooms,
+    where I always have a little plaster of Paris handy for such work, took a
+    mold of the part where the teeth had left the clearest marks. I then
+    returned the apple to its place for the police to use if they thought
+    fit. Looking at my mold, it was plain that the person who had bitten that
+    apple had lost two teeth, one at top and one below, not exactly opposite,
+    but nearly so. The other teeth, although they would appear to have been
+    fairly sound, were irregular in size and line. Now, the dead man had, as
+    I saw, a very excellent set of false teeth, regular and sharp, with none
+    missing. Therefore it was plain that somebody <i>else</i> had been eating that
+    apple. Do I make myself clear?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite! Go on!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There were other inferences to be made&mdash;slighter, but all pointing the
+    same way. For instance, a man of Foggatt's age does not, as a rule, munch
+    an unpeeled apple like a school-boy. Inference, a young man, and healthy.
+    Why I came to the conclusion that he was tall, active, a gymnast, and
+    perhaps a sailor, I have already told you, when we examined the outside
+    of Foggatt's window. It was also pretty clear that robbery was not the
+    motive, since nothing was disturbed, and that a friendly conversation had
+    preceded the murder&mdash;witness the drinking and the eating of the apple.
+    Whether or not the police noticed these things I can't say. If they had
+    had their best men on, they certainly would, I think; but the case, to a
+    rough observer, looked so clearly one of accident or suicide that
+    possibly they didn't.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As I said, after the inquest I was unable to devote any immediate time
+    to the case, but I resolved to keep my eyes open. The man to look for was
+    tall, young, strong and active, with a very irregular set of teeth, a
+    tooth missing from the lower jaw just to the left of the center, and
+    another from the upper jaw a little farther still toward the left. He
+    might possibly be a person I had seen about the premises (I have a good
+    memory for faces), or, of course, he possibly might not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just before you returned from your holiday I noticed a young man at
+    Luzatti's whom I remembered to have seen somewhere about the offices in
+    this building. He was tall, young, and so on, but I had a client with me,
+    and was unable to examine him more narrowly; indeed, as I was not exactly
+    engaged on the case, and as there are several tall young men about, I
+    took little trouble. But to-day, finding the same young man with a vacant
+    seat opposite him, I took the opportunity of making a closer
+    acquaintance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You certainly managed to draw him out."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; the easiest person in the world to draw out is a cyclist. The
+    easiest cyclist to draw out is, of course, the novice, but the next
+    easiest is the veteran. When you see a healthy, well-trained-looking man,
+    who, nevertheless, has a slight stoop in the shoulders, and, maybe, a
+    medal on his watch-guard, it is always a safe card to try him first with
+    a little cycle-racing talk. I soon brought Mr. Mason out of his shell,
+    read his name on his medal, and had a chance of observing his
+    teeth&mdash;indeed, he spoke of them himself. Now, as I observed just now,
+    there are several tall, athletic young men about, and also there are
+    several men who have lost teeth. But now I saw that this tall and
+    athletic young man had lost exactly <i>two</i> teeth&mdash;one from the lower jaw,
+    just to the left of the center, and another from the upper jaw, farther
+    still toward the left! Trivialities, pointing in the same direction,
+    became important considerations. More, his teeth were irregular
+    throughout, and, as nearly as I could remember it, looked remarkably like
+    this little plaster mold of mine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He produced from his pocket an irregular lump of plaster, about three
+    inches long. On one side of this appeared in relief the likeness of two
+    irregular rows of six or eight teeth, minus one in each row, where a deep
+    gap was seen, in the position spoken of by my friend. He proceeded:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was enough at least to set me after this young man. But he gave me
+    the greatest chance of all when he turned and left his apple (eaten
+    unpeeled, remember!&mdash;another important triviality) on his plate. I'm
+    afraid I wasn't at all polite, and I ran the risk of arousing his
+    suspicions, but I couldn't resist the temptation to steal it. I did, as
+    you saw, and here it is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He brought the apple from his coat-pocket. One bitten side, placed
+    against the upper half of the mold, fitted precisely, a projection of
+    apple filling exactly the deep gap. The other side similarly fitted the
+    lower half.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There's no getting behind that, you see," Hewitt remarked. "Merely
+    observing the man's teeth was a guide, to some extent, but this is as
+    plain as his signature or his thumb impression. You'll never find two men
+    <i>bite</i> exactly alike, no matter whether they leave distinct teeth-marks
+    or not. Here, by the by, is Mrs. Clayton's oil. We'll take another mold
+    from this apple, and compare <i>them</i>."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He oiled the apple, heaped a little plaster in a newspaper, took my
+    water-jug, and rapidly pulled off a hard mold. The parts corresponding to
+    the merely broken places in the apple were, of course, dissimilar; but as
+    to the teeth-marks, the impressions were identical.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That will do, I think," Hewitt said. "Tomorrow morning, Brett, I shall
+    put up these things in a small parcel, and take them round to Bow
+    Street."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But are they sufficient evidence?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite sufficient for the police purpose. There is the man, and all the
+    rest&mdash;his movements on the day and so forth&mdash;are simple matters of
+    inquiry; at any rate, that is police business."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    I had scarcely sat down to my breakfast on the following morning when
+    Hewitt came into the room and put a long letter before me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "From our friend of last night," he said; "read it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This letter began abruptly, and undated, and was as follows:
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>
+    "TO MARTIN HEWITT, ESQ.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "SIR: I must compliment you on the adroitness you exhibited this evening
+    in extracting from me my name. The address I was able to balk you of for
+    the time being, although by the time you read this you will probably have
+    found it through the <i>Law List</i>, as I am an admitted solicitor. That,
+    however, will be of little use to you, for I am removing myself, I think,
+    beyond the reach even of your abilities of search. I knew you well by
+    sight, and was, perhaps, foolish to allow myself to be drawn as I did.
+    Still, I had no idea that it would be dangerous, especially after seeing
+    you, as a witness with very little to say, at the inquest upon the
+    scoundrel I shot. Your somewhat discourteous seizure of my apple at first
+    amazed me&mdash;indeed, I was a little doubtful as to whether you had really
+    taken it&mdash;but it was my first warning that you might be playing a deep
+    game against me, incomprehensible as the action was to my mind. I
+    subsequently reflected that I had been eating an apple, instead of taking
+    the drink he first offered me, in the dead wretch's rooms on the night he
+    came to his merited end. From this I assume that your design was in some
+    way to compare what remained of the two apples&mdash;although I do not
+    presume to fathom the depths of your detective system. Still, I have
+    heard of many of your cases, and profoundly admire the keenness you
+    exhibit. I am thought to be a keen man myself, but, although I was able,
+    to some extent, to hold my own to-night, I admit that your acumen in this
+    case alone is something beyond me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I do not know by whom you are commissioned to hunt me, nor to what
+    extent you may be acquainted with my connection with the creature I
+    killed. I have sufficient respect for you, however, to wish that you
+    should not regard me as a vicious criminal, and a couple of hours to
+    spare in which to offer you an explanation that will convince you that
+    such is not altogether the case. A hasty and violent temper I admit
+    possessing; but even now I can not forget the one crime it has led me
+    into&mdash;for it is, I suppose, strictly speaking, a crime. For it was the
+    man Foggatt who made a felon of my father before the eyes of the world,
+    and killed him with shame. It was he who murdered my mother, and none the
+    less murdered her because she died of a broken heart. That he was also a
+    thief and a hypocrite might have concerned me little but for that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of my father I remember very little. He must, I fear, have been a weak
+    and incapable man in many respects. He had no business abilities&mdash;in
+    fact, was quite unable to understand the complicated business matters in
+    which he largely dealt. Foggatt was a consummate master of all those arts
+    of financial jugglery that make so many fortunes, and ruin so many
+    others, in matters of company promoting, stocks, and shares. He was
+    unable to exercise them, however, because of a great financial disaster
+    in which he had been mixed up a few years before, and which made his name
+    one to be avoided in future. In these circumstances he made a sort of
+    secret and informal partnership with my father, who, ostensibly alone in
+    the business, acted throughout on the directions of Foggatt,
+    understanding as little what he did, poor, simple man, as a schoolboy
+    would have done. The transactions carried on went from small to large,
+    and, unhappily from honorable to dishonorable. My father relied on the
+    superior abilities of Foggatt with an absolute trust, carrying out each
+    day the directions given him privately the previous evening, buying,
+    selling, printing prospectuses, signing whatever had to be signed, all
+    with sole responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the
+    scenes absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and
+    foolish father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who
+    pulled all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible.
+    At last three companies, for the promotion of which my father was
+    responsible, came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all
+    their history, and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was
+    left to meet ruin, disgrace, and imprisonment. From beginning to end he,
+    and he only, was responsible. There was no shred of evidence to connect
+    Foggatt with the matter, and no means of escape from the net drawn about
+    my father. He lived through three years of imprisonment, and then,
+    entirely abandoned by the man who had made use of his simplicity, he
+    died&mdash;of nothing but shame and a broken heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of this I knew nothing at the time. Again and again, as a small boy, I
+    remember asking of my mother why I had no father at home, as other boys
+    had&mdash;unconscious of the stab I thus inflicted on her gentle heart. Of her
+    my earliest, as well as my latest, memory is that of a pale, weeping
+    woman, who grudged to let me out of her sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Little by little I learned the whole cause of my mother's grief, for she
+    had no other confidant, and I fear my character developed early, for my
+    first coherent remembrance of the matter is that of a childish design to
+    take a table-knife and kill the bad man who had made my father die in
+    prison and caused my mother to cry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One thing, however, I never knew&mdash;the name of that bad man. Again and
+    again, as I grew older, I demanded to know, but my mother always withheld
+    it from me, with a gentle reminder that vengeance was for a greater hand
+    than mine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was seventeen years of age when my mother died. I believe that nothing
+    but her strong attachment to myself and her desire to see me safely
+    started in life kept her alive so long. Then I found that through all
+    those years of narrowed means she had contrived to scrape and save a
+    little money&mdash;sufficient, as it afterward proved, to see me through the
+    examinations for entrance to my profession, with the generous assistance
+    of my father's old legal advisers, who gave me my articles, and who have
+    all along treated me with extreme kindness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For most of the succeeding years my life does not concern the matter in
+    hand. I was a lawyer's clerk in my benefactors' service, and afterward a
+    qualified man among their assistants. All through the firm were careful,
+    in pursuance of my poor mother's wishes, that I should not learn the name
+    or whereabouts of the man who had wrecked her life and my father's. I
+    first met the man himself at the Clifton Club, where I had gone with an
+    acquaintance who was a member. It was not till afterward that I
+    understood his curious awkwardness on that occasion. A week later I
+    called (as I had frequently done) at the building in which your office is
+    situated, on business with a solicitor who has an office on the floor
+    above your own. On the stairs I almost ran against Mr. Foggatt. He
+    started and turned pale, exhibiting signs of alarm that I could not
+    understand, and asked me if I wished to see him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'No,' I replied, 'I didn't know you lived here. I am after somebody else
+    just now. Aren't you well?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He looked at me rather doubtfully, and said he was <i>not</i> very well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I met him twice or thrice after that, and on each occasion his manner
+    grew more friendly, in a servile, flattering, and mean sort of way&mdash;a
+    thing unpleasant enough in anybody, but doubly so in the intercourse of a
+    man with another young enough to be his own son. Still, of course, I
+    treated the man civilly enough. On one occasion he asked me into his
+    rooms to look at a rather fine picture he had lately bought, and observed
+    casually, lifting a large revolver from the mantel-piece:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'You see, I am prepared for any unwelcome visitors to my little den! He!
+    He!' Conceiving him, of course, to refer to burglars, I could not help
+    wondering at the forced and hollow character of his laugh. As we went
+    down the stairs he said: 'I think we know one another pretty well now,
+    Mr. Mason, eh? And if I could do anything to advance your professional
+    prospects, I should be glad of the chance, of course. I understand the
+    struggles of a young professional man&mdash;he! he!' It was the forced laugh
+    again, and the man spoke nervously. 'I think,' he added, 'that if you
+    will drop in to-morrow evening, perhaps I may have a little proposal to
+    make. Will you?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I assented, wondering what this proposal could be. Perhaps this
+    eccentric old gentleman was a good fellow, after all, anxious to do me a
+    good turn, and his awkwardness was nothing but a natural delicacy in
+    breaking the ice. I was not so flush of good friends as to be willing to
+    lose one. He might be desirous of putting business in my way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I went, and was received with cordiality that even then seemed a little
+    over-effusive. We sat and talked of one thing and another for a long
+    while, and I began to wonder when Mr. Foggatt was coming to the point
+    that most interested me. Several times he invited me to drink and smoke,
+    but long usage to athletic training has given me a distaste for both
+    practices, and I declined. At last he began to talk about myself. He was
+    afraid that my professional prospects in this country were not great, but
+    he had heard that in some of the colonies&mdash;South Africa, for
+    example&mdash;young lawyers had brilliant opportunities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'If you'd like to go there,' he said, 'I've no doubt, with a little
+    capital, a clever man like you could get a grand practice together very
+    soon. Or you might buy a share in some good established practice. I
+    should be glad to let you have £500, or even a little more, if that
+    wouldn't satisfy you, and&mdash;&mdash;'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I stood aghast. Why should this man, almost a stranger, offer me £500,
+    or even more, 'if that wouldn't satisfy' me? What claim had I on him? It
+    was very generous of him, of course, but out of the question. I was, at
+    least, a gentleman, and had a gentleman's self-respect. Meanwhile, he had
+    gone maundering on, in a halting sort of way, and presently let slip a
+    sentence that struck me like a blow between the eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'I shouldn't like you to bear ill-will because of what has happened in
+    the past,' he said. 'Your late&mdash;your late lamented mother&mdash;I'm
+    afraid&mdash;she had unworthy suspicions&mdash;I'm sure&mdash;it was best for all
+    parties&mdash;your father always appreciated&mdash;&mdash;'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I set back my chair and stood erect before him. This groveling wretch,
+    forcing the words through his dry lips, was the thief who had made
+    another of my father and had brought to miserable ends the lives of both
+    my parents! Everything was clear. The creature went in fear of me, never
+    imagining that I did not know him, and sought to buy me off&mdash;to buy me
+    from the remembrance of my dead mother's broken heart for £500&mdash;£500 that
+    he had made my father steal for him! I said not a word. But the memory of
+    all my mother's bitter years, and a savage sense of this crowning insult
+    to myself, took a hold upon me, and I was a tiger. Even then I verily
+    believe that one word of repentance, one tone of honest remorse, would
+    have saved him. But he drooped his eyes, snuffled excuses, and stammered
+    of 'unworthy suspicions' and 'no ill-will.' I let him stammer. Presently
+    he looked up and saw my face; and fell back in his chair, sick with
+    terror. I snatched the pistol from the mantel-piece, and, thrusting it in
+    his face, shot him where he sat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My subsequent coolness and quietness surprise me now. I took my hat and
+    stepped toward the door. But there were voices on the stairs. The door
+    was locked on the inside, and I left it so. I went back and quietly
+    opened a window. Below was a clear drop into darkness, and above was
+    plain wall; but away to one side, where the slope of the gable sprang
+    from the roof, an iron gutter ended, supported by a strong bracket. It
+    was the only way. I got upon the sill and carefully shut the window
+    behind me, for people were already knocking at the lobby door. From the
+    end of the sill, holding on by the reveal of the window with one hand,
+    leaning and stretching my utmost, I caught the gutter, swung myself
+    clear, and scrambled on the roof. I climbed over many roofs before I
+    found, in an adjoining street, a ladder lashed perpendicularly against
+    the front of a house in course of repair. This, to me, was an easy
+    opportunity of descent, notwithstanding the boards fastened over the face
+    of the ladder, and I availed myself of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have taken some time and trouble in order that you (so far as I am
+    aware the only human being beside myself who knows me to be the author of
+    Foggatt's death) shall have at least the means of appraising my crime at
+    its just value of culpability. How much you already know of what I have
+    told you I can not guess. I am wrong, hardened, and flagitious, I make no
+    doubt, but I speak of the facts as they are. You see the thing, of
+    course, from your own point of view&mdash;I from mine. And I remember my
+    mother!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Trusting that you will forgive the odd freak of a man&mdash;a criminal, let
+    us say&mdash;who makes a confidant of the man set to hunt him down, I beg
+    leave to be, sir, your obedient servant,
+</p>
+<p>
+    "SIDNEY MASON."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I read the singular document through and handed it back to Hewitt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How does it strike you?" Hewitt asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mason would seem to be a man of very marked character," I said.
+    "Certainly no fool. And, if his tale is true, Foggatt is no great loss to
+    the world."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so&mdash;if the tale is true. Personally I am disposed to believe it
+    is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where was the letter posted?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It wasn't posted. It was handed in with the others from the front-door
+    letter-box this morning in an unstamped envelope. He must have dropped it
+    in himself during the night. Paper," Hewitt proceeded, holding it up to
+    the light, "Turkey mill, ruled foolscap. Envelope, blue, official shape,
+    Pirie's watermark. Both quite ordinary and no special marks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where do you suppose he's gone?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Impossible to guess. Some might think he meant suicide by the expression
+    'beyond the reach even of your abilities of search,' but I scarcely think
+    he is the sort of man to do that. No, there is no telling. Something may
+    be got by inquiring at his late address, of course; but, when such a man
+    tells you he doesn't think you will find him, you may count upon its
+    being a difficult job. His opinion is not to be despised."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What shall you do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Put the letter in the box with the casts for the police. <i>Fiat
+    justitia</i>, you know, without any question of sentiment. As to the apple,
+    I really think, if the police will let me, I'll make you a present of it.
+    Keep it somewhere as a souvenir of your absolute deficiency in reflective
+    observation in this case, and look at it whenever you feel yourself
+    growing dangerously conceited. It should cure you."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    This is the history of the withered and almost petrified half apple that
+    stands in my cabinet among a number of flint implements and one or two
+    rather fine old Roman vessels. Of Mr. Sidney Mason we never heard another
+    word. The police did their best, but he had left not a track behind him.
+    His rooms were left almost undisturbed, and he had gone without anything
+    in the way of elaborate preparation for his journey, and without leaving
+    a trace of his intentions.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH4"></a>
+<h3>
+   IV. THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Hewitt was very apt, in conversation, to dwell upon the many curious
+    chances and coincidences that he had observed, not only in connection
+    with his own cases, but also in matters dealt with by the official
+    police, with whom he was on terms of pretty regular, and, indeed,
+    friendly, acquaintanceship. He has told me many an anecdote of singular
+    happenings to Scotland Yard officials with whom he has exchanged
+    experiences. Of Inspector Nettings, for instance, who spent many weary
+    months in a search for a man wanted by the American Government, and in
+    the end found, by the merest accident (a misdirected call), that the man
+    had been lodging next door to himself the whole of the time; just as
+    ignorant, of course, as was the inspector himself as to the enemy at the
+    other side of the party-wall. Also of another inspector, whose name I can
+    not recall, who, having been given rather meager and insufficient details
+    of a man whom he anticipated having great difficulty in finding, went
+    straight down the stairs of the office where he had received
+    instructions, and actually <i>fell over</i> the man near the door, where he
+    had stooped down to tie his shoe-lace! There were cases, too, in which,
+    when a great and notorious crime had been committed, and various persons
+    had been arrested on suspicion, some were found among them who had long
+    been badly wanted for some other crime altogether. Many criminals had met
+    their deserts by venturing out of their own particular line of crime into
+    another; often a man who got into trouble over something comparatively
+    small found himself in for a startlingly larger trouble, the result of
+    some previous misdeed that otherwise would have gone unpunished. The
+    ruble note-forger Mirsky might never have been handed over to the Russian
+    authorities had he confined his genius to forgery alone. It was generally
+    supposed at the time of his extradition that he had communicated with the
+    Russian Embassy, with a view to giving himself up&mdash;a foolish proceeding
+    on his part, it would seem, since his whereabouts, indeed even his
+    identity as the forger, had not been suspected. He <i>had</i> communicated
+    with the Russian Embassy, it is true, but for quite a different purpose,
+    as Martin Hewitt well understood at the time. What that purpose was is
+    now for the first time published.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    The time was half-past one in the afternoon, and Hewitt sat in his inner
+    office examining and comparing the handwriting of two letters by the aid
+    of a large lens. He put down the lens and glanced at the clock on the
+    mantel-piece with a premonition of lunch; and as he did so his clerk
+    quietly entered the room with one of those printed slips which were kept
+    for the announcement of unknown visitors. It was filled up in a hasty and
+    almost illegible hand, thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+    Name of visitor: <i>F. Graham Dixon</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Address: <i>Chancery Lane</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Business: <i>Private and urgent</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Show Mr. Dixon in," said Martin Hewitt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Dixon was a gaunt, worn-looking man of fifty or so, well, although
+    rather carelessly, dressed, and carrying in his strong, though drawn,
+    face and dullish eyes the look that characterizes the life-long strenuous
+    brain-worker. He leaned forward anxiously in the chair which Hewitt
+    offered him, and told his story with a great deal of very natural
+    agitation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You may possibly have heard, Mr. Hewitt&mdash;I know there are rumors&mdash;of the
+    new locomotive torpedo which the government is about adopting; it is, in
+    fact, the Dixon torpedo, my own invention, and in every respect&mdash;not
+    merely in my own opinion, but in that of the government experts&mdash;by far
+    the most efficient and certain yet produced. It will travel at least
+    four hundred yards farther than any torpedo now made, with perfect
+    accuracy of aim (a very great desideratum, let me tell you), and will
+    carry an unprecedentedly heavy charge. There are other advantages&mdash;speed,
+    simple discharge, and so forth&mdash;that I needn't bother you about. The
+    machine is the result of many years of work and disappointment, and its
+    design has only been arrived at by a careful balancing of principles and
+    means, which are expressed on the only four existing sets of drawings.
+    The whole thing, I need hardly tell you, is a profound secret, and you
+    may judge of my present state of mind when I tell you that one set of
+    drawings has been stolen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "From your house?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "From my office, in Chancery Lane, this morning. The four sets of
+    drawings were distributed thus: Two were at the Admiralty Office, one
+    being a finished set on thick paper, and the other a set of tracings
+    therefrom; and the other two were at my own office, one being a penciled
+    set, uncolored&mdash;a sort of finished draft, you understand&mdash;and the other a
+    set of tracings similar to those at the Admiralty. It is this last set
+    that has gone. The two sets were kept together in one drawer in my room.
+    Both were there at ten this morning; of that I am sure, for I had to go
+    to that very drawer for something else when I first arrived. But at
+    twelve the tracings had vanished."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You suspect somebody, probably?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can not. It is a most extraordinary thing. Nobody has left the office
+    (except myself, and then only to come to you) since ten this morning, and
+    there has been no visitor. And yet the drawings are gone!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But have you searched the place?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course I have! It was twelve o'clock when I first discovered my loss,
+    and I have been turning the place upside down ever since&mdash;I and my
+    assistants. Every drawer has been emptied, every desk and table turned
+    over, the very carpet and linoleum have been taken up, but there is not a
+    sign of the drawings. My men even insisted on turning all their pockets
+    inside out, although I never for a moment suspected either of them, and
+    it would take a pretty big pocket to hold the drawings, doubled up as
+    small as they might be."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You say your men&mdash;there are two, I understand&mdash;had neither left the
+    office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Neither; and they are both staying in now. Worsfold suggested that it
+    would be more satisfactory if they did not leave till something was done
+    toward clearing the mystery up, and, although, as I have said, I don't
+    suspect either in the least, I acquiesced."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. Now&mdash;I am assuming that you wish me to undertake the recovery
+    of these drawings?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The engineer nodded hastily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good; I will go round to your office. But first perhaps you can
+    tell me something about your assistants&mdash;something it might be awkward to
+    tell me in their presence, you know. Mr. Worsfold, for instance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He is my draughtsman&mdash;a very excellent and intelligent man, a very smart
+    man, indeed, and, I feel sure, quite beyond suspicion. He has prepared
+    many important drawings for me (he has been with me nearly ten years
+    now), and I have always found him trustworthy. But, of course, the
+    temptation in this case would be enormous. Still, I can not suspect
+    Worsfold. Indeed, how can I suspect anybody in the circumstances?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The other, now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "His name's Ritter. He is merely a tracer, not a fully skilled
+    draughtsman. He is quite a decent young fellow, and I have had him two
+    years. I don't consider him particularly smart, or he would have learned
+    a little more of his business by this time. But I don't see the least
+    reason to suspect him. As I said before, I can't reasonably suspect
+    anybody."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well; we will get to Chancery Lane now, if you please, and you can
+    tell me more as we go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have a cab waiting. What else can I tell you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I understand the position to be succinctly this: The drawings were in
+    the office when you arrived. Nobody came out, and nobody went in; and
+    <i>yet</i> they vanished. Is that so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is so. When I say that absolutely nobody came in, of course I
+    except the postman. He brought a couple of letters during the morning. I
+    mean that absolutely nobody came past the barrier in the outer
+    office&mdash;the usual thing, you know, like a counter, with a frame of ground
+    glass over it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I quite understand that. But I think you said that the drawings were in
+    a drawer in your <i>own</i> room&mdash;not the outer office, where the draughtsmen
+    are, I presume?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is the case. It is an inner room, or, rather, a room parallel with
+    the other, and communicating with it; just as your own room is, which we
+    have just left."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, then, you say you never left your office, and yet the drawings
+    vanished&mdash;apparently by some unseen agency&mdash;while you were there in the
+    room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let me explain more clearly." The cab was bowling smoothly along the
+    Strand, and the engineer took out a pocket-book and pencil. "I fear," he
+    proceeded, "that I am a little confused in my explanation&mdash;I am naturally
+    rather agitated. As you will see presently, my offices consist of three
+    rooms, two at one side of a corridor, and the other opposite&mdash;thus." He
+    made a rapid pencil sketch.
+</p>
+ <a name="image-2"></a>
+ <p class="ctr"><img src="images/128.jpg"  width="198" height="193"
+ alt="diagram of rooms and corridor" >
+ </p>
+<p>
+    "In the outer office my men usually work. In the inner office I work
+    myself. These rooms communicate, as you see, by a door. Our ordinary way
+    in and out of the place is by the door of the outer office leading into
+    the corridor, and we first pass through the usual lifting flap in the
+    barrier. The door leading from the <i>inner</i> office to the corridor is
+    always kept locked on the inside, and I don't suppose I unlock it once in
+    three months. It has not been unlocked all the morning. The drawer in
+    which the missing drawings were kept, and in which I saw them at ten
+    o'clock this morning, is at the place marked D; it is a large chest of
+    shallow drawers in which the plans lie flat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I quite understand. Then there is the private room opposite. What of
+    that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is a sort of private sitting-room that I rarely use, except for
+    business interviews of a very private nature. When I said I never left my
+    office, I did not mean that I never stirred out of the inner office. I
+    was about in one room and another, both the outer and the inner offices,
+    and once I went into the private room for five minutes, but nobody came
+    either in or out of any of the rooms at that time, for the door of the
+    private room was wide open, and I was standing at the book-case (I had
+    gone to consult a book), just inside the door, with a full view of the
+    doors opposite. Indeed, Worsfold was at the door of the outer office most
+    of the short time. He came to ask me a question."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Hewitt replied, "it all comes to the simple first statement. You
+    know that nobody left the place or arrived, except the postman, who
+    couldn't get near the drawings, and yet the drawings went. Is this your
+    office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cab had stopped before a large stone building. Mr. Dixon alighted and
+    led the way to the first-floor. Hewitt took a casual glance round each of
+    the three rooms. There was a sort of door in the frame of ground glass
+    over the barrier to admit of speech with visitors. This door Hewitt
+    pushed wide open, and left so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He and the engineer went into the inner office. "Would you like to ask
+    Worsfold and Ritter any questions?" Mr. Dixon inquired.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Presently. Those are their coats, I take it, hanging just to the right
+    of the outer office door, over the umbrella stand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, those are all their things&mdash;coats, hats, stick, and umbrella."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And those coats were searched, you say?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And this is the drawer&mdash;thoroughly searched, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, certainly; every drawer was taken out and turned over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, of course I must assume you made no mistake in your hunt. Now tell
+    me, did anybody know where these plans were, beyond yourself and your two
+    men?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As far as I can tell, not a soul."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't keep an office boy?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. There would be nothing for him to do except to post a letter now and
+    again, which Ritter does quite well for."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As you are quite sure that the drawings were there at ten o'clock,
+    perhaps the thing scarcely matters. But I may as well know if your men
+    have keys of the office?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Neither. I have patent locks to each door and I keep all the keys
+    myself. If Worsfold or Ritter arrive before me in the morning they have
+    to wait to be let in; and I am always present myself when the rooms are
+    cleaned. I have not neglected precautions, you see."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. I suppose the object of the theft&mdash;assuming it is a theft&mdash;is pretty
+    plain: the thief would offer the drawings for sale to some foreign
+    government?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course. They would probably command a great sum. I have been looking,
+    as I need hardly tell you, to that invention to secure me a very large
+    fortune, and I shall be ruined, indeed, if the design is taken abroad. I
+    am under the strictest engagements to secrecy with the Admiralty, and not
+    only should I lose all my labor, but I should lose all the confidence
+    reposed in me at headquarters; should, in fact, be subject to penalties
+    for breach of contract, and my career stopped forever. I can not tell
+    you what a serious business this is for me. If you can not help me, the
+    consequences will be terrible. Bad for the service of the country, too,
+    of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course. Now tell me this: It would, I take it, be necessary for the
+    thief to <i>exhibit</i> these drawings to anybody anxious to buy the secret&mdash;I
+    mean, he couldn't describe the invention by word of mouth."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, that would be impossible. The drawings are of the most
+    complicated description, and full of figures upon which the whole thing
+    depends. Indeed, one would have to be a skilled expert to properly
+    appreciate the design at all. Various principles of hydrostatics,
+    chemistry, electricity, and pneumatics are most delicately manipulated
+    and adjusted, and the smallest error or omission in any part would upset
+    the whole. No, the drawings are necessary to the thing, and they are
+    gone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this moment the door of the outer office was heard to open and
+    somebody entered. The door between the two offices was ajar, and Hewitt
+    could see right through to the glass door left open over the barrier and
+    into the space beyond. A well-dressed, dark, bushy-bearded man stood
+    there carrying a hand-bag, which he placed on the ledge before him.
+    Hewitt raised his hand to enjoin silence. The man spoke in a rather
+    high-pitched voice and with a slight accent. "Is Mr. Dixon now within?"
+    he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He is engaged," answered one of the draughtsmen; "very particularly
+    engaged. I am afraid you won't be able to see him this afternoon. Can I
+    give him any message?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is two&mdash;the second time I have come to-day. Not two hours ago Mr.
+    Dixon himself tells me to call again. I have a very important&mdash;very
+    excellent steam-packing to show him that is very cheap and the best of
+    the market." The man tapped his bag. "I have just taken orders from the
+    largest railway companies. Can not I see him, for one second only? I will
+    not detain him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really, I'm sure you can't this afternoon; he isn't seeing anybody. But
+    if you'll leave your name&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My name is Hunter; but what the good of that? He ask me to call a little
+    later, and I come, and now he is engaged. It is a very great pity." And
+    the man snatched up his bag and walking-stick, and stalked off,
+    indignantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt stood still, gazing through the small aperture in the doorway.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'd scarcely expect a man with such a name as Hunter to talk with that
+    accent, would you?" he observed, musingly. "It isn't a French accent,
+    nor a German; but it seems foreign. You don't happen to know him, I
+    suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't. He called here about half-past twelve, just while we were
+    in the middle of our search and I was frantic over the loss of the
+    drawings. I was in the outer office myself, and told him to call later. I
+    have lots of such agents here, anxious to sell all sorts of engineering
+    appliances. But what will you do now? Shall you see my men?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think," said Hewitt, rising&mdash;"I think I'll get you to question them
+    yourself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Myself?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I have a reason. Will you trust me with the 'key' of the private
+    room opposite? I will go over there for a little, while you talk to your
+    men in this room. Bring them in here and shut the door; I can look after
+    the office from across the corridor, you know. Ask them each to detail
+    his exact movements about the office this morning, and get them to recall
+    each visitor who has been here from the beginning of the week. I'll let
+    you know the reason of this later. Come across to me in a few minutes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt took the key and passed through the outer office into the
+    corridor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ten minutes later Mr. Dixon, having questioned his draughtsmen, followed
+    him. He found Hewitt standing before the table in the private room, on
+    which lay several drawings on tracing-paper.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "See here, Mr. Dixon," said Hewitt, "I think these are the drawings you
+    are anxious about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The engineer sprang toward them with a cry of delight. "Why, yes, yes,"
+    he exclaimed, turning them over, "every one of them! But where&mdash;how&mdash;they
+    must have been in the place after all, then? What a fool I have been!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt shook his head. "I'm afraid you're not quite so lucky as you
+    think, Mr. Dixon," he said. "These drawings have most certainly been out
+    of the house for a little while. Never mind how&mdash;we'll talk of that
+    after. There is no time to lose. Tell me&mdash;how long would it take a good
+    draughtsman to copy them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They couldn't possibly be traced over properly in less than two or two
+    and a half long days of very hard work," Dixon replied with eagerness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah! then it is as I feared. These tracings have been photographed, Mr.
+    Dixon, and our task is one of every possible difficulty. If they had been
+    copied in the ordinary way, one might hope to get hold of the copy. But
+    photography upsets everything. Copies can be multiplied with such amazing
+    facility that, once the thief gets a decent start, it is almost hopeless
+    to checkmate him. The only chance is to get at the negatives before
+    copies are taken. I must act at once; and I fear, between ourselves, it
+    may be necessary for me to step very distinctly over the line of the law
+    in the matter. You see, to get at those negatives may involve something
+    very like house-breaking. There must be no delay, no waiting for legal
+    procedure, or the mischief is done. Indeed, I very much question whether
+    you have any legal remedy, strictly speaking."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Hewitt, I implore you, do what you can. I need not say that all I
+    have is at your disposal. I will guarantee to hold you harmless for
+    anything that may happen. But do, I entreat you, do everything possible.
+    Think of what the consequences may be!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, so I do," Hewitt remarked, with a smile. "The consequences to
+    me, if I were charged with house-breaking, might be something that no
+    amount of guarantee could mitigate. However, I will do what I can, if
+    only from patriotic motives. Now, I must see your tracer, Ritter. He is
+    the traitor in the camp."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ritter? But how?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind that now. You are upset and agitated, and had better not know
+    more than is necessary for a little while, in case you say or do
+    something unguarded. With Ritter I must take a deep course; what I don't
+    know I must appear to know, and that will seem more likely to him if I
+    disclaim acquaintance with what I do know. But first put these tracings
+    safely away out of sight."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dixon slipped them behind his book-case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," Hewitt pursued, "call Mr. Worsfold and give him something to do
+    that will keep him in the inner office across the way, and tell him to
+    send Ritter here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Dixon called his chief draughtsman and requested him to put in order
+    the drawings in the drawers of the inner room that had been disarranged
+    by the search, and to send Ritter, as Hewitt had suggested.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter walked into the private room with an air of respectful attention.
+    He was a puffy-faced, unhealthy-looking young man, with very small eyes
+    and a loose, mobile mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sit down, Mr. Ritter," Hewitt said, in a stern voice. "Your recent
+    transactions with your friend Mr. Hunter are well known both to Mr. Dixon
+    and myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter, who had at first leaned easily back in his chair, started forward
+    at this, and paled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are surprised, I observe; but you should be more careful in your
+    movements out of doors if you do not wish your acquaintances to be known.
+    Mr. Hunter, I believe, has the drawings which Mr. Dixon has lost, and,
+    if so, I am certain that you have given them to him. That, you know, is
+    theft, for which the law provides a severe penalty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter broke down completely and turned appealingly to Mr. Dixon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, sir," he pleaded, "it isn't so bad, I assure you. I was tempted, I
+    confess, and hid the drawings; but they are still in the office, and I
+    can give them to you&mdash;really, I can."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed?" Hewitt went on. "Then, in that case, perhaps you'd better get
+    them at once. Just go and fetch them in; we won't trouble to observe your
+    hiding-place. I'll only keep this door open, to be sure you don't lose
+    your way, you know&mdash;down the stairs, for instance."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The wretched Ritter, with hanging head, slunk into the office opposite.
+    Presently he reappeared, looking, if possible, ghastlier than before. He
+    looked irresolutely down the corridor, as if meditating a run for it, but
+    Hewitt stepped toward him and motioned him back to the private room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mustn't try any more of that sort of humbug," Hewitt said with
+    increased severity. "The drawings are gone, and you have stolen them; you
+    know that well enough. Now attend to me. If you received your deserts,
+    Mr. Dixon would send for a policeman this moment, and have you hauled
+    off to the jail that is your proper place. But, unfortunately, your
+    accomplice, who calls himself Hunter&mdash;but who has other names besides
+    that&mdash;as I happen to know&mdash;has the drawings, and it is absolutely
+    necessary that these should be recovered. I am afraid that it will be
+    necessary, therefore, to come to some arrangement with this scoundrel&mdash;to
+    square him, in fact. Now, just take that pen and paper, and write to your
+    confederate as I dictate. You know the alternative if you cause any
+    difficulty."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ritter reached tremblingly for the pen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Address him in your usual way," Hewitt proceeded. "Say this: 'There has
+    been an alteration in the plans.' Have you got that? 'There has been an
+    alteration in the plans. I shall be alone here at six o'clock. Please
+    come, without fail.' Have you got it? Very well; sign it, and address the
+    envelope. He must come here, and then we may arrange matters. In the
+    meantime, you will remain in the inner office opposite."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The note was written, and Martin Hewitt, without glancing at the address,
+    thrust it into his pocket. When Ritter was safely in the inner office,
+    however, he drew it out and read the address. "I see," he observed, "he
+    uses the same name, Hunter; 27 Little Carton Street, Westminster, is the
+    address, and there I shall go at once with the note. If the man comes
+    here, I think you had better lock him in with Ritter, and send for a
+    policeman&mdash;it may at least frighten him. My object is, of course, to get
+    the man away, and then, if possible, to invade his house, in some way or
+    another, and steal or smash his negatives if they are there and to be
+    found. Stay here, in any case, till I return. And don't forget to lock up
+    those tracings."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    It was about six o'clock when Hewitt returned, alone, but with a smiling
+    face that told of good fortune at first sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "First, Mr. Dixon," he said, as he dropped into an easy chair in the
+    private room, "let me ease your mind by the information that I have been
+    most extraordinarily lucky; in fact, I think you have no further cause
+    for anxiety. Here are the negatives. They were not all quite dry when
+    I&mdash;well, what?&mdash;stole them, I suppose I must say; so that they have stuck
+    together a bit, and probably the films are damaged. But you don't mind
+    that, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He laid a small parcel, wrapped in a newspaper, on the table. The
+    engineer hastily tore away the paper and took up five or six glass
+    photographic negatives, of a half-plate size, which were damp, and stuck
+    together by the gelatine films in couples. He held them, one after
+    another, up to the light of the window, and glanced through them. Then,
+    with a great sigh of relief, he placed them on the hearth and pounded
+    them to dust and fragments with the poker.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For a few seconds neither spoke. Then Dixon, flinging himself into a
+    chair, said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Hewitt, I can't express my obligation to you. What would have
+    happened if you had failed, I prefer not to think of. But what shall we
+    do with Ritter now? The other man hasn't been here yet, by the by."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No; the fact is I didn't deliver the letter. The worthy gentleman saved
+    me a world of trouble by taking himself out of the way." Hewitt laughed.
+    "I'm afraid he has rather got himself into a mess by trying two kinds of
+    theft at once, and you may not be sorry to hear that his attempt on your
+    torpedo plans is likely to bring him a dose of penal servitude for
+    something else. I'll tell you what has happened.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Little Carton Street, Westminster, I found to be a seedy sort of
+    place&mdash;one of those old streets that have seen much better days. A good
+    many people seem to live in each house&mdash;they are fairly large houses, by
+    the way&mdash;and there is quite a company of bell-handles on each doorpost,
+    all down the side like organ-stops. A barber had possession of the
+    ground floor front of No. 27 for trade purposes, so to him I went. 'Can
+    you tell me,' I said, 'where in this house I can find Mr. Hunter?' He
+    looked doubtful, so I went on: 'His friend will do, you know&mdash;I can't
+    think of his name; foreign gentleman, dark, with a bushy beard.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The barber understood at once. 'Oh, that's Mirsky, I expect,' he said.
+    'Now, I come to think of it, he has had letters addressed to Hunter once
+    or twice; I've took 'em in. Top floor back.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was good so far. I had got at 'Mr. Hunter's' other alias. So, by
+    way of possessing him with the idea that I knew all about him, I
+    determined to ask for him as Mirsky before handing over the letter
+    addressed to him as Hunter. A little bluff of that sort is invaluable at
+    the right time. At the top floor back I stopped at the door and tried to
+    open it at once, but it was locked. I could hear somebody scuttling about
+    within, as though carrying things about, and I knocked again. In a little
+    while the door opened about a foot, and there stood Mr. Hunter&mdash;or
+    Mirsky, as you like&mdash;the man who, in the character of a traveler in
+    steam-packing, came here twice to-day. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and
+    cuddled something under his arm, hastily covered with a spotted
+    pocket-handkerchief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'I have called to see M. Mirsky," I said, 'with a confidential
+    letter&mdash;&mdash;'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Oh, yas, yas,' he answered hastily; 'I know&mdash;I know. Excuse me one
+    minute.' And he rushed off down-stairs with his parcel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here was a noble chance. For a moment I thought of following him, in
+    case there might be something interesting in the parcel. But I had to
+    decide in a moment, and I decided on trying the room. I slipped inside
+    the door, and, finding the key on the inside, locked it. It was a
+    confused sort of room, with a little iron bedstead in one corner and a
+    sort of rough boarded inclosure in another. This I rightly conjectured to
+    be the photographic dark-room, and made for it at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was plenty of light within when the door was left open, and I made
+    at once for the drying-rack that was fastened over the sink. There were a
+    number of negatives in it, and I began hastily examining them one after
+    another. In the middle of this our friend Mirsky returned and tried the
+    door. He rattled violently at the handle and pushed. Then he called.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "At this moment I had come upon the first of the negatives you have just
+    smashed. The fixing and washing had evidently only lately been completed,
+    and the negative was drying on the rack. I seized it, of course, and the
+    others which stood by it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Who are you, there, inside?' Mirsky shouted indignantly from the
+    landing. 'Why for you go in my room like that? Open this door at once, or
+    I call the police!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I took no notice. I had got the full number of negatives, one for each
+    drawing, but I was not by any means sure that he had not taken an extra
+    set; so I went on hunting down the rack. There were no more, so I set to
+    work to turn out all the undeveloped plates. It was quite possible, you
+    see, that the other set, if it existed, had not yet been developed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mirsky changed his tune. After a little more banging and shouting I
+    could hear him kneel down and try the key-hole. I had left the key there,
+    so that he could see nothing. But he began talking softly and rapidly
+    through the hole in a foreign language. I did not know it in the least,
+    but I believe it was Russian. What had led him to believe I understood
+    Russian I could not at the time imagine, though I have a notion now. I
+    went on ruining his stock of plates. I found several boxes, apparently of
+    new plates, but, as there was no means of telling whether they were really
+    unused or were merely undeveloped, but with the chemical impress of your
+    drawings on them, I dragged every one ruthlessly from its hiding-place
+    and laid it out in the full glare of the sunlight&mdash;destroying it thereby,
+    of course, whether it was unused or not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mirsky left off talking, and I heard him quietly sneaking off. Perhaps
+    his conscience was not sufficiently clear to warrant an appeal to the
+    police, but it seemed to me rather probable at the time that that was
+    what he was going for. So I hurried on with my work. I found three dark
+    slides&mdash;the parts that carried the plates in the back of the camera, you
+    know&mdash;one of them fixed in the camera itself. These I opened, and exposed
+    the plates to ruination as before. I suppose nobody ever did so much
+    devastation in a photographic studio in ten minutes as I managed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I had spoiled every plate I could find, and had the developed negatives
+    safely in my pocket, when I happened to glance at a porcelain
+    washing-well under the sink. There was one negative in that, and I took
+    it up. It was <i>not</i> a negative of a drawing of yours, but of a Russian
+    twenty-ruble note!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    This <i>was</i> a discovery. The only possible reason any man could have for
+    photographing a bank-note was the manufacture of an etched plate for the
+    production of forged copies. I was almost as pleased as I had been at
+    the discovery of <i>your</i> negatives. He might bring the police now as soon
+    as he liked; I could turn the tables on him completely. I began to hunt
+    about for anything else relating to this negative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found an inking-roller, some old pieces of blanket (used in printing
+    from plates), and in a corner on the floor, heaped over with newspapers
+    and rubbish, a small copying-press. There was also a dish of acid, but
+    not an etched plate or a printed note to be seen. I was looking at the
+    press, with the negative in one hand and the inking-roller in the other,
+    when I became conscious of a shadow across the window. I looked up
+    quickly, and there was Mirsky hanging over from some ledge or projection
+    to the side of the window, and staring straight at me, with a look of
+    unmistakable terror and apprehension.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The face vanished immediately. I had to move a table to get at the
+    window, and by the time I had opened it there was no sign or sound of the
+    rightful tenant of the room. I had no doubt now of his reason for
+    carrying a parcel down-stairs. He probably mistook me for another visitor
+    he was expecting, and, knowing he must take this visitor into his room,
+    threw the papers and rubbish over the press, and put up his plates and
+    papers in a bundle and secreted them somewhere down-stairs, lest his
+    occupation should be observed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Plainly, my duty now was to communicate with the police. So, by the help
+    of my friend the barber down-stairs, a messenger was found and a note
+    sent over to Scotland Yard. I awaited, of course, for the arrival of the
+    police, and occupied the interval in another look round&mdash;finding nothing
+    important, however. When the official detective arrived, he recognized at
+    once the importance of the case. A large number of forged Russian notes
+    have been put into circulation on the Continent lately, it seems, and it
+    was suspected that they came from London. The Russian Government have
+    been sending urgent messages to the police here on the subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course I said nothing about your business; but, while I was talking
+    with the Scotland Yard man, a letter was left by a messenger, addressed
+    to Mirsky. The letter will be examined, of course, by the proper
+    authorities, but I was not a little interested to perceive that the
+    envelope bore the Russian imperial arms above the words 'Russian
+    Embassy.' Now, why should Mirsky communicate with the Russian Embassy?
+    Certainly not to let the officials know that he was carrying on a very
+    extensive and lucrative business in the manufacture of spurious Russian
+    notes. I think it is rather more than possible that he wrote&mdash;probably
+    before he actually got your drawings&mdash;to say that he could sell
+    information of the highest importance, and that this letter was a reply.
+    Further, I think it quite possible that, when I asked for him by his
+    Russian name and spoke of 'a confidential letter,' he at once concluded
+    that <i>I</i> had come from the embassy in answer to his letter. That would
+    account for his addressing me in Russian through the key-hole; and, of
+    course, an official from the Russian Embassy would be the very last
+    person in the world whom he would like to observe any indications of his
+    little etching experiments. But, anyhow, be that as it may," Hewitt
+    concluded, "your drawings are safe now, and if once Mirsky is caught, and
+    I think it likely, for a man in his shirt-sleeves, with scarcely any
+    start, and, perhaps, no money about him, hasn't a great chance to get
+    away&mdash;if he is caught, I say, he will probably get something handsome at
+    St. Petersburg in the way of imprisonment, or Siberia, or what not; so
+    that you will be amply avenged."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but I don't at all understand this business of the drawings even
+    now. How in the world were they taken out of the place, and how in the
+    world did you find it out?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing could be simpler; and yet the plan was rather ingenious. I'll
+    tell you exactly how the thing revealed itself to me. From your original
+    description of the case many people would consider that an impossibility
+    had been performed. Nobody had gone out and nobody had come in, and yet
+    the drawings had been taken away. But an impossibility is an
+    impossibility, after all, and as drawings don't run away of themselves,
+    plainly somebody had taken them, unaccountable as it might seem. Now, as
+    they were in your inner office, the only people who could have got at
+    them besides yourself were your assistants, so that it was pretty clear
+    that one of them, at least, had something to do with the business. You
+    told me that Worsfold was an excellent and intelligent draughtsman. Well,
+    if such a man as that meditated treachery, he would probably be able to
+    carry away the design in his head&mdash;at any rate, a little at a time&mdash;and
+    would be under no necessity to run the risk of stealing a set of the
+    drawings. But Ritter, you remarked, was an inferior sort of man. 'Not
+    particularly smart,' I think, were your words&mdash;only a mechanical sort of
+    tracer. <i>He</i> would be unlikely to be able to carry in his head the
+    complicated details of such designs as yours, and, being in a subordinate
+    position, and continually overlooked, he would find it impossible to make
+    copies of the plans in the office. So that, to begin with, I thought I
+    saw the most probable path to start on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When I looked round the rooms, I pushed open the glass door of the
+    barrier and left the door to the inner office ajar, in order to be able
+    to see any thing that <i>might</i> happen in any part of the place, without
+    actually expecting any definite development. While we were talking, as it
+    happened, our friend Mirsky (or Hunter&mdash;as you please) came into the
+    outer office, and my attention was instantly called to him by the first
+    thing he did. Did you notice anything peculiar yourself?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, really, I can't say I did. He seemed to behave much as any traveler
+    or agent might."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, what I noticed was the fact that as soon as he entered the place
+    he put his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand over there by the door,
+    close by where he stood, a most unusual thing for a casual caller to do,
+    before even knowing whether you were in. This made me watch him closely.
+    I perceived with increased interest that the stick was exactly of the
+    same kind and pattern as one already standing there, also a curious
+    thing. I kept my eyes carefully on those sticks, and was all the more
+    interested and edified to see, when he left, that he took the <i>other</i>
+    stick&mdash;not the one he came with&mdash;from the stand, and carried it away,
+    leaving his own behind. I might have followed him, but I decided that
+    more could be learned by staying, as, in fact, proved to be the case.
+    This, by the by, is the stick he carried away with him. I took the
+    liberty of fetching it back from Westminster, because I conceive it to be
+    Ritier's property."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt produced the stick. It was an ordinary, thick Malacca cane, with a
+    buck-horn handle and a silver band. Hewitt bent it across his knee and
+    laid it on the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," Dixon answered, "that is Ritter's stick. I think I have often seen
+    it in the stand. But what in the world&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One moment; I'll just fetch the stick Mirsky left behind." And Hewitt
+    stepped across the corridor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He returned with another stick, apparently an exact fac-simile of the
+    other, and placed it by the side of the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When your assistants went into the inner room, I carried this stick off
+    for a minute or two. I knew it was not Worsfold's, because there was an
+    umbrella there with his initial on the handle. Look at this."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Martin Hewitt gave the handle a twist and rapidly unscrewed it from the
+    top. Then it was seen that the stick was a mere tube of very thin metal,
+    painted to appear like a Malacca cane.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It was plain at once that this was no Malacca cane&mdash;it wouldn't bend.
+    Inside it I found your tracings, rolled up tightly. You can get a
+    marvelous quantity of thin tracing-paper into a small compass by tight
+    rolling."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And this&mdash;this was the way they were brought back!" the engineer
+    exclaimed. "I see that clearly. But how did they get away? That's as
+    mysterious as ever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not a bit of it! See here. Mirsky gets hold of Ritter, and they agree to
+    get your drawings and photograph them. Ritter is to let his confederate
+    have the drawings, and Mirsky is to bring them back as soon as possible,
+    so that they sha'n't be missed for a moment. Ritter habitually carries
+    this Malacca cane, and the cunning of Mirsky at once suggests that this
+    tube should be made in outward fac-simile. This morning Mirsky keeps the
+    actual stick, and Ritter comes to the office with the tube. He seizes the
+    first opportunity&mdash;probably when you were in this private room, and
+    Worsfold was talking to you from the corridor&mdash;to get at the tracings,
+    roll them up tightly, and put them in the tube, putting the tube back
+    into the umbrella-stand. At half-past twelve, or whenever it was, Mirsky
+    turns up for the first time with the actual stick and exchanges them,
+    just as he afterward did when he brought the drawings back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but Mirsky came half an hour after they were&mdash;Oh, yes, I see. What
+    a fool I was! I was forgetting. Of course, when I first missed the
+    tracings, they were in this walking-stick, safe enough, and I was tearing
+    my hair out within arm's reach of them!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. And Mirsky took them away before your very eyes. I expect
+    Ritter was in a rare funk when he found that the drawings were missed. He
+    calculated, no doubt, on your not wanting them for the hour or two they
+    would be out of the office."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How lucky that it struck me to jot a pencil-note on one of them! I might
+    easily have made my note somewhere else, and then I should never have
+    known that they had been away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, they didn't give you any too much time to miss them. Well, I think
+    the rest pretty clear. I brought the tracings in here, screwed up the
+    sham stick and put it back. You identified the tracings and found none
+    missing, and then my course was pretty clear, though it looked difficult.
+    I knew you would be very naturally indignant with Ritter, so, as I wanted
+    to manage him myself, I told you nothing of what he had actually done,
+    for fear that, in your agitated state, you might burst out with something
+    that would spoil my game. To Ritter I pretended to know nothing of the
+    return of the drawings or <i>how</i> they had been stolen&mdash;the only things I
+    did know with certainty. But I <i>did</i> pretend to know all about Mirsky&mdash;or
+    Hunter&mdash;when, as a matter of fact, I knew nothing at all, except that he
+    probably went under more than one name. That put Ritter into my hands
+    completely. When he found the game was up, he began with a lying
+    confession. Believing that the tracings were still in the stick and that
+    we knew nothing of their return, he said that they had not been away, and
+    that he would fetch them&mdash;as I had expected he would. I let him go for
+    them alone, and, when he returned, utterly broken up by the discovery
+    that they were not there, I had him altogether at my mercy. You see, if
+    he had known that the drawings were all the time behind your book-case,
+    he might have brazened it out, sworn that the drawings had been there all
+    the time, and we could have done nothing with him. We couldn't have
+    sufficiently frightened him by a threat of prosecution for theft, because
+    there the things were in your possession, to his knowledge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As it was he answered the helm capitally: gave us Mirsky's address on
+    the envelope, and wrote the letter that was to have got him out of the
+    way while I committed burglary, if that disgraceful expedient had not
+    been rendered unnecessary. On the whole, the case has gone very well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has gone marvelously well, thanks to yourself. But what shall I do
+    with Ritter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here's his stick&mdash;knock him down-stairs with it, if you like. I should
+    keep the tube, if I were you, as a memento. I don't suppose the
+    respectable Mirsky will ever call to ask for it. But I should certainly
+    kick Ritter out of doors&mdash;or out of window, if you like&mdash;without delay."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mirsky was caught, and, after two remands at the police-court, was
+    extradited on the charge of forging Russian notes. It came out that he
+    had written to the embassy, as Hewitt had surmised, stating that he had
+    certain valuable information to offer, and the letter which Hewitt had
+    seen delivered was an acknowledgment, and a request for more definite
+    particulars. This was what gave rise to the impression that Mirsky had
+    himself informed the Russian authorities of his forgeries. His real
+    intent was very different, but was never guessed.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    "I wonder," Hewitt has once or twice observed, "whether, after all, it
+    would not have paid the Russian authorities better on the whole if I had
+    never investigated Mirsky's little note factory. The Dixon torpedo was
+    worth a good many twenty-ruble notes."
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH5"></a>
+<h3>
+   V. THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It was comparatively rarely that Hewitt came into contact with members of
+    the regular criminal class&mdash;those, I mean, who are thieves, of one sort
+    or another, by exclusive profession. Still, nobody could have been better
+    prepared than Hewitt for encountering this class when it became
+    necessary. By some means, which I never quite understood, he managed to
+    keep abreast of the very latest fashions in the ever-changing slang
+    dialect of the fraternity, and he was a perfect master of the more modern
+    and debased form of Romany. So much so that frequently a gypsy who began
+    (as they always do) by pretending that he understood nothing, and never
+    heard of a gypsy language, ended by confessing that Hewitt could <i>rokker</i>
+    better than most Romany <i>chals</i> themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this acquaintance with their habits and talk Hewitt was sometimes able
+    to render efficient service in cases of especial importance. In the
+    Quinton jewel affair Hewitt came into contact with a very accomplished
+    thief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The case will probably be very well remembered. Sir Valentine Quinton,
+    before he married, had been as poor as only a man of rank with an old
+    country establishment to keep up can be. His marriage, however, with the
+    daughter of a wealthy financier had changed all that, and now the Quinton
+    establishment was carried on on as lavish a scale as might be; and,
+    indeed, the extravagant habits of Lady Quinton herself rendered it an
+    extremely lucky thing that she had brought a fortune with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Among other things her jewels made quite a collection, and chief among
+    them was the great ruby, one of the very few that were sent to this
+    country to be sold (at an average price of somewhere about twenty
+    thousand pounds apiece, I believe) by the Burmese king before the
+    annexation of his country. Let but a ruby be of a great size and color,
+    and no equally fine diamond can approach its value. Well, this great ruby
+    (which was set in a pendant, by the by), together with a necklace,
+    brooches, bracelets, ear-rings&mdash;indeed, the greater part of Lady
+    Quinton's collection&mdash;were stolen. The robbery was effected at the usual
+    time and in the usual way in cases of carefully planned jewelry
+    robberies. The time was early evening&mdash;dinner-time, in fact&mdash;and an
+    entrance had been made by the window to Lady Quinton's dressing-room, the
+    door screwed up on the inside, and wires artfully stretched about the
+    grounds below to overset anybody who might observe and pursue the
+    thieves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On an investigation by London detectives, however, a feature of
+    singularity was brought to light. There had plainly been only one thief
+    at work at Radcot Hall, and no other had been inside the grounds. Alone
+    he had planted the wires, opened the window, screwed the door, and picked
+    the lock of the safe. Clearly this was a thief of the most accomplished
+    description.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some few days passed, and, although the police had made various arrests,
+    they appeared to be all mistakes, and the suspected persons were released
+    one after another. I was talking of the robbery with Hewitt at lunch, and
+    asked him if he had received any commission to hunt for the missing
+    jewels.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Hewitt replied, "I haven't been commissioned. They are offering an
+    immense reward however&mdash;a very pleasant sum, indeed. I have had a short
+    note from Radcot Hall informing me of the amount, and that's all.
+    Probably they fancy that I may take the case up as a speculation, but
+    that is a great mistake. I'm not a beginner, and I must be commissioned
+    in a regular manner, hit or miss, if I am to deal with the case. I've
+    quite enough commissions going now, and no time to waste hunting for a
+    problematical reward."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But we were nearer a clue to the Quinton jewels than we then supposed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We talked of other things, and presently rose and left the restaurant,
+    strolling quietly toward home. Some little distance from the Strand, and
+    near our own door, we passed an excited Irishman&mdash;without doubt an
+    Irishman by appearance and talk&mdash;who was pouring a torrent of angry
+    complaints in the ears of a policeman. The policeman obviously thought
+    little of the man's grievances, and with an amused smile appeared to be
+    advising him to go home quietly and think no more about it. We passed on
+    and mounted our stairs. Something interesting in our conversation made me
+    stop for a little while at Hewitt's office door on my way up, and, while
+    I stood there, the Irishman we had seen in the street mounted the stairs.
+    He was a poorly dressed but sturdy-looking fellow, apparently a laborer,
+    in a badly-worn best suit of clothes. His agitation still held him, and
+    without a pause he immediately burst out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which of ye jintlemen will be Misther Hewitt, sor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is Mr. Hewitt," I said. "Do you want him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's protecshin I want, sor&mdash;protecshin! I spake to the polis, an' they
+    laff at me, begob. Foive days have I lived in London, an' 'tis nothin'
+    but battle, murdher, an' suddhen death for me here all day an' ivery day!
+    An' the polis say I'm dhrunk!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He gesticulated wildly, and to me it seemed just possible that the police
+    might be right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They say I'm drunk, sor," he continued, "but, begob, I b'lieve they
+    think I'm mad. An' me being thracked an' folleyed an' dogged an' waylaid
+    an' poisoned an' blandandhered an' kidnapped an' murdhered, an' for why I
+    do not know!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And who's doing all this?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sthrangers, sor&mdash;sthrangers. 'Tis a sthranger here I am mesilf, an' fwy
+    they do it bates me, onless I do be so like the Prince av Wales or other
+    crowned head they thry to slaughter me. They're layin' for me in the
+    sthreet now, I misdoubt not, and fwat they may thry next I can tell no
+    more than the Lord Mayor. An' the polis won't listen to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    This, I thought, must be one of the very common cases of mental
+    hallucination which one hears of every day&mdash;the belief of the sufferer
+    that he is surrounded by enemies and followed by spies. It is probably
+    the most usual delusion of the harmless lunatic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But what have these people done?" Hewitt asked, looking rather
+    interested, although amused. "What actual assaults have they committed,
+    and when? And who told you to come here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who towld me, is ut? Who but the payler outside&mdash;in the street below! I
+    explained to 'um, an' sez he: 'Ah, you go an' take a slape,' sez he; 'you
+    go an' take a good slape, an' they'll be all gone whin ye wake up.' 'But
+    they'll murdher me,' sez I. 'Oh, no!' sez he, smilin' behind av his ugly
+    face. 'Oh, no, they won't; you take ut aisy, me frind, an' go home!'
+    'Take it aisy, is ut, an' go home!' sez I; 'why, that's just where
+    they've been last, a-ruinationin' an' a-turnin' av the place upside down,
+    an' me strook on the head onsensible a mile away. Take ut aisy, is ut, ye
+    say, whin all the demons in this unholy place is jumpin' on me every
+    minut in places promiscuous till I can't tell where to turn, descendin'
+    an' vanishin' marvelious an' onaccountable? Take ut aisy, is ut?' sez I.
+    'Well, me frind,' sez he, 'I can't help ye; that's the marvelious an'
+    onaccountable departmint up the stairs forninst ye. Misther Hewitt ut
+    is,' sez he, 'that attinds to the onaccountable departmint, him as wint
+    by a minut ago. You go an' bother him.' That's how I was towld, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," he said; "and now what are these extraordinary troubles of
+    yours? Don't declaim," he added, as the Irishman raised his hand and
+    opened his mouth, preparatory to another torrent of complaint; "just say
+    in ten words, if you can, what they've done to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will, sor. Wan day had I been in London, sor&mdash;wan day only, an' a low
+    scutt thried to poison me dhrink; next day some udther thief av sin
+    shoved me off av a railway platform undher a train, malicious and
+    purposeful; glory be, he didn't kill me! but the very docther that felt
+    me bones thried to pick me pockut, I du b'lieve. Sunday night I was
+    grabbed outrageous in a darrk turnin', rowled on the groun', half
+    strangled, an' me pockuts nigh ripped out av me trousies. An' this very
+    blessed mornin' av light I was strook onsensible an' left a livin'
+    corpse, an' my lodgin's penethrated an' all the thruck mishandled an'
+    bruk up behind me back. Is that a panjandhery for the polis to laff at,
+    sor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Had Hewitt not been there I think I should have done my best to quiet the
+    poor fellow with a few soothing words and to persuade him to go home to
+    his friends. His excited and rather confused manner, his fantastic story
+    of a sort of general conspiracy to kill him, and the absurd reference to
+    the doctor who tried to pick his pocket seemed to me plainly to confirm
+    my first impression that he was insane. But Hewitt appeared strangely
+    interested.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did they steal anything?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Divil a shtick but me door-key, an' that they tuk home an' lift in the
+    door."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt opened his office door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come in," he said, "and tell me all about this. You come, too, Brett."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Irishman and I followed him into the inner office, where, shutting
+    the door, Hewitt suddenly turned on the Irishman and exclaimed sharply:
+    "<i>Then you've still got it</i>?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked keenly in the man's eyes, but the only expression there was one
+    of surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Got ut?" said the Irishman. "Got fwhat, sor? Is ut you're thinkin' I've
+    got the horrors, as well as the polis?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt's gaze relaxed. "Sit down, sit down!" he said. "You've still got
+    your watch and money, I suppose, since you weren't robbed?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, that? Glory be, I have ut still! though for how long&mdash;or me own
+    head, for that matter&mdash;in this state of besiegement, I can not say."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now," said Hewitt, "I want a full, true, and particular account of
+    yourself and your doings for the last week. First, your name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Leamy's my name, sor&mdash;Michael Leamy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lately from Ireland?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Over from Dublin this last blessed Wednesday, and a crooil bad
+    poundherin' tit was in the boat, too&mdash;shpakin'av that same."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Looking for work?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is my purshuit at prisint, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did anything noticeable happen before these troubles of yours
+    began&mdash;anything here in London or on the journey?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sure," the Irishman smiled, "part av the way I thraveled first-class by
+    favor av the gyard, an' I got a small job before I lift the train."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How was that? Why did you travel first-class part of the way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was a station fwhere we shtopped afther a long run, an' I got down
+    to take the cramp out av me joints, an' take a taste av dhrink. I
+    over-shtayed somehow, an', whin I got to the train, begob, it was on the
+    move. There was a first-class carr'ge door opin right forninst me, an'
+    into that the gyard crams me holus-bolus. There was a juce of a foine
+    jintleman sittin' there, an' he stares at me umbrageous, but I was not
+    dishcommoded, bein' onbashful by natur'. We thravelled along a heap av
+    miles more, till we came near London. Afther we had shtopped at a station
+    where they tuk tickets we wint ahead again, an' prisintly, as we rips
+    through some udther station, up jumps the jintleman opposite, swearin'
+    hard undher his tongue, an' looks out at the windy. 'I thought this
+    train shtopped here,' sez he."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Chalk Farm," observed Hewitt, with a nod.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The name I do not know, sor, but that's fwhat he said. Then he looks at
+    me onaisy for a little, an' at last he sez: 'Wud ye loike a small job, me
+    good man, well paid?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Faith,' sez I, ''tis that will suit me well.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Then, see here,' sez he, 'I should have got out at that station, havin'
+    particular business; havin' missed, I must sen' a telegrammer from
+    Euston. Now, here's a bag,' sez he, 'a bag full of imporrtant papers for
+    my solicitor&mdash;imporrtant to me, ye ondershtand, not worth the shine av a
+    brass farden to a sowl else&mdash;an' I want 'em tuk on to him. Take you this
+    bag,' he sez, 'an' go you straight out wid it at Euston an' get a cab. I
+    shall stay in the station a bit to see to the telegrammer. Dhrive out av
+    the station, across the road outside, an' wait there five minuts by the
+    clock. Ye ondershtand? Wait five minuts, an, maybe I'll come an' join ye.
+    If I don't 'twill be bekase I'm detained onexpected, an' then ye'll
+    dhrive to my solicitor straight. Here's his address, if ye can read
+    writin',' an' he put ut on a piece av paper. He gave me half-a-crown for
+    the cab, an' I tuk his bag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One moment&mdash;have you the paper with the address now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have not, sor. I missed ut afther the blayguards overset me
+    yesterday; but the solicitor's name was Hollams, an' a liberal jintleman
+    wid his money he was, too, by that same token."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What was his address?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Twas in Chelsea, and 'twas Gold or Golden something, which I know by
+    the good token av fwhat he gave me; but the number I misremember."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt turned to his directory. "Gold Street is the place, probably," he
+    said, "and it seems to be a street chiefly of private houses. You would
+    be able to point out the house if you were taken there, I suppose?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I should that, sor; indade, I was thinkin' av goin' there an' tellin'
+    Misther Hollams all my throubles, him havin' been so kind."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now tell me exactly what instructions the man in the train gave you, and
+    what happened?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He sez: 'You ask for Misther Hollams, an' see nobody else. Tell him
+    ye've brought the sparks from Misther W.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I fancied I could see a sudden twinkle in Hewitt's eye, but he made no
+    other sign, and the Irishman proceeded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Sparks?' sez I. 'Yes, sparks,' sez he. 'Misther Hollams will know; 'tis
+    our jokin' word for 'em; sometimes papers is sparks when they set a
+    lawsuit ablaze,' and he laffed. 'But be sure ye say the <i>sparks from
+    Misther W.</i>,' he sez again, 'bekase then he'll know ye're jinuine an'
+    he'll pay ye han'some. Say Misther W. sez you're to have your reg'lars,
+    if ye like. D'ye mind that?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Ay,' sez I, 'that I'm to have my reg'lars.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, sor, I tuk the bag and wint out of the station, tuk the cab, an'
+    did all as he towld me. I waited the foive minuts, but he niver came, so
+    off I druv to Misther Hollams, and he threated me han'some, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but tell me exactly all he did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Misther Hollams, sor?' sez I. 'Who are ye?' sez he. 'Mick Leamy, sor,'
+    sez I, 'from Misther W. wid the sparks.' 'Oh,' sez he, 'thin come in.' I
+    wint in. 'They're in here, are they?' sez he, takin' the bag. 'They are,
+    sor,' sez I, 'an' Misther W. sez I'm to have me reg'lars.' 'You shall,'
+    sez he. 'What shall we say, now&mdash;afinnip?' 'Fwhat's that, sor?' sez I.
+    'Oh,' sez he, 'I s'pose ye're a new hand; five quid&mdash;ondershtand that?'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Begob, I did ondershtand it, an' moighty plazed I was to have come to a
+    place where they pay five-pun' notes for carryin' bags. So whin he asked
+    me was I new to London an' shud I kape in the same line av business, I
+    towld him I shud for certin, or any thin' else payin' like it. 'Right,'
+    sez he; 'let me know whin ye've got any thin'&mdash;ye'll find me all right.'
+    An' he winked frindly. 'Faith, that I know I shall, sor,' sez I, wid the
+    money safe in me pockut; an' I winked him back, conjanial. 'I've a smart
+    family about me,' sez he, 'an' I treat 'em all fair an' liberal.' An',
+    saints, I thought it likely his family 'ud have all they wanted, seein'
+    he was so free-handed wid a stranger. Thin he asked me where I was a
+    livin' in London, and, when I towld him nowhere, he towld me av a room in
+    Musson Street, here by Drury Lane, that was to let, in a house his fam'ly
+    knew very well, an' I wint straight there an' tuk ut, an' there I do be
+    stayin' still, sor."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I hadn't understood at first why Hewitt took so much interest in the
+    Irishman's narrative, but the latter part of it opened my eyes a little.
+    It seemed likely that Leamy had, in his innocence, been made a conveyer
+    of stolen property. I knew enough of thieves' slang to know that "sparks"
+    meant diamonds or other jewels; that "regulars" was the term used for a
+    payment made to a brother thief who gave assistance in some small way,
+    such as carrying the booty; and that the "family" was the time-honored
+    expression for a gang of thieves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This was all on Wednesday, I understand," said Hewitt. "Now tell me what
+    happened on Thursday&mdash;the poisoning, or drugging, you know?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, sor, I was walking out, an' toward the evenin' I lost mesilf. Up
+    comes a man, seemin'ly a sthranger, and shmacks me on the showldher.
+    'Why, Mick!' sez he; 'it's Mick Leamy, I du b'lieve!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'I am that,' sez I, 'but you I do not know.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Not know me?' sez he. 'Why, I wint to school wid ye.' An' wid that he
+    hauls me off to a bar, blarneyin' and minowdherin', an' orders dhrinks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can ye rache me a poipe-loight?' sez he, an' I turned to get ut, but,
+    lookin' back suddent, there was that onblushin' thief av the warl'
+    tippin' a paperful of phowder stuff into me glass."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you do?" Hewitt asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I knocked the dhirty face av him, sor, an' can ye blame me? A mane
+    scutt, thryin' for to poison a well-manin' sthranger. I knocked the face
+    av him, an' got away home."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now the next misfortune?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Faith, that was av a sort likely to turn out the last of all
+    misfortunes. I wint that day to the Crystial Palace, bein' dishposed for
+    a little sphort, seein' as I was new to London. Comin' home at night,
+    there was a juce av a crowd on the station platform, consekins of a late
+    thrain. Sthandin' by the edge av the platform at the fore end, just as
+    thrain came in, some onvisible murdherer gives me a stupenjus drive in
+    the back, and over I wint on the line, mid-betwixt the rails. The engine
+    came up an' wint half over me widout givin' me a scratch, bekase av my
+    centraleous situation, an' then the porther-men pulled me out, nigh sick
+    wid fright, sor, as ye may guess. A jintleman in the crowd sings out:
+    'I'm a medical man!' an' they tuk me in the waitin'-room, an' he
+    investigated me, havin' turned everybody else out av the room. There wuz
+    no bones bruk, glory be! and the docthor-man he was tellin' me so, after
+    feelin' me over, whin I felt his hand in me waistcoat pockut.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'An' fwhat's this, sor?' sez I. 'Do you be lookin' for your fee that
+    thief's way?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He laffed, and said: 'I want no fee from ye, me man, an' I did but feel
+    your ribs,' though on me conscience he had done that undher me waistcoat
+    already. An' so I came home."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did they do to you on Saturday?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Saturday, sor, they gave me a whole holiday, and I began to think less
+    of things; but on Saturday night, in a dark place, two blayguards tuk me
+    throat from behind, nigh choked me, flung me down, an' wint through all
+    me pockuts in about a quarter av a minut."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And they took nothing, you say?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing, sor. But this mornin' I got my worst dose. I was trapesing
+    along distreshful an' moighty sore, in a street just away off the Strand
+    here, when I obsarved the docthor-man that was at the Crystial Palace
+    station a-smilin' an' beckonin' at me from a door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'How are ye now?' sez he. 'Well,' sez I, 'I'm moighty sore an' sad
+    bruised,' sez I. 'Is that so?' sez he. 'Sthep in here.' So I sthepped in,
+    an' before I could wink there dhropped a crack on the back av me head
+    that sent me off as unknowledgable as a corrpse. I knew no more for a
+    while, sor, whether half an hour or an hour, an' thin I got up in a room
+    av the place, marked 'To Let.' 'Twas a house full av offices, by the same
+    token, like this. There was a sore bad lump on me head&mdash;see ut, sor?&mdash;an'
+    the whole warl' was shpinnin' roun' rampageous. The things out av me
+    pockuts were lyin' on the flure by me&mdash;all barrin' the key av me room. So
+    that the demons had been through me posseshins again, bad luck to 'em."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are quite sure, are you, that everything was there except the key?"
+    Hewitt asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certin, sor? Well, I got along to me room, sick an' sorry enough, an'
+    doubtsome whether I might get in wid no key. But there was the key in the
+    open door, an', by this an' that, all the shtuff in the room&mdash;chair,
+    table, bed, an' all&mdash;was shtandin' on their heads twisty-ways, an' the
+    bedclothes an' every thin' else; such a disgraceful stramash av
+    conglomerated thruck as ye niver dhreamt av. The chist av drawers was
+    lyin' on uts face, wid all the dhrawers out an' emptied on the flure.
+    'Twas as though an arrmy had been lootin', sor!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But still nothing was gone?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothin', so far as I investigated, sor. But I didn't shtay. I came out
+    to spake to the polis, an' two av them laffed at me&mdash;wan afther another!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has certainly been no laughing matter for you. Now, tell me&mdash;have you
+    anything in your possession&mdash;documents, or valuables, or anything&mdash;that
+    any other person, to your knowledge, is anxious to get hold of!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I have not, sor&mdash;divil a document! As to valuables, thim an' me is the
+    cowldest av sthrangers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just call to mind, now, the face of the man who tried to put powder in
+    your drink, and that of the doctor who attended to you in the railway
+    station. Were they at all alike, or was either like anybody you have seen
+    before?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Leamy puckered his forehead and thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Faith," he said presently, "they were a bit alike, though one had a
+    beard an' the udther whiskers only."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Neither happened to look like Mr. Hollams, for instance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Leamy started. "Begob, but they did! They'd ha' been mortal like him if
+    they'd been shaved." Then, after a pause, he suddenly added: "Holy
+    saints! is ut the fam'ly he talked av?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laughed. "Perhaps it is," he said. "Now, as to the man who sent
+    you with the bag. Was it an old bag?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bran' cracklin' new&mdash;a brown leather bag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Locked?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That I niver thried, sor. It was not my consarn."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "True. Now, as to this Mr. W. himself." Hewitt had been rummaging for
+    some few minutes in a portfolio, and finally produced a photograph, and
+    held it before the Irishman's eye. "Is that like him?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Shure it's the man himself! Is he a friend av yours, sor?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, he's not exactly a friend of mine," Hewitt answered, with a grim
+    chuckle. "I fancy he's one of that very respectable <i>family</i> you heard
+    about at Mr. Hollams'. Come along with me now to Chelsea, and see if you
+    can point out that house in Gold Street. I'll send for a cab."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He made for the outer office, and I went with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is all this, Hewitt?" I asked. "A gang of thieves with stolen
+    property?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt looked in my face and replied: "<i>It's the Quinton ruby</i>!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What! The ruby? Shall you take the case up, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall. It is no longer a speculation."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then do you expect to find it at Hollams' house in Chelsea?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't, because it isn't there&mdash;else why are they trying to get it
+    from this unlucky Irishman? There has been bad faith in Hollams' gang, I
+    expect, and Hollams has missed the ruby and suspects Leamy of having
+    taken it from the bag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then who is this Mr. W. whose portrait you have in your possession?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "See here!" Hewitt turned over a small pile of recent newspapers and
+    selected one, pointing at a particular paragraph. "I kept that in my
+    mind, because to me it seemed to be the most likely arrest of the lot,"
+    he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was an evening paper of the previous Thursday, and the paragraph was a
+    very short one, thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The man Wilks, who was arrested at Euston Station yesterday, in
+    connection with the robbery of Lady Quinton's jewels, has been released,
+    nothing being found to incriminate him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How does that strike you?" asked Hewitt. "Wilks is a man well known to
+    the police&mdash;one of the most accomplished burglars in this country, in
+    fact. I have had no dealings with him as yet, but I found means, some
+    time ago, to add his portrait to my little collection, in case I might
+    want it, and to-day it has been quite useful."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The thing was plain now. Wilks must have been bringing his booty to town,
+    and calculated on getting out at Chalk Farm and thus eluding the watch
+    which he doubtless felt pretty sure would be kept (by telegraphic
+    instruction) at Euston for suspicious characters arriving from the
+    direction of Radcot. His transaction with Leamy was his only possible
+    expedient to save himself from being hopelessly taken with the swag in
+    his possession. The paragraph told me why Leamy had waited in vain for
+    "Mr. W." in the cab.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What shall you do now?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall go to the Gold Street house and find out what I can as soon as
+    this cab turns up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There seemed a possibility of some excitement in the adventure, so I
+    asked: "Will you want any help?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled. "I <i>think</i> I can get through it alone," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then may I come to look on?" I said. "Of course I don't want to be in
+    your way, and the result of the business, whatever it is, will be to
+    your credit alone. But I am curious."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, then, by all means. The cab will be a four-wheeler, and there will
+    be plenty of room."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Gold Street was a short street of private houses of very fair size and of
+    a half-vanished pretension to gentility. We drove slowly through, and
+    Leamy had no difficulty in pointing out the house wherein he had been
+    paid five pounds for carrying a bag. At the end the cab turned the corner
+    and stopped, while Hewitt wrote a short note to an official of Scotland
+    Yard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take this note," he instructed Leamy, "to Scotland Yard in the cab, and
+    then go home. I will pay the cabman now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will, sor. An' will I be protected?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes! Stay at home for the rest of the day, and I expect you'll be
+    left alone in future. Perhaps I shall have something to tell you in a day
+    or two; if I do, I'll send. Good-by."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cab rolled off, and Hewitt and I strolled back along Gold Street. "I
+    think," Hewitt said, "we will drop in on Mr. Hollams for a few minutes
+    while we can. In a few hours I expect the police will have him, and his
+    house, too, if they attend promptly to my note."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you ever seen him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not to my knowledge, though I may know him by some other name. Wilks I
+    know by sight, though he doesn't know me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What shall we say?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That will depend on circumstances. I may not get my cue till the door
+    opens, or even till later. At worst, I can easily apply for a reference
+    as to Leamy, who, you remember, is looking for work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But we were destined not to make Mr. Hollams' acquaintance, after all. As
+    we approached the house a great uproar was heard from the lower part
+    giving on to the area, and suddenly a man, hatless, and with a sleeve of
+    his coat nearly torn away burst through the door and up the area steps,
+    pursued by two others. I had barely time to observe that one of the
+    pursuers carried a revolver, and that both hesitated and retired on
+    seeing that several people were about the street, when Hewitt, gripping
+    my arm and exclaiming: "That's our man!" started at a run after the
+    fugitive.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We turned the next corner and saw the man thirty yards before us,
+    walking, and pulling up his sleeve at the shoulder, so as to conceal the
+    rent. Plainly he felt safe from further molestation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's Sim Wilks," Hewitt explained, as we followed, "the 'juce of a
+    foine jintleman' who got Leamy to carry his bag, and the man who knows
+    where the Quinton ruby is, unless I am more than usually mistaken. Don't
+    stare after him, in case he looks round. Presently, when we get into the
+    busier streets, I shall have a little chat with him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    But for some time the man kept to the back streets. In time, however, he
+    emerged into the Buckingham Palace Road, and we saw him stop and look at
+    a hat-shop. But after a general look over the window and a glance in at
+    the door he went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good sign!" observed Hewitt; "got no money with him&mdash;makes it easier for
+    us."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a little while Wilks approached a small crowd gathered about a woman
+    fiddler. Hewitt touched my arm, and a few quick steps took us past our
+    man and to the opposite side of the crowd. When Wilks emerged, he met us
+    coming in the opposite direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What, Sim!" burst out Hewitt with apparent delight. "I haven't piped
+    your mug<a href="#note-A"><small><sup>[A]</sup></small></a>
+    for a stretch;<a href="#note-B"><small><sup>[B]</sup></small></a>
+    I thought you'd fell.<a href="#note-C"><small><sup>[C]</sup></small></a>
+    Where's your cady?"<a href="#note-D"><small><sup>[D]</sup></small></a>
+</p>
+<a name="note-A"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>A</u></sup>    [Seen your face.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-B"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>B</u></sup>    [A year.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-C"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>C</u></sup>    [Been imprisoned.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-D"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>D</u></sup>    [Hat.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks looked astonished and suspicious. "I don't know you," he said.
+    "You've made a mistake."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laughed. "I'm glad you don't know me," he said. "If you don't,
+    I'm pretty sure the
+    reelers<a href="#note-E"><small><sup>[E]</sup></small></a> won't.
+    I think I've faked my mug pretty well, and my
+    clobber,<a href="#note-F"><small><sup>[F]</sup></small></a> too.
+    Look here: I'll stand you a new cady. Strange blokes don't do that, eh?"
+</p>
+<a name="note-E"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>E</u></sup>    [Police.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-F"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>F</u></sup>    [Clothes.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks was still suspicious. "I don't know what you mean," he said. Then,
+    after a pause, he added: "Who are you, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt winked and screwed his face genially aside. "Hooky!" he said.  "I've had
+    a lucky touch<a href="#note-G"><small><sup>[G]</sup></small></a> and
+    I'm Mr. Smith till I've melted the
+    pieces.<a href="#note-H"><small><sup>[H]</sup></small></a> You come
+    and damp it."
+</p>
+<a name="note-G"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>G</u></sup>    [Robbery.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-H"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>H</u></sup>    [Spent the money.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm off," Wilks replied. "Unless you're pal enough to lend me a quid,"
+    he added, laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am that," responded Hewitt, plunging his hand in his pocket. "I'm
+    flush, my boy, flush, and I've been wetting it pretty well to-day. I feel
+    pretty jolly now, and I shouldn't wonder if I went home
+    cannon.<a href="#note-I"><small><sup>[I]</sup></small></a> Only a
+    quid? Have two, if you want 'em&mdash;or three; there's plenty more, and
+    you'll do the same for me some day. Here y'are."
+</p>
+<a name="note-I"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>I</u></sup>    [Drunk.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt had, of a sudden, assumed the whole appearance, manners, and
+    bearing of a slightly elevated rowdy. Now he pulled his hand from his
+    pocket and extended it, full of silver, with five or six sovereigns
+    interspersed, toward Wilks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll have three quid," Wilks said, with decision, taking the money; "but
+    I'm blowed if I remember you. Who's your pal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt jerked his hand in my direction, winked, and said, in a low voice:
+    "He's all right. Having a rest. Can't stand Manchester," and winked
+    again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks laughed and nodded, and I understood from that that Hewitt had very
+    flatteringly given me credit for being "wanted" by the Manchester police.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We lurched into a public house, and drank a very little very bad whisky
+    and water. Wilks still regarded us curiously, and I could see him again
+    and again glancing doubtfully in Hewitt's face. But the loan of three
+    pounds had largely reassured him. Presently Hewitt said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How about our old pal down in Gold Street? Do anything with him now?
+    Seen him lately?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's a good job. It 'ud be awkward if you were about there to-day, I
+    can tell you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind, so long as you're not there. I know something, if I <i>have</i>
+    been away. I'm glad I haven't had any truck with Gold Street lately,
+    that's all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "D'you mean the reelers are on it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt looked cautiously over his shoulder, leaned toward Wilks, and
+    said: "Look here: this is the straight tip. I know this&mdash;I got it from
+    the very nark<a href="#note-J"><small><sup>[J]</sup></small></a> that's
+    given the show away: By six o'clock No. 8 Gold
+    Street will be turned inside out, like an old glove, and everyone in the
+    place will be&mdash;&mdash;" He finished the sentence by crossing his wrists like
+    a handcuffed man. "What's more," he went on, "they know all about what's
+    gone on there lately, and everybody that's been in or out for the last
+    two moons<a href="#note-K"><small><sup>[K]</sup></small></a> will
+    be wanted particular&mdash;and will be found, I'm told."
+    Hewitt concluded with a confidential frown, a nod, and a wink, and took
+    another mouthful of whisky. Then he added, as an after-thought: "So I'm
+    glad you haven't been there lately."
+</p>
+<a name="note-J"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>J</u></sup>    [Police spy.]
+</p>
+<a name="note-K"></a>
+<p>
+<sup><u>K</u></sup>    [Months.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks looked in Hewitt's face and asked: "Is that straight?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "<i>Is</i> it?" replied Hewitt with emphasis. "You go and have a look, if you
+    ain't afraid of being smugged yourself. Only <i>I</i> shan't go near No. 8
+    just yet&mdash;I know that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks fidgeted, finished his drink, and expressed his intention of going.
+    "Very well, if you <i>won't</i> have another&mdash;&mdash;" replied Hewitt. But he had
+    gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good!" said Hewitt, moving toward the door; "he has suddenly developed a
+    hurry. I shall keep him in sight, but you had better take a cab and go
+    straight to Euston. Take tickets to the nearest station to
+    Radcot&mdash;Kedderby, I think it is&mdash;and look up the train arrangements.
+    Don't show yourself too much, and keep an eye on the entrance. Unless I
+    am mistaken, Wilks will be there pretty soon, and I shall be on his
+    heels. If I <i>am</i> wrong, then you won't see the end of the fun, that's
+    all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt hurried after Wilks, and I took the cab and did as he wished.
+    There was an hour and a few minutes, I found, to wait for the next train,
+    and that time I occupied as best I might, keeping a sharp lookout across
+    the quadrangle. Barely five minutes before the train was to leave, and
+    just as I was beginning to think about the time of the next, a cab dashed
+    up and Hewitt alighted. He hurried in, found me, and drew me aside into a
+    recess, just as another cab arrived.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here he is," Hewitt said. "I followed him as far as Euston Road and
+    then got my cabby to spurt up and pass him. He had had his mustache
+    shaved off, and I feared you mightn't recognize him, and so let him see
+    you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    From our retreat we could see Wilks hurry into the booking-office. We
+    watched him through to the platform and followed. He wasted no time, but
+    made the best of his way to a third-class carriage at the extreme fore
+    end of the train.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We have three minutes," Hewitt said, "and everything depends on his not
+    seeing us get into this train. Take this cap. Fortunately, we're both in
+    tweed suits."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He had bought a couple of tweed cricket caps, and these we assumed,
+    sending our "bowler" hats to the cloak-room. Hewitt also put on a pair of
+    blue spectacles, and then walked boldly up the platform and entered a
+    first-class carriage. I followed close on his heels, in such a manner
+    that a person looking from the fore end of the train would be able to see
+    but very little of me.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So far so good," said Hewitt, when we were seated and the train began to
+    move off. "I must keep a lookout at each station, in case our friend goes
+    off unexpectedly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I waited some time," I said; "where did you both go to?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "First he went and bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some
+    distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets
+    in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor's
+    shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat
+    mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way
+    up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber's shop. I took a
+    cautious peep at the window, saw two or three other customers also
+    waiting, and took the opportunity to rush over to a 'notion' shop and buy
+    these blue spectacles, and to a hatter's for these caps&mdash;of which I
+    regret to observe that yours is too big. He was rather a long while in
+    the barber's, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache.
+    This was a good indication. It made it plainer than ever that he had
+    believed my warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street
+    and its frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was
+    quite true. The rest you know. He cabbed to the station, and so did I."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And now perhaps," I said, "after giving me the character of a thief
+    wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in
+    exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London
+    without any definite idea of when I'm coming back, perhaps you'll tell me
+    what we're after?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt laughed. "You wanted to join in, you know," he said, "and you
+    must take your luck as it comes. As a matter of fact there is scarcely
+    anything in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this
+    watching and following business. Often it lasts for weeks. When we
+    alight, we shall have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult
+    possible conditions, in the country. There it is often quite impossible
+    to follow a man unobserved. It is only because it is the only way that I
+    am undertaking it now. As to what we're after, you know that as well as
+    I&mdash;the Quinton ruby. Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would
+    be impossible to find it. We are following him so that he will find it
+    for us."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the
+    bag to direct Hollams's suspicion to him. Hollams found out by his
+    repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and
+    this morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks'
+    possession with a revolver. We saw the upshot of that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Kedderby Station was about forty miles out. At each intermediate stopping
+    station Hewitt watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train. "What
+    I fear," Hewitt observed, "is that at Kedderby he may take a fly. To stalk
+    a man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you <i>can't</i> follow
+    one vehicle in another without being spotted. But if he's so smart as I
+    think, he won't do it. A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered
+    in these places."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He did <i>not</i> take a fly. At Kedderby we saw him jump out quickly and
+    hasten from the station. The train stood for a few minutes, and he was
+    out of the station before we alighted. Through the railings behind the
+    platform we could see him walking briskly away to the right. From the
+    ticket collector we ascertained that Radcot lay in that direction, three
+    miles off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To my dying day I shall never forget that three miles. They seemed three
+    hundred. In the still country almost every footfall seemed audible for
+    any distance, and in the long stretches of road one could see half a mile
+    behind or before. Hewitt was cool and patient, but I got into a fever of
+    worry, excitement, want of breath, and back-ache. At first, for a little,
+    the road zig-zagged, and then the chase was comparatively easy. We waited
+    behind one bend till Wilks had passed the next, and then hurried in his
+    trail, treading in the dustiest parts of the road or on the side grass,
+    when there was any, to deaden the sound of our steps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the last of these short bends we looked ahead and saw a long, white
+    stretch of road with the dark form of Wilks a couple of hundred yards in
+    front. It would never do to let him get to the end of this great stretch
+    before following, as he might turn off at some branch road out of sight
+    and be lost. So we jumped the hedge and scuttled along as we best might
+    on the other side, with backs bent, and our feet often many inches deep
+    in wet clay. We had to make continual stoppages to listen and peep out,
+    and on one occasion, happening, incautiously, to stand erect, looking
+    after him, I was much startled to see Wilks, with his face toward me,
+    gazing down the road. I ducked like lightning, and, fortunately, he
+    seemed not to have observed me, but went on as before. He had probably
+    heard some slight noise, but looked straight along the road for its
+    explanation, instead of over the hedge. At hilly parts of the road there
+    was extreme difficulty; indeed, on approaching a rise it was usually
+    necessary to lie down under the hedge till Wilks had passed the top,
+    since from the higher ground he could have seen us easily. This improved
+    neither my clothes, my comfort, nor my temper. Luckily we never
+    encountered the difficulty of a long and high wall, but once we were
+    nearly betrayed by a man who shouted to order us off his field.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last we saw, just ahead, the square tower of an old church, set about
+    with thick trees. Opposite this Wilks paused, looked irresolutely up and
+    down the road, and then went on. We crossed the road, availed ourselves
+    of the opposite hedge, and followed. The village was to be seen some
+    three or four hundred yards farther along the road, and toward it Wilks
+    sauntered slowly. Before he actually reached the houses he stopped and
+    turned back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The churchyard!" exclaimed Hewitt, under his breath. "Lie close and let
+    him pass."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wilks reached the churchyard gate, and again looked irresolutely about
+    him. At that moment a party of children, who had been playing among the
+    graves, came chattering and laughing toward and out of the gate, and
+    Wilks walked hastily away again, this time in the opposite direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's the place, clearly," Hewitt said. "We must slip across quietly,
+    as soon as he's far enough down the road. Now!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    We hurried stealthily across, through the gate, and into the churchyard,
+    where Hewitt threw his blue spectacles away. It was now nearly eight in
+    the evening, and the sun was setting. Once again Wilks approached the
+    gate, and did not enter, because a laborer passed at the time. Then he
+    came back and slipped through.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grass about the graves was long, and under the trees it was already
+    twilight. Hewitt and I, two or three yards apart, to avoid falling over
+    one another in case of sudden movement, watched from behind gravestones.
+    The form of Wilks stood out large and black against the fading light in
+    the west as he stealthily approached through the long grass. A light cart
+    came clattering along the road, and Wilks dropped at once and crouched on
+    his knees till it had passed. Then, staring warily about him, he made
+    straight for the stone behind which Hewitt waited.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I saw Hewitt's dark form swing noiselessly round to the other side of
+    the stone. Wilks passed on and dropped on his knee beside a large,
+    weather-worn slab that rested on a brick under-structure a foot or so
+    high. The long grass largely hid the bricks, and among it Wilks plunged
+    his hand, feeling along the brick surface. Presently he drew out a loose
+    brick, and laid it on the slab. He felt again in the place, and brought
+    forth a small dark object. I saw Hewitt rise erect in the gathering dusk,
+    and with extended arm step noiselessly toward the stooping man. Wilks
+    made a motion to place the dark object in his pocket, but checked
+    himself, and opened what appeared to be a lid, as though to make sure of
+    the safety of the contents. The last light, straggling under the trees,
+    fell on a brilliantly sparkling object within, and like a flash Hewitt's
+    hand shot over Wilks' shoulder and snatched the jewel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man actually screamed&mdash;one of those curious sharp little screams that
+    one may hear from a woman very suddenly alarmed. But he sprang at Hewitt
+    like a cat, only to meet a straight drive of the fist that stretched him
+    on his back across the slab. I sprang from behind my stone, and helped
+    Hewitt to secure his wrists with a pocket-handkerchief. Then we marched
+    him, struggling and swearing, to the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When, in the lights of the village, he recognized us, he had a perfect
+    fit of rage, but afterward he calmed down, and admitted that it was a
+    "very clean cop." There was some difficulty in finding the village
+    constable, and Sir Valentine Quinton was dining out and did not arrive
+    for at least an hour. In the interval Wilks grew communicative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How much d'ye think I'll get?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can't guess," Hewitt replied. "And as we shall probably have to give
+    evidence, you'll be giving yourself away if you talk too much."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I don't care; that'll make no difference. It's a fair cop, and I'm
+    in for it. You got at me nicely, lending me three quid. I never knew a
+    reeler do that before. That blinded me. But was it kid about Gold
+    Street?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, it wasn't. Mr. Hollams is safely shut up by this time, I expect,
+    and you are avenged for your little trouble with him this afternoon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you know about that? Well, you've got it up nicely for me, I
+    must say. S'pose you've been following me all the time?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes; I haven't been far off. I guessed you'd want to clear out of
+    town if Hollams was taken, and I knew this"&mdash;Hewitt tapped his breast
+    pocket&mdash;"was what you'd take care to get hold of first. You hid it, of
+    course, because you knew that Hollams would probably have you searched
+    for it if he got suspicious?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, he did, too. Two blokes went over my pockets one night, and
+    somebody got into my room. But I expected that, Hollams is such a greedy
+    pig. Once he's got you under his thumb he don't give you half your
+    makings, and, if you kick, he'll have you smugged. So that I wasn't going
+    to give him <i>that</i> if I could help it. I s'pose it ain't any good asking
+    how you got put on to our mob?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Hewitt, "it isn't."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    We didn't get back till the next day, staying for the night, despite an
+    inconvenient want of requisites, at the Hall. There were, in fact, no
+    late trains. We told Sir Valentine the story of the Irishman, much to his
+    amusement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Leamy's tale sounded unlikely, of course," Hewitt said, "but it was
+    noticeable that every one of his misfortunes pointed in the same
+    direction&mdash;that certain persons were tremendously anxious to get at
+    something they supposed he had. When he spoke of his adventure with the
+    bag, I at once remembered Wilks' arrest and subsequent release. It was a
+    curious coincidence, to say the least, that this should happen at the
+    very station to which the proceeds of this robbery must come, if they
+    came to London at all, and on the day following the robbery itself.
+    Kedderby is one of the few stations on this line where no trains would
+    stop after the time of the robbery, so that the thief would have to wait
+    till the next day to get back. Leamy's recognition of Wilks' portrait
+    made me feel pretty certain. Plainly, he had carried stolen property; the
+    poor, innocent fellow's conversation with Hollams showed that, as, in
+    fact, did the sum, five pounds, paid to him by way of 'regulars,' or
+    customary toll, from the plunder of services of carriage. Hollams
+    obviously took Leamy for a criminal friend of Wilks', because of his use
+    of the thieves' expressions 'sparks' and 'regulars,' and suggested, in
+    terms which Leamy misunderstood, that he should sell any plunder he might
+    obtain to himself, Hollams. Altogether it would have been very curious if
+    the plunder were <i>not</i> that from Radcot Hall, especially as no other
+    robbery had been reported at the time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, among the jewels taken, only one was of a very pre-eminent
+    value&mdash;the famous ruby. It was scarcely likely that Hollams would go to
+    so much trouble and risk, attempting to drug, injuring, waylaying, and
+    burgling the rooms of the unfortunate Leamy, for a jewel of small
+    value&mdash;for any jewel, in fact, but the ruby. So that I felt a pretty
+    strong presumption, at all events, that it was the ruby Hollams was
+    after. Leamy had not had it, I was convinced, from his tale and his
+    manner, and from what I judged of the man himself. The only other person
+    was Wilks, and certainly he had a temptation to keep this to himself, and
+    avoid, if possible, sharing with his London director, or principal; while
+    the carriage of the bag by the Irishman gave him a capital opportunity to
+    put suspicion on him, with the results seen. The most daring of Hollams'
+    attacks on Leamy was doubtless the attempted maiming or killing at the
+    railway station, so as to be able, in the character of a medical man, to
+    search his pockets. He was probably desperate at the time, having, I have
+    no doubt, been following Leamy about all day at the Crystal Palace
+    without finding an opportunity to get at his pockets.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The struggle and flight of Wilks from Hollams' confirmed my previous
+    impressions. Hollams, finally satisfied that very morning that Leamy
+    certainly had not the jewel, either on his person or at his lodging, and
+    knowing, from having so closely watched him, that he had been nowhere
+    where it could be disposed of, concluded that Wilks was cheating him, and
+    attempted to extort the ruby from him by the aid of another ruffian and a
+    pistol. The rest of my way was plain. Wilks, I knew, would seize the
+    opportunity of Hollams' being safely locked up to get at and dispose of
+    the ruby. I supplied him with funds and left him to lead us to his
+    hiding-place. He did it, and I think that's all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He must have walked straight away from my house to the churchyard," Sir
+    Valentine remarked, "to hide that pendant. That was fairly cool."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Only a cool hand could carry out such a robbery single-handed," Hewitt
+    answered. "I expect his tools were in the bag that Leamy carried, as well
+    as the jewels. They must have been a small and neat set."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were. We ascertained on our return to town the next day that the
+    bag, with all its contents intact, including the tools, had been taken by
+    the police at their surprise visit to No. 8 Gold Street, as well as much
+    other stolen property.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hollams and Wilks each got very wholesome doses of penal servitude, to
+    the intense delight of Mick Leamy. Leamy himself, by the by, is still to
+    be seen, clad in a noble uniform, guarding the door of a well-known
+    London restaurant. He has not had any more five-pound notes for carrying
+    bags, but knows London too well now to expect it.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH6"></a>
+<h3>
+   VI. THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It is now a fair number of years back since the loss of the famous
+    Stanway Cameo made its sensation, and the only person who had the least
+    interest in keeping the real facts of the case secret has now been dead
+    for some time, leaving neither relatives nor other representatives.
+    Therefore no harm will be done in making the inner history of the case
+    public; on the contrary, it will afford an opportunity of vindicating the
+    professional reputation of Hewitt, who is supposed to have completely
+    failed to make anything of the mystery surrounding the case. At the
+    present time connoisseurs in ancient objects of art are often heard
+    regretfully to wonder whether the wonderful cameo, so suddenly discovered
+    and so quickly stolen, will ever again be visible to the public eye. Now
+    this question need be asked no longer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cameo, as may be remembered from the many descriptions published at
+    the time, was said to be absolutely the finest extant. It was a sardonyx
+    of three strata&mdash;one of those rare sardonyx cameos in which it has been
+    possible for the artist to avail himself of three different colors of
+    superimposed stone&mdash;the lowest for the ground and the two others for the
+    middle and high relief of the design. In size it was, for a cameo,
+    immense, measuring seven and a half inches by nearly six. In subject it
+    was similar to the renowned Gonzaga Cameo&mdash;now the property of the Czar
+    of Russia&mdash;a male and a female head with imperial insignia; but in this
+    case supposed to represent Tiberius Claudius and Messalina. Experts
+    considered it probably to be the work of Athenion, a famous gem-cutter of
+    the first Christian century, whose most notable other work now extant is
+    a smaller cameo, with a mythological subject, preserved in the Vatican.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Stanway Cameo had been discovered in an obscure Italian village by
+    one of those traveling agents who scour all Europe for valuable
+    antiquities and objects of art. This man had hurried immediately to
+    London with his prize, and sold it to Mr. Claridge of St. James Street,
+    eminent as a dealer in such objects. Mr. Claridge, recognizing the
+    importance and value of the article, lost no opportunity of making its
+    existence known, and very soon the Claudius Cameo, as it was at first
+    usually called, was as famous as any in the world. Many experts in
+    ancient art examined it, and several large bids were made for its
+    purchase.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the end it was bought by the Marquis of Stanway for five thousand
+    pounds for the purpose of presentation to the British Museum. The marquis
+    kept the cameo at his town house for a few days, showing it to his
+    friends, and then returned it to Mr. Claridge to be finally and carefully
+    cleaned before passing into the national collection. Two nights after Mr.
+    Claridge's premises were broken into and the cameo stolen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such, in outline, was the generally known history of the Stanway Cameo.
+    The circumstances of the burglary in detail were these: Mr. Claridge had
+    himself been the last to leave the premises at about eight in the
+    evening, at dusk, and had locked the small side door as usual. His
+    assistant, Mr. Cutler, had left an hour and a half earlier. When Mr.
+    Claridge left, everything was in order, and the policeman on fixed-point
+    duty just opposite, who bade Mr. Claridge good-evening as he left, saw
+    nothing suspicious during the rest of his term of duty, nor did his
+    successors at the point throughout the night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning, however, Mr. Cutler, the assistant, who arrived first,
+    soon after nine o'clock, at once perceived that something unlooked-for
+    had happened. The door, of which he had a key, was still fastened, and
+    had not been touched; but in the room behind the shop Mr. Claridge's
+    private desk had been broken open, and the contents turned out in
+    confusion. The door leading on to the staircase had also been forced.
+    Proceeding up the stairs, Mr. Cutler found another door open, leading
+    from the top landing to a small room; this door had been opened by the
+    simple expedient of unscrewing and taking off the lock, which had been on
+    the inside. In the ceiling of this room was a trap-door, and this was six
+    or eight inches open, the edge resting on the half-wrenched-off bolt,
+    which had been torn away when the trap was levered open from the outside.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Plainly, then, this was the path of the thief or thieves. Entrance had
+    been made through the trap-door, two more doors had been opened, and then
+    the desk had been ransacked. Mr. Cutler afterward explained that at this
+    time he had no precise idea what had been stolen, and did not know where
+    the cameo had been left on the previous evening. Mr. Claridge had himself
+    undertaken the cleaning, and had been engaged on it, the assistant said,
+    when he left.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no doubt, however, after Mr. Claridge's arrival at ten
+    o'clock&mdash;the cameo was gone. Mr. Claridge, utterly confounded at his
+    loss, explained incoherently, and with curses on his own carelessness,
+    that he had locked the precious article in his desk on relinquishing
+    work on it the previous evening, feeling rather tired, and not taking the
+    trouble to carry it as far as the safe in another part of the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The police were sent for at once, of course, and every investigation
+    made, Mr. Claridge offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the
+    recovery of the cameo. The affair was scribbled off at large in the
+    earliest editions of the evening papers, and by noon all the world was
+    aware of the extraordinary theft of the Stanway Cameo, and many people
+    were discussing the probabilities of the case, with very indistinct ideas
+    of what a sardonyx cameo precisely was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was in the afternoon of this day that Lord Stanway called on Martin
+    Hewitt. The marquis was a tall, upstanding man of spare figure and active
+    habits, well known as a member of learned societies and a great patron of
+    art. He hurried into Hewitt's private room as soon as his name had been
+    announced, and, as soon as Hewitt had given him a chair, plunged into
+    business.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Probably you already guess my business with you, Mr. Hewitt&mdash;you have
+    seen the early evening papers? Just so; then I needn't tell you again
+    what you already know. My cameo is gone, and I badly want it back. Of
+    course the police are hard at work at Claridge's, but I'm not quite
+    satisfied. I have been there myself for two or three hours, and can't see
+    that they know any more about it than I do myself. Then, of course, the
+    police, naturally and properly enough from their point of view, look
+    first to find the criminal, regarding the recovery of the property almost
+    as a secondary consideration. Now, from <i>my</i> point of view, the chief
+    consideration is the property. Of course I want the thief caught, if
+    possible, and properly punished; but still more I want the cameo."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly it is a considerable loss. Five thousand pounds&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, but don't misunderstand me! It isn't the monetary value of the thing
+    that I regret. As a matter of fact, I am indemnified for that already.
+    Claridge has behaved most honorably&mdash;more than honorably. Indeed, the
+    first intimation I had of the loss was a check from him for five thousand
+    pounds, with a letter assuring me that the restoration to me of the
+    amount I had paid was the least he could do to repair the result of what
+    he called his unpardonable carelessness. Legally, I'm not sure that I
+    could demand anything of him, unless I could prove very flagrant neglect
+    indeed to guard against theft."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then I take it, Lord Stanway," Hewitt observed, "that you much prefer
+    the cameo to the money?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly. Else I should never have been willing to pay the money for
+    the cameo. It was an enormous price&mdash;perhaps much above the market value,
+    even for such a valuable thing&mdash;but I was particularly anxious that it
+    should not go out of the country. Our public collections here are not so
+    fortunate as they should be in the possession of the very finest examples
+    of that class of work. In short, I had determined on the cameo, and,
+    fortunately, happen to be able to carry out determinations of that sort
+    without regarding an extra thousand pounds or so as an obstacle. So that,
+    you see, what I want is not the value, but the thing itself. Indeed, I
+    don't think I can possibly keep the money Claridge has sent me; the
+    affair is more his misfortune than his fault. But I shall say nothing
+    about returning it for a little while; it may possibly have the effect of
+    sharpening everybody in the search."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. Do I understand that you would like me to look into the case
+    independently, on your behalf?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly. I want you, if you can, to approach the matter entirely from my
+    point of view&mdash;your sole object being to find the cameo. Of course, if
+    you happen on the thief as well, so much the better. Perhaps, after all,
+    looking for the one is the same thing as looking for the other?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not always; but usually it is, or course; even if they are not
+    together, they certainly <i>have</i> been at one time, and to have one is a
+    very long step toward having the other. Now, to begin with, is anybody
+    suspected?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, the police are reserved, but I believe the fact is they've nothing
+    to say. Claridge won't admit that he suspects any one, though he believes
+    that whoever it was must have watched him yesterday evening through the
+    back window of his room, and must have seen him put the cameo away in his
+    desk; because the thief would seem to have gone straight to the place.
+    But I half fancy that, in his inner mind, he is inclined to suspect one
+    of two people. You see, a robbery of this sort is different from others.
+    That cameo would never be stolen, I imagine, with the view of its being
+    sold&mdash;it is much too famous a thing; a man might as well walk about
+    offering to sell the Tower of London. There are only a very few people
+    who buy such things, and every one of them knows all about it. No dealer
+    would touch it; he could never even show it, much less sell it, without
+    being called to account. So that it really seems more likely that it has
+    been taken by somebody who wishes to keep it for mere love of the
+    thing&mdash;a collector, in fact&mdash;who would then have to keep it secretly at
+    home, and never let a soul besides himself see it, living in the
+    consciousness that at his death it must be found and this theft known;
+    unless, indeed, an ordinary vulgar burglar has taken it without knowing
+    its value."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That isn't likely," Hewitt replied. "An ordinary burglar, ignorant of
+    its value, wouldn't have gone straight to the cameo and have taken it in
+    preference to many other things of more apparent worth, which must be
+    lying near in such a place as Claridge's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "True&mdash;I suppose he wouldn't. Although the police seem to think that the
+    breaking in is clearly the work of a regular criminal&mdash;from the
+    jimmy-marks, you know, and so on."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, but what of the two people you think Mr. Claridge suspects?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course I can't say that he does suspect them&mdash;I only fancied from his
+    tone that it might be possible; he himself insists that he can't, in
+    justice, suspect anybody. One of these men is Hahn, the traveling agent
+    who sold him the cameo. This man's character does not appear to be
+    absolutely irreproachable; no dealer trusts him very far. Of course
+    Claridge doesn't say what he paid him for the cameo; these dealers are
+    very reticent about their profits, which I believe are as often something
+    like five hundred per cent as not. But it seems Hahn bargained to have
+    something extra, depending on the amount Claridge could sell the carving
+    for. According to the appointment he should have turned up this morning,
+    but he hasn't been seen, and nobody seems to know exactly where he is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; and the other person?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I scarcely like mentioning him, because he is certainly a
+    gentleman, and I believe, in the ordinary way, quite incapable of
+    anything in the least degree dishonorable; although, of course, they say
+    a collector has no conscience in the matter of his own particular hobby,
+    and certainly Mr. Wollett is as keen a collector as any man alive. He
+    lives in chambers in the next turning past Claridge's premises&mdash;can, in
+    fact, look into Claridge's back windows if he likes. He examined the
+    cameo several times before I bought it, and made several high
+    offers&mdash;appeared, in fact, very anxious indeed to get it. After I had
+    bought it he made, I understand, some rather strong remarks about people
+    like myself 'spoiling the market' by paying extravagant prices, and
+    altogether cut up 'crusty,' as they say, at losing the specimen." Lord
+    Stanway paused a few seconds, and then went on: "I'm not sure that I
+    ought to mention Mr. Woollett's name for a moment in connection with such
+    a matter; I am personally perfectly certain that he is as incapable of
+    anything like theft as myself. But I am telling you all I know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. I can't know too much in a case like this. It can do no harm
+    if I know all about fifty innocent people, and may save me from the risk
+    of knowing nothing about the thief. Now, let me see: Mr. Wollett's rooms,
+    you say, are near Mr. Claridge's place of business? Is there any means of
+    communication between the roofs?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I am told that it is perfectly possible to get from one place to
+    the other by walking along the leads."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good! Then, unless you can think of any other information that may
+    help me, I think, Lord Stanway, I will go at once and look at the place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do, by all means. I think I'll come back with you. Somehow, I don't like
+    to feel idle in the matter, though I suppose I can't do much. As to more
+    information, I don't think there is any."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In regard to Mr. Claridge's assistant, now: Do you know anything of
+    him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Only that he has always seemed a very civil and decent sort of man.
+    Honest, I should say, or Claridge wouldn't have kept him so many
+    years&mdash;there are a good many valuable things about at Claridge's.
+    Besides, the man has keys of the place himself, and, even if he were a
+    thief, he wouldn't need to go breaking in through the roof."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So that," said Hewitt, "we have, directly connected with this cameo,
+    besides yourself, these people: Mr. Claridge, the dealer; Mr. Cutler, the
+    assistant in Mr. Claridge's business; Hahn, who sold the article to
+    Claridge, and Mr. Woollett, who made bids for it. These are all?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All that I know of. Other gentlemen made bids, I believe, but I don't
+    know them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take these people in their order. Mr. Claridge is out of the question,
+    as a dealer with a reputation to keep up would be, even if he hadn't
+    immediately sent you this five thousand pounds&mdash;more than the market
+    value, I understand, of the cameo. The assistant is a reputable man,
+    against whom nothing is known, who would never need to break in, and who
+    must understand his business well enough to know that he could never
+    attempt to sell the missing stone without instant detection. Hahn is a
+    man of shady antecedents, probably clever enough to know as well as
+    anybody how to dispose of such plunder&mdash;if it be possible to dispose of
+    it at all; also, Hahn hasn't been to Claridge's to-day, although he had
+    an appointment to take money. Lastly, Mr. Woollett is a gentleman of the
+    most honorable record, but a perfectly rabid collector, who had made
+    every effort to secure the cameo before you bought it; who, moreover,
+    could have seen Mr. Claridge working in his back room, and who has
+    perfectly easy access to Mr. Claridge's roof. If we find it can't be none
+    of these, then we must look where circumstances indicate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was unwonted excitement at Mr. Claridge's place when Hewitt and his
+    client arrived. It was a dull old building, and in the windows there was
+    never more show than an odd blue china vase or two, or, mayhap, a few old
+    silver shoe-buckles and a curious small sword. Nine men out of ten would
+    have passed it without a glance; but the tenth at least would probably
+    know it for a place famous through the world for the number and value of
+    the old and curious objects of art that had passed through it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On this day two or three loiterers, having heard of the robbery,
+    extracted what gratification they might from staring at nothing between
+    the railings guarding the windows. Within, Mr. Claridge, a brisk, stout,
+    little old man, was talking earnestly to a burly police-inspector in
+    uniform, and Mr. Cutler, who had seized the opportunity to attempt
+    amateur detective work on his own account, was groveling perseveringly
+    about the floor, among old porcelain and loose pieces of armor, in the
+    futile hope of finding any clue that the thieves might have
+    considerately dropped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge came forward eagerly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The leather case has been found, I am pleased to be able to tell you,
+    Lord Stanway, since you left."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Empty, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Unfortunately, yes. It had evidently been thrown away by the thief
+    behind a chimney-stack a roof or two away, where the police have found
+    it. But it is a clue, of course."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, then this gentleman will give me his opinion of it," Lord Stanway
+    said, turning to Hewitt. "This, Mr. Claridge, is Mr. Martin Hewitt, who
+    has been kind enough to come with me here at a moment's notice. With the
+    police on the one hand and Mr. Hewitt on the other we shall certainly
+    recover that cameo, if it is to be recovered, I think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge bowed, and beamed on Hewitt through his spectacles. "I'm
+    very glad Mr. Hewitt has come," he said. "Indeed, I had already decided
+    to give the police till this time to-morrow, and then, if they had found
+    nothing, to call in Mr. Hewitt myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt bowed in his turn, and then asked: "Will you let me see the
+    various breakages? I hope they have not been disturbed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing whatever has been disturbed. Do exactly as seems best. I need
+    scarcely say that everything here is perfectly at your disposal. You know
+    all the circumstances, of course?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In general, yes. I suppose I am right in the belief that you have no
+    resident housekeeper?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Claridge replied, "I haven't. I had one housekeeper who sometimes
+    pawned my property in the evening, and then another who used to break my
+    most valuable china, till I could never sleep or take a moment's ease at
+    home for fear my stock was being ruined here. So I gave up resident
+    housekeepers. I felt some confidence in doing it because of the policeman
+    who is always on duty opposite."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can I see the broken desk?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge led the way into the room behind the shop. The desk was
+    really a sort of work-table, with a lifting top and a lock. The top had
+    been forced roughly open by some instrument which had been pushed in
+    below it and used as a lever, so that the catch of the lock was torn
+    away. Hewitt examined the damaged parts and the marks of the lever, and
+    then looked out at the back window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There are several windows about here," he remarked, "from which it might
+    be possible to see into this room. Do you know any of the people who live
+    behind them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Two or three I know," Mr. Claridge answered, "but there are two
+    windows&mdash;the pair almost immediately before us&mdash;belonging to a room or
+    office which is to let. Any stranger might get in there and watch."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do the roofs above any of those windows communicate in any way with
+    yours?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "None of those directly opposite. Those at the left do; you may walk all
+    the way along the leads."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And whose windows are they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge hesitated. "Well," he said, "they're Mr. Woollett's, an
+    excellent customer of mine. But he's a gentleman, and&mdash;well, I really
+    think it's absurd to suspect him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In a case like this," Hewitt answered, "one must disregard nothing but
+    the impossible. Somebody&mdash;whether Mr. Woollett himself or another
+    person&mdash;could possibly have seen into this room from those windows, and
+    equally possibly could have reached this room from that one. Therefore we
+    must not forget Mr. Woollett. Have any of your neighbors been burgled
+    during the night? I mean that strangers anxious to get at your trap-door
+    would probably have to begin by getting into some other house close by,
+    so as to reach your roof."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Mr. Claridge replied; "there has been nothing of that sort. It was
+    the first thing the police ascertained."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt examined the broken door and then made his way up the stairs with
+    the others. The unscrewed lock of the door of the top back-room required
+    little examination. In the room below the trap-door was a dusty table on
+    which stood a chair, and at the other side of the table sat
+    Detective-Inspector Plummer, whom Hewitt knew very well, and who bade him
+    "good-day" and then went on with his docket.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This chair and table were found as they are now, I take it?" Hewitt
+    asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," said Mr. Claridge; "the thieves, I should think, dropped in
+    through the trap-door, after breaking it open, and had to place this
+    chair where it is to be able to climb back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt scrambled up through the trap-way and examined it from the top.
+    The door was hung on long external barn-door hinges, and had been forced
+    open in a similar manner to that practiced on the desk. A jimmy had been
+    pushed between the frame and the door near the bolt, and the door had
+    been pried open, the bolt being torn away from the screws in the
+    operation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Inspector Plummer, having finished his docket, climbed up to
+    the roof after Hewitt, and the two together went to the spot, close under
+    a chimney-stack on the next roof but one, where the case had been found.
+    Plummer produced the case, which he had in his coat-tail pocket, for
+    Hewitt's inspection.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't see anything particular about it; do you?" he said. "It shows us
+    the way they went, though, being found just here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes," Hewitt said; "if we kept on in this direction, we should be
+    going toward Mr. Woollett's house, and <i>his</i> trap-door, shouldn't we!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The inspector pursed his lips, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. "Of
+    course we haven't waited till now to find that out," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, of course. And, as you say, I didn't think there is much to be
+    learned from this leather case. It is almost new, and there isn't a mark
+    on it." And Hewitt handed it back to the inspector.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Plummer, as he returned the case to his pocket, "what's your
+    opinion?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's rather an awkward case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it is. Between ourselves&mdash;I don't mind telling you&mdash;I'm having a
+    sharp lookout kept over there"&mdash;Plummer jerked his head in the direction
+    of Mr. Woollett's chambers&mdash;"because the robbery's an unusual one.
+    There's only two possible motives&mdash;the sale of the cameo or the keeping
+    of it. The sale's out of the question, as you know; the thing's only
+    salable to those who would collar the thief at once, and who wouldn't
+    have the thing in their places now for anything. So that it must be taken
+    to keep, and that's a thing nobody but the maddest of collectors would
+    do, just such persons as&mdash;" and the inspector nodded again toward Mr.
+    Woollett's quarters. "Take that with the other circumstances," he added,
+    "and I think you'll agree it's worth while looking a little farther that
+    way. Of course some of the work&mdash;taking off the lock and so on&mdash;looks
+    rather like a regular burglar, but it's just possible that any one badly
+    wanting the cameo would like to hire a man who was up to the work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it's possible."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you know anything of Hahn, the agent?" Plummer asked, a moment later.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't. Have you found him yet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I haven't yet, but I'm after him. I've found he was at Charing Cross a
+    day or two ago, booking a ticket for the Continent. That and his failing
+    to turn up to-day seem to make it worth while not to miss <i>him</i> if we can
+    help it. He isn't the sort of man that lets a chance of drawing a bit of
+    money go for nothing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They returned to the room. "Well," said Lord Stanway, "what's the result
+    of the consultation? We've been waiting here very patiently, while you
+    two clever men have been discussing the matter on the roof."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the wall just beneath the trap-door a very dusty old tall hat hung on
+    a peg. This Hewitt took down and examined very closely, smearing his
+    fingers with the dust from the inside lining. "Is this one of your
+    valuable and crusted old antiques?" he asked, with a smile, of Mr.
+    Claridge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's only an old hat that I used to keep here for use in bad weather,"
+    Mr. Claridge said, with some surprise at the question. "I haven't touched
+    it for a year or more."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, then it couldn't have been left here by your last night's visitor,"
+    Hewitt replied, carelessly replacing it on the hook. "You left here at
+    eight last night, I think?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Eight exactly&mdash;or within a minute or two."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just so. I think I'll look at the room on the opposite side of the
+    landing, if you'll let me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, if you'd like to," Claridge replied; "but they haven't been
+    there&mdash;it is exactly as it was left. Only a lumber-room, you see," he
+    concluded, flinging the door open.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A number of partly broken-up packing-cases littered about this room, with
+    much other rubbish. Hewitt took the lid of one of the newest-looking
+    packing-cases, and glanced at the address label. Then he turned to a
+    rusty old iron box that stood against a wall. "I should like to see
+    behind this," he said, tugging at it with his hands. "It is heavy and
+    dirty. Is there a small crowbar about the house, or some similar lever?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge shook his head. "Haven't such a thing in the place," he
+    said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind," Hewitt replied, "another time will do to shift that old
+    box, and perhaps, after all, there's little reason for moving it. I will
+    just walk round to the police-station, I think, and speak to the
+    constables who were on duty opposite during the night. I think, Lord
+    Stanway, I have seen all that is necessary here."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose," asked Mr. Claridge, "it is too soon yet to ask if you have
+    formed any theory in the matter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;yes, it is," Hewitt answered. "But perhaps I may be able to
+    surprise you in an hour or two; but that I don't promise. By the by," he
+    added suddenly, "I suppose you're sure the trap-door was bolted last
+    night?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly," Mr. Claridge answered, smiling. "Else how could the bolt
+    have been broken? As a matter of fact, I believe the trap hasn't been
+    opened for months. Mr. Cutler, do you remember when the trap-door was
+    last opened?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Cutler shook his head. "Certainly not for six months," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah, very well; it's not very important," Hewitt replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As they reached the front shop a fiery-faced old gentleman bounced in at
+    the street door, stumbling over an umbrella that stood in a dark corner,
+    and kicking it three yards away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What the deuce do you mean," he roared at Mr. Claridge, "by sending
+    these police people smelling about my rooms and asking questions of my
+    servants? What do you mean, sir, by treating me as a thief? Can't a
+    gentleman come into this place to look at an article without being
+    suspected of stealing it, when it disappears through your wretched
+    carelessness? I'll ask my solicitor, sir, if there isn't a remedy for
+    this sort of thing. And if I catch another of your spy fellows on my
+    staircase, or crawling about my roof, I'll&mdash;I'll shoot him!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really, Mr. Woollett&mdash;&mdash;" began Mr. Claridge, somewhat abashed, but the
+    angry old man would hear nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't talk to me, sir; you shall talk to my solicitor. And am I to
+    understand, my lord"&mdash;turning to Lord Stanway&mdash;"that these things are
+    being done with your approval?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whatever is being done," Lord Stanway answered, "is being done by the
+    police on their own responsibility, and entirely without prompting, I
+    believe, by Mr. Claridge&mdash;certainly without a suggestion of any sort from
+    myself. I think that the personal opinion of Mr. Claridge&mdash;certainly my
+    own&mdash;is that anything like a suspicion of your position in this wretched
+    matter is ridiculous. And if you will only consider the matter calmly&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Consider it calmly? Imagine yourself considering such a thing calmly,
+    Lord Stanway. I <i>won't</i> consider it calmly. I'll&mdash;I'll&mdash;I won't have it.
+    And if I find another man on my roof, I'll pitch him off!" And Mr.
+    Woollett bounced into the street again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Woollett is annoyed," Hewitt observed, with a smile. "I'm afraid
+    Plummer has a clumsy assistant somewhere."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge said nothing, but looked rather glum, for Mr. Woollett was a
+    most excellent customer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lord Stanwood and Hewitt walked slowly down the street, Hewitt staring at
+    the pavement in profound thought. Once or twice Lord Stanway glanced at
+    his face, but refrained from disturbing him. Presently, however, he
+    observed: "You seem, at least, Mr. Hewitt, to have noticed something that
+    has set you thinking. Does it look like a clue?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt came out of his cogitation at once. "A clue?" he said; "the case
+    bristles with clues. The extraordinary thing to me is that Plummer,
+    usually a smart man, doesn't seem to have seen one of them. He must be
+    out of sorts, I'm afraid. But the case is decidedly a most remarkable
+    one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Remarkable in what particular way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In regard to motive. Now it would seem, as Plummer was saying to me just
+    now on the roof, that there were only two possible motives for such a
+    robbery. Either the man who took all this trouble and risk to break into
+    Claridge's place must have desired to sell the cameo at a good price, or
+    he must have desired to keep it for himself, being a lover of such
+    things. But neither of these has been the actual motive."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps he thinks he can extort a good sum from me by way of ransom?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, it isn't that. Nor is it jealousy, nor spite, nor anything of that
+    kind. I know the motive, I <i>think</i>&mdash;but I wish we could get hold of Hahn.
+    I will shut myself up alone and turn it over in my mind for half an hour
+    presently."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Meanwhile, what I want to know is, apart from all your professional
+    subtleties&mdash;which I confess I can't understand&mdash;can you get back the
+    cameo?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That," said Hewitt, stopping at the corner of the street, "I am rather
+    afraid I can not&mdash;nor anybody else. But I am pretty sure I know the
+    thief."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then surely that will lead you to the cameo?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It <i>may</i>, of course; but, then, it is just possible that by this evening
+    you may not want to have it back, after all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lord Stanway stared in amazement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not want to have it back!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course I shall want to
+    have it back. I don't understand you in the least; you talk in
+    conundrums. Who is the thief you speak of?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think, Lord Stanway," Hewitt said, "that perhaps I had better not say
+    until I have quite finished my inquiries, in case of mistakes. The case
+    is quite an extraordinary one, and of quite a different character from
+    what one would at first naturally imagine, and I must be very careful to
+    guard against the possibility of error. I have very little fear of a
+    mistake, however, and I hope I may wait on you in a few hours at
+    Piccadilly with news. I have only to see the policemen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, come whenever you please. But why see the policemen? They
+    have already most positively stated that they saw nothing whatever
+    suspicious in the house or near it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall not ask them anything at all about the house," Hewitt responded.
+    "I shall just have a little chat with them&mdash;about the weather." And with
+    a smiling bow he turned away, while Lord Stanway stood and gazed after
+    him, with an expression that implied a suspicion that his special
+    detective was making a fool of him.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    In rather more than an hour Hewitt was back in Mr. Claridge's shop. "Mr.
+    Claridge," he said, "I think I must ask you one or two questions in
+    private. May I see you in your own room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    They went there at once, and Hewitt, pulling a chair before the window,
+    sat down with his back to the light. The dealer shut the door, and sat
+    opposite him, with the light full in his face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Claridge," Hewitt proceeded slowly, "<i>when did you first find that
+    Lord Stanway's cameo was a forgery</i>?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Claridge literally bounced in his chair. His face paled, but he managed
+    to stammer sharply: "What&mdash;what&mdash;what d'you mean? Forgery? Do you mean to
+    say I sell forgeries? Forgery? It wasn't a forgery!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then," continued Hewitt in the same deliberate tone, watching the
+    other's face the while, "if it wasn't a forgery, <i>why did you destroy it
+    and burst your trap-door and desk to imitate a burglary</i>?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sweat stood thick on the dealer's face, and he gasped. But he
+    struggled hard to keep his faculties together, and ejaculated hoarsely:
+    "Destroy it? What&mdash;what&mdash;I didn't&mdash;didn't destroy it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Threw it into the river, then&mdash;don't prevaricate about details."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No&mdash;no&mdash;it's a lie! Who says that? Go away! You're insulting me!"
+    Claridge almost screamed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, come, Mr. Claridge," Hewitt said more placably, for he had gained
+    his point; "don't distress yourself, and don't attempt to deceive me&mdash;you
+    can't, I assure you. I know everything you did before you left here last
+    night&mdash;everything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Claridge's face worked painfully. Once or twice he appeared to be on the
+    point of returning an indignant reply, but hesitated, and finally broke
+    down altogether.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't expose me, Mr. Hewitt!" he pleaded; "I beg you won't expose me! I
+    haven't harmed a soul but myself. I've paid Lord Stanway every penny
+    back, and I never knew the thing was a forgery till I began to clean it.
+    I'm an old man, Mr. Hewitt, and my professional reputation has been
+    spotless until now. I beg you won't expose me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt's voice softened. "Don't make an unnecessary trouble of it," he
+    said. "I see a decanter on your sideboard&mdash;let me give you a little
+    brandy and water. Come, there's nothing criminal, I believe, in a man's
+    breaking open his own desk, or his own trap-door, for that matter. Of
+    course I'm acting for Lord Stanway in this affair, and I must, in duty,
+    report to him without reserve. But Lord Stanway is a gentleman, and I'll
+    undertake he'll do nothing inconsiderate of your feelings, if you're
+    disposed to be frank. Let us talk the affair over; tell me about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It was that swindler Hahn who deceived me in the beginning," Claridge
+    said. "I have never made a mistake with a cameo before, and I never
+    thought so close an imitation was possible. I examined it most carefully,
+    and was perfectly satisfied, and many experts examined it afterward, and
+    were all equally deceived. I felt as sure as I possibly could feel that I
+    had bought one of the finest, if not actually the finest, cameos known to
+    exist. It was not until after it had come back from Lord Stanway's, and I
+    was cleaning it the evening before last, that in course of my work it
+    became apparent that the thing was nothing but a consummately clever
+    forgery. It was made of three layers of molded glass, nothing more nor
+    less. But the glass was treated in a way I had never before known of, and
+    the surface had been cunningly worked on till it defied any ordinary
+    examination. Some of the glass imitation cameos made in the latter part
+    of the last century, I may tell you, are regarded as marvelous pieces of
+    work, and, indeed, command very fair prices, but this was something quite
+    beyond any of those.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was amazed and horrified. I put the thing away and went home. All that
+    night I lay awake in a state of distraction, quite unable to decide what
+    to do. To let the cameo go out of my possession was impossible. Sooner or
+    later the forgery would be discovered, and my reputation&mdash;the highest in
+    these matters in this country, I may safely claim, and the growth of
+    nearly fifty years of honest application and good judgment&mdash;this
+    reputation would be gone forever. But without considering this, there was
+    the fact that I had taken five thousand pounds of Lord Stanway's money
+    for a mere piece of glass, and that money I must, in mere common honesty
+    as well as for my own sake, return. But how? The name of the Stanway
+    Cameo had become a household word, and to confess that the whole thing
+    was a sham would ruin my reputation and destroy all confidence&mdash;past,
+    present, and future&mdash;in me and in my transactions. Either way spelled
+    ruin. Even if I confided in Lord Stanway privately, returned his money,
+    and destroyed the cameo, what then? The sudden disappearance of an
+    article so famous would excite remark at once. It had been presented to
+    the British Museum, and if it never appeared in that collection, and no
+    news were to be got of it, people would guess at the truth at once. To
+    make it known that I myself had been deceived would have availed nothing.
+    It is my business <i>not</i> to be deceived; and to have it known that my most
+    expensive specimens might be forgeries would equally mean ruin, whether I
+    sold them cunningly as a rogue or ignorantly as a fool. Indeed, my pride,
+    my reputation as a connoisseur, is a thing near to my heart, and it would
+    be an unspeakable humiliation to me to have it known that I had been
+    imposed on by such a forgery. What could I do? Every expedient seemed
+    useless but one&mdash;the one I adopted. It was not straightforward, I admit;
+    but, oh! Mr. Hewitt, consider the temptation&mdash;and remember that it
+    couldn't do a soul any harm. No matter who might be suspected, I knew
+    there could not possibly be evidence to make them suffer. All the next
+    day&mdash;yesterday&mdash;I was anxiously worrying out the thing in my mind and
+    carefully devising the&mdash;the trick, I'm afraid you'll call it, that you by
+    some extraordinary means have seen through. It seemed the only
+    thing&mdash;what else was there? More I needn't tell you; you know it. I have
+    only now to beg that you will use your best influence with Lord Stanway
+    to save me from public derision and exposure. I will do anything&mdash;pay
+    anything&mdash;anything but exposure, at my age, and with my position."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you see," Hewitt replied thoughtfully, "I've no doubt Lord Stanway
+    will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to
+    save you in the circumstances; though you must remember that you <i>have</i>
+    done some harm&mdash;you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest
+    man. But as to reputation, I've a professional reputation of my own. If I
+    help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed
+    in <i>my</i> part of the business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt. Consider. You are not
+    expected&mdash;it would be impossible&mdash;to succeed invariably; and there are
+    only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other
+    conspicuous successes&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, well, we shall see. One thing I don't know, though&mdash;whether you
+    climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got
+    up through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through
+    the jamb, so as to bolt it after you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There was no available window. I used the string, as you say. My poor
+    little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours
+    of thought over the question of the trap-door&mdash;how to break it open so as
+    to leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after
+    I had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility
+    of suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension.
+    How, to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery?
+    Did you ever see it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never. And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to
+    express an opinion on it; I'm not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I
+    <i>didn't</i> know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I
+    knew in the first place was that it was <i>you</i> who had broken into the
+    house. It was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain
+    amount of thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of
+    the question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo
+    again, and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway's money. I knew
+    enough of your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal
+    of a great theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for
+    yourself, when you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble
+    and mystery. Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first
+    another motive seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all
+    this trouble to lose five thousand pounds? You had nothing to gain;
+    perhaps you had something to save&mdash;your professional reputation, for
+    instance. Looking at it so, it was plain that you were <i>suppressing</i> the
+    cameo&mdash;burking it; since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never
+    come to light again. That suggested the solution of the mystery at
+    once&mdash;you had discovered, after the sale, that the cameo was not
+    genuine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes&mdash;I see; but you say you began with the knowledge that I broke
+    into the place myself. How did you know that? I can not imagine a
+    trace&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My dear sir, you left traces everywhere. In the first place, it struck
+    me as curious, before I came here, that you had sent off that check for
+    five thousand pounds to Lord Stanway an hour or so after the robbery was
+    discovered; it looked so much as though you were sure of the cameo never
+    coming back, and were in a hurry to avert suspicion. Of course I
+    understood that, so far as I then knew the case, you were the most
+    unlikely person in the world, and that your eagerness to repay Lord
+    Stanway might be the most creditable thing possible. But the point was
+    worth remembering, and I remembered it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When I came here, I saw suspicious indications in many directions, but
+    the conclusive piece of evidence was that old hat hanging below the
+    trap-door."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I never touched it; I assure you, Mr. Hewitt, I never touched the
+    hat; haven't touched it for months&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course. If you <i>had</i> touched it, I might never have got the clue. But
+    we'll deal with the hat presently; that wasn't what struck me at first.
+    The trap-door first took my attention. Consider, now: Here was a
+    trap-door, most insecurely hung on <i>external</i> hinges; the burglar had a
+    screwdriver, for he took off the door-lock below with it. Why, then,
+    didn't he take this trap off by the hinges, instead of making a noise and
+    taking longer time and trouble to burst the bolt from its fastenings? And
+    why, if he were a stranger, was he able to plant his jimmy from the
+    outside just exactly opposite the interior bolt? There was only one mark
+    on the frame, and that precisely in the proper place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "After that I saw the leather case. It had not been thrown away, or some
+    corner would have shown signs of the fall. It had been put down carefully
+    where it was found. These things, however, were of small importance
+    compared with the hat. The hat, as you know, was exceedingly thick with
+    dust&mdash;the accumulation of months. But, on the top side, presented toward
+    the trap-door, were a score or so of <i>raindrop marks</i>. That was all. They
+    were new marks, for there was no dust over them; they had merely had time
+    to dry and cake the dust they had fallen on. <i>Now, there had been no rain
+    since a sharp shower just after seven o'clock last night</i>. At that time
+    you, by your own statement, were in the place. You left at eight, and the
+    rain was all over at ten minutes or a quarter past seven. The trap-door,
+    you also told me, had not been opened for months. The thing was plain.
+    You, or somebody who was here when you were, had opened that trap-door
+    during, or just before, that shower. I said little then, but went, as
+    soon as I had left, to the police-station. There I made perfectly certain
+    that there had been no rain during the night by questioning the policemen
+    who were on duty outside all the time. There had been none. I knew
+    everything.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The only other evidence there was pointed with all the rest. There were
+    no rain-marks on the leather case; it had been put on the roof as an
+    after-thought when there was no rain. A very poor after-thought, let me
+    tell you, for no thief would throw away a useful case that concealed his
+    booty and protected it from breakage, and throw it away just so as to
+    leave a clue as to what direction he had gone in. I also saw, in the
+    lumber-room, a number of packing-cases&mdash;one with a label dated two days
+    back&mdash;which had been opened with an iron lever; and yet, when I made an
+    excuse to ask for it, you said there was no such thing in the place.
+    Inference, you didn't want me to compare it with the marks on the desks
+    and doors. That is all, I think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Claridge looked dolorously down at the floor. "I'm afraid," he said,
+    "that I took an unsuitable rôle when I undertook to rely on my wits to
+    deceive men like you. I thought there wasn't a single vulnerable spot in
+    my defense, but you walk calmly through it at the first attempt. Why did
+    I never think of those raindrops?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come," said Hewitt, with a smile, "that sounds unrepentant. I am going,
+    now, to Lord Stanway's. If I were you, I think I should apologize to Mr.
+    Woollett in some way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lord Stanway, who, in the hour or two of reflection left him after
+    parting with Hewitt, had come to the belief that he had employed a man
+    whose mind was not always in order, received Hewitt's story with natural
+    astonishment. For some time he was in doubt as to whether he would be
+    doing right in acquiescing in anything but a straightforward public
+    statement of the facts connected with the disappearance of the cameo, but
+    in the end was persuaded to let the affair drop, on receiving an
+    assurance from Mr. Woollett that he unreservedly accepted the apology
+    offered him by Mr. Claridge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the latter, he was at least sufficiently punished in loss of money
+    and personal humiliation for his escapade. But the bitterest and last
+    blow he sustained when the unblushing Hahn walked smilingly into his
+    office two days later to demand the extra payment agreed on in
+    consideration of the sale. He had been called suddenly away, he
+    exclaimed, on the day he should have come, and hoped his missing the
+    appointment had occasioned no inconvenience. As to the robbery of the
+    cameo, of course he was very sorry, but "pishness was pishness," and he
+    would be glad of a check for the sum agreed on. And the unhappy Claridge
+    was obliged to pay it, knowing that the man had swindled him, but unable
+    to open his mouth to say so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The reward remained on offer for a long time; indeed, it was never
+    publicly withdrawn, I believe, even at the time of Claridge's death. And
+    several intelligent newspapers enlarged upon the fact that an ordinary
+    burglar had completely baffled and defeated the boasted acumen of Mr.
+    Martin Hewitt, the well-known private detective.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="CH7"></a>
+<h3>
+   VII. THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Very often Hewitt was tempted, by the fascination of some particularly
+    odd case, to neglect his other affairs to follow up a matter that from a
+    business point of view was of little or no value to him. As a rule, he
+    had a sufficient regard for his own interests to resist such temptations,
+    but in one curious case, at least, I believe he allowed it largely to
+    influence him. It was certainly an extremely odd case&mdash;one of those
+    affairs that, coming to light at intervals, but more often remaining
+    unheard of by the general public, convince one that, after all, there is
+    very little extravagance about Mr. R.L. Stevenson's bizarre imaginings of
+    doings in London in his "New Arabian Nights." "There is nothing in this
+    world that is at all possible," I have often heard Martin Hewitt say,
+    "that has not happened or is not happening in London." Certainly he had
+    opportunities of knowing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The case I have referred to occurred some time before my own acquaintance
+    with him began&mdash;in 1878, in fact. He had called one Monday morning at an
+    office in regard to something connected with one of those uninteresting,
+    though often difficult, cases which formed, perhaps, the bulk of his
+    practice, when he was informed of a most mysterious murder that had taken
+    place in another part of the same building on the previous Saturday
+    afternoon. Owing to the circumstances of the case, only the vaguest
+    account had appeared in the morning papers, and even this, as it chanced,
+    Hewitt had not read.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The building was one of a new row in a partly rebuilt street near the
+    National Gallery. The whole row had been built by a speculator for the
+    purpose of letting out in flats, suites of chambers, and in one or two
+    cases, on the ground floors, offices. The rooms had let very well, and to
+    desirable tenants, as a rule. The least satisfactory tenant, the
+    proprietor reluctantly admitted, was a Mr. Rameau, a negro gentleman,
+    single, who had three rooms on the top floor but one of the particular
+    building that Hewitt was visiting. His rent was paid regularly, but his
+    behavior had produced complaints from other tenants. He got uproariously
+    drunk, and screamed and howled in unknown tongues. He fell asleep on the
+    staircase, and ladies were afraid to pass. He bawled rough chaff down the
+    stairs and along the corridors at butcher-boys and messengers, and played
+    on errand-boys brutal practical jokes that ended in police-court
+    summonses. He once had a way of sliding down the balusters, shouting:
+    "Ho! ho! ho! yah!" as he went, but as he was a big, heavy man, and the
+    balusters had been built for different treatment, he had very soon and
+    very firmly been requested to stop it. He had plenty of money, and spent
+    it freely; but it was generally felt that there was too much of the
+    light-hearted savage about him to fit him to live among quiet people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How much longer the landlord would have stood this sort of thing,
+    Hewitt's informant said, was a matter of conjecture, for on the Saturday
+    afternoon in question the tenancy had come to a startling full-stop.
+    Rameau had been murdered in his room, and the body had, in the most
+    unaccountable fashion, been secretly removed from the premises.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The strongest possible suspicion pointed to a man who had been employed
+    in shoveling and carrying coals, cleaning windows, and chopping wood for
+    several of the buildings, and who had left that very Saturday. The crime
+    had, in fact, been committed with this man's chopper, and the man himself
+    had been heard, again and again, to threaten Rameau, who, in his brutal
+    fashion, had made a butt of him. This man was a Frenchman, Victor Goujon
+    by name, who had lost his employment as a watchmaker by reason of an
+    injury to his right hand, which destroyed its steadiness, and so he had
+    fallen upon evil days and odd jobs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was a little man of no great strength, but extraordinarily excitable,
+    and the coarse gibes and horse-play of the big negro drove him almost to
+    madness. Rameau would often, after some more than ordinarily outrageous
+    attack, contemptuously fling Goujon a shilling, which the little
+    Frenchman, although wanting a shilling badly enough, would hurl back in
+    his face, almost weeping with impotent rage. "Pig! <i>Canaille</i>!" he would
+    scream. "Dirty pig of Africa! Take your sheelin' to vere you 'ave stole
+    it! <i>Voleur</i>! Pig!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a tortoise living in the basement, of which Goujon had made
+    rather a pet, and the negro would sometimes use this animal as a missile,
+    flinging it at the little Frenchman's head. On one such occasion the
+    tortoise struck the wall so forcibly as to break its shell, and then
+    Goujon seized a shovel and rushed at his tormentor with such blind fury
+    that the latter made a bolt of it. These were but a few of the passages
+    between Rameau and the fuel-porter, but they illustrate the state of
+    feeling between them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Goujon, after correspondence with a relative in France who offered him
+    work, gave notice to leave, which expired on the day of the crime. At
+    about three that afternoon a housemaid, proceeding toward Rameau's rooms,
+    met Goujon as he was going away. Goujon bade her good-by, and, pointing
+    in the direction of Rameau's rooms, said exultantly: "Dere shall be no
+    more of the black pig for me; vit 'im I 'ave done for. Zut! I mock me of
+    'im! 'E vill never <i>tracasser</i> me no more." And he went away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl went to the outer door of Rameau's rooms, knocked, and got no
+    reply. Concluding that the tenant was out, she was about to use her keys,
+    when she found that the door was unlocked. She passed through the lobby
+    and into the sitting-room, and there fell in a dead faint at the sight
+    that met her eyes. Rameau lay with his back across the sofa and his
+    head&mdash;drooping within an inch of the ground. On the head was a fearful
+    gash, and below it was a pool of blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl must have lain unconscious for about ten minutes. When she came
+    to her senses, she dragged herself, terrified, from the room and up to
+    the housekeeper's apartments, where, being an excitable and nervous
+    creature, she only screamed "Murder!" and immediately fell in a fit of
+    hysterics that lasted three-quarters of an hour. When at last she came
+    to herself, she told her story, and, the hall-porter having been
+    summoned, Rameau's rooms were again approached.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The blood still lay on the floor, and the chopper, with which the crime
+    had evidently been committed, rested against the fender; but the body had
+    vanished! A search was at once made, but no trace of it could be seen
+    anywhere. It seemed impossible that it could have been carried out of the
+    building, for the hall-porter must at once have noticed anybody leaving
+    with so bulky a burden. Still, in the building it was not to be found.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Hewitt was informed of these things on Monday, the police were, of
+    course, still in possession of Rameau's rooms. Inspector Nettings, Hewitt
+    was told, was in charge of the case, and as the inspector was an
+    acquaintance of his, and was then in the rooms upstairs, Hewitt went up
+    to see him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings was pleased to see Hewitt, and invited him to look around the
+    rooms. "Perhaps you can spot something we have overlooked," he said.
+    "Though it's not a case there can be much doubt about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You think it's Goujon, don't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Think? Well, rather! Look here! As soon as we got here on Saturday, we
+    found this piece of paper and pin on the floor. We showed it to the
+    housemaid, and then she remembered&mdash;she was too much upset to think of it
+    before&mdash;that when she was in the room the paper was laying on the dead
+    man's chest&mdash;pinned there, evidently. It must have dropped off when they
+    removed the body. It's a case of half-mad revenge on Goujon's part,
+    plainly. See it; you read French, don't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The paper was a plain, large half-sheet of note-paper, on which a
+    sentence in French was scrawled in red ink in a large, clumsy hand, thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>puni par un vengeur de la tortue</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "<i>Puni par un vengeur de la tortue</i>," Hewitt repeated musingly.
+    "'Punished by an avenger of the tortoise,' That seems odd."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, rather odd. But you understand the reference, of course. Have they
+    told you about Rameau's treatment of Goujon's pet tortoise?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think it was mentioned among his other pranks. But this is an extreme
+    revenge for a thing of that sort, and a queer way of announcing it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, he's mad&mdash;mad with Rameau's continual ragging and baiting," Nettings
+    answered. "Anyway, this is a plain indication&mdash;plain as though he'd left
+    his own signature. Besides, it's in his own language&mdash;French. And there's
+    his chopper, too."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Speaking of signatures," Hewitt remarked, "perhaps you have already
+    compared this with other specimens of Goujon's writing?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I did think of it, but they don't seem to have a specimen to hand, and,
+    anyway, it doesn't seem very important. There's 'avenger of the tortoise'
+    plain enough, in the man's own language, and that tells everything.
+    Besides, handwritings are easily disguised."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you got Goujon?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, no; we haven't. There seems to be some little difficulty about
+    that. But I expect to have him by this time to-morrow. Here comes Mr.
+    Styles, the landlord."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Styles was a thin, querulous, and withered-looking little man, who
+    twitched his eyebrows as he spoke, and spoke in short, jerky phrases.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No news, eh, inspector, eh? eh? Found out nothing else, eh? Terrible
+    thing for my property&mdash;terrible! Who's your friend?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings introduced Hewitt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Shocking thing this, eh, Mr. Hewitt? Terrible! Comes of having anything
+    to do with these blood-thirsty foreigners, eh? New buildings and
+    all&mdash;character ruined. No one come to live here now, eh? Tenants&mdash;noisy
+    niggers&mdash;murdered by my own servants&mdash;terrible! <i>You</i> formed any opinion,
+    eh?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I dare say I might if I went into the case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes&mdash;same opinion as inspector's, eh? I mean an opinion of your
+    own?" The old man scrutinized Hewitt's face sharply.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you'd like me to look into the matter&mdash;&mdash;" Hewitt began.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Eh? Oh, look into it! Well, I can't commission you, you know&mdash;matter for
+    the police. Mischief's done. Police doing very well, I think&mdash;must be
+    Goujon. But look about the place, certainly, if you like. If you see
+    anything likely to serve <i>my</i> interests, tell me, and&mdash;and&mdash;perhaps I'll
+    employ you, eh, eh? Good-afternoon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The landlord vanished, and the inspector laughed. "Likes to see what he's
+    buying, does Mr. Styles," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt's first impulse was to walk out of the place at once. But his
+    interest in the case had been roused, and he determined, at any rate, to
+    examine the rooms, and this he did very minutely. By the side of the
+    lobby was a bath-room, and in this was fitted a tip-up wash-basin, which
+    Hewitt inspected with particular attention. Then he called the
+    housekeeper, and made inquiries about Rameau's clothes and linen. The
+    housekeeper could give no idea of how many overcoats or how much linen
+    he had had. He had all a negro's love of display, and was continually
+    buying new clothes, which, indeed, were lying, hanging, littering, and
+    choking up the bedroom in all directions. The housekeeper, however, on
+    Hewitt's inquiring after such a garment in particular, did remember one
+    heavy black ulster, which Rameau had very rarely worn&mdash;only in the
+    coldest weather.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "After the body was discovered," Hewitt asked the housekeeper, "was any
+    stranger observed about the place&mdash;whether carrying anything or not?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, sir," the housekeeper replied. "There's been particular inquiries
+    about that. Of course, after we knew what was wrong and the body was
+    gone, nobody was seen, or he'd have been stopped. But the hall-porter
+    says he's certain no stranger came or went for half an hour or more
+    before that&mdash;the time about when the housemaid saw the body and fainted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this moment a clerk from the landlord's office arrived and handed
+    Nettings a paper. "Here you are," said Nettings to Hewitt; "they've found
+    a specimen of Goujon's handwriting at last, if you'd like to see it. I
+    don't want it; I'm not a graphologist, and the case is clear enough for
+    me anyway."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt took the paper. "This" he said, "is a different sort of
+    handwriting from that on the paper. The red-ink note about the avenger of
+    the tortoise is in a crude, large, clumsy, untaught style of writing.
+    This is small, neat, and well formed&mdash;except that it is a trifle shaky,
+    probably because of the hand injury."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's nothing," contended Nettings. "handwriting clues are worse than
+    useless, as a rule. It's so easy to disguise and imitate writing; and
+    besides, if Goujon is such a good penman as you seem to say, why, he
+    could all the easier alter his style. Say now yourself, can any fiddling
+    question of handwriting get over this thing about 'avenging the
+    tortoise'&mdash;practically a written confession&mdash;to say nothing of the
+    chopper, and what he said to the housemaid as he left?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," said Hewitt, "perhaps not; but we'll see. Meantime"&mdash;turning to
+    the landlord's clerk&mdash;"possibly you will be good enough to tell me one or
+    two things. First, what was Goujon's character?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Excellent, as far as we know. We never had a complaint about him except
+    for little matters of carelessness&mdash;leaving coal-scuttles on the
+    staircases for people to fall over, losing shovels, and so on. He was
+    certainly a bit careless, but, as far as we could see, quite a decent
+    little fellow. One would never have thought him capable of committing
+    murder for the sake of a tortoise, though he was rather fond of the
+    animal."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The tortoise is dead now, I understand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you a lift in this building?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Only for coals and heavy parcels. Goujon used to work it, sometimes
+    going up and down in it himself with coals, and so on; it goes into the
+    basement."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And are the coals kept under this building?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. The store for the whole row is under the next two houses&mdash;the
+    basements communicate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you know Rameau's other name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "César Rameau he signed in our agreement."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did he ever mention his relations?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No. That is to say, he did say something one day when he was very drunk;
+    but, of course, it was all rot. Some one told him not to make such a
+    row&mdash;he was a beastly tenant&mdash;and he said he was the best man in the
+    place, and his brother was Prime Minister, and all sorts of things. Mere
+    drunken rant! I never heard of his saying anything sensible about
+    relations. We know nothing of his connections; he came here on a banker's
+    reference."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thanks. I think that's all I want to ask. You notice," Hewitt
+    proceeded, turning to Nettings, "the only ink in this place is scented
+    and violet, and the only paper is tinted and scented, too, with a
+    monogram&mdash;characteristic of a negro with money. The paper that was pinned
+    on Rameau's breast is in red ink on common and rather grubby paper,
+    therefore it was written somewhere else and brought here. Inference,
+    premeditation."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes. But are you an inch nearer with all these speculations? Can
+    you get nearer than I am now without them?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, perhaps not," Hewitt replied. "I don't profess at this moment to
+    know the criminal; you do. I'll concede you that point for the present.
+    But you don't offer an opinion as to who removed Rameau's body&mdash;which I
+    think I know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who was it, then?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, try and guess that yourself. It wasn't Goujon; I don't mind
+    letting you know that. But it was a person quite within your knowledge of
+    the case. You've mentioned the person's name more than once."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings stared blankly. "I don't understand you in the least," he said.
+    "But, of course, you mean that this mysterious person you speak of as
+    having moved the body committed the murder?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't. Nobody could have been more innocent of that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Nettings concluded with resignation, "I'm afraid one of us is
+    rather thick-headed. What will you do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Interview the person who took away the body," Hewitt replied, with a
+    smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, man alive, why? Why bother about the person if it isn't the
+    criminal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Never mind&mdash;never mind; probably the person will be a most valuable
+    witness."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean you think this person&mdash;whoever it is&mdash;saw the crime?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think it very probable indeed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I won't ask you any more. I shall get hold of Goujon; that's
+    simple and direct enough for me. I prefer to deal with the heart of the
+    case&mdash;the murder itself&mdash;when there's such clear evidence as I have."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall look a little into that, too, perhaps," Hewitt said, "and, if
+    you like, I'll tell you the first thing I shall do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shall have a good look at a map of the West Indies, and I advise you
+    to do the same. Good-morning."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings stared down the corridor after Hewitt, and continued staring for
+    nearly two minutes after he had disappeared. Then he said to the clerk,
+    who had remained: "What was he talking about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't know," replied the clerk. "Couldn't make head nor tail of it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't believe there <i>is</i> a head to it," declared Nettings; "nor a tail
+    either. He's kidding us."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Nettings was better than his word, for within two hours of his
+    conversation with Hewitt, Goujon was captured and safe in a cab bound for
+    Bow Street. He had been stopped at Newhaven in the morning on his way to
+    Dieppe, and was brought back to London. But now Nettings met a check.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Late that afternoon he called on Hewitt to explain matters. "We've got
+    Goujon," he said, gloomily, "but there's a difficulty. He's got two
+    friends who can swear an <i>alibi</i>. Rameau was seen alive at half-past one
+    on Saturday, and the girl found him dead about three. Now, Goujon's two
+    friends, it seems, were with him from one o'clock till four in the
+    afternoon, with the exception of five minutes when the girl saw him, and
+    then he left them to take a key or something to the housekeeper before
+    finally leaving. They were waiting on the landing below when Goujon spoke
+    to the housemaid, heard him speaking, and had seen him go all the way up
+    to the housekeeper's room and back, as they looked up the wide well of
+    the staircase. They are men employed near the place, and seem to have
+    good characters. But perhaps we shall find something unfavorable about
+    them. They were drinking with Goujon, it seems, by way of 'seeing him
+    off.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," Hewitt said, "I scarcely think you need trouble to damage these
+    men's characters. They are probably telling the truth. Come, now, be
+    plain. You've come here to get a hint as to whether my theory of the case
+    helps you, haven't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, if you can give me a friendly hint, although, of course, I may be
+    right, after all. Still, I wish you'd explain a bit as to what you meant
+    by looking at a map and all that mystery. Nice thing for me to be taking
+    a lesson in my own business after all these years! But perhaps I deserve
+    it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "See, now," quoth Hewitt, "you remember what map I told you to look at?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The West Indies."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Right! Well, here you are." Hewitt reached an atlas from his book-shelf.
+    "Now, look here: the biggest island of the lot on this map, barring Cuba,
+    is Hayti. You know as well as I do that the western part of that island
+    is peopled by the black republic of Hayti, and that the country is in a
+    degenerate state of almost unexampled savagery, with a ridiculous show of
+    civilization. There are revolutions all the time; the South American
+    republics are peaceful and prosperous compared to Hayti. The state of the
+    country is simply awful&mdash;read Sir Spenser St. John's book on it.
+    President after president of the vilest sort forces his way to power and
+    commits the most horrible and bloodthirsty excesses, murdering his
+    opponents by the hundred and seizing their property for himself and his
+    satellites, who are usually as bad, if not worse, than the president
+    himself. Whole families&mdash;men, women, and children&mdash;are murdered at the
+    instance of these ruffians, and, as a consequence, the most deadly feuds
+    spring up, and the presidents and their followers are always themselves
+    in danger of reprisals from others. Perhaps the very worst of these
+    presidents in recent times has been the notorious Domingue, who was
+    overthrown by an insurrection, as they all are sooner or later, and
+    compelled to fly the country. Domingue and his nephews, one of whom was
+    Chief Minister, while in power committed the cruellest bloodshed, and
+    many members of the opposite party sought refuge in a small island lying
+    just to the north of Hayti, but were sought out there and almost
+    exterminated. Now, I will show you that island on the map. What is its
+    name?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tortuga."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is. 'Tortuga,' however, is only the old Spanish name; the Haytians
+    speak French&mdash;Creole French. Here is a French atlas: now see the name of
+    that island."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "La Tortue!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "La Tortue it is&mdash;the tortoise. Tortuga means the same thing in Spanish.
+    But that island is always spoken of in Hayti as La Tortue. Now, do you
+    see the drift of that paper pinned to Rameau's breast?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Punished by an avenger of&mdash;or from&mdash;the tortoise or La Tortue&mdash;clear
+    enough. It would seem that the dead man had something to do with the
+    massacre there, and somebody from the island is avenging it. The thing's
+    most extraordinary."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And now listen. The name of Domingue's nephew, who was Chief Minister,
+    was <i>Septimus Rameau</i>."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And this was César Rameau&mdash;his brother, probably. I see. Well, this <i>is</i>
+    a case."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think the relationship probable. Now you understand why I was inclined
+    to doubt that Goujon was the man you wanted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, of course! And now I suppose I must try to get a nigger&mdash;the
+    chap who wrote that paper. I wish he hadn't been such an ignorant nigger.
+    If he'd only have put the capitals to the words 'La Tortue,' I might have
+    thought a little more about them, instead of taking it for granted that
+    they meant that wretched tortoise in the basement of the house. Well,
+    I've made a fool of a start, but I'll be after that nigger now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And I, as I said before," said Hewitt, "shall be after the person that
+    carried off Rameau's body. I have had something else to do this
+    afternoon, or I should have begun already."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You said you thought he saw the crime. How did you judge that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hewitt smiled. "I think I'll keep that little secret to myself for the
+    present," he said. "You shall know soon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very well," Nettings replied, with resignation. "I suppose I mustn't
+    grumble if you don't tell me everything. I feel too great a fool
+    altogether over this case to see any farther than you show me." And
+    Inspector Nettings left on his search; while Martin Hewitt, as soon as he
+    was alone, laughed joyously and slapped his thigh.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    There was a cab-rank and shelter at the end of the street where Mr.
+    Styles' building stood, and early that evening a man approached it and
+    hailed the cabmen and the waterman. Any one would have known the
+    new-comer at once for a cabman taking a holiday. The brim of the hat, the
+    bird's-eye neckerchief, the immense coat-buttons, and, more than all,
+    the rolling walk and the wrinkled trousers, marked him out distinctly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Watcheer!" he exclaimed, affably, with the self-possessed nod only
+    possible to cabbies and 'busmen. "I'm a-lookin' for a bilker. I'm told
+    one o' the blokes off this rank carried 'im last Saturday, and I want to
+    know where he went. I ain't 'ad a chance o' gettin' 'is address yet. Took
+    a cab just as it got dark, I'm told. Tallish chap, muffled up a lot, in a
+    long black overcoat. Any of ye seen 'im?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cabbies looked at one another and shook their heads; it chanced that
+    none of them had been on that particular rank at that time. But the
+    waterman said: "'Old on&mdash;I bet 'e's the bloke wot old Bill Stammers took.
+    Yorkey was fust on the rank, but the bloke wouldn't 'ave a 'ansom&mdash;wanted
+    a four-wheeler, so old Bill took 'im. Biggish chap in a long black coat,
+    collar up an' muffled thick; soft wide-awake 'at, pulled over 'is eyes;
+    and he was in a 'urry, too. Jumped in sharp as a weasel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't see 'is face, did ye?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No&mdash;not an inch of it; too much muffled. Couldn't tell if he 'ad a
+    face."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was his arm in a sling?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ay, it looked so. Had it stuffed through the breast of his coat, like as
+    though there might be a sling inside."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's 'im. Any of ye tell me where I might run across old Bill
+    Stammers? He'll tell me where my precious bilker went to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to this there was plenty of information, and in five minutes Martin
+    Hewitt, who had become an unoccupied cabman for the occasion, was on his
+    way to find old Bill Stammers. That respectable old man gave him full
+    particulars as to the place in the East End where he had driven his
+    muffled fare on Saturday, and Hewitt then begun an eighteen, or twenty
+    hours' search beyond Whitechapel.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    At about three on Tuesday afternoon, as Nettings was in the act of
+    leaving Bow Street Police Station, Hewitt drove up in a four-wheeler.
+    Some prisoner appeared to be crouching low in the vehicle, but, leaving
+    him to take care of himself, Hewitt hurried into the station and shook
+    Nettings by the hand. "Well," he said, "have you got the murderer of
+    Rameau yet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," Nettings growled. "Unless&mdash;well, Goujon's under remand still, and,
+    after all, I've been thinking that he may know something&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Pooh, nonsense!" Hewitt answered. "You'd better let him go. Now, I
+    <i>have</i> got somebody." Hewitt laughed and slapped the inspector's
+    shoulder. "I've got the man who carried Rameau's body away!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The deuce you have! Where? Bring him in. We must have him&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right, don't be in a hurry; he won't bolt." And Hewitt stepped out
+    to the cab and produced his prisoner, who, pulling his hat farther over
+    his eyes, hurried furtively into the station. One hand was stowed in the
+    breast of his long coat, and below the wide brim of his hat a small piece
+    of white bandage could be seen; and, as he lifted his face, it was seen
+    to be that of a negro.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Inspector Nettings," Hewitt said ceremoniously, "allow me to introduce
+    Mr. César Rameau!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Netting's gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What!" he at length ejaculated. "What! You&mdash;you're Rameau?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro looked round nervously, and shrank farther from the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," he said; "but please not so loud&mdash;please not loud. Zey may be
+    near, and I'm 'fraid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You will certify, will you not," asked Hewitt, with malicious glee, "not
+    only that you were not murdered last Saturday by Victor Goujon, but that,
+    in fact, you were not murdered at all? Also, that you carried your own
+    body away in the usual fashion, on your own legs."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes," responded Rameau, looking haggardly about; "but is not
+    zis&mdash;zis room publique? I should not be seen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger
+    and your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe
+    enough."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind
+    something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose&mdash;why, hang it, you must
+    have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting
+    upstairs, and walked out. They say there's nothing so hard as a nigger's
+    skull, and yours has certainly made a fool of me. But, then, <i>somebody</i>
+    must have chopped you over the head; who was it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My enemies&mdash;my great enemies&mdash;enemies politique. I am a great man"&mdash;this
+    with a faint revival of vanity amid his fear&mdash;"a great man in my
+    countree. Zey have great secret club-sieties to kill me&mdash;me and my
+    fren's; and one enemy coming in my rooms does zis&mdash;one, two"&mdash;he
+    indicated wrist and head&mdash;"wiz a choppa."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Rameau made the case plain to Nettings, so far as the actual
+    circumstances of the assault on himself were concerned. A negro whom he
+    had noticed near the place more than once during the previous day or two
+    had attacked him suddenly in his rooms, dealing him two savage blows with
+    a chopper. The first he had caught on his wrist, which was seriously
+    damaged, as well as excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken
+    effect on his head. His assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving
+    him for dead; but, as a matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock,
+    and had, thanks to the adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the
+    ill-direction of the chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being
+    no more than grazed. He had lain insensible for some time, and must have
+    come to his senses soon after the housemaid had left the room. Terrified
+    at the knowledge that his enemies had found him out, his only thought was
+    to get away and hide himself. He hastily washed and tied up his head,
+    enveloped himself in the biggest coat he could find, and let himself down
+    into the basement by the coal-lift, for fear of observation. He waited in
+    the basement of one of the adjoining buildings till dark and then got
+    away in a cab, with the idea of hiding himself in the East End. He had
+    had very little money with him on his flight, and it was by reason of
+    this circumstance that Hewitt, when he found him, had prevailed on him to
+    leave his hiding-place, since it would be impossible for him to touch any
+    of the large sums of money in the keeping of his bank so long as he was
+    supposed to be dead. With much difficulty, and the promise of ample
+    police protection, he was at last convinced that it would be safe to
+    declare himself and get his property, and then run away and hide wherever
+    he pleased.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nettings and Hewitt strolled off together for a few minutes and chatted,
+    leaving the wretched Rameau to cower in a corner among several policemen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, Mr. Hewitt," Nettings said, "this case has certainly been a
+    shocking beating for me. I must have been as blind as a bat when I
+    started on it. And yet I don't see that you had a deal to go on, even
+    now. What struck you first?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, in the beginning it seemed rather odd to me that the body should
+    have been taken away, as I had been told it was, after the written paper
+    had been pinned on it. Why should the murderer pin a label on the body of
+    his victim if he meant carrying that body away? Who would read the label
+    and learn of the nature of the revenge gratified? Plainly, that indicated
+    that the person who had carried away the body was <i>not</i> the person who
+    had committed the murder. But as soon as I began to examine the place I
+    saw the probability that there was no murder, after all. There were any
+    number of indications of this fact, and I can't understand your not
+    observing them. First, although there was a good deal of blood on the
+    floor just below where the housemaid had seen Rameau lying, there was
+    none between that place and the door. Now, if the body had been dragged,
+    or even carried, to the door, blood must have become smeared about the
+    floor, or at least there would have been drops, but there were none, and
+    this seemed to hint that the corpse might have come to itself, sat up on
+    the sofa, stanched the wound, and walked out. I reflected at once that
+    Rameau was a full-blooded negro, and that a negro's head is very nearly
+    invulnerable to anything short of bullets. Then, if the body had been
+    dragged out&mdash;as such a heavy body must have been&mdash;almost of necessity the
+    carpet and rugs would show signs of the fact, but there were no such
+    signs. But beyond these there was the fact that no long black overcoat
+    was left with the other clothes, although the housekeeper distinctly
+    remembered Rameau's possession of such a garment. I judged he would use
+    some such thing to assist his disguise, which was why I asked her. <i>Why</i>
+    he would want to disguise was plain, as you shall see presently. There
+    were no towels left in the bath-room; inference, used for bandages.
+    Everything seemed to show that the only person responsible for Rameau's
+    removal was Rameau himself. Why, then, had he gone away secretly and
+    hurriedly, without making complaint, and why had he stayed away? What
+    reason would he have for doing this if it had been Goujon that had
+    attacked him? None. Goujon was going to France. Clearly, Rameau was
+    afraid of another attack from some implacable enemy whom he was anxious
+    to avoid&mdash;one against whom he feared legal complaint or defense would be
+    useless. This brought me at once to the paper found on the floor. If this
+    were the work of Goujon and an open reference to his tortoise, why should
+    he be at such pains to disguise his handwriting? He would have been
+    already pointing himself out by the mere mention of the tortoise. And, if
+    he could not avoid a shake in his natural, small handwriting, how could
+    he have avoided it in a large, clumsy, slowly drawn, assumed hand? No,
+    the paper was not Goujon's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As to the writing on the paper," Nettings interposed, "I've told you how
+    I made that mistake. I took the readiest explanation of the words, since
+    they seemed so pat, and I wouldn't let anything else outweigh that. As to
+    the other things&mdash;the evidences of Rameau's having gone off by
+    himself&mdash;well, I don't usually miss such obvious things; but I never
+    thought of the possibility of the <i>victim</i> going away on the quiet and
+    not coming back, as though <i>he'd</i> done something wrong. Comes of starting
+    with a set of fixed notions."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," answered Hewitt, "I fancy you must have been rather 'out of
+    form,' as they say; everybody has his stupid days, and you can't keep up
+    to concert pitch forever. To return to the case. The evidence of the
+    chopper was very untrustworthy, especially when I had heard of Goujon's
+    careless habits&mdash;losing shovels and leaving coal-scuttles on stairs.
+    Nothing more likely than for the chopper to be left lying about, and a
+    criminal who had calculated his chances would know the advantage to
+    himself of using a weapon that belonged to the place, and leaving it
+    behind to divert suspicion. It is quite possible, by the way, that the
+    man who attacked Rameau got away down the coal-lift and out by an
+    adjoining basement, just as did Rameau himself; this, however, is mere
+    conjecture. The would-be murderer had plainly prepared for the crime:
+    witness the previous preparation of the paper declaring his revenge, an
+    indication of his pride at having run his enemy to earth at such a
+    distant place as this&mdash;although I expect he was only in England by
+    chance, for Haytians are not a persistently energetic race. In regard to
+    the use of small instead of capital letters in the words 'La Tortue' on
+    the paper, I observed, in the beginning, that the first letter of the
+    whole sentence&mdash;the 'p' in 'puni'&mdash;was a small one. Clearly, the writer
+    was an illiterate man, and it was at once plain that he may have made the
+    same mistake with ensuing words.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the whole, it was plain that everybody had begun with a too ready
+    disposition to assume that Goujon was guilty. Everybody insisted, too,
+    that the body had been carried away&mdash;which was true, of course, although
+    not in the sense intended&mdash;so I didn't trouble to contradict, or to say
+    more than that I guessed who <i>had</i> carried the body off. And, to tell you
+    the truth, I was a little piqued at Mr. Styles' manner, and indisposed,
+    interested in the case as I was, to give away my theories too freely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The rest of the job was not very difficult. I found out the cabman who
+    had taken Rameau away&mdash;you can always get readier help from cabbies if
+    you go as one of themselves, especially if you are after a bilker&mdash;and
+    from him got a sufficiently near East End direction to find Rameau after
+    inquiries. I ventured, by the way, on a rather long shot. I described my
+    man to the cabman as having an injured arm or wrist&mdash;and it turned out a
+    correct guess. You see, a man making an attack with a chopper is pretty
+    certain to make more than a single blow, and as there appeared to have
+    been only a single wound on the head, it seemed probable that another had
+    fallen somewhere else&mdash;almost certainly on the arm, as it would be raised
+    to defend the head. At Limehouse I found he had had his head and wrist
+    attended to at a local medico's, and a big nigger in a fright, with a
+    long black coat, a broken head, and a lame hand, is not so difficult to
+    find in a small area. How I persuaded him up here you know already; I
+    think I frightened him a little, too, by explaining how easily I had
+    tracked him, and giving him a hint that others might do the same. He is
+    in a great funk. He seems to have quite lost faith in England as a safe
+    asylum."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The police failed to catch Rameau's assailant&mdash;chiefly because Rameau
+    could not be got to give a proper description of him, nor to do anything
+    except get out of the country in a hurry. In truth, he was glad to be
+    quit of the matter with nothing worse than his broken head. Little Goujon
+    made a wild storm about his arrest, and before he did go to France
+    managed to extract twenty pounds from Rameau by way of compensation, in
+    spite of the absence of any strictly legal claim against his old
+    tormentor. So that, on the whole, Goujon was about the only person who
+    derived any particular profit from the tortoise mystery.
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+    THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison
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+</body>
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+Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Martin Hewitt, Investigator
+
+Author: Arthur Morrison
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2004 [EBook #11252]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Andrea Ball and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+
+By
+Arthur Morrison
+
+
+1894
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+I. THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES
+
+II. THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT
+
+III. THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT
+
+IV. THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO
+
+V. THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR
+
+VI. THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY
+
+VII. THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN HEWITT, INVESTIGATOR.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES.
+
+Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty
+years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary will
+case, "Bartley _v_. Bartley and others," which occupied the Probate Court
+for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public interest rarely
+accorded to any but the cases considered in the other division of the same
+court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity of remarkable and
+unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff's side--evidence that took the
+other party completely by surprise, and overthrew their case like a house
+of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be more readily recalled as the
+occasion of the sudden rise to eminence in their profession of Messrs.
+Crellan, Hunt & Crellan, solicitors for the plaintiff--a result due
+entirely to the wonderful ability shown in this case of building up,
+apparently out of nothing, a smashing weight of irresistible evidence.
+That the firm has since maintained--indeed enhanced--the position it then
+won for itself need scarcely be said here; its name is familiar to
+everybody. But there are not many of the outside public who know that the
+credit of the whole performance was primarily due to a young clerk in the
+employ of Messrs. Crellan, who had been given charge of the seemingly
+desperate task of collecting evidence in the case.
+
+This Mr. Martin Hewitt had, however, full credit and reward for his
+exploit from his firm and from their client, and more than one other firm
+of lawyers engaged in contentious work made good offers to entice Hewitt
+to change his employers. Instead of this, however, he determined to work
+independently for the future, having conceived the idea of making a
+regular business of doing, on behalf of such clients as might retain him,
+similar work to that he had just done with such conspicuous success for
+Messrs. Crellan, Hunt & Crellan. This was the beginning of the private
+detective business of Martin Hewitt, and his action at that time has been
+completely justified by the brilliant professional successes he has since
+achieved.
+
+His business has always been conducted in the most private manner, and he
+has always declined the help of professional assistants, preferring to
+carry out himself such of the many investigations offered him as he could
+manage. He has always maintained that he has never lost by this policy,
+since the chance of his refusing a case begets competition for his
+services, and his fees rise by a natural process. At the same time, no man
+could know better how to employ casual assistance at the right time.
+
+Some curiosity has been expressed as to Mr. Martin Hewitt's system, and,
+as he himself always consistently maintains that he has no system beyond a
+judicious use of ordinary faculties, I intend setting forth in detail a
+few of the more interesting of his cases in order that the public may
+judge for itself if I am right in estimating Mr. Hewitt's "ordinary
+faculties" as faculties very extraordinary indeed. He is not a man who has
+made many friendships (this, probably, for professional reasons),
+notwithstanding his genial and companionable manners. I myself first made
+his acquaintance as a result of an accident resulting in a fire at the old
+house in which Hewitt's office was situated, and in an upper floor of
+which I occupied bachelor chambers. I was able to help in saving a
+quantity of extremely important papers relating to his business, and,
+while repairs were being made, allowed him to lock them in an old
+wall-safe in one of my rooms which the fire had scarcely damaged.
+
+The acquaintance thus begun has lasted many years, and has become a rather
+close friendship. I have even accompanied Hewitt on some of his
+expeditions, and, in a humble way, helped him. Such of the cases, however,
+as I personally saw nothing of I have put into narrative form from the
+particulars given me.
+
+"I consider you, Brett," he said, addressing me, "the most remarkable
+journalist alive. Not because you're particularly clever, you know,
+because, between ourselves, I hope you'll admit you're not; but because
+you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and have
+never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business secrets you
+may have become acquainted with. I'm afraid you're not so enterprising a
+journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you shall write
+something--if you think it worth while."
+
+This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing good-nature
+that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger who thought of him
+only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets and crimes. Indeed,
+the man had always as little of the aspect of the conventional detective
+as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less observant in
+manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of the
+eye--which might, after all, only be the twinkle of good humor.
+
+I _did_ think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt's
+investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an
+ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty
+ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word
+"Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters,
+"Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in the
+ground-floor offices had barely hung up their hats, a short, well-dressed
+young man, wearing spectacles, hastening to open the dusty door, ran into
+the arms of another man who suddenly issued from it.
+
+"I beg pardon," the first said. "Is this Hewitt's Detective Agency
+Office?"
+
+"Yes, I believe you will find it so," the other replied. He was a
+stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round
+countenance. "You'd better speak to the clerk."
+
+In the little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with inky
+fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The printed slip
+having been filled with the visitor's name and present business, and
+conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with an invitation to
+the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat the stoutish man
+himself, who had only just advised an appeal to the clerk.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Lloyd--Mr. Vernon Lloyd," he said, affably, looking
+again at the slip. "You'll excuse my care to start even with my
+visitors--I must, you know. You come from Sir James Norris, I see."
+
+"Yes; I am his secretary. I have only to ask you to go straight to Lenton
+Croft at once, if you can, on very important business. Sir James would
+have wired, but had not your precise address. Can you go by the next
+train? Eleven-thirty is the first available from Paddington."
+
+"Quite possibly. Do you know any thing of the business?"
+
+"It is a case of a robbery in the house, or, rather, I fancy, of several
+robberies. Jewelry has been stolen from rooms occupied by visitors to the
+Croft. The first case occurred some months ago--nearly a year ago, in
+fact. Last night there was another. But I think you had better get the
+details on the spot. Sir James has told me to telegraph if you are coming,
+so that he may meet you himself at the station; and I must hurry, as his
+drive to the station will be rather a long one. Then I take it you will
+go, Mr. Hewitt? Twyford is the station."
+
+"Yes, I shall come, and by the 11.30. Are you going by that train
+yourself?"
+
+"No, I have several things to attend to now I am in town. Good-morning; I
+shall wire at once."
+
+Mr. Martin Hewitt locked the drawer of his table and sent his clerk for a
+cab.
+
+At Twyford Station Sir James Norris was waiting with a dog-cart. Sir James
+was a tall, florid man of fifty or thereabout, known away from home as
+something of a county historian, and nearer his own parts as a great
+supporter of the hunt, and a gentleman much troubled with poachers. As
+soon as he and Hewitt had found one another the baronet hurried the
+detective into his dog-cart. "We've something over seven miles to drive,"
+he said, "and I can tell you all about this wretched business as we go.
+That is why I came for you myself, and alone."
+
+Hewitt nodded.
+
+"I have sent for you, as Lloyd probably told you, because of a robbery at
+my place last evening. It appears, as far as I can guess, to be one of
+three by the same hand, or by the same gang. Late yesterday afternoon----"
+
+"Pardon me, Sir James," Hewitt interrupted, "but I think I must ask you to
+begin at the first robbery and tell me the whole tale in proper order. It
+makes things clearer, and sets them in their proper shape."
+
+"Very well! Eleven months ago, or thereabout, I had rather a large party
+of visitors, and among them Colonel Heath and Mrs. Heath--the lady being a
+relative of my own late wife. Colonel Heath has not been long retired, you
+know--used to be political resident in an Indian native state. Mrs. Heath
+had rather a good stock of jewelry of one sort and another, about the most
+valuable piece being a bracelet set with a particularly fine pearl--quite
+an exceptional pearl, in fact--that had been one of a heap of presents
+from the maharajah of his state when Heath left India.
+
+"It was a very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere
+feather-weight piece of native filigree work--almost too fragile to trust
+on the wrist--and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality
+not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening, and
+after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by
+themselves--shooting, I think--my daughter, my sister (who is very often
+down here), and Mrs. Heath took it into their heads to go
+walking--fern-hunting, and so on. My sister was rather long dressing, and,
+while they waited, my daughter went into Mrs. Heath's room, where Mrs.
+Heath turned over all her treasures to show her, as women do, you know.
+When my sister was at last ready, they came straight away, leaving the
+things littering about the room rather than stay longer to pack them up.
+The bracelet, with other things, was on the dressing-table then."
+
+"One moment. As to the door?"
+
+"They locked it. As they came away my daughter suggested turning the key,
+as we had one or two new servants about."
+
+"And the window?"
+
+"That they left open, as I was going to tell you. Well, they went on their
+walk and came back, with Lloyd (whom they had met somewhere) carrying
+their ferns for them. It was dusk and almost dinner-time. Mrs. Heath went
+straight to her room, and--the bracelet was gone."
+
+"Was the room disturbed?"
+
+"Not a bit. Everything was precisely where it had been left, except the
+bracelet. The door hadn't been tampered with, but of course the window was
+open, as I have told you."
+
+"You called the police, of course?"
+
+"Yes, and had a man from Scotland Yard down in the morning. He seemed a
+pretty smart fellow, and the first thing he noticed on the dressing-table,
+within an inch or two of where the bracelet had been, was a match, which
+had been lit and thrown down. Now nobody about the house had had occasion
+to use a match in that room that day, and, if they had, certainly wouldn't
+have thrown it on the cover of the dressing-table. So that, presuming the
+thief to have used that match, the robbery must have been committed when
+the room was getting dark--immediately before Mrs. Heath returned, in
+fact. The thief had evidently struck the match, passed it hurriedly over
+the various trinkets lying about, and taken the most valuable."
+
+"Nothing else was even moved?"
+
+"Nothing at all. Then the thief must have escaped by the window, although
+it was not quite clear how. The walking party approached the house with a
+full view of the window, but saw nothing, although the robbery must have
+been actually taking place a moment or two before they turned up.
+
+"There was no water-pipe within any practicable distance of the window,
+but a ladder usually kept in the stable-yard was found lying along the
+edge of the lawn. The gardener explained, however, that he had put the
+ladder there after using it himself early in the afternoon."
+
+"Of course it might easily have been used again after that and put back."
+
+"Just what the Scotland Yard man said. He was pretty sharp, too, on the
+gardener, but very soon decided that he knew nothing of it. No stranger
+had been seen in the neighborhood, nor had passed the lodge gates.
+Besides, as the detective said, it scarcely seemed the work of a stranger.
+A stranger could scarcely have known enough to go straight to the room
+where a lady--only arrived the day before--had left a valuable jewel, and
+away again without being seen. So all the people about the house were
+suspected in turn. The servants offered, in a body, to have their boxes
+searched, and this was done; everything was turned over, from the butler's
+to the new kitchen-maid's. I don't know that I should have had this
+carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but it was my guest,
+and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's little more to be
+said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it all, and the thing's as
+great a mystery now as ever. I believe the Scotland Yard man got as far as
+suspecting _me_ before he gave it up altogether, but give it up he did in
+the end. I think that's all I know about the first robbery. Is it clear?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
+the place, but they can wait. What next?"
+
+"Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair, that I
+should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been for one
+circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of the
+same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's disaster--in
+February of this year, in fact--Mrs. Armitage, a young widow, who had been
+a school-fellow of my daughter's, stayed with us for a week or so. The
+girls don't trouble about the London season, you know, and I have no town
+house, so they were glad to have their old friend here for a little in the
+dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active young lady, and was scarcely in
+the house half an hour before she arranged a drive in a pony-cart with
+Eva--my daughter--to look up old people in the village that she used to
+know before she was married. So they set off in the afternoon, and made
+such a round of it that they were late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a
+small plain gold brooch--not at all valuable, you know; two or three
+pounds, I suppose--which she used to pin up a cloak or anything of that
+sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the pin-cushion on her
+dressing-table, and left a ring--rather a good one, I believe--lying close
+by."
+
+"This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had occupied, I
+take it?"
+
+"No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
+went--taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when Mrs.
+Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a little
+tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the curious
+thing was that the ring--worth a dozen of the brooch--was left where it
+had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or not she had locked
+the door herself, although she found it locked when she returned; but my
+niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it once--because she
+remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the landing near by--and found
+it safely locked. The gas-fitter, whom we didn't know at the time, but who
+since seems to be quite an honest fellow, was ready to swear that nobody
+but my niece had been to the door while he was in sight of it--which was
+almost all the time. As to the window, the sash-line had broken that very
+morning, and Mrs. Armitage had propped open the bottom half about eight or
+ten inches with a brush; and, when she returned, that brush, sash, and all
+were exactly as she had left them. Now I scarcely need tell _you_ what an
+awkward job it must have been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that
+unsupported window; and how unlikely he would have been to replace it,
+with the brush, exactly as he found it."
+
+"Just so. I suppose the brooch, was really gone? I mean, there was no
+chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?"
+
+"Oh, none at all! There was a most careful search."
+
+"Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?"
+
+"Well, yes," Sir James replied; "yes, perhaps it would. It was a
+first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the
+billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself--built it out from a
+smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at the
+window from the billiard-room roof. But, then," he added, "that couldn't
+have been the way. Somebody or other was in the billiard-room the whole
+time, and nobody could have got over the roof (which is nearly all
+skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there myself for an hour or
+two, taking a little practice."
+
+"Well, was anything done?"
+
+"Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing came
+of it. It was such a small matter that Mrs. Armitage wouldn't hear of my
+calling in the police or anything of that sort, although I felt pretty
+certain that there must be a dishonest servant about somewhere. A servant
+might take a plain brooch, you know, who would feel afraid of a valuable
+ring, the loss of which would be made a greater matter of."
+
+"Well, yes, perhaps so, in the case of an inexperienced thief, who also
+would be likely to snatch up whatever she took in a hurry. But I'm
+doubtful. What made you connect these two robberies together?"
+
+"Nothing whatever--for some months. They seemed quite of a different sort.
+But scarcely more than a month ago I met Mrs. Armitage at Brighton, and we
+talked, among other things, of the previous robbery--that of Mrs. Heath's
+bracelet. I described the circumstances pretty minutely, and, when I
+mentioned the match found on the table, she said: 'How strange! Why, _my_
+thief left a match on the dressing-table when he took my poor little
+brooch!'"
+
+Hewitt nodded. "Yes," he said. "A spent match, of course?"
+
+"Yes, of course, a spent match. She noticed it lying close by the
+pin-cushion, but threw it away without mentioning the circumstance. Still,
+it seemed rather curious to me that a match should be lit and dropped, in
+each case, on the dressing-cover an inch from where the article was taken.
+I mentioned it to Lloyd when I got back, and he agreed that it seemed
+significant."
+
+"Scarcely," said Hewitt, shaking his head. "Scarcely, so far, to be called
+significant, although worth following up. Everybody uses matches in the
+dark, you know."
+
+"Well, at any rate, the coincidence appealed to me so far that it struck
+me it might be worth while to describe the brooch to the police in order
+that they could trace it if it had been pawned. They had tried that, of
+course, over the bracelet without any result, but I fancied the shot might
+be worth making, and might possibly lead us on the track of the more
+serious robbery."
+
+"Quite so. It was the right thing to do. Well?"
+
+"Well, they found it. A woman had pawned it in London--at a shop in
+Chelsea. But that was some time before, and the pawnbroker had clean
+forgotten all about the woman's appearance. The name and address she gave
+were false. So that was the end of that business."
+
+"Had any of the servants left you between the time the brooch was lost and
+the date of the pawn ticket?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Were all your servants at home on the day the brooch was pawned?"
+
+"Oh, yes! I made that inquiry myself."
+
+"Very good! What next?"
+
+"Yesterday--and this is what made me send for you. My late wife's sister
+came here last Tuesday, and we gave her the room from which Mrs. Heath
+lost her bracelet. She had with her a very old-fashioned brooch,
+containing a miniature of her father, and set in front with three very
+fine brilliants and a few smaller stones. Here we are, though, at the
+Croft. I'll tell you the rest indoors."
+
+Hewitt laid his hand on the baronet's arm. "Don't pull up, Sir James," he
+said. "Drive a little farther. I should like to have a general idea of the
+whole case before we go in."
+
+"Very good!" Sir James Norris straightened the horse's head again and went
+on. "Late yesterday afternoon, as my sister-in-law was changing her dress,
+she left her room for a moment to speak to my daughter in her room, almost
+adjoining. She was gone no more than three minutes, or five at most, but
+on her return the brooch, which had been left on the table, had gone. Now
+the window was shut fast, and had not been tampered with. Of course the
+door was open, but so was my daughter's, and anybody walking near must
+have been heard. But the strangest circumstance, and one that almost makes
+me wonder whether I have been awake to-day or not, was that there lay _a
+used match_ on the very spot, as nearly as possible, where the brooch had
+been--and it was broad daylight!"
+
+Hewitt rubbed his nose and looked thoughtfully before him. "Um--curious,
+certainly," he said, "Anything else?"
+
+"Nothing more than you shall see for yourself. I have had the room locked
+and watched till you could examine it. My sister-in-law had heard of your
+name, and suggested that you should be called in; so, of course, I did
+exactly as she wanted. That she should have lost that brooch, of all
+things, in my house is most unfortunate; you see, there was some small
+difference about the thing between my late wife and her sister when their
+mother died and left it. It's almost worse than the Heaths' bracelet
+business, and altogether I'm not pleased with things, I can assure you.
+See what a position it is for me! Here are three ladies, in the space of
+one year, robbed one after another in this mysterious fashion in my house,
+and I can't find the thief! It's horrible! People will be afraid to come
+near the place. And I can do nothing!"
+
+"Ah, well, we'll see. Perhaps we had better turn back now. By-the-by, were
+you thinking of having any alterations or additions made to your house?"
+
+"No. What makes you ask?"
+
+"I think you might at least consider the question of painting and
+decorating, Sir James--or, say, putting up another coach-house, or
+something. Because I should like to be (to the servants) the architect--or
+the builder, if you please--come to look around. You haven't told any of
+them about this business?"
+
+"Not a word. Nobody knows but my relatives and Lloyd. I took every
+precaution myself, at once. As to your little disguise, be the architect
+by all means, and do as you please. If you can only find this thief and
+put an end to this horrible state of affairs, you'll do me the greatest
+service I've ever asked for--and as to your fee, I'll gladly make it
+whatever is usual, and three hundred in addition."
+
+Martin Hewitt bowed. "You're very generous, Sir James, and you may be sure
+I'll do what I can. As a professional man, of course, a good fee always
+stimulates my interest, although this case of yours certainly seems
+interesting enough by itself."
+
+"Most extraordinary! Don't you think so? Here are three persons, all
+ladies, all in my house, two even in the same room, each successively
+robbed of a piece of jewelry, each from a dressing-table, and a used match
+left behind in every case. All in the most difficult--one would say
+impossible--circumstances for a thief, and yet there is no clue!"
+
+"Well, we won't say that just yet, Sir James; we must see. And we must
+guard against any undue predisposition to consider the robberies in a
+lump. Here we are at the lodge gate again. Is that your gardener--the man
+who left the ladder by the lawn on the first occasion you spoke of?"
+
+Mr. Hewitt nodded in the direction of a man who was clipping a box border.
+
+"Yes; will you ask him anything?"
+
+"No, no; at any rate, not now. Remember the building alterations. I think,
+if there is no objection, I will look first at the room that the
+lady--Mrs.----" Hewitt looked up, inquiringly.
+
+"My sister-in-law? Mrs. Cazenove. Oh, yes! you shall come to her room at
+once."
+
+"Thank you. And I think Mrs. Cazenove had better be there."
+
+They alighted, and a boy from the lodge led the horse and dog-cart away.
+
+Mrs. Cazenove was a thin and faded, but quick and energetic, lady of
+middle age. She bent her head very slightly on learning Martin Hewitt's
+name, and said: "I must thank you, Mr. Hewitt, for your very prompt
+attention. I need scarcely say that any help you can afford in tracing the
+thief who has my property--whoever it may be--will make me most grateful.
+My room is quite ready for you to examine."
+
+The room was on the second floor--the top floor at that part of the
+building. Some slight confusion of small articles of dress was observable
+in parts of the room.
+
+"This, I take it," inquired Hewitt, "is exactly as it was at the time the
+brooch was missed?"
+
+"Precisely," Mrs. Cazenove answered. "I have used another room, and put
+myself to some other inconveniences, to avoid any disturbance."
+
+Hewitt stood before the dressing-table. "Then this is the used match," he
+observed, "exactly where it was found?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where was the brooch?"
+
+"I should say almost on the very same spot. Certainly no more than a very
+few inches away."
+
+Hewitt examined the match closely. "It is burned very little," he
+remarked. "It would appear to have gone out at once. Could you hear it
+struck?"
+
+"I heard nothing whatever; absolutely nothing."
+
+"If you will step into Miss Norris' room now for a moment," Hewitt
+suggested, "we will try an experiment. Tell me if you hear matches struck,
+and how many. Where is the match-stand?"
+
+The match-stand proved to be empty, but matches were found in Miss Norris'
+room, and the test was made. Each striking could be heard distinctly, even
+with one of the doors pushed to.
+
+"Both your own door and Miss Norris' were open, I understand; the window
+shut and fastened inside as it is now, and nothing but the brooch was
+disturbed?"
+
+"Yes, that was so."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Cazenove. I don't think I need trouble you any further
+just at present. I think, Sir James," Hewitt added, turning to the
+baronet, who was standing by the door----"I think we will see the other
+room and take a walk outside the house, if you please. I suppose, by the
+by, that there is no getting at the matches left behind on the first and
+second occasions?"
+
+"No," Sir James answered. "Certainly not here. The Scotland Yard man may
+have kept his."
+
+The room that Mrs. Armitage had occupied presented no peculiar feature. A
+few feet below the window the roof of the billiard-room was visible,
+consisting largely of skylight. Hewitt glanced casually about the walls,
+ascertained that the furniture and hangings had not been materially
+changed since the second robbery, and expressed his desire to see the
+windows from the outside. Before leaving the room, however, he wished to
+know the names of any persons who were known to have been about the house
+on the occasions of all three robberies.
+
+"Just carry your mind back, Sir James," he said. "Begin with yourself, for
+instance. Where were you at these times?"
+
+"When Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet, I was in Tagley Wood all the
+afternoon. When Mrs. Armitage was robbed, I believe I was somewhere about
+the place most of the time she was out. Yesterday I was down at the farm."
+Sir James' face broadened. "I don't know whether you call those suspicious
+movements," he added, and laughed.
+
+"Not at all; I only asked you so that, remembering your own movements, you
+might the better recall those of the rest of the household. Was anybody,
+to your knowledge--_anybody_, mind--in the house on all three occasions?"
+
+"Well, you know, it's quite impossible to answer for all the servants.
+You'll only get that by direct questioning--I can't possibly remember
+things of that sort. As to the family and visitors--why, you don't suspect
+any of them, do you?"
+
+"I don't suspect a soul, Sir James," Hewitt answered, beaming genially,
+"not a soul. You see, I can't suspect people till I know something about
+where they were. It's quite possible there will be independent evidence
+enough as it is, but you must help me if you can. The visitors, now. Was
+there any visitor here each time--or even on the first and last occasions
+only?"
+
+"No, not one. And my own sister, perhaps you will be pleased to know, was
+only there at the time of the first robbery."
+
+"Just so! And your daughter, as I have gathered, was clearly absent from
+the spot each time--indeed, was in company with the party robbed. Your
+niece, now?"
+
+"Why hang it all, Mr. Hewitt, I can't talk of my niece as a suspected
+criminal! The poor girl's under my protection, and I really can't
+allow----"
+
+Hewitt raised his hand, and shook his head deprecatingly.
+
+"My dear sir, haven't I said that I don't suspect a soul? _Do_ let me know
+how the people were distributed, as nearly as possible. Let me see. It was
+your, niece, I think, who found that Mrs. Armitage's door was locked--this
+door, in fact--on the day she lost her brooch?"
+
+"Yes, it was."
+
+"Just so--at the time when Mrs. Armitage herself had forgotten whether she
+locked it or not. And yesterday--was she out then?"
+
+"No, I think not. Indeed, she goes out very little--her health is usually
+bad. She was indoors, too, at the time of the Heath robbery, since you
+ask. But come, now, I don't like this. It's ridiculous to suppose that
+_she_ knows anything of it."
+
+"I don't suppose it, as I have said. I am only asking for information.
+That is all your resident family, I take it, and you know nothing of
+anybody else's movements--except, perhaps, Mr. Lloyd's?"
+
+"Lloyd? Well, you know yourself that he was out with the ladies when the
+first robbery took place. As to the others, I don't remember. Yesterday he
+was probably in his room, writing. I think that acquits _him_, eh?" Sir
+James looked quizzically into the broad face of the affable detective, who
+smiled and replied:
+
+"Oh, of course nobody can be in two places at once, else what would become
+of the _alibi_ as an institution? But, as I have said, I am only setting
+my facts in order. Now, you see, we get down to the servants--unless some
+stranger is the party wanted. Shall we go outside now?"
+
+Lenton Croft was a large, desultory sort of house, nowhere more than three
+floors high, and mostly only two. It had been added to bit by bit, till it
+zigzagged about its site, as Sir James Norris expressed it, "like a game
+of dominoes." Hewitt scrutinized its external features carefully as they
+strolled around, and stopped some little while before the windows of the
+two bed-rooms he had just seen from the inside. Presently they approached
+the stables and coach-house, where a groom was washing the wheels of the
+dog-cart.
+
+"Do you mind my smoking?" Hewitt asked Sir James. "Perhaps you will take a
+cigar yourself--they are not so bad, I think. I will ask your man for a
+light."
+
+Sir James felt for his own match-box, but Hewitt had gone, and was
+lighting his cigar with a match from a box handed him by the groom. A
+smart little terrier was trotting about by the coach-house, and Hewitt
+stooped to rub its head. Then he made some observation about the dog,
+which enlisted the groom's interest, and was soon absorbed in a chat with
+the man. Sir James, waiting a little way off, tapped the stones rather
+impatiently with his foot, and presently moved away.
+
+For full a quarter of an hour Hewitt chatted with the groom, and, when at
+last he came away and overtook Sir James, that gentleman was about
+re-entering the house.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir James," Hewitt said, "for leaving you in that
+unceremonious fashion to talk to your groom, but a dog, Sir James--a good
+dog--will draw me anywhere."
+
+"Oh!" replied Sir James, shortly.
+
+"There is one other thing," Hewitt went on, disregarding the other's
+curtness, "that I should like to know: There are two windows directly
+below that of the room occupied yesterday by Mrs. Cazenove--one on each
+floor. What rooms do they light?"
+
+"That on the ground floor is the morning-room; the other is Mr.
+Lloyd's--my secretary. A sort of study or sitting-room."
+
+"Now you will see at once, Sir James," Hewitt pursued, with an affable
+determination to win the baronet back to good-humor--"you will see at once
+that, if a ladder had been used in Mrs. Heath's case, anybody looking from
+either of these rooms would have seen it."
+
+"Of course! The Scotland Yard man questioned everybody as to that, but
+nobody seemed to have been in either of the rooms when the thing occurred;
+at any rate, nobody saw anything."
+
+"Still, I think I should like to look out of those windows myself; it
+will, at least, give me an idea of what _was_ in view and what was not, if
+anybody had been there."
+
+Sir James Norris led the way to the morning-room. As they reached the door
+a young lady, carrying a book and walking very languidly, came out. Hewitt
+stepped aside to let her pass, and afterward said interrogatively: "Miss
+Norris, your daughter, Sir James?"
+
+"No, my niece. Do you want to ask her anything? Dora, my dear," Sir James
+added, following her in the corridor, "this is Mr. Hewitt, who is
+investigating these wretched robberies for me. I think he would like to
+hear if you remember anything happening at any of the three times."
+
+The lady bowed slightly, and said in a plaintive drawl: "I, uncle? Really,
+I don't remember anything; nothing at all."
+
+"You found Mrs. Armitage's door locked, I believe," asked Hewitt, "when
+you tried it, on the afternoon when she lost her brooch?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I believe it was locked. Yes, it was."
+
+"Had the key been left in?"
+
+"The key? Oh, no! I think not; no."
+
+"Do you remember anything out of the common happening--anything whatever,
+no matter how trivial--on the day Mrs. Heath lost her bracelet?"
+
+"No, really, I don't. I can't remember at all."
+
+"Nor yesterday?"
+
+"No, nothing. I don't remember anything."
+
+"Thank you," said Hewitt, hastily; "thank you. Now the morning-room, Sir
+James."
+
+In the morning-room Hewitt stayed but a few seconds, doing little more
+than casually glance out of the windows. In the room above he took a
+little longer time. It was a comfortable room, but with rather effeminate
+indications about its contents. Little pieces of draped silk-work hung
+about the furniture, and Japanese silk fans decorated the mantel-piece.
+Near the window was a cage containing a gray parrot, and the writing-table
+was decorated with two vases of flowers.
+
+"Lloyd makes himself pretty comfortable, eh?" Sir James observed. "But it
+isn't likely anybody would be here while he was out, at the time that
+bracelet went."
+
+"No," replied Hewitt, meditatively. "No, I suppose not."
+
+He stared thoughtfully out of the window, and then, still deep in thought,
+rattled at the wires of the cage with a quill toothpick and played a
+moment with the parrot. Then, looking up at the window again, he said:
+"That is Mr. Lloyd, isn't it, coming back in a fly?"
+
+"Yes, I think so. Is there anything else you would care to see here?"
+
+"No, thank you," Hewitt replied; "I don't think there is."
+
+They went down to the smoking-room, and Sir James went away to speak to
+his secretary. When he returned, Hewitt said quietly: "I think, Sir
+James--I _think_ that I shall be able to give you your thief presently."
+
+"What! Have you a clue? Who do you think? I began to believe you were
+hopelessly stumped."
+
+"Well, yes. I have rather a good clue, although I can't tell you much
+about it just yet. But it is so good a clue that I should like to know now
+whether you are determined to prosecute when you have the criminal?"
+
+"Why, bless me, of course," Sir James replied, with surprise. "It doesn't
+rest with me, you know--the property belongs to my friends. And even if
+they were disposed to let the thing slide, I shouldn't allow it--I
+couldn't, after they had been robbed in my house."
+
+"Of course, of course! Then, if I can, I should like to send a message to
+Twyford by somebody perfectly trustworthy--not a servant. Could anybody
+go?"
+
+"Well, there's Lloyd, although he's only just back from his journey. But,
+if it's important, he'll go."
+
+"It is important. The fact is we must have a policeman or two here this
+evening, and I'd like Mr. Lloyd to fetch them without telling anybody
+else."
+
+Sir James rang, and, in response to his message, Mr. Lloyd appeared. While
+Sir James gave his secretary his instructions, Hewitt strolled to the door
+of the smoking-room, and intercepted the latter as he came out.
+
+"I'm sorry to give you this trouble, Mr. Lloyd," he said, "but I must stay
+here myself for a little, and somebody who can be trusted must go. Will
+you just bring back a police-constable with you? or rather two--two would
+be better. That is all that is wanted. You won't let the servants know,
+will you? Of course there will be a female searcher at the Twyford
+police-station? Ah--of course. Well, you needn't bring her, you know. That
+sort of thing is done at the station." And, chatting thus confidentially,
+Martin Hewitt saw him off.
+
+When Hewitt returned to the smoking-room, Sir James said, suddenly: "Why,
+bless my soul, Mr. Hewitt, we haven't fed you! I'm awfully sorry. We came
+in rather late for lunch, you know, and this business has bothered me so I
+clean forgot everything else. There's no dinner till seven, so you'd
+better let me give you something now. I'm really sorry. Come along."
+
+"Thank you, Sir James," Hewitt replied; "I won't take much. A few
+biscuits, perhaps, or something of that sort. And, by the by, if you don't
+mind, I rather think I should like to take it alone. The fact is I want to
+go over this case thoroughly by myself. Can you put me in a room?"
+
+"Any room you like. Where will you go? The dining-room's rather large, but
+there's my study, that's pretty snug, or----"
+
+"Perhaps I can go into Mr. Lloyd's room for half an hour or so; I don't
+think he'll mind, and it's pretty comfortable."
+
+"Certainly, if you'd like. I'll tell them to send you whatever they've
+got."
+
+"Thank you very much. Perhaps they'll also send me a lump of sugar and a
+walnut; it's--it's a little fad of mine."
+
+"A--what? A lump of sugar and a walnut?" Sir James stopped for a moment,
+with his hand on the bell-rope. "Oh, certainly, if you'd like it;
+certainly," he added, and stared after this detective with curious tastes
+as he left the room.
+
+When the vehicle, bringing back the secretary and the policeman, drew up
+on the drive, Martin Hewitt left the room on the first floor and proceeded
+down-stairs. On the landing he met Sir James Norris and Mrs. Cazenove, who
+stared with astonishment on perceiving that the detective carried in his
+hand the parrot-cage.
+
+"I think our business is about brought to a head now," Hewitt remarked, on
+the stairs. "Here are the police officers from Twyford." The men were
+standing in the hall with Mr. Lloyd, who, on catching sight of the cage in
+Hewitt's hand, paled suddenly.
+
+"This is the person who will be charged, I think," Hewitt pursued,
+addressing the officers, and indicating Lloyd with his finger.
+
+"What, Lloyd?" gasped Sir James, aghast. "No--not Lloyd--nonsense!"
+
+"He doesn't seem to think it nonsense himself, does he?" Hewitt placidly
+observed. Lloyd had sank on a chair, and, gray of face, was staring
+blindly at the man he had run against at the office door that morning. His
+lips moved in spasms, but there was no sound. The wilted flower fell from
+his button-hole to the floor, but he did not move.
+
+"This is his accomplice," Hewitt went on, placing the parrot and cage on
+the hall table, "though I doubt whether there will be any use in charging
+_him_. Eh, Polly?"
+
+The parrot put his head aside and chuckled. "Hullo, Polly!" it quietly
+gurgled. "Come along!"
+
+Sir James Norris was hopelessly bewildered. "Lloyd--Lloyd," he said, under
+his breath. "Lloyd--and that!"
+
+"This was his little messenger, his useful Mercury," Hewitt explained,
+tapping the cage complacently; "in fact, the actual lifter. Hold him up!"
+
+The last remark referred to the wretched Lloyd, who had fallen forward
+with something between a sob and a loud sigh. The policemen took him by
+the arms and propped him in his chair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"System?" said Hewitt, with a shrug of the shoulders, an hour or two after
+in Sir James' study. "I can't say I have a system. I call it nothing but
+common-sense and a sharp pair of eyes. Nobody using these could help
+taking the right road in this case. I began at the match, just as the
+Scotland Yard man did, but I had the advantage of taking a line through
+three cases. To begin with, it was plain that that match, being left there
+in daylight, in Mrs. Cazenove's room, could not have been used to light
+the table-top, in the full glare of the window; therefore it had been used
+for some other purpose--_what_ purpose I could not, at the moment, guess.
+Habitual thieves, you know, often have curious superstitions, and some
+will never take anything without leaving something behind--a pebble or a
+piece of coal, or something like that--in the premises they have been
+robbing. It seemed at first extremely likely that this was a case of that
+kind. The match had clearly been _brought in_--because, when I asked for
+matches, there were none in the stand, not even an empty box, and the room
+had not been disturbed. Also the match probably had not been struck there,
+nothing having been heard, although, of course, a mistake in this matter
+was just possible. This match, then, it was fair to assume, had been lit
+somewhere else and blown out immediately--I remarked at the time that it
+was very little burned. Plainly it could not have been treated thus for
+nothing, and the only possible object would have been to prevent it
+igniting accidentally. Following on this, it became obvious that the match
+was used, for whatever purpose, not _as_ a match, but merely as a
+convenient splinter of wood.
+
+"So far so good. But on examining the match very closely I observed, as
+you can see for yourself, certain rather sharp indentations in the wood.
+They are very small, you see, and scarcely visible, except upon narrow
+inspection; but there they are, and their positions are regular. See,
+there are two on each side, each opposite the corresponding mark of the
+other pair. The match, in fact, would seem to have been gripped in some
+fairly sharp instrument, holding it at two points above and two below--an
+instrument, as it may at once strike you, not unlike the beak of a bird.
+
+"Now here was an idea. What living creature but a bird could possibly have
+entered Mrs. Heath's window without a ladder--supposing no ladder to have
+been used--or could have got into Mrs. Armitage's window without lifting
+the sash higher than the eight or ten inches it was already open? Plainly,
+nothing. Further, it is significant that only _one_ article was stolen at
+a time, although others were about. A human being could have carried any
+reasonable number, but a bird could only take one at a time. But why
+should a bird carry a match in its beak? Certainly it must have been
+trained to do that for a purpose, and a little consideration made that
+purpose pretty clear. A noisy, chattering bird would probably betray
+itself at once. Therefore it must be trained to keep quiet both while
+going for and coming away with its plunder. What readier or more probably
+effectual way than, while teaching it to carry without dropping, to teach
+it also to keep quiet while carrying? The one thing would practically
+cover the other.
+
+"I thought at once, of course, of a jackdaw or a magpie--these birds'
+thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match
+were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I
+conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived
+near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity of a little chat with your
+groom on the subject of dogs and pets in general, and ascertained that
+there was no tame raven in the place. I also, incidentally, by getting a
+light from the coach-house box of matches, ascertained that the match
+found was of the sort generally used about the establishment--the large,
+thick, red-topped English match. But I further found that Mr. Lloyd had a
+parrot which was a most intelligent pet, and had been trained into
+comparative quietness--for a parrot. Also, I learned that more than once
+the groom had met Mr. Lloyd carrying his parrot under his coat, it having,
+as its owner explained, learned the trick of opening its cage-door and
+escaping.
+
+"I said nothing, of course, to you of all this, because I had as yet
+nothing but a train of argument and no results. I got to Lloyd's room as
+soon as possible. My chief object in going there was achieved when I
+played with the parrot, and induced it to bite a quill toothpick.
+
+"When you left me in the smoking-room, I compared the quill and the match
+very carefully, and found that the marks corresponded exactly. After this
+I felt very little doubt indeed. The fact of Lloyd having met the ladies
+walking before dark on the day of the first robbery proved nothing,
+because, since it was clear that the match had _not_ been used to procure
+a light, the robbery might as easily have taken place in daylight as
+not--must have so taken place, in fact, if my conjectures were right. That
+they were right I felt no doubt. There could be no other explanation.
+
+"When Mrs. Heath left her window open and her door shut, anybody climbing
+upon the open sash of Lloyd's high window could have put the bird upon the
+sill above. The match placed in the bird's beak for the purpose I have
+indicated, and struck first, in case by accident it should ignite by
+rubbing against something and startle the bird--this match would, of
+course, be dropped just where the object to be removed was taken up; as
+you know, in every case the match was found almost upon the spot where the
+missing article had been left--scarcely a likely triple coincidence had
+the match been used by a human thief. This would have been done as soon
+after the ladies had left as possible, and there would then have been
+plenty of time for Lloyd to hurry out and meet them before
+dark--especially plenty of time to meet them _coming back_, as they must
+have been, since they were carrying their ferns. The match was an article
+well chosen for its purpose, as being a not altogether unlikely thing to
+find on a dressing-table, and, if noticed, likely to lead to the wrong
+conclusions adopted by the official detective.
+
+"In Mrs. Armitage's case the taking of an inferior brooch and the leaving
+of a more valuable ring pointed clearly either to the operator being a
+fool or unable to distinguish values, and certainly, from other
+indications, the thief seemed no fool. The door was locked, and the
+gas-fitter, so to speak, on guard, and the window was only eight or ten
+inches open and propped with a brush. A human thief entering the window
+would have disturbed this arrangement, and would scarcely risk discovery
+by attempting to replace it, especially a thief in so great a hurry as to
+snatch the brooch up without unfastening the pin. The bird could pass
+through the opening as it was, and _would have_ to tear the pin-cushion to
+pull the brooch off, probably holding the cushion down with its claw the
+while.
+
+"Now in yesterday's case we had an alteration of conditions. The window
+was shut and fastened, but the door was open--but only left for a few
+minutes, during which time no sound was heard either of coming or going.
+Was it not possible, then, that the thief was _already_ in the room, in
+hiding, while Mrs. Cazenove was there, and seized its first opportunity on
+her temporary absence? The room is full of draperies, hangings, and what
+not, allowing of plenty of concealment for a bird, and a bird could leave
+the place noiselessly and quickly. That the whole scheme was strange
+mattered not at all. Robberies presenting such unaccountable features must
+have been effected by strange means of one sort or another. There was no
+improbability. Consider how many hundreds of examples of infinitely higher
+degrees of bird-training are exhibited in the London streets every week
+for coppers.
+
+"So that, on the whole, I felt pretty sure of my ground. But before taking
+any definite steps I resolved to see if Polly could not be persuaded to
+exhibit his accomplishments to an indulgent stranger. For that purpose I
+contrived to send Lloyd away again and have a quiet hour alone with his
+bird. A piece of sugar, as everybody knows, is a good parrot bribe; but a
+walnut, split in half, is a better--especially if the bird be used to it;
+so I got you to furnish me with both. Polly was shy at first, but I
+generally get along very well with pets, and a little perseverance soon
+led to a complete private performance for my benefit. Polly would take the
+match, mute as wax, jump on the table, pick up the brightest thing he
+could see, in a great hurry, leave the match behind, and scuttle away
+round the room; but at first wouldn't give up the plunder to _me_. It was
+enough. I also took the liberty, as you know, of a general look round, and
+discovered that little collection of Brummagem rings and trinkets that you
+have just seen--used in Polly's education, no doubt. When we sent Lloyd
+away, it struck me that he might as well be usefully employed as not, so I
+got him to fetch the police, deluding him a little, I fear, by talking
+about the servants and a female searcher. There will be no trouble about
+evidence; he'll confess. Of that I'm sure. I know the sort of man. But I
+doubt if you'll get Mrs. Cazenove's brooch back. You see, he has been to
+London to-day, and by this time the swag is probably broken up."
+
+Sir James listened to Hewitt's explanation with many expressions of assent
+and some of surprise. When it was over, he smoked a few whiffs and then
+said: "But Mrs. Armitage's brooch was pawned, and by a woman."
+
+"Exactly. I expect our friend Lloyd was rather disgusted at his small
+luck--probably gave the brooch to some female connection in London, and
+she realized on it. Such persons don't always trouble to give a correct
+address."
+
+The two smoked in silence for a few minutes, and then Hewitt continued: "I
+don't expect our friend has had an easy job altogether with that bird. His
+successes at most have only been three, and I suspect he had many failures
+and not a few anxious moments that we know nothing of. I should judge as
+much merely from what the groom told me of frequently meeting Lloyd with
+his parrot. But the plan was not a bad one--not at all. Even if the bird
+had been caught in the act, it would only have been 'That mischievous
+parrot!' you see. And his master would only have been looking for him."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+THE LOSS OF SAMMY CROCKETT.
+
+It was, of course, always a part of Martin Hewitt's business to be
+thoroughly at home among any and every class of people, and to be able to
+interest himself intelligently, or to appear to do so, in their various
+pursuits. In one of the most important cases ever placed in his hands he
+could have gone but a short way toward success had he not displayed some
+knowledge of the more sordid aspects of professional sport, and a great
+interest in the undertakings of a certain dealer therein.
+
+The great case itself had nothing to do with sport, and, indeed, from a
+narrative point of view, was somewhat uninteresting, but the man who alone
+held the one piece of information wanted was a keeper, backer, or "gaffer"
+of professional pedestrians, and it was through the medium of his
+pecuniary interest in such matters that Hewitt was enabled to strike a
+bargain with him.
+
+The man was a publican on the outskirts of Padfield, a northern town,
+pretty famous for its sporting tastes, and to Padfield, therefore, Hewitt
+betook himself, and, arrayed in a way to indicate some inclination of his
+own toward sport, he began to frequent the bar of the Hare and Hounds.
+Kentish, the landlord, was a stout, bull-necked man, of no great
+communicativeness at first; but after a little acquaintance he opened out
+wonderfully, became quite a jolly (and rather intelligent) companion, and
+came out with innumerable anecdotes of his sporting adventures. He could
+put a very decent dinner on the table, too, at the Hare and Hounds, and
+Hewitt's frequent invitation to him to join therein and divide a bottle of
+the best in the cellar soon put the two on the very best of terms. Good
+terms with Mr. Kentish was Hewitt's great desire, for the information he
+wanted was of a sort that could never be extracted by casual questioning,
+but must be a matter of open communication by the publican, extracted in
+what way it might be.
+
+"Look here," said Kentish one day, "I'll put you on to a good thing, my
+boy--a real good thing. Of course you know all about the Padfield 135
+Yards Handicap being run off now?"
+
+"Well, I haven't looked into it much," Hewitt replied. "Ran the first
+round of heats last Saturday and Monday, didn't they?"
+
+"They did. Well"--Kentish spoke in a stage whisper as he leaned over and
+rapped the table--"I've got the final winner in this house." He nodded his
+head, took a puff at his cigar, and added, in his ordinary voice. "Don't
+say nothing."
+
+"No, of course not. Got something on, of course?"
+
+"Rather! What do you think? Got any price I liked. Been saving him up for
+this. Why, he's got twenty-one yards, and he can do even time all the way!
+Fact! Why, he could win runnin' back'ards. He won his heat on Monday
+like--like--like that!" The gaffer snapped his fingers, in default of a
+better illustration, and went on. "He might ha' took it a little easier,
+_I_ think; it's shortened his price, of course, him jumpin' in by two
+yards. But you can get decent odds now, if you go about it right. You take
+my tip--back him for his heat next Saturday, in the second round, and for
+the final. You'll get a good price for the final, if you pop it down at
+once. But don't go makin' a song of it, will you, now? I'm givin' you a
+tip I wouldn't give anybody else."
+
+"Thanks, very much; it's awfully good of you. I'll do what you advise. But
+isn't there a dark horse anywhere else?"
+
+"Not dark to me, my boy, not dark to me. I know every man runnin' like a
+book. Old Taylor--him over at the Cop--he's got a very good lad at
+eighteen yards, a very good lad indeed; and he's a tryer this time, I
+know. But, bless you, my lad could give him ten, instead o' taking three,
+and beat him then! When I'm runnin' a real tryer, I'm generally runnin'
+something very near a winner, you bet; and this time, mind _this_ time,
+I'm runnin' the certainest winner I _ever_ run--and I don't often make a
+mistake. You back him."
+
+"I shall, if you're as sure as that. But who is he?"
+
+"Oh, Crockett's his name--Sammy Crockett. He's quite a new lad. I've got
+young Steggles looking after him--sticks to him like wax. Takes his little
+breathers in my bit o' ground at the back here. I've got a cinder-sprint
+path there, over behind the trees. I don't let him out o' sight much, I
+can tell you. He's a straight lad, and he knows it'll be worth his while
+to stick to me; but there's some 'ud poison him, if they thought he'd
+spoil their books."
+
+Soon afterward the two strolled toward the taproom. "I expect Sammy'll be
+there," the landlord said, "with Steggles. I don't hide him too
+much--they'd think I'd got something extra on if I did."
+
+In the tap-room sat a lean, wire-drawn-looking youth, with sloping
+shoulders and a thin face, and by his side was a rather short, thick-set
+man, who had an odd air, no matter what he did, of proprietorship and
+surveillance of the lean youth. Several other men sat about, and there was
+loud laughter, under which the lean youth looked sheepishly angry.
+
+"'Tarn't no good, Sammy, lad," some one was saying, "you a-makin' after
+Nancy Webb--she'll ha' nowt to do with 'ee."
+
+"Don' like 'em so thread-papery," added another. "No, Sammy, you aren't
+the lad for she. I see her----"
+
+"What about Nancy Webb?" asked Kentish, pushing open the door. "Sammy's
+all right, any way. You keep fit, my lad, an' go on improving, and some
+day you'll have as good a house as me. Never mind the lasses. Had his
+glass o' beer, has he?" This to Raggy Steggles, who, answering in the
+affirmative, viewed his charge as though he were a post, and the beer a
+recent coat of paint.
+
+"Has two glasses of mild a day," the landlord said to Hewitt. "Never puts
+on flesh, so he can stand it. Come out now." He nodded to Steggles, who
+rose and marched Sammy Crockett away for exercise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following afternoon (it was Thursday), as Hewitt and Kentish
+chatted in the landlord's own snuggery, Steggles burst into the room in a
+great state of agitation and spluttered out: "He--he's bolted; gone away!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sammy--gone! Hooked it! _I_ can't find him."
+
+The landlord stared blankly at the trainer, who stood with a sweater
+dangling from his hand and stared blankly back. "What d'ye mean?" Kentish
+said, at last. "Don't be a fool! He's in the place somewhere. Find him!"
+
+But this Steggles defied anybody to do. He had looked already. He had left
+Crockett at the cinder-path behind the trees in his running-gear, with the
+addition of the long overcoat and cap he used in going between the path
+and the house to guard against chill. "I was goin' to give him a bust or
+two with the pistol," the trainer explained, "but, when we got over
+t'other side, 'Raggy,' ses he, 'it's blawin' a bit chilly. I think I'll
+ha' a sweater. There's one on my box, ain't there?' So in I coomes for the
+sweater, and it weren't on his box, and, when I found it and got back--he
+weren't there. They'd seen nowt o' him in t' house, and he weren't
+nowhere."
+
+Hewitt and the landlord, now thoroughly startled, searched everywhere, but
+to no purpose. "What should he go off the place for?" asked Kentish, in a
+sweat of apprehension. "'Tain't chilly a bit--it's warm. He didn't want no
+sweater; never wore one before. It was a piece of kid to be able to clear
+out. Nice thing, this is. I stand to win two years' takings over him.
+Here--you'll have to find him."
+
+"Ah, but how?" exclaimed the disconcerted trainer, dancing about
+distractedly. "I've got all I could scrape on him myself. Where can I
+look?"
+
+Here was Hewitt's opportunity. He took Kentish aside and whispered. What
+he said startled the landlord considerably. "Yes, I'll tell you all about
+that," he said, "if that's all you want. It's no good or harm to me
+whether I tell or no. But can you find him?"
+
+"That I can't promise, of course. But you know who I am now, and what I'm
+here for. If you like to give me the information I want, I'll go into the
+case for you, and, of course, I shan't charge any fee. I may have luck,
+you know, but I can't promise, of course."
+
+The landlord looked in Hewitt's face for a moment. Then he said: "Done!
+It's a deal."
+
+"Very good," Hewitt replied; "get together the one or two papers you have,
+and we'll go into my business in the evening. As to Crockett, don't say a
+word to anybody. I'm afraid it must get out, since they all know about it
+in the house, but there's no use in making any unnecessary noise. Don't
+make hedging bets or do anything that will attract notice. Now we'll go
+over to the back and look at this cinder-path of yours."
+
+Here Steggles, who was still standing near, was struck with an idea. "How
+about old Taylor, at the Cop, guv'nor, eh?" he said, meaningly. "His lad's
+good enough to win with Sammy out, and Taylor is backing him plenty. Think
+he knows any thing o' this?"
+
+"That's likely," Hewitt observed, before Kentish could reply. "Yes. Look
+here--suppose Steggles goes and keeps his eye on the Cop for an hour or
+two, in case there's anything to be heard of? Don't show yourself, of
+course."
+
+Kentish agreed, and the trainer went. When Hewitt and Kentish arrived at
+the path behind the trees, Hewitt at once began examining the ground. One
+or two rather large holes in the cinders were made, as the publican
+explained, by Crockett, in practicing getting off his mark. Behind these
+were several fresh tracks of spiked shoes. The tracks led up to within a
+couple of yards of the high fence bounding the ground, and there stopped
+abruptly and entirely. In the fence, a little to the right of where the
+tracks stopped, there was a stout door. This Hewitt tried, and found ajar.
+
+"That's always kept bolted," Kentish said. "He's gone out that way--he
+couldn't have gone any other without comin' through the house."
+
+"But he isn't in the habit of making a step three yards long, is he?"
+Hewitt asked, pointing at the last footmark and then at the door, which
+was quite that distance away from it. "Besides," he added, opening the
+door, "there's no footprint here nor outside."
+
+The door opened on a lane, with another fence and a thick plantation of
+trees at the other side. Kentish looked at the footmarks, then at the
+door, then down the lane, and finally back toward the house. "That's a
+licker!" he said.
+
+"This is a quiet sort of lane," was Hewitt's next remark. "No houses in
+sight. Where does it lead?"
+
+"That way it goes to the Old Kilns--disused. This way down to a turning
+off the Padfield and Catton road."
+
+Hewitt returned to the cinder-path again, and once more examined the
+footmarks. He traced them back over the grass toward the house.
+"Certainly," he said, "he hasn't gone back to the house. Here is the
+double line of tracks, side by side, from the house--Steggles' ordinary
+boots with iron tips, and Crockett's running pumps; thus they came out.
+Here is Steggles' track in the opposite direction alone, made when he went
+back for the sweater. Crockett remained; you see various prints in those
+loose cinders at the end of the path where he moved this way and that, and
+then two or three paces toward the fence--not directly toward the door,
+you notice--and there they stop dead, and there are no more, either back
+or forward. Now, if he had wings, I should be tempted to the opinion that
+he flew straight away in the air from that spot--unless the earth
+swallowed him and closed again without leaving a wrinkle on its face."
+
+Kentish stared gloomily at the tracks and said nothing.
+
+"However," Hewitt resumed, "I think I'll take a little walk now and think
+over it. You go into the house and show yourself at the bar. If anybody
+wants to know how Crockett is, he's pretty well, thank you. By the by, can
+I get to the Cop--this place of Taylor's--by this back lane?"
+
+"Yes, down to the end leading to the Catton road, turn to the left and
+then first on the right. Any one'll show you the Cop," and Kentish shut
+the door behind the detective, who straightway walked--toward the Old
+Kilns.
+
+In little more than an hour he was back. It was now becoming dusk, and the
+landlord looked out papers from a box near the side window of his
+snuggery, for the sake of the extra light. "I've got these papers together
+for you," he said, as Hewitt entered. "Any news?"
+
+"Nothing very great. Here's a bit of handwriting I want you to recognize,
+if you can. Get a light."
+
+Kentish lit a lamp, and Hewitt laid upon the table half a dozen small
+pieces of torn paper, evidently fragments of a letter which had been torn
+up, here reproduced in fac-simile:
+
+[Illustration: six scraps of paper: mmy, throw them ou, right away, left
+hi, hate his, lane wr]
+
+The landlord turned the scraps over, regarding them dubiously. "These
+aren't much to recognize, anyhow. _I_ don't know the writing. Where did
+you find 'em?"
+
+"They were lying in the lane at the back, a little way down. Plainly they
+are pieces of a note addressed to some one called Sammy or something very
+like it. See the first piece, with its 'mmy'? That is clearly from the
+beginning of the note, because there is no line between it and the smooth,
+straight edge of the paper above; also, nothing follows on the same line.
+Some one writes to Crockett--presuming it to be a letter addressed to him,
+as I do for other reasons--as Sammy. It is a pity that there is no more of
+the letter to be found than these pieces. I expect the person who tore it
+up put the rest in his pocket and dropped these by accident."
+
+Kentish, who had been picking up and examining each piece in turn, now
+dolorously broke out:
+
+"Oh, it's plain he's sold us--bolted and done us; me as took him out o'
+the gutter, too. Look here--'throw them over'; that's plain enough--can't
+mean anything else. Means throw _me_ over, and my friends--me, after what
+I've done for him! Then 'right away'--go right away, I s'pose, as he has
+done. Then"--he was fiddling with the scraps and finally fitted two
+together--"why, look here, this one with 'lane' on it fits over the one
+about throwing over, and it says 'poor f' where its torn; that means 'poor
+fool,' I s'pose--_me_, or 'fathead,' or something like that. That's nice.
+Why, I'd twist his neck if I could get hold of him; and I will!"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "Perhaps it's not quite so uncomplimentary, after all," he
+said. "If you can't recognize the writing, never mind. But, if he's gone
+away to sell you, it isn't much use finding him, is it? He won't win if he
+doesn't want to."
+
+"Why, he wouldn't dare to rope under my very eyes. I'd--I'd----"
+
+"Well, well; perhaps we'll get him to run, after all, and as well as he
+can. One thing is certain--he left this place of his own will. Further, I
+think he is in Padfield now; he went toward the town, I believe. And I
+don't think he means to sell you."
+
+"Well, he shouldn't. I've made it worth his while to stick to me. I've put
+a fifty on for him out of my own pocket, and told him so; and, if he won,
+that would bring him a lump more than he'd probably get by going crooked,
+besides the prize money and anything I might give him over. But it seems
+to me he's putting me in the cart altogether."
+
+"That we shall see. Meantime, don't mention anything I've told you to any
+one--not even to Steggles. He can't help us, and he might blurt things out
+inadvertently. Don't say anything about these pieces of paper, which I
+shall keep myself. By-the-by, Steggles is indoors, isn't he? Very well,
+keep him in. Don't let him be seen hunting about this evening. I'll stay
+here to-night and we'll proceed with Crockett's business in the morning.
+And now we'll settle _my_ business, please."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning Hewitt took his breakfast in the snuggery, carefully
+listening to any conversation that might take place at the bar. Soon after
+nine o'clock a fast dog-cart stopped outside, and a red-faced, loud-voiced
+man swaggered in, greeting Kentish with boisterous cordiality. He had a
+drink with the landlord, and said: "How's things? Fancy any of 'em for the
+sprint handicap? Got a lad o' your own in, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Kentish replied. "Crockett. Only a young un not got to his
+proper mark yet, I reckon. I think old Taylor's got No. 1 this time."
+
+"Capital lad," the other replied, with a confidential nod. "Shouldn't
+wonder at all. Want to do anything yourself over it?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. I'm not on at present. Might have a little flutter
+on the grounds just for fun; nothing else."
+
+There were a few more casual remarks, and then the red-faced man drove
+away.
+
+"Who was that?" asked Hewitt, who had watched the visitor through the
+snuggery window.
+
+"That's Danby--bookmaker. Cute chap. He's been told Crockett's missing,
+I'll bet anything, and come here to pump me. No good, though. As a matter
+of fact, I've worked Sammy Crockett into his books for about half I'm in
+for altogether--through third parties, of course."
+
+Hewitt reached for his hat. "I'm going out for half an hour now," he said.
+"If Steggles wants to go out before I come back, don't let him. Let him go
+and smooth over all those tracks on the cinder-path, very carefully. And,
+by the by, could you manage to have your son about the place to-day, in
+case I happen to want a little help out of doors?"
+
+"Certainly; I'll get him to stay in. But what do you want the cinders
+smoothed for?"
+
+Hewitt smiled, and patted his host's shoulder. "I'll explain all my tricks
+when the job's done," he said, and went out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lane from Padfield to Sedby village stood the Plough beer-house,
+wherein J. Webb was licensed to sell by retail beer to be consumed on the
+premises or off, as the thirsty list. Nancy Webb, with a very fine color,
+a very curly fringe, and a wide smiling mouth revealing a fine set of
+teeth, came to the bar at the summons of a stoutish old gentleman in
+spectacles who walked with a stick.
+
+The stoutish old gentleman had a glass of bitter beer, and then said in
+the peculiarly quiet voice of a very deaf man: "Can you tell me, if you
+please, the way into the main Catton road?"
+
+"Down the lane, turn to the right at the cross-roads, then first to the
+left."
+
+The old gentleman waited with his hand to his ear for some few seconds
+after she had finished speaking, and then resumed in his whispering voice:
+"I'm afraid I'm very deaf this morning." He fumbled in his pocket and
+produced a note-book and pencil. "May I trouble you to write it down? I'm
+so very deaf at times that I--Thank you."
+
+The girl wrote the direction, and the old gentleman bade her good-morning
+and left. All down the lane he walked slowly with his stick. At the
+cross-roads he turned, put the stick under his arm, thrust his spectacles
+into his pocket, and strode away in the ordinary guise of Martin Hewitt.
+He pulled out his note-book, examined Miss Webb's direction very
+carefully, and then went off another way altogether, toward the Hare and
+Hounds.
+
+Kentish lounged moodily in his bar. "Well, my boy," said Hewitt, "has
+Steggles wiped out the tracks?"
+
+"Not yet; I haven't told him. But he's somewhere about; I'll tell him
+now."
+
+"No, don't. I don't think we'll have that done, after all. I expect he'll
+want to go out soon--at any rate, some time during the day. Let him go
+whenever he likes. I'll sit upstairs a bit in the club-room."
+
+"Very well. But how do you know Steggles will be going out?"
+
+"Well, he's pretty restless after his lost _protege_, isn't he? I don't
+suppose he'll be able to remain idle long."
+
+"And about Crockett. Do you give him up?"
+
+"Oh, no! Don't you be impatient. I can't say I'm quite confident yet of
+laying hold of him--the time is so short, you see--but I think I shall at
+least have news for you by the evening."
+
+Hewitt sat in the club-room until the afternoon, taking his lunch there.
+At length he saw, through the front window, Raggy Steggles walking down
+the road. In an instant Hewitt was down-stairs and at the door. The road
+bent eighty yards away, and as soon as Steggles passed the bend the
+detective hurried after him.
+
+All the way to Padfield town and more than half through it Hewitt dogged
+the trainer. In the end Steggles stopped at a corner and gave a note to a
+small boy who was playing near. The boy ran with the note to a bright,
+well-kept house at the opposite corner. Martin Hewitt was interested to
+observe the legend, "H. Danby, Contractor," on a board over a gate in the
+side wall of the garden behind this house. In five minutes a door in the
+side gate opened, and the head and shoulders of the red-faced man emerged.
+Steggles immediately hurried across and disappeared through the gate.
+
+This was both interesting and instructive. Hewitt took up a position in
+the side street and waited. In ten minutes the trainer reappeared and
+hurried off the way he had come, along the street Hewitt had considerately
+left clear for him. Then Hewitt strolled toward the smart house and took a
+good look at it. At one corner of the small piece of forecourt garden,
+near the railings, a small, baize-covered, glass-fronted notice-board
+stood on two posts. On its top edge appeared the words, "H. Danby. Houses
+to be Sold or Let." But the only notice pinned to the green baize within
+was an old and dusty one, inviting tenants for three shops, which were
+suitable for any business, and which would be fitted to suit tenants.
+Apply within.
+
+Hewitt pushed open the front gate and rang the door-bell. "There are some
+shops to let, I see," he said, when a maid appeared. "I should like to see
+them, if you will let me have the key."
+
+"Master's out, sir. You can't see the shops till Monday."
+
+"Dear me, that's unfortunate, I'm afraid I can't wait till Monday. Didn't
+Mr. Danby leave any instructions, in case anybody should inquire?"
+
+"Yes, sir--as I've told you. He said anybody who called about 'em must
+come again on Monday."
+
+"Oh, very well, then; I suppose I must try. One of the shops is in High
+Street, isn't it?"
+
+"No, sir; they're all in the new part--Granville Road."
+
+"Ah, I'm afraid that will scarcely do. But I'll see. Good-day."
+
+Martin Hewitt walked away a couple of streets' lengths before he inquired
+the way to Granville Road. When at last he found that thoroughfare, in a
+new and muddy suburb, crowded with brick-heaps and half-finished streets,
+he took a slow walk along its entire length. It was a melancholy example
+of baffled enterprise. A row of a dozen or more shops had been built
+before any population had arrived to demand goods. Would-be tradesmen had
+taken many of these shops, and failure and disappointment stared from the
+windows. Some were half covered by shutters, because the scanty stock
+scarce sufficed to fill the remaining half. Others were shut almost
+altogether, the inmates only keeping open the door for their own
+convenience, and, perhaps, keeping down a shutter for the sake of a little
+light. Others, again, had not yet fallen so low, but struggled bravely
+still to maintain a show of business and prosperity, with very little
+success. Opposite the shops there still remained a dusty, ill-treated
+hedge and a forlorn-looking field, which an old board offered on building
+leases. Altogether a most depressing spot.
+
+There was little difficulty in identifying the three shops offered for
+letting by Mr. H. Danby. They were all together near the middle of the
+row, and were the only ones that appeared not yet to have been occupied. A
+dusty "To Let" bill hung in each window, with written directions to
+inquire of Mr. H. Danby or at No. 7. Now No. 7 was a melancholy baker's
+shop, with a stock of three loaves and a plate of stale buns. The
+disappointed baker assured Hewitt that he usually kept the keys of the
+shops, but that the landlord, Mr. Danby, had taken them away the day
+before to see how the ceilings were standing, and had not returned them.
+"But if you was thinking of taking a shop here," the poor baker added,
+with some hesitation, "I--I--if you'll excuse my advising you--I shouldn't
+recommend it. I've had a sickener of it myself."
+
+Hewitt thanked the baker for his advice, wished him better luck in future,
+and left. To the Hare and Hounds his pace was brisk. "Come," he said, as
+he met Kentish's inquiring glance, "this has been a very good day, on the
+whole. I know where our man is now, and I think we can get him, by a
+little management."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Oh, down in Padfield. As a matter of fact, he's being kept there against
+his will, we shall find. I see that your friend Mr. Danby is a builder as
+well as a bookmaker."
+
+"Not a regular builder. He speculates in a street of new houses now and
+again, that's all. But is he in it?"
+
+"He's as deep in it as anybody, I think. Now, don't fly into a passion.
+There are a few others in it as well, but you'll do harm if you don't keep
+quiet."
+
+"But go and get the police; come and fetch him, if you know where they're
+keeping him. Why----"
+
+"So we will, if we can't do it without them. But it's quite possible we
+can, and without all the disturbance and, perhaps, delay that calling in
+the police would involve. Consider, now, in reference to your own
+arrangements. Wouldn't it pay you better to get him back quietly, without
+a soul knowing--perhaps not even Danby knowing--till the heat is run
+to-morrow?"
+
+"Well, yes, it would, of course."
+
+"Very good, then, so be it. Remember what I have told you about keeping
+your mouth shut; say nothing to Steggles or anybody. Is there a cab or
+brougham your son and I can have for the evening?"
+
+"There's an old hiring landau in the stables you can shut up into a cab,
+if that'll do."
+
+"Excellent. We'll run down to the town in it as soon as it's ready. But,
+first, a word about Crockett. What sort of a lad is he? Likely to give
+them trouble, show fight, and make a disturbance?"
+
+"No, I should say not. He's no plucked un, certainly; all his manhood's in
+his legs, I believe. You see, he ain't a big sort o' chap at best, and
+he'd be pretty easy put upon--at least, I guess so."
+
+"Very good, so much the better, for then he won't have been damaged, and
+they will probably only have one man to guard him. Now the carriage,
+please."
+
+Young Kentish was a six-foot sergeant of grenadiers home on furlough, and
+luxuriating in plain clothes. He and Hewitt walked a little way toward the
+town, allowing the landau to catch them up. They traveled in it to within
+a hundred yards of the empty shops and then alighted, bidding the driver
+wait.
+
+"I shall show you three empty shops," Hewitt said, as he and young Kentish
+walked down Granville Road. "I am pretty sure that Sammy Crockett is in
+one of them, and I am pretty sure that that is the middle one. Take a look
+as we go past."
+
+When the shops had been slowly passed, Hewitt resumed: "Now, did you see
+anything about those shops that told a tale of any sort?"
+
+"No," Sergeant Kentish replied. "I can't say I noticed anything beyond the
+fact that they were empty--and likely to stay so, I should think."
+
+"We'll stroll back, and look in at the windows, if nobody's watching us,"
+Hewitt said. "You see, it's reasonable to suppose they've put him in the
+middle one, because that would suit their purpose best. The shops at each
+side of the three are occupied, and, if the prisoner struggled, or
+shouted, or made an uproar, he might be heard if he were in one of the
+shops next those inhabited. So that the middle shop is the most likely.
+Now, see there," he went on, as they stopped before the window of the shop
+in question, "over at the back there's a staircase not yet partitioned
+off. It goes down below and up above. On the stairs and on the floor near
+them there are muddy footmarks. These must have been made to-day, else
+they would not be muddy, but dry and dusty, since there hasn't been a
+shower for a week till to-day. Move on again. Then you noticed that there
+were no other such marks in the shop. Consequently the man with the muddy
+feet did not come in by the front door, but by the back; otherwise he
+would have made a trail from the door. So we will go round to the back
+ourselves."
+
+It was now growing dusk. The small pieces of ground behind the shops were
+bounded by a low fence, containing a door for each house.
+
+"This door is bolted inside, of course," Hewitt said, "but there is no
+difficulty in climbing. I think we had better wait in the garden till
+dark. In the meantime, the jailer, whoever he is, may come out; in which
+case we shall pounce on him as soon as he opens the door. You have that
+few yards of cord in your pocket, I think? And my handkerchief, properly
+rolled, will make a very good gag. Now over."
+
+They climbed the fence and quietly approached the house, placing
+themselves in the angle of an outhouse out of sight from the windows.
+There was no sound, and no light appeared. Just above the ground about a
+foot of window was visible, with a grating over it, apparently lighting a
+basement. Suddenly Hewitt touched his companion's arm and pointed toward
+the window. A faint rustling sound was perceptible, and, as nearly as
+could be discerned in the darkness, some white blind or covering was
+placed over the glass from the inside. Then came the sound of a striking
+match, and at the side edge of the window there was a faint streak of
+light.
+
+"That's the place," Hewitt whispered. "Come, we'll make a push for it. You
+stand against the wall at one side of the door and I'll stand at the
+other, and we'll have him as he comes out. Quietly, now, and I'll startle
+them."
+
+He took a stone from among the rubbish littering the garden and flung it
+crashing through the window. There was a loud exclamation from within, the
+blind fell, and somebody rushed to the back door and flung it open.
+Instantly Kentish let fly a heavy right-hander, and the man went over like
+a skittle. In a moment Hewitt was upon him and the gag in his mouth.
+
+"Hold him," Hewitt whispered, hurriedly. "I'll see if there are others."
+
+He peered down through the low window. Within Sammy Crockett, his bare
+legs dangling from beneath his long overcoat, sat on a packing-box,
+leaning with his head on his hand and his back toward the window. A
+guttering candle stood on the mantel-piece, and the newspaper which had
+been stretched across the window lay in scattered sheets on the floor. No
+other person besides Sammy was visible.
+
+They led their prisoner indoors. Young Kentish recognized him as a
+public-house loafer and race-course ruffian, well known in the
+neighborhood.
+
+"So it's you, is it, Browdie?" he said. "I've caught you one hard clump,
+and I've half a mind to make it a score more. But you'll get it pretty
+warm one way or another before this job's forgotten."
+
+Sammy Crockett was overjoyed at his rescue. He had not been ill-treated,
+he explained, but had been thoroughly cowed by Browdie, who had from time
+to time threatened him savagely with an iron bar by way of persuading him
+to quietness and submission. He had been fed, and had taken no worse harm
+than a slight stiffness from his adventure, due to his light under-attire
+of jersey and knee-shorts.
+
+Sergeant Kentish tied Browdie's elbows firmly together behind, and carried
+the line round the ankles, bracing all up tight. Then he ran a knot from
+one wrist to the other over the back of the neck, and left the prisoner,
+trussed and helpless, on the heap of straw that had been Sammy's bed.
+
+"You won't be very jolly, I expect," Kentish said, "for some time. You
+can't shout and you can't walk, and I know you can't untie yourself.
+You'll get a bit hungry, too, perhaps, but that'll give you an appetite. I
+don't suppose you'll be disturbed till some time to-morrow, unless our
+friend Danby turns up in the meantime. But you can come along to jail
+instead, if you prefer it."
+
+They left him where he lay, and took Sammy to the old landau. Sammy walked
+in slippers, carrying his spiked shoes, hanging by the lace, in his hand.
+
+"Ah," said Hewitt, "I think I know the name of the young lady who gave you
+those slippers."
+
+Crockett looked ashamed and indignant. "Yes," he said, "they've done me
+nicely between 'em. But I'll pay her--I'll----"
+
+"Hush, hush!" Hewitt said; "you mustn't talk unkindly of a lady, you know.
+Get into this carriage, and we'll take you home. We'll see if I can tell
+you your adventures without making a mistake. First, you had a note from
+Miss Webb, telling you that you were mistaken in supposing she had
+slighted you, and that, as a matter of fact, she had quite done with
+somebody else--left him--of whom you were jealous. Isn't that so?"
+
+"Well, yes," young Crockett answered, blushing deeply under the
+carriage-lamp; "but I don't see how you come to know that."
+
+"Then she went on to ask you to get rid of Steggles on Thursday afternoon
+for a few minutes, and speak to her in the back lane. Now, your running
+pumps, with their thin soles, almost like paper, no heels and long spikes,
+hurt your feet horribly if you walk on hard ground, don't they?"
+
+"Ay, that they do--enough to cripple you. I'd never go on much hard ground
+with 'em."
+
+"They're not like cricket shoes, I see."
+
+"Not a bit. Cricket shoes you can walk anywhere in!"
+
+"Well, she knew this--I think I know who told her--and she promised to
+bring you a new pair of slippers, and to throw them over the fence for you
+to come out in."
+
+"I s'pose she's been tellin' you all this?" Crockett said, mournfully.
+"You couldn't ha' seen the letter; I saw her tear it up and put the bits
+in her pocket. She asked me for it in the lane, in case Steggles saw it."
+
+"Well, at any rate, you sent Steggles away, and the slippers did come
+over, and you went into the lane. You walked with her as far as the road
+at the end, and then you were seized and gagged, and put into a carriage."
+
+"That was Browdie did that," said Crockett, "and another chap I don't
+know. But--why, this is Padfield High Street?" He looked through the
+window and regarded the familiar shops with astonishment.
+
+"Of course it is. Where did you think it was?"
+
+"Why, where was that place you found me in?"
+
+"Granville Road, Padfield. I suppose they told you you were in another
+town?"
+
+"Told me it was Newstead Hatch. They drove for about three or four hours,
+and kept me down on the floor between the seats so as I couldn't see where
+we was going."
+
+"Done for two reasons," said Hewitt. "First, to mystify you, and prevent
+any discovery of the people directing the conspiracy; and second, to be
+able to put you indoors at night and unobserved. Well, I think I have told
+you all you know yourself now as far as the carriage.
+
+"But there is the Hare and Hounds just in front. We'll pull up here, and
+I'll get out and see if the coast is clear. I fancy Mr. Kentish would
+rather you came in unnoticed."
+
+In a few seconds Hewitt was back, and Crockett was conveyed indoors by a
+side entrance. Hewitt's instructions to the landlord were few, but
+emphatic. "Don't tell Steggles about it," he said; "make an excuse to get
+rid of him, and send him out of the house. Take Crockett into some other
+bedroom, not his own, and let your son look after him. Then come here, and
+I'll tell you all about it."
+
+Sammy Crockett was undergoing a heavy grooming with white embrocation at
+the hands of Sergeant Kentish when the landlord returned to Hewitt. "Does
+Danby know you've got him?" he asked. "How did you do it?"
+
+"Danby doesn't know yet, and with luck he won't know till he sees Crockett
+running to-morrow. The man who has sold you is Steggles."
+
+"Steggles?"
+
+"Steggles it is. At the very first, when Steggles rushed in to report
+Sammy Crockett missing, I suspected him. You didn't, I suppose?"
+
+"No. He's always been considered a straight man, and he looked as startled
+as anybody."
+
+"Yes, I must say he acted it very well. But there was something suspicious
+in his story. What did he say? Crockett had remarked a chilliness, and
+asked for a sweater, which Steggles went to fetch. Now, just think. You
+understand these things. Would any trainer who knew his business (as
+Steggles does) have gone to bring out a sweater for his man to change for
+his jersey in the open air, at the very time the man was complaining of
+chilliness? Of course not. He would have taken his man indoors again and
+let him change there under shelter. Then supposing Steggles had really
+been surprised at missing Crockett, wouldn't he have looked about, found
+the gate open, and _told_ you it was open when he first came in? He said
+nothing of that--we found the gate open for ourselves. So that from the
+beginning I had a certain opinion of Steggles."
+
+"What you say seems pretty plain now, although it didn't strike me at the
+time. But, if Steggles was selling us, why couldn't he have drugged the
+lad? That would have been a deal simpler."
+
+"Because Steggles is a good trainer, and has a certain reputation to keep
+up. It would have done him no good to have had a runner drugged while
+under his care; certainly it would have cooked his goose with _you_. It
+was much the safer thing to connive at kidnapping. That put all the active
+work into other hands, and left him safe, even if the trick failed. Now,
+you remember that we traced the prints of Crockett's spiked shoes to
+within a couple of yards from the fence, and that there they ceased
+suddenly?"
+
+"Yes. You said it looked as though he had flown up into the air; and so it
+did."
+
+"But I was sure that it was by that gate that Crockett had left, and by no
+other. He couldn't have got through the house without being seen, and
+there was no other way--let alone the evidence of the unbolted gate.
+Therefore, as the footprints ceased where they did, and were not repeated
+anywhere in the lane, I knew that he had taken his spiked shoes
+off--probably changed them for something else, because a runner anxious as
+to his chances would never risk walking on bare feet, with a chance of
+cutting them. Ordinary, broad, smooth-soled slippers would leave no
+impression on the coarse cinders bordering the track, and nothing short of
+spiked shoes would leave a mark on the hard path in the lane behind. The
+spike-tracks were leading, not directly toward the door, but in the
+direction of the fence, when they stopped; somebody had handed, or thrown,
+the slippers over the fence, and he had changed them on the spot. The
+enemy had calculated upon the spikes leaving a track in the lane that
+might lead us in our search, and had arranged accordingly.
+
+"So far so good. I could see no footprints near the gate in the lane. You
+will remember that I sent Steggles off to watch at the Cop before I went
+out to the back--merely, of course, to get him out of the way. I went out
+into the lane, leaving you behind, and walked its whole length, first
+toward the Old Kilns and then back toward the road. I found nothing to
+help me except these small pieces of paper--which are here in my
+pocket-book, by the by. Of course this 'mmy' might have meant 'Jimmy' or
+'Tommy' as possibly as 'Sammy,' but they were not to be rejected on that
+account. Certainly Crockett had been decoyed out of your ground, not taken
+by force, or there would have been marks of a scuffle in the cinders. And
+as his request for a sweater was probably an excuse--because it was not at
+all a cold afternoon--he must have previously designed going out.
+Inference, a letter received; and here were pieces of a letter. Now, in
+the light of what I have said, look at these pieces. First, there is the
+'mmy'--that I have dealt with. Then see this 'throw them ov'--clearly a
+part of 'throw them over'; exactly what had probably been done with the
+slippers. Then the 'poor f,' coming just on the line before, and seen, by
+joining up with this other piece, might easily be a reference to 'poor
+feet.' These coincidences, one on the other, went far to establish the
+identity of the letter, and to confirm my previous impressions. But then
+there is something else. Two other pieces evidently mean 'left him,' and
+'right away,' perhaps; but there is another, containing almost all of the
+words 'hate his,' with the word 'hate' underlined. Now, who writes 'hate'
+with the emphasis of underscoring--who but a woman? The writing is large
+and not very regular; it might easily be that of a half-educated woman.
+Here was something more--Sammy had been enticed away by a woman.
+
+"Now, I remembered that, when we went into the tap-room on Wednesday, some
+of his companions were chaffing Crockett about a certain Nancy Webb, and
+the chaff went home, as was plain to see. The woman, then, who could most
+easily entice Sammy Crockett away was Nancy Webb. I resolved to find who
+Nancy Webb was and learn more of her.
+
+"Meantime, I took a look at the road at the end of the lane. It was damper
+than the lane, being lower, and overhung by trees. There were many
+wheel-tracks, but only one set that turned in the road and went back the
+way it came, toward the town; and they were narrow wheels--carriage
+wheels. Crockett tells me now that they drove him about for a long time
+before shutting him up; probably the inconvenience of taking him straight
+to the hiding-place didn't strike them when they first drove off.
+
+"A few inquiries soon set me in the direction of the Plough and Miss Nancy
+Webb. I had the curiosity to look around the place as I approached, and
+there, in the garden behind the house, were Steggles and the young lady in
+earnest confabulation!
+
+"Every conjecture became a certainty. Steggles was the lover of whom
+Crockett was jealous, and he had employed the girl to bring Sammy out. I
+watched Steggles home, and gave you a hint to keep him there.
+
+"But the thing that remained was to find Steggles' employer in this
+business. I was glad to be in when Danby called. He came, of course, to
+hear if you would blurt out anything, and to learn, if possible, what
+steps you were taking. He failed. By way of making assurance doubly sure I
+took a short walk this morning in the character of a deaf gentleman, and
+got Miss Webb to write me a direction that comprised three of the words on
+these scraps of paper--'left,' 'right,' and 'lane'; see, they correspond,
+the peculiar 'f's,' 't's,' and all.
+
+"Now, I felt perfectly sure that Steggles would go for his pay to-day. In
+the first place, I knew that people mixed up with shady transactions in
+professional pedestrianism are not apt to trust one another far--they know
+better. Therefore Steggles wouldn't have had his bribe first. But he would
+take care to get it before the Saturday heats were run, because once they
+were over the thing was done, and the principal conspirator might have
+refused to pay up, and Steggles couldn't have helped himself. Again I
+hinted he should not go out till I could follow him, and this afternoon,
+when he went, follow him I did. I saw him go into Danby's house by the
+side way and come away again. Danby it was, then, who had arranged the
+business; and nobody was more likely, considering his large pecuniary
+stake against Crockett's winning this race.
+
+"But now how to find Crockett? I made up my mind he wouldn't be in Danby's
+own house. That would be a deal too risky, with servants about and so on.
+I saw that Danby was a builder, and had three shops to let--it was on a
+paper before his house. What more likely prison than an empty house? I
+knocked at Danby's door and asked for the keys of those shops. I couldn't
+have them. The servant told me Danby was out (a manifest lie, for I had
+just seen him), and that nobody could see the shops till Monday. But I got
+out of her the address of the shops, and that was all I wanted at the
+time.
+
+"Now, why was nobody to see those shops till Monday? The interval was
+suspicious--just enough to enable Crockett to be sent away again and cast
+loose after the Saturday racing, supposing him to be kept in one of the
+empty buildings. I went off at once and looked at the shops, forming my
+conclusions as to which would be the most likely for Danby's purpose. Here
+I had another confirmation of my ideas. A poor, half-bankrupt baker in one
+of the shops had, by the bills, the custody of a set of keys; but he, too,
+told me I couldn't have them; Danby had taken them away--and on Thursday,
+the very day--with some trivial excuse, and hadn't brought them back. That
+was all I wanted or could expect in the way of guidance. The whole thing
+was plain. The rest you know all about."
+
+"Well, you're certainly as smart as they give you credit for, I must say.
+But suppose Danby had taken down his 'To Let' notice, what would you have
+done, then?"
+
+"We had our course, even then. We should have gone to Danby, astounded him
+by telling him all about his little games, terrorized him with threats of
+the law, and made him throw up his hand and send Crockett back. But, as it
+is, you see, he doesn't know at this moment--probably won't know till
+to-morrow afternoon--that the lad is safe and sound here. You will
+probably use the interval to make him pay for losing the game--by some of
+the ingenious financial devices you are no doubt familiar with."
+
+"Ay, that I will. He'll give any price against Crockett now, so long as
+the bet don't come direct from me."
+
+"But about Crockett, now," Hewitt went on. "Won't this confinement be
+likely to have damaged his speed for a day or two?"
+
+"Ah, perhaps," the landlord replied; "but, bless ye, that won't matter.
+There's four more in his heat to-morrow. Two I know aren't tryers, and the
+other two I can hold in at a couple of quid apiece any day. The third
+round and final won't be till to-morrow week, and he'll be as fit as ever
+by then. It's as safe as ever it was. How much are you going to have on?
+I'll lump it on for you safe enough. This is a chance not to be missed;
+it's picking money up."
+
+"Thank you; I don't think I'll have anything to do with it. This
+professional pedestrian business doesn't seem a pretty one at all. I don't
+call myself a moralist, but, if you'll excuse my saying so, the thing is
+scarcely the game I care to pick tap money at in any way."
+
+"Oh, very well! if you think so, I won't persuade ye, though I don't think
+so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won't quarrel;
+you've done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I
+aren't level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you've
+got your trade as I've got mine. Let me have the bill, and I'll pay it
+like a lord, and feel a deal more pleased than if you made a favor of
+it--not that I'm above a favor, of course. But I'd prefer paying, and
+that's a fact."
+
+"My dear sir, you have paid," Hewitt said, with a smile. "You paid in
+advance. It was a bargain, wasn't it, that I should do your business if
+you would help me in mine? Very well; a bargain's a bargain, and we've
+both performed our parts. And you mustn't be offended at what I said just
+now."
+
+"That I won't! But as to that Raggy Steggles, once those heats are over
+to-morrow, I'll--well----"
+
+It was on the following Sunday week that Martin Hewitt, in his rooms in
+London, turned over his paper and read, under the head "Padfield Annual
+135 Yards Handicap," this announcement: "Final heat: Crockett, first;
+Willis, second; Trewby, third; Owen, 0; Howell, 0. A runaway win by nearly
+three yards."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT.
+
+Almost the only dogmatism that Martin Hewitt permitted himself in regard
+to his professional methods was one on the matter of accumulative
+probabilities. Often when I have remarked upon the apparently trivial
+nature of the clews by which he allowed himself to be guided--sometimes,
+to all seeming, in the very face of all likelihood--he has replied that
+two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became at once, by their
+mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important
+considerations. "If I were in search of a man," he would say, "of whom I
+knew nothing but that he squinted, bore a birthmark on his right hand, and
+limped, and I observed a man who answered to the first peculiarity, so far
+the clue would be trivial, because thousands of men squint. Now, if that
+man presently moved and exhibited a birthmark on his right hand, the
+value of that squint and that mark would increase at once a hundred or
+a thousand fold. Apart they are little; together much. The weight of
+evidence is not doubled merely; it would be only doubled if half the men
+who squinted had right-hand birthmarks; whereas the proportion, if it
+could be ascertained, would be, perhaps, more like one in ten thousand.
+The two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become very strong
+evidence. And, when the man is seen to walk with a limp, that limp
+(another triviality), re-enforcing the others, brings the matter to the
+rank of a practical certainty. The Bertillon system of identification--what
+is it but a summary of trivialities? Thousands of men are of the same
+height, thousands of the same length of foot, thousands of the same girth
+of head--thousands correspond in any separate measurement you may name. It
+is when the measurements are taken _together_ that you have your man
+identified forever. Just consider how few, if any, of your friends
+correspond exactly in any two personal peculiarities." Hewitt's dogma
+received its illustration unexpectedly close at home.
+
+The old house wherein my chambers and Hewitt's office were situated
+contained, besides my own, two or three more bachelors' dens, in addition
+to the offices on the ground and first and second floors. At the very top
+of all, at the back, a fat, middle-aged man, named Foggatt, occupied a set
+of four rooms. It was only after a long residence, by an accidental remark
+of the housekeeper's, that I learned the man's name, which was not painted
+on his door or displayed, with all the others, on the wall of the
+ground-floor porch.
+
+Mr. Foggatt appeared to have few friends, but lived in something as nearly
+approaching luxury as an old bachelor living in chambers can live. An
+ascending case of champagne was a common phenomenon of the staircase, and
+I have more than once seen a picture, destined for the top floor, of a
+sort that went far to awaken green covetousness in the heart of a poor
+journalist.
+
+The man himself was not altogether prepossessing. Fat as he was, he had a
+way of carrying his head forward on his extended neck and gazing widely
+about with a pair of the roundest and most prominent eyes I remember to
+have ever seen, except in a fish. On the whole, his appearance was rather
+vulgar, rather arrogant, and rather suspicious, without any very
+pronounced quality of any sort. But certainly he was not pretty. In the
+end, however, he was found shot dead in his sitting-room.
+
+It was in this way: Hewitt and I had dined together at my club, and late
+in the evening had returned to my rooms to smoke and discuss whatever came
+uppermost. I had made a bargain that day with two speculative odd lots at
+a book sale, each of which contained a hidden prize. We sat talking and
+turning over these books while time went unperceived, when suddenly we
+were startled by a loud report. Clearly it was in the building. We
+listened for a moment, but heard nothing else, and then Hewitt expressed
+his opinion that the report was that of a gunshot. Gunshots in residential
+chambers are not common things, wherefore I got up and went to the
+landing, looking up the stairs and down.
+
+At the top of the next flight I saw Mrs. Clayton, the housekeeper. She
+appeared to be frightened, and told me that the report came from Mr.
+Foggatt's room. She thought he might have had an accident with the pistol
+that usually lay on his mantel-piece. We went upstairs with her, and she
+knocked at Mr. Foggatt's door.
+
+There was no reply. Through the ventilating fanlight over the door it
+could be seen that there were lights within, a sign, Mrs. Clayton
+maintained, that Mr. Foggatt was not out. We knocked again, much more
+loudly, and called, but still ineffectually. The door was locked, and an
+application of the housekeeper's key proved that the tenant's key had been
+left in the lock inside. Mrs. Clayton's conviction that "something had
+happened" became distressing, and in the end Hewitt pried open the door
+with a small poker.
+
+Something _had_ happened. In the sitting-room Mr. Foggatt sat with his
+head bowed over the table, quiet and still. The head was ill to look at,
+and by it lay a large revolver, of the full-sized army pattern. Mrs.
+Clayton ran back toward the landing with faint screams.
+
+"Run, Brett!" said Hewitt; "a doctor and a policeman!"
+
+I bounced down the stairs half a flight at a time. "First," I thought, "a
+doctor. He may not be dead." I could think of no doctor in the immediate
+neighborhood, but ran up the street away from the Strand, as being the
+more likely direction for the doctor, although less so for the policeman.
+It took me a good five minutes to find the medico, after being led astray
+by a red lamp at a private hotel, and another five to get back, with a
+policeman.
+
+Foggatt was dead, without a doubt. Probably had shot himself, the doctor
+thought, from the powder-blackening and other circumstances. Certainly
+nobody could have left the room by the door, or he must have passed my
+landing, while the fact of the door being found locked from the inside
+made the thing impossible. There were two windows to the room, both of
+which were shut, one being fastened by the catch, while the catch of the
+other was broken--an old fracture. Below these windows was a sheer drop of
+fifty feet or more, without a foot or hand-hold near. The windows in the
+other rooms were shut and fastened. Certainly it seemed suicide--unless it
+were one of those accidents that will occur to people who fiddle
+ignorantly with firearms. Soon the rooms were in possession of the police,
+and we were turned out.
+
+We looked in at the housekeeper's kitchen, where her daughter was reviving
+and calming Mrs. Clayton with gin and water.
+
+"You mustn't upset yourself, Mrs. Clayton," Hewitt said, "or what will
+become of us all? The doctor thinks it was an accident."
+
+He took a small bottle of sewing-machine oil from his pocket and handed it
+to the daughter, thanking her for the loan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was little evidence at the inquest. The shot had been heard, the
+body had been found--that was the practical sum of the matter. No friends
+or relatives of the dead man came forward. The doctor gave his opinion as
+to the probability of suicide or an accident, and the police evidence
+tended in the same direction. Nothing had been found to indicate that any
+other person had been near the dead man's rooms on the night of the
+fatality. On the other hand, his papers, bankbook, etc., proved him to be
+a man of considerable substance, with no apparent motive for suicide. The
+police had been unable to trace any relatives, or, indeed, any nearer
+connections than casual acquaintances, fellow-clubmen, and so on. The jury
+found that Mr. Foggatt had died by accident.
+
+"Well, Brett," Hewitt asked me afterward, "what do you think of the
+verdict?"
+
+I said that it seemed to be the most reasonable one possible, and to
+square with the common-sense view of the case.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "perhaps it does. From the point of view of the jury,
+and on their information, their verdict was quite reasonable.
+Nevertheless, Mr. Foggatt did not shoot himself. He was shot by a rather
+tall, active young man, perhaps a sailor, but certainly a gymnast--a young
+man whom I think I could identify if I saw him."
+
+"But how do you know this?"
+
+"By the simplest possible inferences, which you may easily guess, if you
+will but think."
+
+"But, then, why didn't you say this at the inquest?"
+
+"My dear fellow, they don't want any inferences and conjectures at an
+inquest; they only want evidence. If I had traced the murderer, of course
+then I should have communicated with the police. As a matter of fact, it
+is quite possible that the police have observed and know as much as I
+do--or more. They don't give everything away at an inquest, you know. It
+wouldn't do."
+
+"But, if you are right, how did the man get away?"
+
+"Come, we are near home now. Let us take a look at the back of the house.
+He _couldn't_ have left by Foggatt's landing door, as we know; and as he
+_was_ there (I am certain of that), and as the chimney is out of the
+question--for there was a good fire in the grate--he must have gone out by
+the window. Only one window is possible--that with the broken catch--for
+all the others were fastened inside. Out of that window, then, he went."
+
+"But how? The window is fifty feet up."
+
+"Of course it is. But why _will_ you persist in assuming that the only way
+of escape by a window is downward? See, now, look up there. The window is
+at the top floor, and it has a very broad sill. Over the window is nothing
+but the flat face of the gable-end; but to the right, and a foot or two
+above the level of the top of the window, an iron gutter ends. Observe, it
+is not of lead composition, but a strong iron gutter, supported, just at
+its end, by an iron bracket. If a tall man stood on the end of the
+window-sill, steadying himself by the left hand and leaning to the right,
+he could just touch the end of this gutter with his right hand. The full
+stretch, toe to finger, is seven feet three inches. I have measured it. An
+active gymnast, or a sailor, could catch the gutter with a slight spring,
+and by it draw himself upon the roof. You will say he would have to be
+_very_ active, dexterous, and cool. So he would. And that very fact helps
+us, because it narrows the field of inquiry. We know the sort of man to
+look for. Because, being certain (as I am) that the man was in the room, I
+_know_ that he left in the way I am telling you. He must have left in some
+way, and, all the other ways being impossible, this alone remains,
+difficult as the feat may seem. The fact of his shutting the window behind
+him further proves his coolness and address at so great a height from the
+ground."
+
+All this was very plain, but the main point was still dark.
+
+"You say you _know_ that another man was in the room," I said; "how do you
+know that?"
+
+"As I said, by an obvious inference. Come, now, you shall guess how I
+arrived at that inference. You often speak of your interest in my work,
+and the attention with which you follow it. This shall be a simple
+exercise for you. You saw everything in the room as plainly as I myself.
+Bring the scene back to your memory, and think over the various small
+objects littering about, and how they would affect the case. Quick
+observation is the first essential for my work. Did you see a newspaper,
+for instance?"
+
+"Yes. There was an evening paper on the floor, but I didn't examine it."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"On the table there was a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand
+on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as
+though only one person were present."
+
+"So it did, perhaps, although the inference wouldn't be very strong. Go
+on!"
+
+"There was a fruit-stand on the sideboard, with a plate beside it
+containing a few nutshells, a piece of apple, a pair of nut-crackers, and,
+I think, some orange peel. There was, of course, all the ordinary
+furniture, but no chair pulled up to the table, except that used by
+Foggatt himself. That's all I noticed, I think. Stay--there was an
+ash-tray on the table, and a partly burned cigar near it--only one cigar,
+though."
+
+"Excellent--excellent, indeed, as far as memory and simple observation go.
+You saw everything plainly, and you remember everything. Surely _now_ you
+know how I found out that another man had just left?"
+
+"No, I don't; unless there were different kinds of ash in the ash-tray."
+
+"That is a fairly good suggestion, but there were not--there was only a
+single ash, corresponding in every way to that on the cigar. Don't you
+remember everything that I did as we went down-stairs?"
+
+"You returned a bottle of oil to the housekeeper's daughter, I think."
+
+"I did. Doesn't that give you a hint? Come, you surely have it now?"
+
+"I haven't."
+
+"Then I sha'n't tell you; you don't deserve it. Think, and don't mention
+the subject again till you have at least one guess to make. The thing
+stares you in the face; you see it, you remember it, and yet you _won't_
+see it. I won't encourage your slovenliness of thought, my boy, by telling
+you what you can know for yourself if you like. Good-by--I'm off now.
+There's a case in hand I can't neglect."
+
+"Don't you propose to go further into this, then?"
+
+Hewitt shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not a policeman," he said. "The case
+is in very good hands. Of course, if anybody comes to me to do it as a
+matter of business, I'll take it up. It's very interesting, but I can't
+neglect my regular work for it. Naturally, I shall keep my eyes open and
+my memory in order. Sometimes these things come into the hands by
+themselves, as it were; in that case, of course, I am a loyal citizen, and
+ready to help the law. _Au revoir_!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am a busy man myself, and thought little more of Hewitt's conundrum for
+some time; indeed, when I did think, I saw no way to the answer. A week
+after the inquest I took a holiday (I had written my nightly leaders
+regularly every day for the past five years), and saw no more of Hewitt
+for six weeks. After my return, with still a few days of leave to run, one
+evening we together turned into Luzatti's, off Coventry Street, for
+dinner.
+
+"I have been here several times lately," Hewitt said; "they feed you very
+well. No, not that table"--he seized my arm as I turned to an unoccupied
+corner--"I fancy it's draughty." He led the way to a longer table where a
+dark, lithe, and (as well as could be seen) tall young man already sat,
+and took chairs opposite him.
+
+We had scarcely seated ourselves before Hewitt broke into a torrent of
+conversation on the subject of bicycling. As our previous conversation had
+been of a literary sort, and as I had never known Hewitt at any other time
+to show the slightest interest in bicycling, this rather surprised me. I
+had, however, such a general outsider's grasp of the subject as is usual
+in a journalist-of-all-work, and managed to keep the talk going from my
+side. As we went on I could see the face of the young man opposite
+brighten with interest. He was a rather fine-looking fellow, with a dark,
+though very clear skin, but had a hard, angry look of eye, a prominence of
+cheek-bone, and a squareness of jaw that gave him a rather uninviting
+aspect. As Hewitt rattled on, however, our neighbor's expression became
+one of pleasant interest merely.
+
+"Of course," Hewitt said, "we've a number of very capital men just now,
+but I believe a deal in the forgotten riders of five, ten, and fifteen
+years back. Osmond, I believe, was better than any man riding now, and I
+think it would puzzle some of them to beat Furnivall as he was, at his
+best. But poor old Cortis--really, I believe he was as good as anybody.
+Nobody ever beat Cortis--except--let me see--I think somebody beat Cortis
+once--who was it now? I can't remember."
+
+"Liles," said the young man opposite, looking up quickly.
+
+"Ah, yes--Liles it was; Charley Liles. Wasn't it a championship?"
+
+"Mile championship, 1880; Cortis won the other three, though."
+
+"Yes, so he did. I saw Cortis when he first broke the old 2.46 mile
+record." And straightway Hewitt plunged into a whirl of talk of bicycles,
+tricycles, records, racing cyclists, Hillier, and Synyer and Noel Whiting,
+Taylerson and Appleyard--talk wherein the young man opposite bore an
+animated share, while I was left in the cold.
+
+Our new friend, it seems, had himself been a prominent racing bicyclist a
+few years back, and was presently, at Hewitt's request, exhibiting a neat
+gold medal that hung at his watch-guard. That was won, he explained, in
+the old tall bicycle days, the days of bad tracks, when every racing
+cyclist carried cinder scars on his face from numerous accidents. He
+pointed to a blue mark on his forehead, which, he told us, was a track
+scar, and described a bad fall that had cost him two teeth, and broken
+others. The gaps among his teeth were plain to see as he smiled.
+
+Presently the waiter brought dessert, and the young man opposite took an
+apple. Nut-crackers and a fruit-knife lay on our side of the stand, and
+Hewitt turned the stand to offer him the knife.
+
+"No, thanks," he said; "I only polish a good apple, never peel it. It's a
+mistake, except with thick-skinned foreign ones."
+
+And he began to munch the apple as only a boy or a healthy athlete can.
+Presently he turned his head to order coffee. The waiter's back was
+turned, and he had to be called twice. To my unutterable amazement Hewitt
+reached swiftly across the table, snatched the half-eaten apple from the
+young man's plate and pocketed it, gazing immediately, with an abstracted
+air, at a painted Cupid on the ceiling.
+
+Our neighbor turned again, looked doubtfully at his plate and the
+table-cloth about it, and then shot a keen glance in the direction of
+Hewitt. He said nothing, however, but took his coffee and his bill,
+deliberately drank the former, gazing quietly at Hewitt as he did it, paid
+the latter, and left.
+
+Immediately Hewitt was on his feet and, taking an umbrella, which stood
+near, followed. Just as he reached the door he met our late neighbor, who
+had turned suddenly back.
+
+"Your umbrella, I think?" Hewitt asked, offering it.
+
+"Yes, thanks." But the man's eye had more than its former hardness, and
+his jaw muscles tightened as I looked. He turned and went. Hewitt came
+back to me. "Pay the bill," he said, "and go back to your rooms; I will
+come on later. I must follow this man--it's the Foggatt case." As he went
+out I heard a cab rattle away, and immediately after it another.
+
+I paid the bill and went home. It was ten o'clock before Hewitt turned up,
+calling in at his office below on his way up to me.
+
+"Mr. Sidney Mason," he said, "is the gentleman the police will be wanting
+to-morrow, I expect, for the Foggatt murder. He is as smart a man as I
+remember ever meeting, and has done me rather neatly twice this evening."
+
+"You mean the man we sat opposite at Luzatti's, of course?"
+
+"Yes, I got his name, of course, from the reverse of that gold medal he
+was good enough to show me. But I fear he has bilked me over the address.
+He suspected me, that was plain, and left his umbrella by way of
+experiment to see if I were watching him sharply enough to notice the
+circumstance, and to avail myself of it to follow him. I was hasty and
+fell into the trap. He cabbed it away from Luzatti's, and I cabbed it
+after him. He has led me a pretty dance up and down London to-night, and
+two cabbies have made quite a stroke of business out of us. In the end he
+entered a house of which, of course, I have taken the address, but I
+expect he doesn't live there. He is too smart a man to lead me to his den;
+but the police can certainly find something of him at the house he went in
+at--and, I expect, left by the back way. By the way, you never guessed
+that simple little puzzle as to how I found that this _was_ a murder, did
+you? You see it now, of course?"
+
+"Something to do with that apple you stole, I suppose?"
+
+"Something to do with it? I should think so, you worthy innocent. Just
+ring your bell; we'll borrow Mrs. Clayton's sewing-machine oil again. On
+the night we broke into Foggatt's room you saw the nutshells and the
+bitten remains of an apple on the sideboard, and you remembered it; and
+yet you couldn't see that in that piece of apple possibly lay an important
+piece of evidence. Of course I never expected you to have arrived at any
+conclusion, as I had, because I had ten minutes in which to examine that
+apple, and to do what I did with it. But, at least, you should have seen
+the possibility of evidence in it.
+
+"First, now, the apple was white. A bitten apple, as you must have
+observed, turns of a reddish brown color if left to stand long. Different
+kinds of apples brown with different rapidities, and the browning always
+begins at the core. This is one of the twenty thousand tiny things that
+few people take the trouble to notice, but which it is useful for a man in
+my position to know. A russet will brown quite quickly. The apple on the
+sideboard was, as near as I could tell, a Newtown pippin or other apple of
+that kind, which will brown at the core in from twenty minutes to half an
+hour, and in other parts in a quarter of an hour more. When we saw it, it
+was white, with barely a tinge of brown about the exposed core. Inference,
+somebody had been eating it fifteen or twenty minutes before, perhaps a
+little longer--an inference supported by the fact that it was only partly
+eaten.
+
+"I examined that apple, and found it bore marks of very irregular teeth.
+While you were gone, I oiled it over, and, rushing down to my rooms, where
+I always have a little plaster of Paris handy for such work, took a mold
+of the part where the teeth had left the clearest marks. I then returned
+the apple to its place for the police to use if they thought fit. Looking
+at my mold, it was plain that the person who had bitten that apple had
+lost two teeth, one at top and one below, not exactly opposite, but nearly
+so. The other teeth, although they would appear to have been fairly sound,
+were irregular in size and line. Now, the dead man had, as I saw, a very
+excellent set of false teeth, regular and sharp, with none missing.
+Therefore it was plain that somebody _else_ had been eating that apple. Do
+I make myself clear?"
+
+"Quite! Go on!"
+
+"There were other inferences to be made--slighter, but all pointing the
+same way. For instance, a man of Foggatt's age does not, as a rule, munch
+an unpeeled apple like a school-boy. Inference, a young man, and healthy.
+Why I came to the conclusion that he was tall, active, a gymnast, and
+perhaps a sailor, I have already told you, when we examined the outside of
+Foggatt's window. It was also pretty clear that robbery was not the
+motive, since nothing was disturbed, and that a friendly conversation had
+preceded the murder--witness the drinking and the eating of the apple.
+Whether or not the police noticed these things I can't say. If they had
+had their best men on, they certainly would, I think; but the case, to a
+rough observer, looked so clearly one of accident or suicide that possibly
+they didn't.
+
+"As I said, after the inquest I was unable to devote any immediate time to
+the case, but I resolved to keep my eyes open. The man to look for was
+tall, young, strong and active, with a very irregular set of teeth, a
+tooth missing from the lower jaw just to the left of the center, and
+another from the upper jaw a little farther still toward the left. He
+might possibly be a person I had seen about the premises (I have a good
+memory for faces), or, of course, he possibly might not.
+
+"Just before you returned from your holiday I noticed a young man at
+Luzatti's whom I remembered to have seen somewhere about the offices in
+this building. He was tall, young, and so on, but I had a client with me,
+and was unable to examine him more narrowly; indeed, as I was not exactly
+engaged on the case, and as there are several tall young men about, I took
+little trouble. But to-day, finding the same young man with a vacant seat
+opposite him, I took the opportunity of making a closer acquaintance."
+
+"You certainly managed to draw him out."
+
+"Oh, yes; the easiest person in the world to draw out is a cyclist. The
+easiest cyclist to draw out is, of course, the novice, but the next
+easiest is the veteran. When you see a healthy, well-trained-looking man,
+who, nevertheless, has a slight stoop in the shoulders, and, maybe, a
+medal on his watch-guard, it is always a safe card to try him first with a
+little cycle-racing talk. I soon brought Mr. Mason out of his shell, read
+his name on his medal, and had a chance of observing his teeth--indeed, he
+spoke of them himself. Now, as I observed just now, there are several
+tall, athletic young men about, and also there are several men who have
+lost teeth. But now I saw that this tall and athletic young man had lost
+exactly _two_ teeth--one from the lower jaw, just to the left of the
+center, and another from the upper jaw, farther still toward the left!
+Trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became important
+considerations. More, his teeth were irregular throughout, and, as nearly
+as I could remember it, looked remarkably like this little plaster mold of
+mine."
+
+He produced from his pocket an irregular lump of plaster, about three
+inches long. On one side of this appeared in relief the likeness of two
+irregular rows of six or eight teeth, minus one in each row, where a deep
+gap was seen, in the position spoken of by my friend. He proceeded:
+
+"This was enough at least to set me after this young man. But he gave me
+the greatest chance of all when he turned and left his apple (eaten
+unpeeled, remember!--another important triviality) on his plate. I'm
+afraid I wasn't at all polite, and I ran the risk of arousing his
+suspicions, but I couldn't resist the temptation to steal it. I did, as
+you saw, and here it is."
+
+He brought the apple from his coat-pocket. One bitten side, placed against
+the upper half of the mold, fitted precisely, a projection of apple
+filling exactly the deep gap. The other side similarly fitted the lower
+half.
+
+"There's no getting behind that, you see," Hewitt remarked. "Merely
+observing the man's teeth was a guide, to some extent, but this is as
+plain as his signature or his thumb impression. You'll never find two men
+_bite_ exactly alike, no matter whether they leave distinct teeth-marks or
+not. Here, by the by, is Mrs. Clayton's oil. We'll take another mold from
+this apple, and compare _them_."
+
+He oiled the apple, heaped a little plaster in a newspaper, took my
+water-jug, and rapidly pulled off a hard mold. The parts corresponding to
+the merely broken places in the apple were, of course, dissimilar; but as
+to the teeth-marks, the impressions were identical.
+
+"That will do, I think," Hewitt said. "Tomorrow morning, Brett, I shall
+put up these things in a small parcel, and take them round to Bow Street."
+
+"But are they sufficient evidence?"
+
+"Quite sufficient for the police purpose. There is the man, and all the
+rest--his movements on the day and so forth--are simple matters of
+inquiry; at any rate, that is police business."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had scarcely sat down to my breakfast on the following morning when
+Hewitt came into the room and put a long letter before me.
+
+"From our friend of last night," he said; "read it."
+
+This letter began abruptly, and undated, and was as follows:
+
+
+"TO MARTIN HEWITT, ESQ.
+
+"SIR: I must compliment you on the adroitness you exhibited this evening
+in extracting from me my name. The address I was able to balk you of for
+the time being, although by the time you read this you will probably have
+found it through the _Law List_, as I am an admitted solicitor. That,
+however, will be of little use to you, for I am removing myself, I think,
+beyond the reach even of your abilities of search. I knew you well by
+sight, and was, perhaps, foolish to allow myself to be drawn as I did.
+Still, I had no idea that it would be dangerous, especially after seeing
+you, as a witness with very little to say, at the inquest upon the
+scoundrel I shot. Your somewhat discourteous seizure of my apple at first
+amazed me--indeed, I was a little doubtful as to whether you had really
+taken it--but it was my first warning that you might be playing a deep
+game against me, incomprehensible as the action was to my mind. I
+subsequently reflected that I had been eating an apple, instead of taking
+the drink he first offered me, in the dead wretch's rooms on the night he
+came to his merited end. From this I assume that your design was in some
+way to compare what remained of the two apples--although I do not presume
+to fathom the depths of your detective system. Still, I have heard of many
+of your cases, and profoundly admire the keenness you exhibit. I am
+thought to be a keen man myself, but, although I was able, to some extent,
+to hold my own to-night, I admit that your acumen in this case alone is
+something beyond me.
+
+"I do not know by whom you are commissioned to hunt me, nor to what extent
+you may be acquainted with my connection with the creature I killed. I
+have sufficient respect for you, however, to wish that you should not
+regard me as a vicious criminal, and a couple of hours to spare in which
+to offer you an explanation that will convince you that such is not
+altogether the case. A hasty and violent temper I admit possessing; but
+even now I can not forget the one crime it has led me into--for it is, I
+suppose, strictly speaking, a crime. For it was the man Foggatt who made a
+felon of my father before the eyes of the world, and killed him with
+shame. It was he who murdered my mother, and none the less murdered her
+because she died of a broken heart. That he was also a thief and a
+hypocrite might have concerned me little but for that.
+
+"Of my father I remember very little. He must, I fear, have been a weak
+and incapable man in many respects. He had no business abilities--in fact,
+was quite unable to understand the complicated business matters in which
+he largely dealt. Foggatt was a consummate master of all those arts of
+financial jugglery that make so many fortunes, and ruin so many others, in
+matters of company promoting, stocks, and shares. He was unable to
+exercise them, however, because of a great financial disaster in which he
+had been mixed up a few years before, and which made his name one to be
+avoided in future. In these circumstances he made a sort of secret and
+informal partnership with my father, who, ostensibly alone in the
+business, acted throughout on the directions of Foggatt, understanding as
+little what he did, poor, simple man, as a schoolboy would have done. The
+transactions carried on went from small to large, and, unhappily from
+honorable to dishonorable. My father relied on the superior abilities of
+Foggatt with an absolute trust, carrying out each day the directions given
+him privately the previous evening, buying, selling, printing
+prospectuses, signing whatever had to be signed, all with sole
+responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the scenes
+absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and foolish
+father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled
+all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible. At last
+three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible,
+came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all their history,
+and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was left to meet
+ruin, disgrace, and imprisonment. From beginning to end he, and he only,
+was responsible. There was no shred of evidence to connect Foggatt with
+the matter, and no means of escape from the net drawn about my father. He
+lived through three years of imprisonment, and then, entirely abandoned by
+the man who had made use of his simplicity, he died--of nothing but shame
+and a broken heart.
+
+"Of this I knew nothing at the time. Again and again, as a small boy, I
+remember asking of my mother why I had no father at home, as other boys
+had--unconscious of the stab I thus inflicted on her gentle heart. Of her
+my earliest, as well as my latest, memory is that of a pale, weeping
+woman, who grudged to let me out of her sight.
+
+"Little by little I learned the whole cause of my mother's grief, for she
+had no other confidant, and I fear my character developed early, for my
+first coherent remembrance of the matter is that of a childish design to
+take a table-knife and kill the bad man who had made my father die in
+prison and caused my mother to cry.
+
+"One thing, however, I never knew--the name of that bad man. Again and
+again, as I grew older, I demanded to know, but my mother always withheld
+it from me, with a gentle reminder that vengeance was for a greater hand
+than mine.
+
+"I was seventeen years of age when my mother died. I believe that nothing
+but her strong attachment to myself and her desire to see me safely
+started in life kept her alive so long. Then I found that through all
+those years of narrowed means she had contrived to scrape and save a
+little money--sufficient, as it afterward proved, to see me through the
+examinations for entrance to my profession, with the generous assistance
+of my father's old legal advisers, who gave me my articles, and who have
+all along treated me with extreme kindness.
+
+"For most of the succeeding years my life does not concern the matter in
+hand. I was a lawyer's clerk in my benefactors' service, and afterward a
+qualified man among their assistants. All through the firm were careful,
+in pursuance of my poor mother's wishes, that I should not learn the name
+or whereabouts of the man who had wrecked her life and my father's. I
+first met the man himself at the Clifton Club, where I had gone with an
+acquaintance who was a member. It was not till afterward that I understood
+his curious awkwardness on that occasion. A week later I called (as I had
+frequently done) at the building in which your office is situated, on
+business with a solicitor who has an office on the floor above your own.
+On the stairs I almost ran against Mr. Foggatt. He started and turned
+pale, exhibiting signs of alarm that I could not understand, and asked me
+if I wished to see him.
+
+"'No,' I replied, 'I didn't know you lived here. I am after somebody else
+just now. Aren't you well?'
+
+"He looked at me rather doubtfully, and said he was _not_ very well.
+
+"I met him twice or thrice after that, and on each occasion his manner
+grew more friendly, in a servile, flattering, and mean sort of way--a
+thing unpleasant enough in anybody, but doubly so in the intercourse of a
+man with another young enough to be his own son. Still, of course, I
+treated the man civilly enough. On one occasion he asked me into his rooms
+to look at a rather fine picture he had lately bought, and observed
+casually, lifting a large revolver from the mantel-piece:
+
+"'You see, I am prepared for any unwelcome visitors to my little den! He!
+He!' Conceiving him, of course, to refer to burglars, I could not help
+wondering at the forced and hollow character of his laugh. As we went down
+the stairs he said: 'I think we know one another pretty well now, Mr.
+Mason, eh? And if I could do anything to advance your professional
+prospects, I should be glad of the chance, of course. I understand the
+struggles of a young professional man--he! he!' It was the forced laugh
+again, and the man spoke nervously. 'I think,' he added, 'that if you will
+drop in to-morrow evening, perhaps I may have a little proposal to make.
+Will you?'
+
+"I assented, wondering what this proposal could be. Perhaps this eccentric
+old gentleman was a good fellow, after all, anxious to do me a good turn,
+and his awkwardness was nothing but a natural delicacy in breaking the
+ice. I was not so flush of good friends as to be willing to lose one. He
+might be desirous of putting business in my way.
+
+"I went, and was received with cordiality that even then seemed a little
+over-effusive. We sat and talked of one thing and another for a long
+while, and I began to wonder when Mr. Foggatt was coming to the point that
+most interested me. Several times he invited me to drink and smoke, but
+long usage to athletic training has given me a distaste for both
+practices, and I declined. At last he began to talk about myself. He was
+afraid that my professional prospects in this country were not great, but
+he had heard that in some of the colonies--South Africa, for
+example--young lawyers had brilliant opportunities.
+
+"'If you'd like to go there,' he said, 'I've no doubt, with a little
+capital, a clever man like you could get a grand practice together very
+soon. Or you might buy a share in some good established practice. I should
+be glad to let you have L500, or even a little more, if that wouldn't
+satisfy you, and----'
+
+"I stood aghast. Why should this man, almost a stranger, offer me L500, or
+even more, 'if that wouldn't satisfy' me? What claim had I on him? It was
+very generous of him, of course, but out of the question. I was, at least,
+a gentleman, and had a gentleman's self-respect. Meanwhile, he had gone
+maundering on, in a halting sort of way, and presently let slip a sentence
+that struck me like a blow between the eyes.
+
+"'I shouldn't like you to bear ill-will because of what has happened in
+the past,' he said. 'Your late--your late lamented mother--I'm afraid--she
+had unworthy suspicions--I'm sure--it was best for all parties--your
+father always appreciated----'
+
+"I set back my chair and stood erect before him. This groveling wretch,
+forcing the words through his dry lips, was the thief who had made another
+of my father and had brought to miserable ends the lives of both my
+parents! Everything was clear. The creature went in fear of me, never
+imagining that I did not know him, and sought to buy me off--to buy me
+from the remembrance of my dead mother's broken heart for L500--L500 that
+he had made my father steal for him! I said not a word. But the memory of
+all my mother's bitter years, and a savage sense of this crowning insult
+to myself, took a hold upon me, and I was a tiger. Even then I verily
+believe that one word of repentance, one tone of honest remorse, would
+have saved him. But he drooped his eyes, snuffled excuses, and stammered
+of 'unworthy suspicions' and 'no ill-will.' I let him stammer. Presently
+he looked up and saw my face; and fell back in his chair, sick with
+terror. I snatched the pistol from the mantel-piece, and, thrusting it in
+his face, shot him where he sat.
+
+"My subsequent coolness and quietness surprise me now. I took my hat and
+stepped toward the door. But there were voices on the stairs. The door was
+locked on the inside, and I left it so. I went back and quietly opened a
+window. Below was a clear drop into darkness, and above was plain wall;
+but away to one side, where the slope of the gable sprang from the roof,
+an iron gutter ended, supported by a strong bracket. It was the only way.
+I got upon the sill and carefully shut the window behind me, for people
+were already knocking at the lobby door. From the end of the sill, holding
+on by the reveal of the window with one hand, leaning and stretching my
+utmost, I caught the gutter, swung myself clear, and scrambled on the
+roof. I climbed over many roofs before I found, in an adjoining street, a
+ladder lashed perpendicularly against the front of a house in course of
+repair. This, to me, was an easy opportunity of descent, notwithstanding
+the boards fastened over the face of the ladder, and I availed myself of
+it.
+
+"I have taken some time and trouble in order that you (so far as I am
+aware the only human being beside myself who knows me to be the author of
+Foggatt's death) shall have at least the means of appraising my crime at
+its just value of culpability. How much you already know of what I have
+told you I can not guess. I am wrong, hardened, and flagitious, I make no
+doubt, but I speak of the facts as they are. You see the thing, of course,
+from your own point of view--I from mine. And I remember my mother!
+
+"Trusting that you will forgive the odd freak of a man--a criminal, let us
+say--who makes a confidant of the man set to hunt him down, I beg leave to
+be, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"SIDNEY MASON."
+
+I read the singular document through and handed it back to Hewitt.
+
+"How does it strike you?" Hewitt asked.
+
+"Mason would seem to be a man of very marked character," I said.
+"Certainly no fool. And, if his tale is true, Foggatt is no great loss to
+the world."
+
+"Just so--if the tale is true. Personally I am disposed to believe it is."
+
+"Where was the letter posted?"
+
+"It wasn't posted. It was handed in with the others from the front-door
+letter-box this morning in an unstamped envelope. He must have dropped it
+in himself during the night. Paper," Hewitt proceeded, holding it up to
+the light, "Turkey mill, ruled foolscap. Envelope, blue, official shape,
+Pirie's watermark. Both quite ordinary and no special marks."
+
+"Where do you suppose he's gone?"
+
+"Impossible to guess. Some might think he meant suicide by the expression
+'beyond the reach even of your abilities of search,' but I scarcely think
+he is the sort of man to do that. No, there is no telling. Something may
+be got by inquiring at his late address, of course; but, when such a man
+tells you he doesn't think you will find him, you may count upon its being
+a difficult job. His opinion is not to be despised."
+
+"What shall you do?"
+
+"Put the letter in the box with the casts for the police. _Fiat justitia_,
+you know, without any question of sentiment. As to the apple, I really
+think, if the police will let me, I'll make you a present of it. Keep it
+somewhere as a souvenir of your absolute deficiency in reflective
+observation in this case, and look at it whenever you feel yourself
+growing dangerously conceited. It should cure you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the history of the withered and almost petrified half apple that
+stands in my cabinet among a number of flint implements and one or two
+rather fine old Roman vessels. Of Mr. Sidney Mason we never heard another
+word. The police did their best, but he had left not a track behind him.
+His rooms were left almost undisturbed, and he had gone without anything
+in the way of elaborate preparation for his journey, and without leaving a
+trace of his intentions.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+THE CASE OF THE DIXON TORPEDO.
+
+Hewitt was very apt, in conversation, to dwell upon the many curious
+chances and coincidences that he had observed, not only in connection with
+his own cases, but also in matters dealt with by the official police, with
+whom he was on terms of pretty regular, and, indeed, friendly,
+acquaintanceship. He has told me many an anecdote of singular happenings
+to Scotland Yard officials with whom he has exchanged experiences. Of
+Inspector Nettings, for instance, who spent many weary months in a search
+for a man wanted by the American Government, and in the end found, by the
+merest accident (a misdirected call), that the man had been lodging next
+door to himself the whole of the time; just as ignorant, of course, as was
+the inspector himself as to the enemy at the other side of the party-wall.
+Also of another inspector, whose name I can not recall, who, having been
+given rather meager and insufficient details of a man whom he anticipated
+having great difficulty in finding, went straight down the stairs of the
+office where he had received instructions, and actually _fell over_ the
+man near the door, where he had stooped down to tie his shoe-lace! There
+were cases, too, in which, when a great and notorious crime had been
+committed, and various persons had been arrested on suspicion, some were
+found among them who had long been badly wanted for some other crime
+altogether. Many criminals had met their deserts by venturing out of their
+own particular line of crime into another; often a man who got into
+trouble over something comparatively small found himself in for a
+startlingly larger trouble, the result of some previous misdeed that
+otherwise would have gone unpunished. The ruble note-forger Mirsky might
+never have been handed over to the Russian authorities had he confined his
+genius to forgery alone. It was generally supposed at the time of his
+extradition that he had communicated with the Russian Embassy, with a view
+to giving himself up--a foolish proceeding on his part, it would seem,
+since his whereabouts, indeed even his identity as the forger, had not
+been suspected. He _had_ communicated with the Russian Embassy, it is
+true, but for quite a different purpose, as Martin Hewitt well understood
+at the time. What that purpose was is now for the first time published.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The time was half-past one in the afternoon, and Hewitt sat in his inner
+office examining and comparing the handwriting of two letters by the aid
+of a large lens. He put down the lens and glanced at the clock on the
+mantel-piece with a premonition of lunch; and as he did so his clerk
+quietly entered the room with one of those printed slips which were kept
+for the announcement of unknown visitors. It was filled up in a hasty and
+almost illegible hand, thus:
+
+Name of visitor: _F. Graham Dixon_.
+
+Address: _Chancery Lane_.
+
+Business: _Private and urgent_.
+
+"Show Mr. Dixon in," said Martin Hewitt.
+
+Mr. Dixon was a gaunt, worn-looking man of fifty or so, well, although
+rather carelessly, dressed, and carrying in his strong, though drawn, face
+and dullish eyes the look that characterizes the life-long strenuous
+brain-worker. He leaned forward anxiously in the chair which Hewitt
+offered him, and told his story with a great deal of very natural
+agitation.
+
+"You may possibly have heard, Mr. Hewitt--I know there are rumors--of the
+new locomotive torpedo which the government is about adopting; it is, in
+fact, the Dixon torpedo, my own invention, and in every respect--not
+merely in my own opinion, but in that of the government experts--by far
+the most efficient and certain yet produced. It will travel at least four
+hundred yards farther than any torpedo now made, with perfect accuracy of
+aim (a very great desideratum, let me tell you), and will carry an
+unprecedentedly heavy charge. There are other advantages--speed, simple
+discharge, and so forth--that I needn't bother you about. The machine is
+the result of many years of work and disappointment, and its design has
+only been arrived at by a careful balancing of principles and means, which
+are expressed on the only four existing sets of drawings. The whole thing,
+I need hardly tell you, is a profound secret, and you may judge of my
+present state of mind when I tell you that one set of drawings has been
+stolen."
+
+"From your house?"
+
+"From my office, in Chancery Lane, this morning. The four sets of drawings
+were distributed thus: Two were at the Admiralty Office, one being a
+finished set on thick paper, and the other a set of tracings therefrom;
+and the other two were at my own office, one being a penciled set,
+uncolored--a sort of finished draft, you understand--and the other a set
+of tracings similar to those at the Admiralty. It is this last set that
+has gone. The two sets were kept together in one drawer in my room. Both
+were there at ten this morning; of that I am sure, for I had to go to that
+very drawer for something else when I first arrived. But at twelve the
+tracings had vanished."
+
+"You suspect somebody, probably?"
+
+"I can not. It is a most extraordinary thing. Nobody has left the office
+(except myself, and then only to come to you) since ten this morning, and
+there has been no visitor. And yet the drawings are gone!"
+
+"But have you searched the place?"
+
+"Of course I have! It was twelve o'clock when I first discovered my loss,
+and I have been turning the place upside down ever since--I and my
+assistants. Every drawer has been emptied, every desk and table turned
+over, the very carpet and linoleum have been taken up, but there is not a
+sign of the drawings. My men even insisted on turning all their pockets
+inside out, although I never for a moment suspected either of them, and it
+would take a pretty big pocket to hold the drawings, doubled up as small
+as they might be."
+
+"You say your men--there are two, I understand--had neither left the
+office?"
+
+"Neither; and they are both staying in now. Worsfold suggested that it
+would be more satisfactory if they did not leave till something was done
+toward clearing the mystery up, and, although, as I have said, I don't
+suspect either in the least, I acquiesced."
+
+"Just so. Now--I am assuming that you wish me to undertake the recovery of
+these drawings?"
+
+The engineer nodded hastily.
+
+"Very good; I will go round to your office. But first perhaps you can tell
+me something about your assistants--something it might be awkward to tell
+me in their presence, you know. Mr. Worsfold, for instance?"
+
+"He is my draughtsman--a very excellent and intelligent man, a very smart
+man, indeed, and, I feel sure, quite beyond suspicion. He has prepared
+many important drawings for me (he has been with me nearly ten years now),
+and I have always found him trustworthy. But, of course, the temptation in
+this case would be enormous. Still, I can not suspect Worsfold. Indeed,
+how can I suspect anybody in the circumstances?"
+
+"The other, now?"
+
+"His name's Ritter. He is merely a tracer, not a fully skilled
+draughtsman. He is quite a decent young fellow, and I have had him two
+years. I don't consider him particularly smart, or he would have learned a
+little more of his business by this time. But I don't see the least reason
+to suspect him. As I said before, I can't reasonably suspect anybody."
+
+"Very well; we will get to Chancery Lane now, if you please, and you can
+tell me more as we go."
+
+"I have a cab waiting. What else can I tell you?"
+
+"I understand the position to be succinctly this: The drawings were in the
+office when you arrived. Nobody came out, and nobody went in; and _yet_
+they vanished. Is that so?"
+
+"That is so. When I say that absolutely nobody came in, of course I except
+the postman. He brought a couple of letters during the morning. I mean
+that absolutely nobody came past the barrier in the outer office--the
+usual thing, you know, like a counter, with a frame of ground glass over
+it."
+
+"I quite understand that. But I think you said that the drawings were in a
+drawer in your _own_ room--not the outer office, where the draughtsmen
+are, I presume?"
+
+"That is the case. It is an inner room, or, rather, a room parallel with
+the other, and communicating with it; just as your own room is, which we
+have just left."
+
+"But, then, you say you never left your office, and yet the drawings
+vanished--apparently by some unseen agency--while you were there in the
+room?"
+
+"Let me explain more clearly." The cab was bowling smoothly along the
+Strand, and the engineer took out a pocket-book and pencil. "I fear," he
+proceeded, "that I am a little confused in my explanation--I am naturally
+rather agitated. As you will see presently, my offices consist of three
+rooms, two at one side of a corridor, and the other opposite--thus." He
+made a rapid pencil sketch.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"In the outer office my men usually work. In the inner office I work
+myself. These rooms communicate, as you see, by a door. Our ordinary way
+in and out of the place is by the door of the outer office leading into
+the corridor, and we first pass through the usual lifting flap in the
+barrier. The door leading from the _inner_ office to the corridor is
+always kept locked on the inside, and I don't suppose I unlock it once in
+three months. It has not been unlocked all the morning. The drawer in
+which the missing drawings were kept, and in which I saw them at ten
+o'clock this morning, is at the place marked D; it is a large chest of
+shallow drawers in which the plans lie flat."
+
+"I quite understand. Then there is the private room opposite. What of
+that?"
+
+"That is a sort of private sitting-room that I rarely use, except for
+business interviews of a very private nature. When I said I never left my
+office, I did not mean that I never stirred out of the inner office. I was
+about in one room and another, both the outer and the inner offices, and
+once I went into the private room for five minutes, but nobody came either
+in or out of any of the rooms at that time, for the door of the private
+room was wide open, and I was standing at the book-case (I had gone to
+consult a book), just inside the door, with a full view of the doors
+opposite. Indeed, Worsfold was at the door of the outer office most of the
+short time. He came to ask me a question."
+
+"Well," Hewitt replied, "it all comes to the simple first statement. You
+know that nobody left the place or arrived, except the postman, who
+couldn't get near the drawings, and yet the drawings went. Is this your
+office?"
+
+The cab had stopped before a large stone building. Mr. Dixon alighted and
+led the way to the first-floor. Hewitt took a casual glance round each of
+the three rooms. There was a sort of door in the frame of ground glass
+over the barrier to admit of speech with visitors. This door Hewitt pushed
+wide open, and left so.
+
+He and the engineer went into the inner office. "Would you like to ask
+Worsfold and Ritter any questions?" Mr. Dixon inquired.
+
+"Presently. Those are their coats, I take it, hanging just to the right of
+the outer office door, over the umbrella stand?"
+
+"Yes, those are all their things--coats, hats, stick, and umbrella."
+
+"And those coats were searched, you say?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And this is the drawer--thoroughly searched, of course?"
+
+"Oh, certainly; every drawer was taken out and turned over."
+
+"Well, of course I must assume you made no mistake in your hunt. Now tell
+me, did anybody know where these plans were, beyond yourself and your two
+men?"
+
+"As far as I can tell, not a soul."
+
+"You don't keep an office boy?"
+
+"No. There would be nothing for him to do except to post a letter now and
+again, which Ritter does quite well for."
+
+"As you are quite sure that the drawings were there at ten o'clock,
+perhaps the thing scarcely matters. But I may as well know if your men
+have keys of the office?"
+
+"Neither. I have patent locks to each door and I keep all the keys myself.
+If Worsfold or Ritter arrive before me in the morning they have to wait to
+be let in; and I am always present myself when the rooms are cleaned. I
+have not neglected precautions, you see."
+
+"No. I suppose the object of the theft--assuming it is a theft--is pretty
+plain: the thief would offer the drawings for sale to some foreign
+government?"
+
+"Of course. They would probably command a great sum. I have been looking,
+as I need hardly tell you, to that invention to secure me a very large
+fortune, and I shall be ruined, indeed, if the design is taken abroad. I
+am under the strictest engagements to secrecy with the Admiralty, and not
+only should I lose all my labor, but I should lose all the confidence
+reposed in me at headquarters; should, in fact, be subject to penalties
+for breach of contract, and my career stopped forever. I can not tell you
+what a serious business this is for me. If you can not help me, the
+consequences will be terrible. Bad for the service of the country, too, of
+course."
+
+"Of course. Now tell me this: It would, I take it, be necessary for the
+thief to _exhibit_ these drawings to anybody anxious to buy the secret--I
+mean, he couldn't describe the invention by word of mouth."
+
+"Oh, no, that would be impossible. The drawings are of the most
+complicated description, and full of figures upon which the whole thing
+depends. Indeed, one would have to be a skilled expert to properly
+appreciate the design at all. Various principles of hydrostatics,
+chemistry, electricity, and pneumatics are most delicately manipulated and
+adjusted, and the smallest error or omission in any part would upset the
+whole. No, the drawings are necessary to the thing, and they are gone."
+
+At this moment the door of the outer office was heard to open and somebody
+entered. The door between the two offices was ajar, and Hewitt could see
+right through to the glass door left open over the barrier and into the
+space beyond. A well-dressed, dark, bushy-bearded man stood there carrying
+a hand-bag, which he placed on the ledge before him. Hewitt raised his
+hand to enjoin silence. The man spoke in a rather high-pitched voice and
+with a slight accent. "Is Mr. Dixon now within?" he asked.
+
+"He is engaged," answered one of the draughtsmen; "very particularly
+engaged. I am afraid you won't be able to see him this afternoon. Can I
+give him any message?"
+
+"This is two--the second time I have come to-day. Not two hours ago Mr.
+Dixon himself tells me to call again. I have a very important--very
+excellent steam-packing to show him that is very cheap and the best of the
+market." The man tapped his bag. "I have just taken orders from the
+largest railway companies. Can not I see him, for one second only? I will
+not detain him."
+
+"Really, I'm sure you can't this afternoon; he isn't seeing anybody. But
+if you'll leave your name----"
+
+"My name is Hunter; but what the good of that? He ask me to call a little
+later, and I come, and now he is engaged. It is a very great pity." And
+the man snatched up his bag and walking-stick, and stalked off,
+indignantly.
+
+Hewitt stood still, gazing through the small aperture in the doorway.
+
+"You'd scarcely expect a man with such a name as Hunter to talk with that
+accent, would you?" he observed, musingly. "It isn't a French accent, nor
+a German; but it seems foreign. You don't happen to know him, I suppose?"
+
+"No, I don't. He called here about half-past twelve, just while we were in
+the middle of our search and I was frantic over the loss of the drawings.
+I was in the outer office myself, and told him to call later. I have lots
+of such agents here, anxious to sell all sorts of engineering appliances.
+But what will you do now? Shall you see my men?"
+
+"I think," said Hewitt, rising--"I think I'll get you to question them
+yourself."
+
+"Myself?"
+
+"Yes, I have a reason. Will you trust me with the 'key' of the private
+room opposite? I will go over there for a little, while you talk to your
+men in this room. Bring them in here and shut the door; I can look after
+the office from across the corridor, you know. Ask them each to detail his
+exact movements about the office this morning, and get them to recall each
+visitor who has been here from the beginning of the week. I'll let you
+know the reason of this later. Come across to me in a few minutes."
+
+Hewitt took the key and passed through the outer office into the corridor.
+
+Ten minutes later Mr. Dixon, having questioned his draughtsmen, followed
+him. He found Hewitt standing before the table in the private room, on
+which lay several drawings on tracing-paper.
+
+"See here, Mr. Dixon," said Hewitt, "I think these are the drawings you
+are anxious about?"
+
+The engineer sprang toward them with a cry of delight. "Why, yes, yes," he
+exclaimed, turning them over, "every one of them! But where--how--they
+must have been in the place after all, then? What a fool I have been!"
+
+Hewitt shook his head. "I'm afraid you're not quite so lucky as you think,
+Mr. Dixon," he said. "These drawings have most certainly been out of the
+house for a little while. Never mind how--we'll talk of that after. There
+is no time to lose. Tell me--how long would it take a good draughtsman to
+copy them?"
+
+"They couldn't possibly be traced over properly in less than two or two
+and a half long days of very hard work," Dixon replied with eagerness.
+
+"Ah! then it is as I feared. These tracings have been photographed, Mr.
+Dixon, and our task is one of every possible difficulty. If they had been
+copied in the ordinary way, one might hope to get hold of the copy. But
+photography upsets everything. Copies can be multiplied with such amazing
+facility that, once the thief gets a decent start, it is almost hopeless
+to checkmate him. The only chance is to get at the negatives before copies
+are taken. I must act at once; and I fear, between ourselves, it may be
+necessary for me to step very distinctly over the line of the law in the
+matter. You see, to get at those negatives may involve something very like
+house-breaking. There must be no delay, no waiting for legal procedure, or
+the mischief is done. Indeed, I very much question whether you have any
+legal remedy, strictly speaking."
+
+"Mr. Hewitt, I implore you, do what you can. I need not say that all I
+have is at your disposal. I will guarantee to hold you harmless for
+anything that may happen. But do, I entreat you, do everything possible.
+Think of what the consequences may be!"
+
+"Well, yes, so I do," Hewitt remarked, with a smile. "The consequences to
+me, if I were charged with house-breaking, might be something that no
+amount of guarantee could mitigate. However, I will do what I can, if only
+from patriotic motives. Now, I must see your tracer, Ritter. He is the
+traitor in the camp."
+
+"Ritter? But how?"
+
+"Never mind that now. You are upset and agitated, and had better not know
+more than is necessary for a little while, in case you say or do something
+unguarded. With Ritter I must take a deep course; what I don't know I must
+appear to know, and that will seem more likely to him if I disclaim
+acquaintance with what I do know. But first put these tracings safely away
+out of sight."
+
+Dixon slipped them behind his book-case.
+
+"Now," Hewitt pursued, "call Mr. Worsfold and give him something to do
+that will keep him in the inner office across the way, and tell him to
+send Ritter here."
+
+Mr. Dixon called his chief draughtsman and requested him to put in order
+the drawings in the drawers of the inner room that had been disarranged by
+the search, and to send Ritter, as Hewitt had suggested.
+
+Ritter walked into the private room with an air of respectful attention.
+He was a puffy-faced, unhealthy-looking young man, with very small eyes
+and a loose, mobile mouth.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Ritter," Hewitt said, in a stern voice. "Your recent
+transactions with your friend Mr. Hunter are well known both to Mr. Dixon
+and myself."
+
+Ritter, who had at first leaned easily back in his chair, started forward
+at this, and paled.
+
+"You are surprised, I observe; but you should be more careful in your
+movements out of doors if you do not wish your acquaintances to be known.
+Mr. Hunter, I believe, has the drawings which Mr. Dixon has lost, and, if
+so, I am certain that you have given them to him. That, you know, is
+theft, for which the law provides a severe penalty."
+
+Ritter broke down completely and turned appealingly to Mr. Dixon.
+
+"Oh, sir," he pleaded, "it isn't so bad, I assure you. I was tempted, I
+confess, and hid the drawings; but they are still in the office, and I can
+give them to you--really, I can."
+
+"Indeed?" Hewitt went on. "Then, in that case, perhaps you'd better get
+them at once. Just go and fetch them in; we won't trouble to observe your
+hiding-place. I'll only keep this door open, to be sure you don't lose
+your way, you know--down the stairs, for instance."
+
+The wretched Ritter, with hanging head, slunk into the office opposite.
+Presently he reappeared, looking, if possible, ghastlier than before. He
+looked irresolutely down the corridor, as if meditating a run for it, but
+Hewitt stepped toward him and motioned him back to the private room.
+
+"You mustn't try any more of that sort of humbug," Hewitt said with
+increased severity. "The drawings are gone, and you have stolen them; you
+know that well enough. Now attend to me. If you received your deserts, Mr.
+Dixon would send for a policeman this moment, and have you hauled off to
+the jail that is your proper place. But, unfortunately, your accomplice,
+who calls himself Hunter--but who has other names besides that--as I
+happen to know--has the drawings, and it is absolutely necessary that
+these should be recovered. I am afraid that it will be necessary,
+therefore, to come to some arrangement with this scoundrel--to square him,
+in fact. Now, just take that pen and paper, and write to your confederate
+as I dictate. You know the alternative if you cause any difficulty."
+
+Ritter reached tremblingly for the pen.
+
+"Address him in your usual way," Hewitt proceeded. "Say this: 'There has
+been an alteration in the plans.' Have you got that? 'There has been an
+alteration in the plans. I shall be alone here at six o'clock. Please
+come, without fail.' Have you got it? Very well; sign it, and address the
+envelope. He must come here, and then we may arrange matters. In the
+meantime, you will remain in the inner office opposite."
+
+The note was written, and Martin Hewitt, without glancing at the address,
+thrust it into his pocket. When Ritter was safely in the inner office,
+however, he drew it out and read the address. "I see," he observed, "he
+uses the same name, Hunter; 27 Little Carton Street, Westminster, is the
+address, and there I shall go at once with the note. If the man comes
+here, I think you had better lock him in with Ritter, and send for a
+policeman--it may at least frighten him. My object is, of course, to get
+the man away, and then, if possible, to invade his house, in some way or
+another, and steal or smash his negatives if they are there and to be
+found. Stay here, in any case, till I return. And don't forget to lock up
+those tracings."
+
+ *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about six o'clock when Hewitt returned, alone, but with a smiling
+face that told of good fortune at first sight.
+
+"First, Mr. Dixon," he said, as he dropped into an easy chair in the
+private room, "let me ease your mind by the information that I have been
+most extraordinarily lucky; in fact, I think you have no further cause for
+anxiety. Here are the negatives. They were not all quite dry when I--well,
+what?--stole them, I suppose I must say; so that they have stuck together
+a bit, and probably the films are damaged. But you don't mind that, I
+suppose?"
+
+He laid a small parcel, wrapped in a newspaper, on the table. The engineer
+hastily tore away the paper and took up five or six glass photographic
+negatives, of a half-plate size, which were damp, and stuck together by
+the gelatine films in couples. He held them, one after another, up to the
+light of the window, and glanced through them. Then, with a great sigh of
+relief, he placed them on the hearth and pounded them to dust and
+fragments with the poker.
+
+For a few seconds neither spoke. Then Dixon, flinging himself into a
+chair, said:
+
+"Mr. Hewitt, I can't express my obligation to you. What would have
+happened if you had failed, I prefer not to think of. But what shall we do
+with Ritter now? The other man hasn't been here yet, by the by."
+
+"No; the fact is I didn't deliver the letter. The worthy gentleman saved
+me a world of trouble by taking himself out of the way." Hewitt laughed.
+"I'm afraid he has rather got himself into a mess by trying two kinds of
+theft at once, and you may not be sorry to hear that his attempt on your
+torpedo plans is likely to bring him a dose of penal servitude for
+something else. I'll tell you what has happened.
+
+"Little Carton Street, Westminster, I found to be a seedy sort of
+place--one of those old streets that have seen much better days. A good
+many people seem to live in each house--they are fairly large houses, by
+the way--and there is quite a company of bell-handles on each doorpost,
+all down the side like organ-stops. A barber had possession of the ground
+floor front of No. 27 for trade purposes, so to him I went. 'Can you tell
+me,' I said, 'where in this house I can find Mr. Hunter?' He looked
+doubtful, so I went on: 'His friend will do, you know--I can't think of
+his name; foreign gentleman, dark, with a bushy beard.'
+
+"The barber understood at once. 'Oh, that's Mirsky, I expect,' he said.
+'Now, I come to think of it, he has had letters addressed to Hunter once
+or twice; I've took 'em in. Top floor back.'
+
+"This was good so far. I had got at 'Mr. Hunter's' other alias. So, by way
+of possessing him with the idea that I knew all about him, I determined to
+ask for him as Mirsky before handing over the letter addressed to him as
+Hunter. A little bluff of that sort is invaluable at the right time. At
+the top floor back I stopped at the door and tried to open it at once, but
+it was locked. I could hear somebody scuttling about within, as though
+carrying things about, and I knocked again. In a little while the door
+opened about a foot, and there stood Mr. Hunter--or Mirsky, as you
+like--the man who, in the character of a traveler in steam-packing, came
+here twice to-day. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and cuddled something
+under his arm, hastily covered with a spotted pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"'I have called to see M. Mirsky," I said, 'with a confidential
+letter----'
+
+"'Oh, yas, yas,' he answered hastily; 'I know--I know. Excuse me one
+minute.' And he rushed off down-stairs with his parcel.
+
+"Here was a noble chance. For a moment I thought of following him, in case
+there might be something interesting in the parcel. But I had to decide in
+a moment, and I decided on trying the room. I slipped inside the door,
+and, finding the key on the inside, locked it. It was a confused sort of
+room, with a little iron bedstead in one corner and a sort of rough
+boarded inclosure in another. This I rightly conjectured to be the
+photographic dark-room, and made for it at once.
+
+"There was plenty of light within when the door was left open, and I made
+at once for the drying-rack that was fastened over the sink. There were a
+number of negatives in it, and I began hastily examining them one after
+another. In the middle of this our friend Mirsky returned and tried the
+door. He rattled violently at the handle and pushed. Then he called.
+
+"At this moment I had come upon the first of the negatives you have just
+smashed. The fixing and washing had evidently only lately been completed,
+and the negative was drying on the rack. I seized it, of course, and the
+others which stood by it.
+
+"'Who are you, there, inside?' Mirsky shouted indignantly from the
+landing. 'Why for you go in my room like that? Open this door at once, or
+I call the police!'
+
+"I took no notice. I had got the full number of negatives, one for each
+drawing, but I was not by any means sure that he had not taken an extra
+set; so I went on hunting down the rack. There were no more, so I set to
+work to turn out all the undeveloped plates. It was quite possible, you
+see, that the other set, if it existed, had not yet been developed.
+
+"Mirsky changed his tune. After a little more banging and shouting I could
+hear him kneel down and try the key-hole. I had left the key there, so
+that he could see nothing. But he began talking softly and rapidly through
+the hole in a foreign language. I did not know it in the least, but I
+believe it was Russian. What had led him to believe I understood Russian I
+could not at the time imagine, though I have a notion now. I went on
+ruining his stock of plates. I found several boxes, apparently of new
+plates, but, as there was no means of telling whether they were really
+unused or were merely undeveloped, but with the chemical impress of your
+drawings on them, I dragged every one ruthlessly from its hiding-place and
+laid it out in the full glare of the sunlight--destroying it thereby, of
+course, whether it was unused or not.
+
+"Mirsky left off talking, and I heard him quietly sneaking off. Perhaps
+his conscience was not sufficiently clear to warrant an appeal to the
+police, but it seemed to me rather probable at the time that that was what
+he was going for. So I hurried on with my work. I found three dark
+slides--the parts that carried the plates in the back of the camera, you
+know--one of them fixed in the camera itself. These I opened, and exposed
+the plates to ruination as before. I suppose nobody ever did so much
+devastation in a photographic studio in ten minutes as I managed.
+
+"I had spoiled every plate I could find, and had the developed negatives
+safely in my pocket, when I happened to glance at a porcelain washing-well
+under the sink. There was one negative in that, and I took it up. It was
+_not_ a negative of a drawing of yours, but of a Russian twenty-ruble
+note!"
+
+This _was_ a discovery. The only possible reason any man could have for
+photographing a bank-note was the manufacture of an etched plate for the
+production of forged copies. I was almost as pleased as I had been at the
+discovery of _your_ negatives. He might bring the police now as soon as he
+liked; I could turn the tables on him completely. I began to hunt about
+for anything else relating to this negative.
+
+"I found an inking-roller, some old pieces of blanket (used in printing
+from plates), and in a corner on the floor, heaped over with newspapers
+and rubbish, a small copying-press. There was also a dish of acid, but not
+an etched plate or a printed note to be seen. I was looking at the press,
+with the negative in one hand and the inking-roller in the other, when I
+became conscious of a shadow across the window. I looked up quickly, and
+there was Mirsky hanging over from some ledge or projection to the side of
+the window, and staring straight at me, with a look of unmistakable terror
+and apprehension.
+
+"The face vanished immediately. I had to move a table to get at the
+window, and by the time I had opened it there was no sign or sound of the
+rightful tenant of the room. I had no doubt now of his reason for carrying
+a parcel down-stairs. He probably mistook me for another visitor he was
+expecting, and, knowing he must take this visitor into his room, threw the
+papers and rubbish over the press, and put up his plates and papers in a
+bundle and secreted them somewhere down-stairs, lest his occupation should
+be observed.
+
+"Plainly, my duty now was to communicate with the police. So, by the help
+of my friend the barber down-stairs, a messenger was found and a note sent
+over to Scotland Yard. I awaited, of course, for the arrival of the
+police, and occupied the interval in another look round--finding nothing
+important, however. When the official detective arrived, he recognized at
+once the importance of the case. A large number of forged Russian notes
+have been put into circulation on the Continent lately, it seems, and it
+was suspected that they came from London. The Russian Government have been
+sending urgent messages to the police here on the subject.
+
+"Of course I said nothing about your business; but, while I was talking
+with the Scotland Yard man, a letter was left by a messenger, addressed to
+Mirsky. The letter will be examined, of course, by the proper authorities,
+but I was not a little interested to perceive that the envelope bore the
+Russian imperial arms above the words 'Russian Embassy.' Now, why should
+Mirsky communicate with the Russian Embassy? Certainly not to let the
+officials know that he was carrying on a very extensive and lucrative
+business in the manufacture of spurious Russian notes. I think it is
+rather more than possible that he wrote--probably before he actually got
+your drawings--to say that he could sell information of the highest
+importance, and that this letter was a reply. Further, I think it quite
+possible that, when I asked for him by his Russian name and spoke of 'a
+confidential letter,' he at once concluded that _I_ had come from the
+embassy in answer to his letter. That would account for his addressing me
+in Russian through the key-hole; and, of course, an official from the
+Russian Embassy would be the very last person in the world whom he would
+like to observe any indications of his little etching experiments. But,
+anyhow, be that as it may," Hewitt concluded, "your drawings are safe now,
+and if once Mirsky is caught, and I think it likely, for a man in his
+shirt-sleeves, with scarcely any start, and, perhaps, no money about him,
+hasn't a great chance to get away--if he is caught, I say, he will
+probably get something handsome at St. Petersburg in the way of
+imprisonment, or Siberia, or what not; so that you will be amply avenged."
+
+"Yes, but I don't at all understand this business of the drawings even
+now. How in the world were they taken out of the place, and how in the
+world did you find it out?"
+
+"Nothing could be simpler; and yet the plan was rather ingenious. I'll
+tell you exactly how the thing revealed itself to me. From your original
+description of the case many people would consider that an impossibility
+had been performed. Nobody had gone out and nobody had come in, and yet
+the drawings had been taken away. But an impossibility is an
+impossibility, after all, and as drawings don't run away of themselves,
+plainly somebody had taken them, unaccountable as it might seem. Now, as
+they were in your inner office, the only people who could have got at them
+besides yourself were your assistants, so that it was pretty clear that
+one of them, at least, had something to do with the business. You told me
+that Worsfold was an excellent and intelligent draughtsman. Well, if such
+a man as that meditated treachery, he would probably be able to carry away
+the design in his head--at any rate, a little at a time--and would be
+under no necessity to run the risk of stealing a set of the drawings. But
+Ritter, you remarked, was an inferior sort of man. 'Not particularly
+smart,' I think, were your words--only a mechanical sort of tracer. _He_
+would be unlikely to be able to carry in his head the complicated details
+of such designs as yours, and, being in a subordinate position, and
+continually overlooked, he would find it impossible to make copies of the
+plans in the office. So that, to begin with, I thought I saw the most
+probable path to start on.
+
+"When I looked round the rooms, I pushed open the glass door of the
+barrier and left the door to the inner office ajar, in order to be able to
+see any thing that _might_ happen in any part of the place, without
+actually expecting any definite development. While we were talking, as it
+happened, our friend Mirsky (or Hunter--as you please) came into the outer
+office, and my attention was instantly called to him by the first thing he
+did. Did you notice anything peculiar yourself?"
+
+"No, really, I can't say I did. He seemed to behave much as any traveler
+or agent might."
+
+"Well, what I noticed was the fact that as soon as he entered the place he
+put his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand over there by the door,
+close by where he stood, a most unusual thing for a casual caller to do,
+before even knowing whether you were in. This made me watch him closely. I
+perceived with increased interest that the stick was exactly of the same
+kind and pattern as one already standing there, also a curious thing. I
+kept my eyes carefully on those sticks, and was all the more interested
+and edified to see, when he left, that he took the _other_ stick--not the
+one he came with--from the stand, and carried it away, leaving his own
+behind. I might have followed him, but I decided that more could be
+learned by staying, as, in fact, proved to be the case. This, by the by,
+is the stick he carried away with him. I took the liberty of fetching it
+back from Westminster, because I conceive it to be Ritier's property."
+
+Hewitt produced the stick. It was an ordinary, thick Malacca cane, with a
+buck-horn handle and a silver band. Hewitt bent it across his knee and
+laid it on the table.
+
+"Yes," Dixon answered, "that is Ritter's stick. I think I have often seen
+it in the stand. But what in the world----"
+
+"One moment; I'll just fetch the stick Mirsky left behind." And Hewitt
+stepped across the corridor.
+
+He returned with another stick, apparently an exact fac-simile of the
+other, and placed it by the side of the other.
+
+"When your assistants went into the inner room, I carried this stick off
+for a minute or two. I knew it was not Worsfold's, because there was an
+umbrella there with his initial on the handle. Look at this."
+
+Martin Hewitt gave the handle a twist and rapidly unscrewed it from the
+top. Then it was seen that the stick was a mere tube of very thin metal,
+painted to appear like a Malacca cane.
+
+"It was plain at once that this was no Malacca cane--it wouldn't bend.
+Inside it I found your tracings, rolled up tightly. You can get a
+marvelous quantity of thin tracing-paper into a small compass by tight
+rolling."
+
+"And this--this was the way they were brought back!" the engineer
+exclaimed. "I see that clearly. But how did they get away? That's as
+mysterious as ever."
+
+"Not a bit of it! See here. Mirsky gets hold of Ritter, and they agree to
+get your drawings and photograph them. Ritter is to let his confederate
+have the drawings, and Mirsky is to bring them back as soon as possible,
+so that they sha'n't be missed for a moment. Ritter habitually carries
+this Malacca cane, and the cunning of Mirsky at once suggests that this
+tube should be made in outward fac-simile. This morning Mirsky keeps the
+actual stick, and Ritter comes to the office with the tube. He seizes the
+first opportunity--probably when you were in this private room, and
+Worsfold was talking to you from the corridor--to get at the tracings,
+roll them up tightly, and put them in the tube, putting the tube back into
+the umbrella-stand. At half-past twelve, or whenever it was, Mirsky turns
+up for the first time with the actual stick and exchanges them, just as he
+afterward did when he brought the drawings back."
+
+"Yes, but Mirsky came half an hour after they were--Oh, yes, I see. What a
+fool I was! I was forgetting. Of course, when I first missed the tracings,
+they were in this walking-stick, safe enough, and I was tearing my hair
+out within arm's reach of them!"
+
+"Precisely. And Mirsky took them away before your very eyes. I expect
+Ritter was in a rare funk when he found that the drawings were missed. He
+calculated, no doubt, on your not wanting them for the hour or two they
+would be out of the office."
+
+"How lucky that it struck me to jot a pencil-note on one of them! I might
+easily have made my note somewhere else, and then I should never have
+known that they had been away."
+
+"Yes, they didn't give you any too much time to miss them. Well, I think
+the rest pretty clear. I brought the tracings in here, screwed up the sham
+stick and put it back. You identified the tracings and found none missing,
+and then my course was pretty clear, though it looked difficult. I knew
+you would be very naturally indignant with Ritter, so, as I wanted to
+manage him myself, I told you nothing of what he had actually done, for
+fear that, in your agitated state, you might burst out with something that
+would spoil my game. To Ritter I pretended to know nothing of the return
+of the drawings or _how_ they had been stolen--the only things I did know
+with certainty. But I _did_ pretend to know all about Mirsky--or
+Hunter--when, as a matter of fact, I knew nothing at all, except that he
+probably went under more than one name. That put Ritter into my hands
+completely. When he found the game was up, he began with a lying
+confession. Believing that the tracings were still in the stick and that
+we knew nothing of their return, he said that they had not been away, and
+that he would fetch them--as I had expected he would. I let him go for
+them alone, and, when he returned, utterly broken up by the discovery that
+they were not there, I had him altogether at my mercy. You see, if he had
+known that the drawings were all the time behind your book-case, he might
+have brazened it out, sworn that the drawings had been there all the time,
+and we could have done nothing with him. We couldn't have sufficiently
+frightened him by a threat of prosecution for theft, because there the
+things were in your possession, to his knowledge.
+
+"As it was he answered the helm capitally: gave us Mirsky's address on the
+envelope, and wrote the letter that was to have got him out of the way
+while I committed burglary, if that disgraceful expedient had not been
+rendered unnecessary. On the whole, the case has gone very well."
+
+"It has gone marvelously well, thanks to yourself. But what shall I do
+with Ritter?"
+
+"Here's his stick--knock him down-stairs with it, if you like. I should
+keep the tube, if I were you, as a memento. I don't suppose the
+respectable Mirsky will ever call to ask for it. But I should certainly
+kick Ritter out of doors--or out of window, if you like--without delay."
+
+Mirsky was caught, and, after two remands at the police-court, was
+extradited on the charge of forging Russian notes. It came out that he had
+written to the embassy, as Hewitt had surmised, stating that he had
+certain valuable information to offer, and the letter which Hewitt had
+seen delivered was an acknowledgment, and a request for more definite
+particulars. This was what gave rise to the impression that Mirsky had
+himself informed the Russian authorities of his forgeries. His real intent
+was very different, but was never guessed.
+
+ *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wonder," Hewitt has once or twice observed, "whether, after all, it
+would not have paid the Russian authorities better on the whole if I had
+never investigated Mirsky's little note factory. The Dixon torpedo was
+worth a good many twenty-ruble notes."
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+THE QUINTON JEWEL AFFAIR.
+
+It was comparatively rarely that Hewitt came into contact with members of
+the regular criminal class--those, I mean, who are thieves, of one sort or
+another, by exclusive profession. Still, nobody could have been better
+prepared than Hewitt for encountering this class when it became necessary.
+By some means, which I never quite understood, he managed to keep abreast
+of the very latest fashions in the ever-changing slang dialect of the
+fraternity, and he was a perfect master of the more modern and debased
+form of Romany. So much so that frequently a gypsy who began (as they
+always do) by pretending that he understood nothing, and never heard of a
+gypsy language, ended by confessing that Hewitt could _rokker_ better than
+most Romany _chals_ themselves.
+
+By this acquaintance with their habits and talk Hewitt was sometimes able
+to render efficient service in cases of especial importance. In the
+Quinton jewel affair Hewitt came into contact with a very accomplished
+thief.
+
+The case will probably be very well remembered. Sir Valentine Quinton,
+before he married, had been as poor as only a man of rank with an old
+country establishment to keep up can be. His marriage, however, with the
+daughter of a wealthy financier had changed all that, and now the Quinton
+establishment was carried on on as lavish a scale as might be; and,
+indeed, the extravagant habits of Lady Quinton herself rendered it an
+extremely lucky thing that she had brought a fortune with her.
+
+Among other things her jewels made quite a collection, and chief among
+them was the great ruby, one of the very few that were sent to this
+country to be sold (at an average price of somewhere about twenty thousand
+pounds apiece, I believe) by the Burmese king before the annexation of his
+country. Let but a ruby be of a great size and color, and no equally fine
+diamond can approach its value. Well, this great ruby (which was set in a
+pendant, by the by), together with a necklace, brooches, bracelets,
+ear-rings--indeed, the greater part of Lady Quinton's collection--were
+stolen. The robbery was effected at the usual time and in the usual way in
+cases of carefully planned jewelry robberies. The time was early
+evening--dinner-time, in fact--and an entrance had been made by the window
+to Lady Quinton's dressing-room, the door screwed up on the inside, and
+wires artfully stretched about the grounds below to overset anybody who
+might observe and pursue the thieves.
+
+On an investigation by London detectives, however, a feature of
+singularity was brought to light. There had plainly been only one thief at
+work at Radcot Hall, and no other had been inside the grounds. Alone he
+had planted the wires, opened the window, screwed the door, and picked the
+lock of the safe. Clearly this was a thief of the most accomplished
+description.
+
+Some few days passed, and, although the police had made various arrests,
+they appeared to be all mistakes, and the suspected persons were released
+one after another. I was talking of the robbery with Hewitt at lunch, and
+asked him if he had received any commission to hunt for the missing
+jewels.
+
+"No," Hewitt replied, "I haven't been commissioned. They are offering an
+immense reward however--a very pleasant sum, indeed. I have had a short
+note from Radcot Hall informing me of the amount, and that's all. Probably
+they fancy that I may take the case up as a speculation, but that is a
+great mistake. I'm not a beginner, and I must be commissioned in a regular
+manner, hit or miss, if I am to deal with the case. I've quite enough
+commissions going now, and no time to waste hunting for a problematical
+reward."
+
+But we were nearer a clue to the Quinton jewels than we then supposed.
+
+We talked of other things, and presently rose and left the restaurant,
+strolling quietly toward home. Some little distance from the Strand, and
+near our own door, we passed an excited Irishman--without doubt an
+Irishman by appearance and talk--who was pouring a torrent of angry
+complaints in the ears of a policeman. The policeman obviously thought
+little of the man's grievances, and with an amused smile appeared to be
+advising him to go home quietly and think no more about it. We passed on
+and mounted our stairs. Something interesting in our conversation made me
+stop for a little while at Hewitt's office door on my way up, and, while I
+stood there, the Irishman we had seen in the street mounted the stairs. He
+was a poorly dressed but sturdy-looking fellow, apparently a laborer, in a
+badly-worn best suit of clothes. His agitation still held him, and without
+a pause he immediately burst out:
+
+"Which of ye jintlemen will be Misther Hewitt, sor?"
+
+"This is Mr. Hewitt," I said. "Do you want him?"
+
+"It's protecshin I want, sor--protecshin! I spake to the polis, an' they
+laff at me, begob. Foive days have I lived in London, an' 'tis nothin' but
+battle, murdher, an' suddhen death for me here all day an' ivery day! An'
+the polis say I'm dhrunk!"
+
+He gesticulated wildly, and to me it seemed just possible that the police
+might be right.
+
+"They say I'm drunk, sor," he continued, "but, begob, I b'lieve they think
+I'm mad. An' me being thracked an' folleyed an' dogged an' waylaid an'
+poisoned an' blandandhered an' kidnapped an' murdhered, an' for why I do
+not know!"
+
+"And who's doing all this?'
+
+"Sthrangers, sor--sthrangers. 'Tis a sthranger here I am mesilf, an' fwy
+they do it bates me, onless I do be so like the Prince av Wales or other
+crowned head they thry to slaughter me. They're layin' for me in the
+sthreet now, I misdoubt not, and fwat they may thry next I can tell no
+more than the Lord Mayor. An' the polis won't listen to me!"
+
+This, I thought, must be one of the very common cases of mental
+hallucination which one hears of every day--the belief of the sufferer
+that he is surrounded by enemies and followed by spies. It is probably the
+most usual delusion of the harmless lunatic.
+
+"But what have these people done?" Hewitt asked, looking rather
+interested, although amused. "What actual assaults have they committed,
+and when? And who told you to come here?"
+
+"Who towld me, is ut? Who but the payler outside--in the street below! I
+explained to 'um, an' sez he: 'Ah, you go an' take a slape,' sez he; 'you
+go an' take a good slape, an' they'll be all gone whin ye wake up.' 'But
+they'll murdher me,' sez I. 'Oh, no!' sez he, smilin' behind av his ugly
+face. 'Oh, no, they won't; you take ut aisy, me frind, an' go home!' 'Take
+it aisy, is ut, an' go home!' sez I; 'why, that's just where they've been
+last, a-ruinationin' an' a-turnin' av the place upside down, an' me strook
+on the head onsensible a mile away. Take ut aisy, is ut, ye say, whin all
+the demons in this unholy place is jumpin' on me every minut in places
+promiscuous till I can't tell where to turn, descendin' an' vanishin'
+marvelious an' onaccountable? Take ut aisy, is ut?' sez I. 'Well, me
+frind,' sez he, 'I can't help ye; that's the marvelious an' onaccountable
+departmint up the stairs forninst ye. Misther Hewitt ut is,' sez he, 'that
+attinds to the onaccountable departmint, him as wint by a minut ago. You
+go an' bother him.' That's how I was towld, sor."
+
+Hewitt smiled.
+
+"Very good," he said; "and now what are these extraordinary troubles of
+yours? Don't declaim," he added, as the Irishman raised his hand and
+opened his mouth, preparatory to another torrent of complaint; "just say
+in ten words, if you can, what they've done to you."
+
+"I will, sor. Wan day had I been in London, sor--wan day only, an' a low
+scutt thried to poison me dhrink; next day some udther thief av sin shoved
+me off av a railway platform undher a train, malicious and purposeful;
+glory be, he didn't kill me! but the very docther that felt me bones
+thried to pick me pockut, I du b'lieve. Sunday night I was grabbed
+outrageous in a darrk turnin', rowled on the groun', half strangled, an'
+me pockuts nigh ripped out av me trousies. An' this very blessed mornin'
+av light I was strook onsensible an' left a livin' corpse, an' my lodgin's
+penethrated an' all the thruck mishandled an' bruk up behind me back. Is
+that a panjandhery for the polis to laff at, sor?"
+
+Had Hewitt not been there I think I should have done my best to quiet the
+poor fellow with a few soothing words and to persuade him to go home to
+his friends. His excited and rather confused manner, his fantastic story
+of a sort of general conspiracy to kill him, and the absurd reference to
+the doctor who tried to pick his pocket seemed to me plainly to confirm my
+first impression that he was insane. But Hewitt appeared strangely
+interested.
+
+"Did they steal anything?" he asked.
+
+"Divil a shtick but me door-key, an' that they tuk home an' lift in the
+door."
+
+Hewitt opened his office door.
+
+"Come in," he said, "and tell me all about this. You come, too, Brett."
+
+The Irishman and I followed him into the inner office, where, shutting the
+door, Hewitt suddenly turned on the Irishman and exclaimed sharply: "_Then
+you've still got it_?"
+
+He looked keenly in the man's eyes, but the only expression there was one
+of surprise.
+
+"Got ut?" said the Irishman. "Got fwhat, sor? Is ut you're thinkin' I've
+got the horrors, as well as the polis?"
+
+Hewitt's gaze relaxed. "Sit down, sit down!" he said. "You've still got
+your watch and money, I suppose, since you weren't robbed?"
+
+"Oh, that? Glory be, I have ut still! though for how long--or me own head,
+for that matter--in this state of besiegement, I can not say."
+
+"Now," said Hewitt, "I want a full, true, and particular account of
+yourself and your doings for the last week. First, your name?"
+
+"Leamy's my name, sor--Michael Leamy."
+
+"Lately from Ireland?"
+
+"Over from Dublin this last blessed Wednesday, and a crooil bad
+poundherin' tit was in the boat, too--shpakin'av that same."
+
+"Looking for work?"
+
+"That is my purshuit at prisint, sor."
+
+"Did anything noticeable happen before these troubles of yours
+began--anything here in London or on the journey?"
+
+"Sure," the Irishman smiled, "part av the way I thraveled first-class by
+favor av the gyard, an' I got a small job before I lift the train."
+
+"How was that? Why did you travel first-class part of the way?"
+
+"There was a station fwhere we shtopped afther a long run, an' I got down
+to take the cramp out av me joints, an' take a taste av dhrink. I
+over-shtayed somehow, an', whin I got to the train, begob, it was on the
+move. There was a first-class carr'ge door opin right forninst me, an'
+into that the gyard crams me holus-bolus. There was a juce of a foine
+jintleman sittin' there, an' he stares at me umbrageous, but I was not
+dishcommoded, bein' onbashful by natur'. We thravelled along a heap av
+miles more, till we came near London. Afther we had shtopped at a station
+where they tuk tickets we wint ahead again, an' prisintly, as we rips
+through some udther station, up jumps the jintleman opposite, swearin'
+hard undher his tongue, an' looks out at the windy. 'I thought this train
+shtopped here,' sez he."
+
+"Chalk Farm," observed Hewitt, with a nod.
+
+"The name I do not know, sor, but that's fwhat he said. Then he looks at
+me onaisy for a little, an' at last he sez: 'Wud ye loike a small job, me
+good man, well paid?'
+
+"'Faith,' sez I, ''tis that will suit me well.'
+
+"'Then, see here,' sez he, 'I should have got out at that station, havin'
+particular business; havin' missed, I must sen' a telegrammer from Euston.
+Now, here's a bag,' sez he, 'a bag full of imporrtant papers for my
+solicitor--imporrtant to me, ye ondershtand, not worth the shine av a
+brass farden to a sowl else--an' I want 'em tuk on to him. Take you this
+bag,' he sez, 'an' go you straight out wid it at Euston an' get a cab. I
+shall stay in the station a bit to see to the telegrammer. Dhrive out av
+the station, across the road outside, an' wait there five minuts by the
+clock. Ye ondershtand? Wait five minuts, an, maybe I'll come an' join ye.
+If I don't 'twill be bekase I'm detained onexpected, an' then ye'll dhrive
+to my solicitor straight. Here's his address, if ye can read writin',' an'
+he put ut on a piece av paper. He gave me half-a-crown for the cab, an' I
+tuk his bag."
+
+"One moment--have you the paper with the address now?"
+
+"I have not, sor. I missed ut afther the blayguards overset me yesterday;
+but the solicitor's name was Hollams, an' a liberal jintleman wid his
+money he was, too, by that same token."
+
+"What was his address?"
+
+"'Twas in Chelsea, and 'twas Gold or Golden something, which I know by the
+good token av fwhat he gave me; but the number I misremember."
+
+Hewitt turned to his directory. "Gold Street is the place, probably," he
+said, "and it seems to be a street chiefly of private houses. You would be
+able to point out the house if you were taken there, I suppose?"
+
+"I should that, sor; indade, I was thinkin' av goin' there an' tellin'
+Misther Hollams all my throubles, him havin' been so kind."
+
+"Now tell me exactly what instructions the man in the train gave you, and
+what happened?"
+
+"He sez: 'You ask for Misther Hollams, an' see nobody else. Tell him ye've
+brought the sparks from Misther W.'"
+
+I fancied I could see a sudden twinkle in Hewitt's eye, but he made no
+other sign, and the Irishman proceeded.
+
+"'Sparks?' sez I. 'Yes, sparks,' sez he. 'Misther Hollams will know; 'tis
+our jokin' word for 'em; sometimes papers is sparks when they set a
+lawsuit ablaze,' and he laffed. 'But be sure ye say the _sparks from
+Misther W._,' he sez again, 'bekase then he'll know ye're jinuine an'
+he'll pay ye han'some. Say Misther W. sez you're to have your reg'lars, if
+ye like. D'ye mind that?'
+
+"'Ay,' sez I, 'that I'm to have my reg'lars.'
+
+"Well, sor, I tuk the bag and wint out of the station, tuk the cab, an'
+did all as he towld me. I waited the foive minuts, but he niver came, so
+off I druv to Misther Hollams, and he threated me han'some, sor."
+
+"Yes, but tell me exactly all he did."
+
+"'Misther Hollams, sor?' sez I. 'Who are ye?' sez he. 'Mick Leamy, sor,'
+sez I, 'from Misther W. wid the sparks.' 'Oh,' sez he, 'thin come in.' I
+wint in. 'They're in here, are they?' sez he, takin' the bag. 'They are,
+sor,' sez I, 'an' Misther W. sez I'm to have me reg'lars.' 'You shall,'
+sez he. 'What shall we say, now--afinnip?' 'Fwhat's that, sor?' sez I.
+'Oh,' sez he, 'I s'pose ye're a new hand; five quid--ondershtand that?'"
+
+"Begob, I did ondershtand it, an' moighty plazed I was to have come to a
+place where they pay five-pun' notes for carryin' bags. So whin he asked
+me was I new to London an' shud I kape in the same line av business, I
+towld him I shud for certin, or any thin' else payin' like it. 'Right,'
+sez he; 'let me know whin ye've got any thin'--ye'll find me all right.'
+An' he winked frindly. 'Faith, that I know I shall, sor,' sez I, wid the
+money safe in me pockut; an' I winked him back, conjanial. 'I've a smart
+family about me,' sez he, 'an' I treat 'em all fair an' liberal.' An',
+saints, I thought it likely his family 'ud have all they wanted, seein' he
+was so free-handed wid a stranger. Thin he asked me where I was a livin'
+in London, and, when I towld him nowhere, he towld me av a room in Musson
+Street, here by Drury Lane, that was to let, in a house his fam'ly knew
+very well, an' I wint straight there an' tuk ut, an' there I do be stayin'
+still, sor."
+
+I hadn't understood at first why Hewitt took so much interest in the
+Irishman's narrative, but the latter part of it opened my eyes a little.
+It seemed likely that Leamy had, in his innocence, been made a conveyer of
+stolen property. I knew enough of thieves' slang to know that "sparks"
+meant diamonds or other jewels; that "regulars" was the term used for a
+payment made to a brother thief who gave assistance in some small way,
+such as carrying the booty; and that the "family" was the time-honored
+expression for a gang of thieves.
+
+"This was all on Wednesday, I understand," said Hewitt. "Now tell me what
+happened on Thursday--the poisoning, or drugging, you know?"
+
+"Well, sor, I was walking out, an' toward the evenin' I lost mesilf. Up
+comes a man, seemin'ly a sthranger, and shmacks me on the showldher. 'Why,
+Mick!' sez he; 'it's Mick Leamy, I du b'lieve!'
+
+"'I am that,' sez I, 'but you I do not know.'
+
+"'Not know me?' sez he. 'Why, I wint to school wid ye.' An' wid that he
+hauls me off to a bar, blarneyin' and minowdherin', an' orders dhrinks.
+
+"Can ye rache me a poipe-loight?' sez he, an' I turned to get ut, but,
+lookin' back suddent, there was that onblushin' thief av the warl' tippin'
+a paperful of phowder stuff into me glass."
+
+"What did you do?" Hewitt asked.
+
+"I knocked the dhirty face av him, sor, an' can ye blame me? A mane scutt,
+thryin' for to poison a well-manin' sthranger. I knocked the face av him,
+an' got away home."
+
+"Now the next misfortune?"
+
+"Faith, that was av a sort likely to turn out the last of all misfortunes.
+I wint that day to the Crystial Palace, bein' dishposed for a little
+sphort, seein' as I was new to London. Comin' home at night, there was a
+juce av a crowd on the station platform, consekins of a late thrain.
+Sthandin' by the edge av the platform at the fore end, just as thrain came
+in, some onvisible murdherer gives me a stupenjus drive in the back, and
+over I wint on the line, mid-betwixt the rails. The engine came up an'
+wint half over me widout givin' me a scratch, bekase av my centraleous
+situation, an' then the porther-men pulled me out, nigh sick wid fright,
+sor, as ye may guess. A jintleman in the crowd sings out: 'I'm a medical
+man!' an' they tuk me in the waitin'-room, an' he investigated me, havin'
+turned everybody else out av the room. There wuz no bones bruk, glory be!
+and the docthor-man he was tellin' me so, after feelin' me over, whin I
+felt his hand in me waistcoat pockut.
+
+"'An' fwhat's this, sor?' sez I. 'Do you be lookin' for your fee that
+thief's way?'
+
+"He laffed, and said: 'I want no fee from ye, me man, an' I did but feel
+your ribs,' though on me conscience he had done that undher me waistcoat
+already. An' so I came home."
+
+"What did they do to you on Saturday?"
+
+"Saturday, sor, they gave me a whole holiday, and I began to think less of
+things; but on Saturday night, in a dark place, two blayguards tuk me
+throat from behind, nigh choked me, flung me down, an' wint through all me
+pockuts in about a quarter av a minut."
+
+"And they took nothing, you say?"
+
+"Nothing, sor. But this mornin' I got my worst dose. I was trapesing along
+distreshful an' moighty sore, in a street just away off the Strand here,
+when I obsarved the docthor-man that was at the Crystial Palace station
+a-smilin' an' beckonin' at me from a door.
+
+"'How are ye now?' sez he. 'Well,' sez I, 'I'm moighty sore an' sad
+bruised,' sez I. 'Is that so?' sez he. 'Sthep in here.' So I sthepped in,
+an' before I could wink there dhropped a crack on the back av me head that
+sent me off as unknowledgable as a corrpse. I knew no more for a while,
+sor, whether half an hour or an hour, an' thin I got up in a room av the
+place, marked 'To Let.' 'Twas a house full av offices, by the same token,
+like this. There was a sore bad lump on me head--see ut, sor?--an' the
+whole warl' was shpinnin' roun' rampageous. The things out av me pockuts
+were lyin' on the flure by me--all barrin' the key av me room. So that the
+demons had been through me posseshins again, bad luck to 'em."
+
+"You are quite sure, are you, that everything was there except the key?"
+Hewitt asked.
+
+"Certin, sor? Well, I got along to me room, sick an' sorry enough, an'
+doubtsome whether I might get in wid no key. But there was the key in the
+open door, an', by this an' that, all the shtuff in the room--chair,
+table, bed, an' all--was shtandin' on their heads twisty-ways, an' the
+bedclothes an' every thin' else; such a disgraceful stramash av
+conglomerated thruck as ye niver dhreamt av. The chist av drawers was
+lyin' on uts face, wid all the dhrawers out an' emptied on the flure.
+'Twas as though an arrmy had been lootin', sor!"
+
+"But still nothing was gone?"
+
+"Nothin', so far as I investigated, sor. But I didn't shtay. I came out to
+spake to the polis, an' two av them laffed at me--wan afther another!"
+
+"It has certainly been no laughing matter for you. Now, tell me--have you
+anything in your possession--documents, or valuables, or anything--that
+any other person, to your knowledge, is anxious to get hold of!"
+
+"I have not, sor--divil a document! As to valuables, thim an' me is the
+cowldest av sthrangers."
+
+"Just call to mind, now, the face of the man who tried to put powder in
+your drink, and that of the doctor who attended to you in the railway
+station. Were they at all alike, or was either like anybody you have seen
+before?"
+
+Leamy puckered his forehead and thought.
+
+"Faith," he said presently, "they were a bit alike, though one had a beard
+an' the udther whiskers only."
+
+"Neither happened to look like Mr. Hollams, for instance?"
+
+Leamy started. "Begob, but they did! They'd ha' been mortal like him if
+they'd been shaved." Then, after a pause, he suddenly added: "Holy saints!
+is ut the fam'ly he talked av?"
+
+Hewitt laughed. "Perhaps it is," he said. "Now, as to the man who sent you
+with the bag. Was it an old bag?"
+
+"Bran' cracklin' new--a brown leather bag."
+
+"Locked?"
+
+"That I niver thried, sor. It was not my consarn."
+
+"True. Now, as to this Mr. W. himself." Hewitt had been rummaging for some
+few minutes in a portfolio, and finally produced a photograph, and held it
+before the Irishman's eye. "Is that like him?" he asked.
+
+"Shure it's the man himself! Is he a friend av yours, sor?"
+
+"No, he's not exactly a friend of mine," Hewitt answered, with a grim
+chuckle. "I fancy he's one of that very respectable _family_ you heard
+about at Mr. Hollams'. Come along with me now to Chelsea, and see if you
+can point out that house in Gold Street. I'll send for a cab."
+
+He made for the outer office, and I went with him.
+
+"What is all this, Hewitt?" I asked. "A gang of thieves with stolen
+property?"
+
+Hewitt looked in my face and replied: "_It's the Quinton ruby_!"
+
+"What! The ruby? Shall you take the case up, then?"
+
+"I shall. It is no longer a speculation."
+
+"Then do you expect to find it at Hollams' house in Chelsea?" I asked.
+
+"No, I don't, because it isn't there--else why are they trying to get it
+from this unlucky Irishman? There has been bad faith in Hollams' gang, I
+expect, and Hollams has missed the ruby and suspects Leamy of having taken
+it from the bag."
+
+"Then who is this Mr. W. whose portrait you have in your possession?"
+
+"See here!" Hewitt turned over a small pile of recent newspapers and
+selected one, pointing at a particular paragraph. "I kept that in my mind,
+because to me it seemed to be the most likely arrest of the lot," he said.
+
+It was an evening paper of the previous Thursday, and the paragraph was a
+very short one, thus:
+
+"The man Wilks, who was arrested at Euston Station yesterday, in
+connection with the robbery of Lady Quinton's jewels, has been released,
+nothing being found to incriminate him."
+
+"How does that strike you?" asked Hewitt. "Wilks is a man well known to
+the police--one of the most accomplished burglars in this country, in
+fact. I have had no dealings with him as yet, but I found means, some time
+ago, to add his portrait to my little collection, in case I might want it,
+and to-day it has been quite useful."
+
+The thing was plain now. Wilks must have been bringing his booty to town,
+and calculated on getting out at Chalk Farm and thus eluding the watch
+which he doubtless felt pretty sure would be kept (by telegraphic
+instruction) at Euston for suspicious characters arriving from the
+direction of Radcot. His transaction with Leamy was his only possible
+expedient to save himself from being hopelessly taken with the swag in his
+possession. The paragraph told me why Leamy had waited in vain for "Mr.
+W." in the cab.
+
+"What shall you do now?" I asked.
+
+"I shall go to the Gold Street house and find out what I can as soon as
+this cab turns up."
+
+There seemed a possibility of some excitement in the adventure, so I
+asked: "Will you want any help?"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "I _think_ I can get through it alone," he said.
+
+"Then may I come to look on?" I said. "Of course I don't want to be in
+your way, and the result of the business, whatever it is, will be to your
+credit alone. But I am curious."
+
+"Come, then, by all means. The cab will be a four-wheeler, and there will
+be plenty of room."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gold Street was a short street of private houses of very fair size and of
+a half-vanished pretension to gentility. We drove slowly through, and
+Leamy had no difficulty in pointing out the house wherein he had been paid
+five pounds for carrying a bag. At the end the cab turned the corner and
+stopped, while Hewitt wrote a short note to an official of Scotland Yard.
+
+"Take this note," he instructed Leamy, "to Scotland Yard in the cab, and
+then go home. I will pay the cabman now."
+
+"I will, sor. An' will I be protected?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Stay at home for the rest of the day, and I expect you'll be
+left alone in future. Perhaps I shall have something to tell you in a day
+or two; if I do, I'll send. Good-by."
+
+The cab rolled off, and Hewitt and I strolled back along Gold Street. "I
+think," Hewitt said, "we will drop in on Mr. Hollams for a few minutes
+while we can. In a few hours I expect the police will have him, and his
+house, too, if they attend promptly to my note."
+
+"Have you ever seen him?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge, though I may know him by some other name. Wilks I
+know by sight, though he doesn't know me."
+
+"What shall we say?"
+
+"That will depend on circumstances. I may not get my cue till the door
+opens, or even till later. At worst, I can easily apply for a reference as
+to Leamy, who, you remember, is looking for work."
+
+But we were destined not to make Mr. Hollams' acquaintance, after all. As
+we approached the house a great uproar was heard from the lower part
+giving on to the area, and suddenly a man, hatless, and with a sleeve of
+his coat nearly torn away burst through the door and up the area steps,
+pursued by two others. I had barely time to observe that one of the
+pursuers carried a revolver, and that both hesitated and retired on seeing
+that several people were about the street, when Hewitt, gripping my arm
+and exclaiming: "That's our man!" started at a run after the fugitive.
+
+We turned the next corner and saw the man thirty yards before us, walking,
+and pulling up his sleeve at the shoulder, so as to conceal the rent.
+Plainly he felt safe from further molestation.
+
+"That's Sim Wilks," Hewitt explained, as we followed, "the 'juce of a
+foine jintleman' who got Leamy to carry his bag, and the man who knows
+where the Quinton ruby is, unless I am more than usually mistaken. Don't
+stare after him, in case he looks round. Presently, when we get into the
+busier streets, I shall have a little chat with him."
+
+But for some time the man kept to the back streets. In time, however, he
+emerged into the Buckingham Palace Road, and we saw him stop and look at a
+hat-shop. But after a general look over the window and a glance in at the
+door he went on.
+
+"Good sign!" observed Hewitt; "got no money with him--makes it easier for
+us."
+
+In a little while Wilks approached a small crowd gathered about a woman
+fiddler. Hewitt touched my arm, and a few quick steps took us past our man
+and to the opposite side of the crowd. When Wilks emerged, he met us
+coming in the opposite direction.
+
+"What, Sim!" burst out Hewitt with apparent delight. "I haven't piped your
+mug[A] for a stretch;[B] I thought you'd fell.[C] Where's your cady?"[D]
+
+[Footnote A: Seen your face.]
+
+[Footnote B: A year.]
+
+[Footnote C: Been imprisoned.]
+
+[Footnote D: Hat.]
+
+Wilks looked astonished and suspicious. "I don't know you," he said.
+"You've made a mistake."
+
+Hewitt laughed. "I'm glad you don't know me," he said. "If you don't, I'm
+pretty sure the reelers[A] won't. I think I've faked my mug pretty well,
+and my clobber,[B] too. Look here: I'll stand you a new cady. Strange
+blokes don't do that, eh?"
+
+[Footnote A: Police.]
+
+[Footnote B: Clothes.]
+
+Wilks was still suspicious. "I don't know what you mean," he said. Then,
+after a pause, he added: "Who are you, then?"
+
+Hewitt winked and screwed his face genially aside. "Hooky!" he said. "I've
+had a lucky touch[A] and I'm Mr. Smith till I've melted the pieces.[B] You
+come and damp it."
+
+[Footnote A: Robbery.]
+
+[Footnote B: Spent the money.]
+
+"I'm off," Wilks replied. "Unless you're pal enough to lend me a quid," he
+added, laughing.
+
+"I am that," responded Hewitt, plunging his hand in his pocket. "I'm
+flush, my boy, flush, and I've been wetting it pretty well to-day. I feel
+pretty jolly now, and I shouldn't wonder if I went home cannon.[A] Only a
+quid? Have two, if you want 'em--or three; there's plenty more, and you'll
+do the same for me some day. Here y'are."
+
+[Footnote A: Drunk.]
+
+Hewitt had, of a sudden, assumed the whole appearance, manners, and
+bearing of a slightly elevated rowdy. Now he pulled his hand from his
+pocket and extended it, full of silver, with five or six sovereigns
+interspersed, toward Wilks.
+
+"I'll have three quid," Wilks said, with decision, taking the money; "but
+I'm blowed if I remember you. Who's your pal?"
+
+Hewitt jerked his hand in my direction, winked, and said, in a low voice:
+"He's all right. Having a rest. Can't stand Manchester," and winked again.
+
+Wilks laughed and nodded, and I understood from that that Hewitt had very
+flatteringly given me credit for being "wanted" by the Manchester police.
+
+We lurched into a public house, and drank a very little very bad whisky
+and water. Wilks still regarded us curiously, and I could see him again
+and again glancing doubtfully in Hewitt's face. But the loan of three
+pounds had largely reassured him. Presently Hewitt said:
+
+"How about our old pal down in Gold Street? Do anything with him now? Seen
+him lately?"
+
+Wilks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
+
+"That's a good job. It 'ud be awkward if you were about there to-day, I
+can tell you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Never mind, so long as you're not there. I know something, if I _have_
+been away. I'm glad I haven't had any truck with Gold Street lately,
+that's all."
+
+"D'you mean the reelers are on it?"
+
+Hewitt looked cautiously over his shoulder, leaned toward Wilks, and said:
+"Look here: this is the straight tip. I know this--I got it from the very
+nark[A] that's given the show away: By six o'clock No. 8 Gold Street will
+be turned inside out, like an old glove, and everyone in the place will
+be----" He finished the sentence by crossing his wrists like a handcuffed
+man. "What's more," he went on, "they know all about what's gone on there
+lately, and everybody that's been in or out for the last two moons[B] will
+be wanted particular--and will be found, I'm told." Hewitt concluded with
+a confidential frown, a nod, and a wink, and took another mouthful of
+whisky. Then he added, as an after-thought: "So I'm glad you haven't been
+there lately."
+
+[Footnote A: Police spy.]
+
+[Footnote B: Months.]
+
+Wilks looked in Hewitt's face and asked: "Is that straight?"
+
+"_Is_ it?" replied Hewitt with emphasis. "You go and have a look, if you
+ain't afraid of being smugged yourself. Only _I_ shan't go near No. 8 just
+yet--I know that."
+
+Wilks fidgeted, finished his drink, and expressed his intention of going.
+"Very well, if you _won't_ have another----" replied Hewitt. But he had
+gone.
+
+"Good!" said Hewitt, moving toward the door; "he has suddenly developed a
+hurry. I shall keep him in sight, but you had better take a cab and go
+straight to Euston. Take tickets to the nearest station to
+Radcot--Kedderby, I think it is--and look up the train arrangements. Don't
+show yourself too much, and keep an eye on the entrance. Unless I am
+mistaken, Wilks will be there pretty soon, and I shall be on his heels. If
+I _am_ wrong, then you won't see the end of the fun, that's all."
+
+Hewitt hurried after Wilks, and I took the cab and did as he wished. There
+was an hour and a few minutes, I found, to wait for the next train, and
+that time I occupied as best I might, keeping a sharp lookout across the
+quadrangle. Barely five minutes before the train was to leave, and just as
+I was beginning to think about the time of the next, a cab dashed up and
+Hewitt alighted. He hurried in, found me, and drew me aside into a recess,
+just as another cab arrived.
+
+"Here he is," Hewitt said. "I followed him as far as Euston Road and then
+got my cabby to spurt up and pass him. He had had his mustache shaved off,
+and I feared you mightn't recognize him, and so let him see you."
+
+From our retreat we could see Wilks hurry into the booking-office. We
+watched him through to the platform and followed. He wasted no time, but
+made the best of his way to a third-class carriage at the extreme fore end
+of the train.
+
+"We have three minutes," Hewitt said, "and everything depends on his not
+seeing us get into this train. Take this cap. Fortunately, we're both in
+tweed suits."
+
+He had bought a couple of tweed cricket caps, and these we assumed,
+sending our "bowler" hats to the cloak-room. Hewitt also put on a pair of
+blue spectacles, and then walked boldly up the platform and entered a
+first-class carriage. I followed close on his heels, in such a manner that
+a person looking from the fore end of the train would be able to see but
+very little of me.
+
+"So far so good," said Hewitt, when we were seated and the train began to
+move off. "I must keep a lookout at each station, in case our friend goes
+off unexpectedly."
+
+"I waited some time," I said; "where did you both go to?"
+
+"First he went and bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some
+distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets
+in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor's
+shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat
+mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way
+up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber's shop. I took a
+cautious peep at the window, saw two or three other customers also
+waiting, and took the opportunity to rush over to a 'notion' shop and buy
+these blue spectacles, and to a hatter's for these caps--of which I regret
+to observe that yours is too big. He was rather a long while in the
+barber's, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache. This was
+a good indication. It made it plainer than ever that he had believed my
+warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street and its
+frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was quite
+true. The rest you know. He cabbed to the station, and so did I."
+
+"And now perhaps," I said, "after giving me the character of a thief
+wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in
+exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London
+without any definite idea of when I'm coming back, perhaps you'll tell me
+what we're after?"
+
+Hewitt laughed. "You wanted to join in, you know," he said, "and you must
+take your luck as it comes. As a matter of fact there is scarcely anything
+in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this watching and
+following business. Often it lasts for weeks. When we alight, we shall
+have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult possible conditions,
+in the country. There it is often quite impossible to follow a man
+unobserved. It is only because it is the only way that I am undertaking it
+now. As to what we're after, you know that as well as I--the Quinton ruby.
+Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would be impossible to find
+it. We are following him so that he will find it for us."
+
+"He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?"
+
+"Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the
+bag to direct Hollams's suspicion to him. Hollams found out by his
+repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and this
+morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks' possession with
+a revolver. We saw the upshot of that."
+
+Kedderby Station was about forty miles out. At each intermediate stopping
+station Hewitt watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train. "What I
+fear," Hewitt observed, "is that at Kedderby he may take a fly. To stalk a
+man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you _can't_ follow one
+vehicle in another without being spotted. But if he's so smart as I think,
+he won't do it. A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered in
+these places."
+
+He did _not_ take a fly. At Kedderby we saw him jump out quickly and
+hasten from the station. The train stood for a few minutes, and he was out
+of the station before we alighted. Through the railings behind the
+platform we could see him walking briskly away to the right. From the
+ticket collector we ascertained that Radcot lay in that direction, three
+miles off.
+
+To my dying day I shall never forget that three miles. They seemed three
+hundred. In the still country almost every footfall seemed audible for any
+distance, and in the long stretches of road one could see half a mile
+behind or before. Hewitt was cool and patient, but I got into a fever of
+worry, excitement, want of breath, and back-ache. At first, for a little,
+the road zig-zagged, and then the chase was comparatively easy. We waited
+behind one bend till Wilks had passed the next, and then hurried in his
+trail, treading in the dustiest parts of the road or on the side grass,
+when there was any, to deaden the sound of our steps.
+
+At the last of these short bends we looked ahead and saw a long, white
+stretch of road with the dark form of Wilks a couple of hundred yards in
+front. It would never do to let him get to the end of this great stretch
+before following, as he might turn off at some branch road out of sight
+and be lost. So we jumped the hedge and scuttled along as we best might on
+the other side, with backs bent, and our feet often many inches deep in
+wet clay. We had to make continual stoppages to listen and peep out, and
+on one occasion, happening, incautiously, to stand erect, looking after
+him, I was much startled to see Wilks, with his face toward me, gazing
+down the road. I ducked like lightning, and, fortunately, he seemed not to
+have observed me, but went on as before. He had probably heard some slight
+noise, but looked straight along the road for its explanation, instead of
+over the hedge. At hilly parts of the road there was extreme difficulty;
+indeed, on approaching a rise it was usually necessary to lie down under
+the hedge till Wilks had passed the top, since from the higher ground he
+could have seen us easily. This improved neither my clothes, my comfort,
+nor my temper. Luckily we never encountered the difficulty of a long and
+high wall, but once we were nearly betrayed by a man who shouted to order
+us off his field.
+
+At last we saw, just ahead, the square tower of an old church, set about
+with thick trees. Opposite this Wilks paused, looked irresolutely up and
+down the road, and then went on. We crossed the road, availed ourselves of
+the opposite hedge, and followed. The village was to be seen some three or
+four hundred yards farther along the road, and toward it Wilks sauntered
+slowly. Before he actually reached the houses he stopped and turned back.
+
+"The churchyard!" exclaimed Hewitt, under his breath. "Lie close and let
+him pass."
+
+Wilks reached the churchyard gate, and again looked irresolutely about
+him. At that moment a party of children, who had been playing among the
+graves, came chattering and laughing toward and out of the gate, and Wilks
+walked hastily away again, this time in the opposite direction.
+
+"That's the place, clearly," Hewitt said. "We must slip across quietly, as
+soon as he's far enough down the road. Now!"
+
+We hurried stealthily across, through the gate, and into the churchyard,
+where Hewitt threw his blue spectacles away. It was now nearly eight in
+the evening, and the sun was setting. Once again Wilks approached the
+gate, and did not enter, because a laborer passed at the time. Then he
+came back and slipped through.
+
+The grass about the graves was long, and under the trees it was already
+twilight. Hewitt and I, two or three yards apart, to avoid falling over
+one another in case of sudden movement, watched from behind gravestones.
+The form of Wilks stood out large and black against the fading light in
+the west as he stealthily approached through the long grass. A light cart
+came clattering along the road, and Wilks dropped at once and crouched on
+his knees till it had passed. Then, staring warily about him, he made
+straight for the stone behind which Hewitt waited.
+
+I saw Hewitt's dark form swing noiselessly round to the other side of the
+stone. Wilks passed on and dropped on his knee beside a large,
+weather-worn slab that rested on a brick under-structure a foot or so
+high. The long grass largely hid the bricks, and among it Wilks plunged
+his hand, feeling along the brick surface. Presently he drew out a loose
+brick, and laid it on the slab. He felt again in the place, and brought
+forth a small dark object. I saw Hewitt rise erect in the gathering dusk,
+and with extended arm step noiselessly toward the stooping man. Wilks made
+a motion to place the dark object in his pocket, but checked himself, and
+opened what appeared to be a lid, as though to make sure of the safety of
+the contents. The last light, straggling under the trees, fell on a
+brilliantly sparkling object within, and like a flash Hewitt's hand shot
+over Wilks' shoulder and snatched the jewel.
+
+The man actually screamed--one of those curious sharp little screams that
+one may hear from a woman very suddenly alarmed. But he sprang at Hewitt
+like a cat, only to meet a straight drive of the fist that stretched him
+on his back across the slab. I sprang from behind my stone, and helped
+Hewitt to secure his wrists with a pocket-handkerchief. Then we marched
+him, struggling and swearing, to the village.
+
+When, in the lights of the village, he recognized us, he had a perfect fit
+of rage, but afterward he calmed down, and admitted that it was a "very
+clean cop." There was some difficulty in finding the village constable,
+and Sir Valentine Quinton was dining out and did not arrive for at least
+an hour. In the interval Wilks grew communicative.
+
+"How much d'ye think I'll get?" he asked.
+
+"Can't guess," Hewitt replied. "And as we shall probably have to give
+evidence, you'll be giving yourself away if you talk too much."
+
+"Oh, I don't care; that'll make no difference. It's a fair cop, and I'm in
+for it. You got at me nicely, lending me three quid. I never knew a reeler
+do that before. That blinded me. But was it kid about Gold Street?"
+
+"No, it wasn't. Mr. Hollams is safely shut up by this time, I expect, and
+you are avenged for your little trouble with him this afternoon."
+
+"What did you know about that? Well, you've got it up nicely for me, I
+must say. S'pose you've been following me all the time?"
+
+"Well, yes; I haven't been far off. I guessed you'd want to clear out of
+town if Hollams was taken, and I knew this"--Hewitt tapped his breast
+pocket--"was what you'd take care to get hold of first. You hid it, of
+course, because you knew that Hollams would probably have you searched for
+it if he got suspicious?"
+
+"Yes, he did, too. Two blokes went over my pockets one night, and somebody
+got into my room. But I expected that, Hollams is such a greedy pig. Once
+he's got you under his thumb he don't give you half your makings, and, if
+you kick, he'll have you smugged. So that I wasn't going to give him
+_that_ if I could help it. I s'pose it ain't any good asking how you got
+put on to our mob?"
+
+"No," said Hewitt, "it isn't."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We didn't get back till the next day, staying for the night, despite an
+inconvenient want of requisites, at the Hall. There were, in fact, no late
+trains. We told Sir Valentine the story of the Irishman, much to his
+amusement.
+
+"Leamy's tale sounded unlikely, of course," Hewitt said, "but it was
+noticeable that every one of his misfortunes pointed in the same
+direction--that certain persons were tremendously anxious to get at
+something they supposed he had. When he spoke of his adventure with the
+bag, I at once remembered Wilks' arrest and subsequent release. It was a
+curious coincidence, to say the least, that this should happen at the very
+station to which the proceeds of this robbery must come, if they came to
+London at all, and on the day following the robbery itself. Kedderby is
+one of the few stations on this line where no trains would stop after the
+time of the robbery, so that the thief would have to wait till the next
+day to get back. Leamy's recognition of Wilks' portrait made me feel
+pretty certain. Plainly, he had carried stolen property; the poor,
+innocent fellow's conversation with Hollams showed that, as, in fact, did
+the sum, five pounds, paid to him by way of 'regulars,' or customary toll,
+from the plunder of services of carriage. Hollams obviously took Leamy for
+a criminal friend of Wilks', because of his use of the thieves'
+expressions 'sparks' and 'regulars,' and suggested, in terms which Leamy
+misunderstood, that he should sell any plunder he might obtain to himself,
+Hollams. Altogether it would have been very curious if the plunder were
+_not_ that from Radcot Hall, especially as no other robbery had been
+reported at the time.
+
+"Now, among the jewels taken, only one was of a very pre-eminent
+value--the famous ruby. It was scarcely likely that Hollams would go to so
+much trouble and risk, attempting to drug, injuring, waylaying, and
+burgling the rooms of the unfortunate Leamy, for a jewel of small
+value--for any jewel, in fact, but the ruby. So that I felt a pretty
+strong presumption, at all events, that it was the ruby Hollams was after.
+Leamy had not had it, I was convinced, from his tale and his manner, and
+from what I judged of the man himself. The only other person was Wilks,
+and certainly he had a temptation to keep this to himself, and avoid, if
+possible, sharing with his London director, or principal; while the
+carriage of the bag by the Irishman gave him a capital opportunity to put
+suspicion on him, with the results seen. The most daring of Hollams'
+attacks on Leamy was doubtless the attempted maiming or killing at the
+railway station, so as to be able, in the character of a medical man, to
+search his pockets. He was probably desperate at the time, having, I have
+no doubt, been following Leamy about all day at the Crystal Palace without
+finding an opportunity to get at his pockets.
+
+"The struggle and flight of Wilks from Hollams' confirmed my previous
+impressions. Hollams, finally satisfied that very morning that Leamy
+certainly had not the jewel, either on his person or at his lodging, and
+knowing, from having so closely watched him, that he had been nowhere
+where it could be disposed of, concluded that Wilks was cheating him, and
+attempted to extort the ruby from him by the aid of another ruffian and a
+pistol. The rest of my way was plain. Wilks, I knew, would seize the
+opportunity of Hollams' being safely locked up to get at and dispose of
+the ruby. I supplied him with funds and left him to lead us to his
+hiding-place. He did it, and I think that's all."
+
+"He must have walked straight away from my house to the churchyard," Sir
+Valentine remarked, "to hide that pendant. That was fairly cool."
+
+"Only a cool hand could carry out such a robbery single-handed," Hewitt
+answered. "I expect his tools were in the bag that Leamy carried, as well
+as the jewels. They must have been a small and neat set."
+
+They were. We ascertained on our return to town the next day that the bag,
+with all its contents intact, including the tools, had been taken by the
+police at their surprise visit to No. 8 Gold Street, as well as much other
+stolen property.
+
+Hollams and Wilks each got very wholesome doses of penal servitude, to the
+intense delight of Mick Leamy. Leamy himself, by the by, is still to be
+seen, clad in a noble uniform, guarding the door of a well-known London
+restaurant. He has not had any more five-pound notes for carrying bags,
+but knows London too well now to expect it.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+THE STANWAY CAMEO MYSTERY.
+
+It is now a fair number of years back since the loss of the famous Stanway
+Cameo made its sensation, and the only person who had the least interest
+in keeping the real facts of the case secret has now been dead for some
+time, leaving neither relatives nor other representatives. Therefore no
+harm will be done in making the inner history of the case public; on the
+contrary, it will afford an opportunity of vindicating the professional
+reputation of Hewitt, who is supposed to have completely failed to make
+anything of the mystery surrounding the case. At the present time
+connoisseurs in ancient objects of art are often heard regretfully to
+wonder whether the wonderful cameo, so suddenly discovered and so quickly
+stolen, will ever again be visible to the public eye. Now this question
+need be asked no longer.
+
+The cameo, as may be remembered from the many descriptions published at
+the time, was said to be absolutely the finest extant. It was a sardonyx
+of three strata--one of those rare sardonyx cameos in which it has been
+possible for the artist to avail himself of three different colors of
+superimposed stone--the lowest for the ground and the two others for the
+middle and high relief of the design. In size it was, for a cameo,
+immense, measuring seven and a half inches by nearly six. In subject it
+was similar to the renowned Gonzaga Cameo--now the property of the Czar of
+Russia--a male and a female head with imperial insignia; but in this case
+supposed to represent Tiberius Claudius and Messalina. Experts considered
+it probably to be the work of Athenion, a famous gem-cutter of the first
+Christian century, whose most notable other work now extant is a smaller
+cameo, with a mythological subject, preserved in the Vatican.
+
+The Stanway Cameo had been discovered in an obscure Italian village by one
+of those traveling agents who scour all Europe for valuable antiquities
+and objects of art. This man had hurried immediately to London with his
+prize, and sold it to Mr. Claridge of St. James Street, eminent as a
+dealer in such objects. Mr. Claridge, recognizing the importance and value
+of the article, lost no opportunity of making its existence known, and
+very soon the Claudius Cameo, as it was at first usually called, was as
+famous as any in the world. Many experts in ancient art examined it, and
+several large bids were made for its purchase.
+
+In the end it was bought by the Marquis of Stanway for five thousand
+pounds for the purpose of presentation to the British Museum. The marquis
+kept the cameo at his town house for a few days, showing it to his
+friends, and then returned it to Mr. Claridge to be finally and carefully
+cleaned before passing into the national collection. Two nights after Mr.
+Claridge's premises were broken into and the cameo stolen.
+
+Such, in outline, was the generally known history of the Stanway Cameo.
+The circumstances of the burglary in detail were these: Mr. Claridge had
+himself been the last to leave the premises at about eight in the evening,
+at dusk, and had locked the small side door as usual. His assistant, Mr.
+Cutler, had left an hour and a half earlier. When Mr. Claridge left,
+everything was in order, and the policeman on fixed-point duty just
+opposite, who bade Mr. Claridge good-evening as he left, saw nothing
+suspicious during the rest of his term of duty, nor did his successors at
+the point throughout the night.
+
+In the morning, however, Mr. Cutler, the assistant, who arrived first,
+soon after nine o'clock, at once perceived that something unlooked-for had
+happened. The door, of which he had a key, was still fastened, and had not
+been touched; but in the room behind the shop Mr. Claridge's private desk
+had been broken open, and the contents turned out in confusion. The door
+leading on to the staircase had also been forced. Proceeding up the
+stairs, Mr. Cutler found another door open, leading from the top landing
+to a small room; this door had been opened by the simple expedient of
+unscrewing and taking off the lock, which had been on the inside. In the
+ceiling of this room was a trap-door, and this was six or eight inches
+open, the edge resting on the half-wrenched-off bolt, which had been torn
+away when the trap was levered open from the outside.
+
+Plainly, then, this was the path of the thief or thieves. Entrance had
+been made through the trap-door, two more doors had been opened, and then
+the desk had been ransacked. Mr. Cutler afterward explained that at this
+time he had no precise idea what had been stolen, and did not know where
+the cameo had been left on the previous evening. Mr. Claridge had himself
+undertaken the cleaning, and had been engaged on it, the assistant said,
+when he left.
+
+There was no doubt, however, after Mr. Claridge's arrival at ten
+o'clock--the cameo was gone. Mr. Claridge, utterly confounded at his loss,
+explained incoherently, and with curses on his own carelessness, that he
+had locked the precious article in his desk on relinquishing work on it
+the previous evening, feeling rather tired, and not taking the trouble to
+carry it as far as the safe in another part of the house.
+
+The police were sent for at once, of course, and every investigation made,
+Mr. Claridge offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the recovery of
+the cameo. The affair was scribbled off at large in the earliest editions
+of the evening papers, and by noon all the world was aware of the
+extraordinary theft of the Stanway Cameo, and many people were discussing
+the probabilities of the case, with very indistinct ideas of what a
+sardonyx cameo precisely was.
+
+It was in the afternoon of this day that Lord Stanway called on Martin
+Hewitt. The marquis was a tall, upstanding man of spare figure and active
+habits, well known as a member of learned societies and a great patron of
+art. He hurried into Hewitt's private room as soon as his name had been
+announced, and, as soon as Hewitt had given him a chair, plunged into
+business.
+
+"Probably you already guess my business with you, Mr. Hewitt--you have
+seen the early evening papers? Just so; then I needn't tell you again what
+you already know. My cameo is gone, and I badly want it back. Of course
+the police are hard at work at Claridge's, but I'm not quite satisfied. I
+have been there myself for two or three hours, and can't see that they
+know any more about it than I do myself. Then, of course, the police,
+naturally and properly enough from their point of view, look first to find
+the criminal, regarding the recovery of the property almost as a secondary
+consideration. Now, from _my_ point of view, the chief consideration is
+the property. Of course I want the thief caught, if possible, and properly
+punished; but still more I want the cameo."
+
+"Certainly it is a considerable loss. Five thousand pounds----"
+
+"Ah, but don't misunderstand me! It isn't the monetary value of the thing
+that I regret. As a matter of fact, I am indemnified for that already.
+Claridge has behaved most honorably--more than honorably. Indeed, the
+first intimation I had of the loss was a check from him for five thousand
+pounds, with a letter assuring me that the restoration to me of the amount
+I had paid was the least he could do to repair the result of what he
+called his unpardonable carelessness. Legally, I'm not sure that I could
+demand anything of him, unless I could prove very flagrant neglect indeed
+to guard against theft."
+
+"Then I take it, Lord Stanway," Hewitt observed, "that you much prefer the
+cameo to the money?"
+
+"Certainly. Else I should never have been willing to pay the money for the
+cameo. It was an enormous price--perhaps much above the market value, even
+for such a valuable thing--but I was particularly anxious that it should
+not go out of the country. Our public collections here are not so
+fortunate as they should be in the possession of the very finest examples
+of that class of work. In short, I had determined on the cameo, and,
+fortunately, happen to be able to carry out determinations of that sort
+without regarding an extra thousand pounds or so as an obstacle. So that,
+you see, what I want is not the value, but the thing itself. Indeed, I
+don't think I can possibly keep the money Claridge has sent me; the affair
+is more his misfortune than his fault. But I shall say nothing about
+returning it for a little while; it may possibly have the effect of
+sharpening everybody in the search."
+
+"Just so. Do I understand that you would like me to look into the case
+independently, on your behalf?"
+
+"Exactly. I want you, if you can, to approach the matter entirely from my
+point of view--your sole object being to find the cameo. Of course, if you
+happen on the thief as well, so much the better. Perhaps, after all,
+looking for the one is the same thing as looking for the other?"
+
+"Not always; but usually it is, or course; even if they are not together,
+they certainly _have_ been at one time, and to have one is a very long
+step toward having the other. Now, to begin with, is anybody suspected?"
+
+"Well, the police are reserved, but I believe the fact is they've nothing
+to say. Claridge won't admit that he suspects any one, though he believes
+that whoever it was must have watched him yesterday evening through the
+back window of his room, and must have seen him put the cameo away in his
+desk; because the thief would seem to have gone straight to the place. But
+I half fancy that, in his inner mind, he is inclined to suspect one of two
+people. You see, a robbery of this sort is different from others. That
+cameo would never be stolen, I imagine, with the view of its being
+sold--it is much too famous a thing; a man might as well walk about
+offering to sell the Tower of London. There are only a very few people who
+buy such things, and every one of them knows all about it. No dealer would
+touch it; he could never even show it, much less sell it, without being
+called to account. So that it really seems more likely that it has been
+taken by somebody who wishes to keep it for mere love of the thing--a
+collector, in fact--who would then have to keep it secretly at home, and
+never let a soul besides himself see it, living in the consciousness that
+at his death it must be found and this theft known; unless, indeed, an
+ordinary vulgar burglar has taken it without knowing its value."
+
+"That isn't likely," Hewitt replied. "An ordinary burglar, ignorant of its
+value, wouldn't have gone straight to the cameo and have taken it in
+preference to many other things of more apparent worth, which must be
+lying near in such a place as Claridge's."
+
+"True--I suppose he wouldn't. Although the police seem to think that the
+breaking in is clearly the work of a regular criminal--from the
+jimmy-marks, you know, and so on."
+
+"Well, but what of the two people you think Mr. Claridge suspects?"
+
+"Of course I can't say that he does suspect them--I only fancied from his
+tone that it might be possible; he himself insists that he can't, in
+justice, suspect anybody. One of these men is Hahn, the traveling agent
+who sold him the cameo. This man's character does not appear to be
+absolutely irreproachable; no dealer trusts him very far. Of course
+Claridge doesn't say what he paid him for the cameo; these dealers are
+very reticent about their profits, which I believe are as often something
+like five hundred per cent as not. But it seems Hahn bargained to have
+something extra, depending on the amount Claridge could sell the carving
+for. According to the appointment he should have turned up this morning,
+but he hasn't been seen, and nobody seems to know exactly where he is."
+
+"Yes; and the other person?"
+
+"Well, I scarcely like mentioning him, because he is certainly a
+gentleman, and I believe, in the ordinary way, quite incapable of anything
+in the least degree dishonorable; although, of course, they say a
+collector has no conscience in the matter of his own particular hobby, and
+certainly Mr. Wollett is as keen a collector as any man alive. He lives in
+chambers in the next turning past Claridge's premises--can, in fact, look
+into Claridge's back windows if he likes. He examined the cameo several
+times before I bought it, and made several high offers--appeared, in fact,
+very anxious indeed to get it. After I had bought it he made, I
+understand, some rather strong remarks about people like myself 'spoiling
+the market' by paying extravagant prices, and altogether cut up 'crusty,'
+as they say, at losing the specimen." Lord Stanway paused a few seconds,
+and then went on: "I'm not sure that I ought to mention Mr. Woollett's
+name for a moment in connection with such a matter; I am personally
+perfectly certain that he is as incapable of anything like theft as
+myself. But I am telling you all I know."
+
+"Precisely. I can't know too much in a case like this. It can do no harm
+if I know all about fifty innocent people, and may save me from the risk
+of knowing nothing about the thief. Now, let me see: Mr. Wollett's rooms,
+you say, are near Mr. Claridge's place of business? Is there any means of
+communication between the roofs?"
+
+"Yes, I am told that it is perfectly possible to get from one place to the
+other by walking along the leads."
+
+"Very good! Then, unless you can think of any other information that may
+help me, I think, Lord Stanway, I will go at once and look at the place."
+
+"Do, by all means. I think I'll come back with you. Somehow, I don't like
+to feel idle in the matter, though I suppose I can't do much. As to more
+information, I don't think there is any."
+
+"In regard to Mr. Claridge's assistant, now: Do you know anything of him?"
+
+"Only that he has always seemed a very civil and decent sort of man.
+Honest, I should say, or Claridge wouldn't have kept him so many
+years--there are a good many valuable things about at Claridge's. Besides,
+the man has keys of the place himself, and, even if he were a thief, he
+wouldn't need to go breaking in through the roof."
+
+"So that," said Hewitt, "we have, directly connected with this cameo,
+besides yourself, these people: Mr. Claridge, the dealer; Mr. Cutler, the
+assistant in Mr. Claridge's business; Hahn, who sold the article to
+Claridge, and Mr. Woollett, who made bids for it. These are all?"
+
+"All that I know of. Other gentlemen made bids, I believe, but I don't
+know them."
+
+"Take these people in their order. Mr. Claridge is out of the question, as
+a dealer with a reputation to keep up would be, even if he hadn't
+immediately sent you this five thousand pounds--more than the market
+value, I understand, of the cameo. The assistant is a reputable man,
+against whom nothing is known, who would never need to break in, and who
+must understand his business well enough to know that he could never
+attempt to sell the missing stone without instant detection. Hahn is a man
+of shady antecedents, probably clever enough to know as well as anybody
+how to dispose of such plunder--if it be possible to dispose of it at all;
+also, Hahn hasn't been to Claridge's to-day, although he had an
+appointment to take money. Lastly, Mr. Woollett is a gentleman of the most
+honorable record, but a perfectly rabid collector, who had made every
+effort to secure the cameo before you bought it; who, moreover, could have
+seen Mr. Claridge working in his back room, and who has perfectly easy
+access to Mr. Claridge's roof. If we find it can't be none of these, then
+we must look where circumstances indicate."
+
+There was unwonted excitement at Mr. Claridge's place when Hewitt and his
+client arrived. It was a dull old building, and in the windows there was
+never more show than an odd blue china vase or two, or, mayhap, a few old
+silver shoe-buckles and a curious small sword. Nine men out of ten would
+have passed it without a glance; but the tenth at least would probably
+know it for a place famous through the world for the number and value of
+the old and curious objects of art that had passed through it.
+
+On this day two or three loiterers, having heard of the robbery, extracted
+what gratification they might from staring at nothing between the railings
+guarding the windows. Within, Mr. Claridge, a brisk, stout, little old
+man, was talking earnestly to a burly police-inspector in uniform, and Mr.
+Cutler, who had seized the opportunity to attempt amateur detective work
+on his own account, was groveling perseveringly about the floor, among old
+porcelain and loose pieces of armor, in the futile hope of finding any
+clue that the thieves might have considerately dropped.
+
+Mr. Claridge came forward eagerly.
+
+"The leather case has been found, I am pleased to be able to tell you,
+Lord Stanway, since you left."
+
+"Empty, of course?"
+
+"Unfortunately, yes. It had evidently been thrown away by the thief behind
+a chimney-stack a roof or two away, where the police have found it. But it
+is a clue, of course."
+
+"Ah, then this gentleman will give me his opinion of it," Lord Stanway
+said, turning to Hewitt. "This, Mr. Claridge, is Mr. Martin Hewitt, who
+has been kind enough to come with me here at a moment's notice. With the
+police on the one hand and Mr. Hewitt on the other we shall certainly
+recover that cameo, if it is to be recovered, I think."
+
+Mr. Claridge bowed, and beamed on Hewitt through his spectacles. "I'm very
+glad Mr. Hewitt has come," he said. "Indeed, I had already decided to give
+the police till this time to-morrow, and then, if they had found nothing,
+to call in Mr. Hewitt myself."
+
+Hewitt bowed in his turn, and then asked: "Will you let me see the various
+breakages? I hope they have not been disturbed."
+
+"Nothing whatever has been disturbed. Do exactly as seems best. I need
+scarcely say that everything here is perfectly at your disposal. You know
+all the circumstances, of course?"
+
+"In general, yes. I suppose I am right in the belief that you have no
+resident housekeeper?"
+
+"No," Claridge replied, "I haven't. I had one housekeeper who sometimes
+pawned my property in the evening, and then another who used to break my
+most valuable china, till I could never sleep or take a moment's ease at
+home for fear my stock was being ruined here. So I gave up resident
+housekeepers. I felt some confidence in doing it because of the policeman
+who is always on duty opposite."
+
+"Can I see the broken desk?"
+
+Mr. Claridge led the way into the room behind the shop. The desk was
+really a sort of work-table, with a lifting top and a lock. The top had
+been forced roughly open by some instrument which had been pushed in below
+it and used as a lever, so that the catch of the lock was torn away.
+Hewitt examined the damaged parts and the marks of the lever, and then
+looked out at the back window.
+
+"There are several windows about here," he remarked, "from which it might
+be possible to see into this room. Do you know any of the people who live
+behind them?"
+
+"Two or three I know," Mr. Claridge answered, "but there are two
+windows--the pair almost immediately before us--belonging to a room or
+office which is to let. Any stranger might get in there and watch."
+
+"Do the roofs above any of those windows communicate in any way with
+yours?"
+
+"None of those directly opposite. Those at the left do; you may walk all
+the way along the leads."
+
+"And whose windows are they?"
+
+Mr. Claridge hesitated. "Well," he said, "they're Mr. Woollett's, an
+excellent customer of mine. But he's a gentleman, and--well, I really
+think it's absurd to suspect him."
+
+"In a case like this," Hewitt answered, "one must disregard nothing but
+the impossible. Somebody--whether Mr. Woollett himself or another
+person--could possibly have seen into this room from those windows, and
+equally possibly could have reached this room from that one. Therefore we
+must not forget Mr. Woollett. Have any of your neighbors been burgled
+during the night? I mean that strangers anxious to get at your trap-door
+would probably have to begin by getting into some other house close by, so
+as to reach your roof."
+
+"No," Mr. Claridge replied; "there has been nothing of that sort. It was
+the first thing the police ascertained."
+
+Hewitt examined the broken door and then made his way up the stairs with
+the others. The unscrewed lock of the door of the top back-room required
+little examination. In the room below the trap-door was a dusty table on
+which stood a chair, and at the other side of the table sat
+Detective-Inspector Plummer, whom Hewitt knew very well, and who bade him
+"good-day" and then went on with his docket.
+
+"This chair and table were found as they are now, I take it?" Hewitt
+asked.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Claridge; "the thieves, I should think, dropped in through
+the trap-door, after breaking it open, and had to place this chair where
+it is to be able to climb back."
+
+Hewitt scrambled up through the trap-way and examined it from the top. The
+door was hung on long external barn-door hinges, and had been forced open
+in a similar manner to that practiced on the desk. A jimmy had been pushed
+between the frame and the door near the bolt, and the door had been pried
+open, the bolt being torn away from the screws in the operation.
+
+Presently Inspector Plummer, having finished his docket, climbed up to the
+roof after Hewitt, and the two together went to the spot, close under a
+chimney-stack on the next roof but one, where the case had been found.
+Plummer produced the case, which he had in his coat-tail pocket, for
+Hewitt's inspection.
+
+"I don't see anything particular about it; do you?" he said. "It shows us
+the way they went, though, being found just here."
+
+"Well, yes," Hewitt said; "if we kept on in this direction, we should be
+going toward Mr. Woollett's house, and _his_ trap-door, shouldn't we!"
+
+The inspector pursed his lips, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. "Of
+course we haven't waited till now to find that out," he said.
+
+"No, of course. And, as you say, I didn't think there is much to be
+learned from this leather case. It is almost new, and there isn't a mark
+on it." And Hewitt handed it back to the inspector.
+
+"Well," said Plummer, as he returned the case to his pocket, "what's your
+opinion?"
+
+"It's rather an awkward case."
+
+"Yes, it is. Between ourselves--I don't mind telling you--I'm having a
+sharp lookout kept over there"--Plummer jerked his head in the direction
+of Mr. Woollett's chambers--"because the robbery's an unusual one. There's
+only two possible motives--the sale of the cameo or the keeping of it. The
+sale's out of the question, as you know; the thing's only salable to those
+who would collar the thief at once, and who wouldn't have the thing in
+their places now for anything. So that it must be taken to keep, and
+that's a thing nobody but the maddest of collectors would do, just such
+persons as--" and the inspector nodded again toward Mr. Woollett's
+quarters. "Take that with the other circumstances," he added, "and I think
+you'll agree it's worth while looking a little farther that way. Of course
+some of the work--taking off the lock and so on--looks rather like a
+regular burglar, but it's just possible that any one badly wanting the
+cameo would like to hire a man who was up to the work."
+
+"Yes, it's possible."
+
+"Do you know anything of Hahn, the agent?" Plummer asked, a moment later.
+
+"No, I don't. Have you found him yet?"
+
+"I haven't yet, but I'm after him. I've found he was at Charing Cross a
+day or two ago, booking a ticket for the Continent. That and his failing
+to turn up to-day seem to make it worth while not to miss _him_ if we can
+help it. He isn't the sort of man that lets a chance of drawing a bit of
+money go for nothing."
+
+They returned to the room. "Well," said Lord Stanway, "what's the result
+of the consultation? We've been waiting here very patiently, while you two
+clever men have been discussing the matter on the roof."
+
+On the wall just beneath the trap-door a very dusty old tall hat hung on a
+peg. This Hewitt took down and examined very closely, smearing his fingers
+with the dust from the inside lining. "Is this one of your valuable and
+crusted old antiques?" he asked, with a smile, of Mr. Claridge.
+
+"That's only an old hat that I used to keep here for use in bad weather,"
+Mr. Claridge said, with some surprise at the question. "I haven't touched
+it for a year or more."
+
+"Oh, then it couldn't have been left here by your last night's visitor,"
+Hewitt replied, carelessly replacing it on the hook. "You left here at
+eight last night, I think?"
+
+"Eight exactly--or within a minute or two."
+
+"Just so. I think I'll look at the room on the opposite side of the
+landing, if you'll let me."
+
+"Certainly, if you'd like to," Claridge replied; "but they haven't been
+there--it is exactly as it was left. Only a lumber-room, you see," he
+concluded, flinging the door open.
+
+A number of partly broken-up packing-cases littered about this room, with
+much other rubbish. Hewitt took the lid of one of the newest-looking
+packing-cases, and glanced at the address label. Then he turned to a rusty
+old iron box that stood against a wall. "I should like to see behind
+this," he said, tugging at it with his hands. "It is heavy and dirty. Is
+there a small crowbar about the house, or some similar lever?"
+
+Mr. Claridge shook his head. "Haven't such a thing in the place," he said.
+
+"Never mind," Hewitt replied, "another time will do to shift that old box,
+and perhaps, after all, there's little reason for moving it. I will just
+walk round to the police-station, I think, and speak to the constables who
+were on duty opposite during the night. I think, Lord Stanway, I have seen
+all that is necessary here."
+
+"I suppose," asked Mr. Claridge, "it is too soon yet to ask if you have
+formed any theory in the matter?"
+
+"Well--yes, it is," Hewitt answered. "But perhaps I may be able to
+surprise you in an hour or two; but that I don't promise. By the by," he
+added suddenly, "I suppose you're sure the trap-door was bolted last
+night?"
+
+"Certainly," Mr. Claridge answered, smiling. "Else how could the bolt have
+been broken? As a matter of fact, I believe the trap hasn't been opened
+for months. Mr. Cutler, do you remember when the trap-door was last
+opened?"
+
+Mr. Cutler shook his head. "Certainly not for six months," he said.
+
+"Ah, very well; it's not very important," Hewitt replied.
+
+As they reached the front shop a fiery-faced old gentleman bounced in at
+the street door, stumbling over an umbrella that stood in a dark corner,
+and kicking it three yards away.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean," he roared at Mr. Claridge, "by sending these
+police people smelling about my rooms and asking questions of my servants?
+What do you mean, sir, by treating me as a thief? Can't a gentleman come
+into this place to look at an article without being suspected of stealing
+it, when it disappears through your wretched carelessness? I'll ask my
+solicitor, sir, if there isn't a remedy for this sort of thing. And if I
+catch another of your spy fellows on my staircase, or crawling about my
+roof, I'll--I'll shoot him!"
+
+"Really, Mr. Woollett----" began Mr. Claridge, somewhat abashed, but the
+angry old man would hear nothing.
+
+"Don't talk to me, sir; you shall talk to my solicitor. And am I to
+understand, my lord"--turning to Lord Stanway--"that these things are
+being done with your approval?"
+
+"Whatever is being done," Lord Stanway answered, "is being done by the
+police on their own responsibility, and entirely without prompting, I
+believe, by Mr. Claridge--certainly without a suggestion of any sort from
+myself. I think that the personal opinion of Mr. Claridge--certainly my
+own--is that anything like a suspicion of your position in this wretched
+matter is ridiculous. And if you will only consider the matter calmly----"
+
+"Consider it calmly? Imagine yourself considering such a thing calmly,
+Lord Stanway. I _won't_ consider it calmly. I'll--I'll--I won't have it.
+And if I find another man on my roof, I'll pitch him off!" And Mr.
+Woollett bounced into the street again.
+
+"Mr. Woollett is annoyed," Hewitt observed, with a smile. "I'm afraid
+Plummer has a clumsy assistant somewhere."
+
+Mr. Claridge said nothing, but looked rather glum, for Mr. Woollett was a
+most excellent customer.
+
+Lord Stanwood and Hewitt walked slowly down the street, Hewitt staring at
+the pavement in profound thought. Once or twice Lord Stanway glanced at
+his face, but refrained from disturbing him. Presently, however, he
+observed: "You seem, at least, Mr. Hewitt, to have noticed something that
+has set you thinking. Does it look like a clue?"
+
+Hewitt came out of his cogitation at once. "A clue?" he said; "the case
+bristles with clues. The extraordinary thing to me is that Plummer,
+usually a smart man, doesn't seem to have seen one of them. He must be out
+of sorts, I'm afraid. But the case is decidedly a most remarkable one."
+
+"Remarkable in what particular way?"
+
+"In regard to motive. Now it would seem, as Plummer was saying to me just
+now on the roof, that there were only two possible motives for such a
+robbery. Either the man who took all this trouble and risk to break into
+Claridge's place must have desired to sell the cameo at a good price, or
+he must have desired to keep it for himself, being a lover of such things.
+But neither of these has been the actual motive."
+
+"Perhaps he thinks he can extort a good sum from me by way of ransom?"
+
+"No, it isn't that. Nor is it jealousy, nor spite, nor anything of that
+kind. I know the motive, I _think_--but I wish we could get hold of Hahn.
+I will shut myself up alone and turn it over in my mind for half an hour
+presently."
+
+"Meanwhile, what I want to know is, apart from all your professional
+subtleties--which I confess I can't understand--can you get back the
+cameo?"
+
+"That," said Hewitt, stopping at the corner of the street, "I am rather
+afraid I can not--nor anybody else. But I am pretty sure I know the
+thief."
+
+"Then surely that will lead you to the cameo?"
+
+"It _may_, of course; but, then, it is just possible that by this evening
+you may not want to have it back, after all."
+
+Lord Stanway stared in amazement.
+
+"Not want to have it back!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course I shall want to
+have it back. I don't understand you in the least; you talk in conundrums.
+Who is the thief you speak of?"
+
+"I think, Lord Stanway," Hewitt said, "that perhaps I had better not say
+until I have quite finished my inquiries, in case of mistakes. The case is
+quite an extraordinary one, and of quite a different character from what
+one would at first naturally imagine, and I must be very careful to guard
+against the possibility of error. I have very little fear of a mistake,
+however, and I hope I may wait on you in a few hours at Piccadilly with
+news. I have only to see the policemen."
+
+"Certainly, come whenever you please. But why see the policemen? They have
+already most positively stated that they saw nothing whatever suspicious
+in the house or near it."
+
+"I shall not ask them anything at all about the house," Hewitt responded.
+"I shall just have a little chat with them--about the weather." And with a
+smiling bow he turned away, while Lord Stanway stood and gazed after him,
+with an expression that implied a suspicion that his special detective was
+making a fool of him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In rather more than an hour Hewitt was back in Mr. Claridge's shop. "Mr.
+Claridge," he said, "I think I must ask you one or two questions in
+private. May I see you in your own room?"
+
+They went there at once, and Hewitt, pulling a chair before the window,
+sat down with his back to the light. The dealer shut the door, and sat
+opposite him, with the light full in his face.
+
+"Mr. Claridge," Hewitt proceeded slowly, "_when did you first find that
+Lord Stanway's cameo was a forgery_?"
+
+Claridge literally bounced in his chair. His face paled, but he managed to
+stammer sharply: "What--what--what d'you mean? Forgery? Do you mean to say
+I sell forgeries? Forgery? It wasn't a forgery!"
+
+"Then," continued Hewitt in the same deliberate tone, watching the other's
+face the while, "if it wasn't a forgery, _why did you destroy it and burst
+your trap-door and desk to imitate a burglary_?"
+
+The sweat stood thick on the dealer's face, and he gasped. But he
+struggled hard to keep his faculties together, and ejaculated hoarsely:
+"Destroy it? What--what--I didn't--didn't destroy it!"
+
+"Threw it into the river, then--don't prevaricate about details."
+
+"No--no--it's a lie! Who says that? Go away! You're insulting me!"
+Claridge almost screamed.
+
+"Come, come, Mr. Claridge," Hewitt said more placably, for he had gained
+his point; "don't distress yourself, and don't attempt to deceive me--you
+can't, I assure you. I know everything you did before you left here last
+night--everything."
+
+Claridge's face worked painfully. Once or twice he appeared to be on the
+point of returning an indignant reply, but hesitated, and finally broke
+down altogether.
+
+"Don't expose me, Mr. Hewitt!" he pleaded; "I beg you won't expose me! I
+haven't harmed a soul but myself. I've paid Lord Stanway every penny back,
+and I never knew the thing was a forgery till I began to clean it. I'm an
+old man, Mr. Hewitt, and my professional reputation has been spotless
+until now. I beg you won't expose me."
+
+Hewitt's voice softened. "Don't make an unnecessary trouble of it," he
+said. "I see a decanter on your sideboard--let me give you a little brandy
+and water. Come, there's nothing criminal, I believe, in a man's breaking
+open his own desk, or his own trap-door, for that matter. Of course I'm
+acting for Lord Stanway in this affair, and I must, in duty, report to him
+without reserve. But Lord Stanway is a gentleman, and I'll undertake he'll
+do nothing inconsiderate of your feelings, if you're disposed to be frank.
+Let us talk the affair over; tell me about it."
+
+"It was that swindler Hahn who deceived me in the beginning," Claridge
+said. "I have never made a mistake with a cameo before, and I never
+thought so close an imitation was possible. I examined it most carefully,
+and was perfectly satisfied, and many experts examined it afterward, and
+were all equally deceived. I felt as sure as I possibly could feel that I
+had bought one of the finest, if not actually the finest, cameos known to
+exist. It was not until after it had come back from Lord Stanway's, and I
+was cleaning it the evening before last, that in course of my work it
+became apparent that the thing was nothing but a consummately clever
+forgery. It was made of three layers of molded glass, nothing more nor
+less. But the glass was treated in a way I had never before known of, and
+the surface had been cunningly worked on till it defied any ordinary
+examination. Some of the glass imitation cameos made in the latter part of
+the last century, I may tell you, are regarded as marvelous pieces of
+work, and, indeed, command very fair prices, but this was something quite
+beyond any of those.
+
+"I was amazed and horrified. I put the thing away and went home. All that
+night I lay awake in a state of distraction, quite unable to decide what
+to do. To let the cameo go out of my possession was impossible. Sooner or
+later the forgery would be discovered, and my reputation--the highest in
+these matters in this country, I may safely claim, and the growth of
+nearly fifty years of honest application and good judgment--this
+reputation would be gone forever. But without considering this, there was
+the fact that I had taken five thousand pounds of Lord Stanway's money for
+a mere piece of glass, and that money I must, in mere common honesty as
+well as for my own sake, return. But how? The name of the Stanway Cameo
+had become a household word, and to confess that the whole thing was a
+sham would ruin my reputation and destroy all confidence--past, present,
+and future--in me and in my transactions. Either way spelled ruin. Even if
+I confided in Lord Stanway privately, returned his money, and destroyed
+the cameo, what then? The sudden disappearance of an article so famous
+would excite remark at once. It had been presented to the British Museum,
+and if it never appeared in that collection, and no news were to be got of
+it, people would guess at the truth at once. To make it known that I
+myself had been deceived would have availed nothing. It is my business
+_not_ to be deceived; and to have it known that my most expensive
+specimens might be forgeries would equally mean ruin, whether I sold them
+cunningly as a rogue or ignorantly as a fool. Indeed, my pride, my
+reputation as a connoisseur, is a thing near to my heart, and it would be
+an unspeakable humiliation to me to have it known that I had been imposed
+on by such a forgery. What could I do? Every expedient seemed useless but
+one--the one I adopted. It was not straightforward, I admit; but, oh! Mr.
+Hewitt, consider the temptation--and remember that it couldn't do a soul
+any harm. No matter who might be suspected, I knew there could not
+possibly be evidence to make them suffer. All the next day--yesterday--I
+was anxiously worrying out the thing in my mind and carefully devising
+the--the trick, I'm afraid you'll call it, that you by some extraordinary
+means have seen through. It seemed the only thing--what else was there?
+More I needn't tell you; you know it. I have only now to beg that you will
+use your best influence with Lord Stanway to save me from public derision
+and exposure. I will do anything--pay anything--anything but exposure, at
+my age, and with my position."
+
+"Well, you see," Hewitt replied thoughtfully, "I've no doubt Lord Stanway
+will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to
+save you in the circumstances; though you must remember that you _have_
+done some harm--you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest
+man. But as to reputation, I've a professional reputation of my own. If I
+help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed
+in _my_ part of the business."
+
+"But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt. Consider. You are not
+expected--it would be impossible--to succeed invariably; and there are
+only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other
+conspicuous successes----"
+
+"Well, well, we shall see. One thing I don't know, though--whether you
+climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got up
+through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through the
+jamb, so as to bolt it after you."
+
+"There was no available window. I used the string, as you say. My poor
+little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours of
+thought over the question of the trap-door--how to break it open so as to
+leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after I
+had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility of
+suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension. How,
+to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery? Did
+you ever see it?"
+
+"Never. And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to
+express an opinion on it; I'm not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I
+_didn't_ know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I knew
+in the first place was that it was _you_ who had broken into the house. It
+was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain amount of
+thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of the
+question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo again,
+and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway's money. I knew enough of
+your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal of a great
+theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for yourself, when
+you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble and mystery.
+Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first another motive
+seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all this trouble to
+lose five thousand pounds? You had nothing to gain; perhaps you had
+something to save--your professional reputation, for instance. Looking at
+it so, it was plain that you were _suppressing_ the cameo--burking it;
+since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never come to light again.
+That suggested the solution of the mystery at once--you had discovered,
+after the sale, that the cameo was not genuine."
+
+"Yes, yes--I see; but you say you began with the knowledge that I broke
+into the place myself. How did you know that? I can not imagine a
+trace----"
+
+"My dear sir, you left traces everywhere. In the first place, it struck me
+as curious, before I came here, that you had sent off that check for five
+thousand pounds to Lord Stanway an hour or so after the robbery was
+discovered; it looked so much as though you were sure of the cameo never
+coming back, and were in a hurry to avert suspicion. Of course I
+understood that, so far as I then knew the case, you were the most
+unlikely person in the world, and that your eagerness to repay Lord
+Stanway might be the most creditable thing possible. But the point was
+worth remembering, and I remembered it.
+
+"When I came here, I saw suspicious indications in many directions, but
+the conclusive piece of evidence was that old hat hanging below the
+trap-door."
+
+"But I never touched it; I assure you, Mr. Hewitt, I never touched the
+hat; haven't touched it for months----"
+
+"Of course. If you _had_ touched it, I might never have got the clue. But
+we'll deal with the hat presently; that wasn't what struck me at first.
+The trap-door first took my attention. Consider, now: Here was a
+trap-door, most insecurely hung on _external_ hinges; the burglar had a
+screwdriver, for he took off the door-lock below with it. Why, then,
+didn't he take this trap off by the hinges, instead of making a noise and
+taking longer time and trouble to burst the bolt from its fastenings? And
+why, if he were a stranger, was he able to plant his jimmy from the
+outside just exactly opposite the interior bolt? There was only one mark
+on the frame, and that precisely in the proper place.
+
+"After that I saw the leather case. It had not been thrown away, or some
+corner would have shown signs of the fall. It had been put down carefully
+where it was found. These things, however, were of small importance
+compared with the hat. The hat, as you know, was exceedingly thick with
+dust--the accumulation of months. But, on the top side, presented toward
+the trap-door, were a score or so of _raindrop marks_. That was all. They
+were new marks, for there was no dust over them; they had merely had time
+to dry and cake the dust they had fallen on. _Now, there had been no rain
+since a sharp shower just after seven o'clock last night_. At that time
+you, by your own statement, were in the place. You left at eight, and the
+rain was all over at ten minutes or a quarter past seven. The trap-door,
+you also told me, had not been opened for months. The thing was plain.
+You, or somebody who was here when you were, had opened that trap-door
+during, or just before, that shower. I said little then, but went, as soon
+as I had left, to the police-station. There I made perfectly certain that
+there had been no rain during the night by questioning the policemen who
+were on duty outside all the time. There had been none. I knew everything.
+
+"The only other evidence there was pointed with all the rest. There were
+no rain-marks on the leather case; it had been put on the roof as an
+after-thought when there was no rain. A very poor after-thought, let me
+tell you, for no thief would throw away a useful case that concealed his
+booty and protected it from breakage, and throw it away just so as to
+leave a clue as to what direction he had gone in. I also saw, in the
+lumber-room, a number of packing-cases--one with a label dated two days
+back--which had been opened with an iron lever; and yet, when I made an
+excuse to ask for it, you said there was no such thing in the place.
+Inference, you didn't want me to compare it with the marks on the desks
+and doors. That is all, I think."
+
+Mr. Claridge looked dolorously down at the floor. "I'm afraid," he said,
+"that I took an unsuitable role when I undertook to rely on my wits to
+deceive men like you. I thought there wasn't a single vulnerable spot in
+my defense, but you walk calmly through it at the first attempt. Why did I
+never think of those raindrops?"
+
+"Come," said Hewitt, with a smile, "that sounds unrepentant. I am going,
+now, to Lord Stanway's. If I were you, I think I should apologize to Mr.
+Woollett in some way."
+
+Lord Stanway, who, in the hour or two of reflection left him after parting
+with Hewitt, had come to the belief that he had employed a man whose mind
+was not always in order, received Hewitt's story with natural
+astonishment. For some time he was in doubt as to whether he would be
+doing right in acquiescing in anything but a straightforward public
+statement of the facts connected with the disappearance of the cameo, but
+in the end was persuaded to let the affair drop, on receiving an assurance
+from Mr. Woollett that he unreservedly accepted the apology offered him by
+Mr. Claridge.
+
+As for the latter, he was at least sufficiently punished in loss of money
+and personal humiliation for his escapade. But the bitterest and last blow
+he sustained when the unblushing Hahn walked smilingly into his office two
+days later to demand the extra payment agreed on in consideration of the
+sale. He had been called suddenly away, he exclaimed, on the day he should
+have come, and hoped his missing the appointment had occasioned no
+inconvenience. As to the robbery of the cameo, of course he was very
+sorry, but "pishness was pishness," and he would be glad of a check for
+the sum agreed on. And the unhappy Claridge was obliged to pay it, knowing
+that the man had swindled him, but unable to open his mouth to say so.
+
+The reward remained on offer for a long time; indeed, it was never
+publicly withdrawn, I believe, even at the time of Claridge's death. And
+several intelligent newspapers enlarged upon the fact that an ordinary
+burglar had completely baffled and defeated the boasted acumen of Mr.
+Martin Hewitt, the well-known private detective.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+THE AFFAIR OF THE TORTOISE.
+
+Very often Hewitt was tempted, by the fascination of some particularly odd
+case, to neglect his other affairs to follow up a matter that from a
+business point of view was of little or no value to him. As a rule, he had
+a sufficient regard for his own interests to resist such temptations, but
+in one curious case, at least, I believe he allowed it largely to
+influence him. It was certainly an extremely odd case--one of those
+affairs that, coming to light at intervals, but more often remaining
+unheard of by the general public, convince one that, after all, there is
+very little extravagance about Mr. R.L. Stevenson's bizarre imaginings of
+doings in London in his "New Arabian Nights." "There is nothing in this
+world that is at all possible," I have often heard Martin Hewitt say,
+"that has not happened or is not happening in London." Certainly he had
+opportunities of knowing.
+
+The case I have referred to occurred some time before my own acquaintance
+with him began--in 1878, in fact. He had called one Monday morning at an
+office in regard to something connected with one of those uninteresting,
+though often difficult, cases which formed, perhaps, the bulk of his
+practice, when he was informed of a most mysterious murder that had taken
+place in another part of the same building on the previous Saturday
+afternoon. Owing to the circumstances of the case, only the vaguest
+account had appeared in the morning papers, and even this, as it chanced,
+Hewitt had not read.
+
+The building was one of a new row in a partly rebuilt street near the
+National Gallery. The whole row had been built by a speculator for the
+purpose of letting out in flats, suites of chambers, and in one or two
+cases, on the ground floors, offices. The rooms had let very well, and to
+desirable tenants, as a rule. The least satisfactory tenant, the
+proprietor reluctantly admitted, was a Mr. Rameau, a negro gentleman,
+single, who had three rooms on the top floor but one of the particular
+building that Hewitt was visiting. His rent was paid regularly, but his
+behavior had produced complaints from other tenants. He got uproariously
+drunk, and screamed and howled in unknown tongues. He fell asleep on the
+staircase, and ladies were afraid to pass. He bawled rough chaff down the
+stairs and along the corridors at butcher-boys and messengers, and played
+on errand-boys brutal practical jokes that ended in police-court
+summonses. He once had a way of sliding down the balusters, shouting: "Ho!
+ho! ho! yah!" as he went, but as he was a big, heavy man, and the
+balusters had been built for different treatment, he had very soon and
+very firmly been requested to stop it. He had plenty of money, and spent
+it freely; but it was generally felt that there was too much of the
+light-hearted savage about him to fit him to live among quiet people.
+
+How much longer the landlord would have stood this sort of thing, Hewitt's
+informant said, was a matter of conjecture, for on the Saturday afternoon
+in question the tenancy had come to a startling full-stop. Rameau had been
+murdered in his room, and the body had, in the most unaccountable fashion,
+been secretly removed from the premises.
+
+The strongest possible suspicion pointed to a man who had been employed in
+shoveling and carrying coals, cleaning windows, and chopping wood for
+several of the buildings, and who had left that very Saturday. The crime
+had, in fact, been committed with this man's chopper, and the man himself
+had been heard, again and again, to threaten Rameau, who, in his brutal
+fashion, had made a butt of him. This man was a Frenchman, Victor Goujon
+by name, who had lost his employment as a watchmaker by reason of an
+injury to his right hand, which destroyed its steadiness, and so he had
+fallen upon evil days and odd jobs.
+
+He was a little man of no great strength, but extraordinarily excitable,
+and the coarse gibes and horse-play of the big negro drove him almost to
+madness. Rameau would often, after some more than ordinarily outrageous
+attack, contemptuously fling Goujon a shilling, which the little
+Frenchman, although wanting a shilling badly enough, would hurl back in
+his face, almost weeping with impotent rage. "Pig! _Canaille_!" he would
+scream. "Dirty pig of Africa! Take your sheelin' to vere you 'ave stole
+it! _Voleur_! Pig!"
+
+There was a tortoise living in the basement, of which Goujon had made
+rather a pet, and the negro would sometimes use this animal as a missile,
+flinging it at the little Frenchman's head. On one such occasion the
+tortoise struck the wall so forcibly as to break its shell, and then
+Goujon seized a shovel and rushed at his tormentor with such blind fury
+that the latter made a bolt of it. These were but a few of the passages
+between Rameau and the fuel-porter, but they illustrate the state of
+feeling between them.
+
+Goujon, after correspondence with a relative in France who offered him
+work, gave notice to leave, which expired on the day of the crime. At
+about three that afternoon a housemaid, proceeding toward Rameau's rooms,
+met Goujon as he was going away. Goujon bade her good-by, and, pointing in
+the direction of Rameau's rooms, said exultantly: "Dere shall be no more
+of the black pig for me; vit 'im I 'ave done for. Zut! I mock me of 'im!
+'E vill never _tracasser_ me no more." And he went away.
+
+The girl went to the outer door of Rameau's rooms, knocked, and got no
+reply. Concluding that the tenant was out, she was about to use her keys,
+when she found that the door was unlocked. She passed through the lobby
+and into the sitting-room, and there fell in a dead faint at the sight
+that met her eyes. Rameau lay with his back across the sofa and his
+head--drooping within an inch of the ground. On the head was a fearful
+gash, and below it was a pool of blood.
+
+The girl must have lain unconscious for about ten minutes. When she came
+to her senses, she dragged herself, terrified, from the room and up to the
+housekeeper's apartments, where, being an excitable and nervous creature,
+she only screamed "Murder!" and immediately fell in a fit of hysterics
+that lasted three-quarters of an hour. When at last she came to herself,
+she told her story, and, the hall-porter having been summoned, Rameau's
+rooms were again approached.
+
+The blood still lay on the floor, and the chopper, with which the crime
+had evidently been committed, rested against the fender; but the body had
+vanished! A search was at once made, but no trace of it could be seen
+anywhere. It seemed impossible that it could have been carried out of the
+building, for the hall-porter must at once have noticed anybody leaving
+with so bulky a burden. Still, in the building it was not to be found.
+
+When Hewitt was informed of these things on Monday, the police were, of
+course, still in possession of Rameau's rooms. Inspector Nettings, Hewitt
+was told, was in charge of the case, and as the inspector was an
+acquaintance of his, and was then in the rooms upstairs, Hewitt went up to
+see him.
+
+Nettings was pleased to see Hewitt, and invited him to look around the
+rooms. "Perhaps you can spot something we have overlooked," he said.
+"Though it's not a case there can be much doubt about."
+
+"You think it's Goujon, don't you?"
+
+"Think? Well, rather! Look here! As soon as we got here on Saturday, we
+found this piece of paper and pin on the floor. We showed it to the
+housemaid, and then she remembered--she was too much upset to think of it
+before--that when she was in the room the paper was laying on the dead
+man's chest--pinned there, evidently. It must have dropped off when they
+removed the body. It's a case of half-mad revenge on Goujon's part,
+plainly. See it; you read French, don't you?"
+
+The paper was a plain, large half-sheet of note-paper, on which a sentence
+in French was scrawled in red ink in a large, clumsy hand, thus:
+
+  _puni par un vengeur de la tortue_.
+
+"_Puni par un vengeur de la tortue_," Hewitt repeated musingly. "'Punished
+by an avenger of the tortoise,' That seems odd."
+
+"Well, rather odd. But you understand the reference, of course. Have they
+told you about Rameau's treatment of Goujon's pet tortoise?"
+
+"I think it was mentioned among his other pranks. But this is an extreme
+revenge for a thing of that sort, and a queer way of announcing it."
+
+"Oh, he's mad--mad with Rameau's continual ragging and baiting," Nettings
+answered. "Anyway, this is a plain indication--plain as though he'd left
+his own signature. Besides, it's in his own language--French. And there's
+his chopper, too."
+
+"Speaking of signatures," Hewitt remarked, "perhaps you have already
+compared this with other specimens of Goujon's writing?"
+
+"I did think of it, but they don't seem to have a specimen to hand, and,
+anyway, it doesn't seem very important. There's 'avenger of the tortoise'
+plain enough, in the man's own language, and that tells everything.
+Besides, handwritings are easily disguised."
+
+"Have you got Goujon?"
+
+"Well, no; we haven't. There seems to be some little difficulty about
+that. But I expect to have him by this time to-morrow. Here comes Mr.
+Styles, the landlord."
+
+Mr. Styles was a thin, querulous, and withered-looking little man, who
+twitched his eyebrows as he spoke, and spoke in short, jerky phrases.
+
+"No news, eh, inspector, eh? eh? Found out nothing else, eh? Terrible
+thing for my property--terrible! Who's your friend?"
+
+Nettings introduced Hewitt.
+
+"Shocking thing this, eh, Mr. Hewitt? Terrible! Comes of having anything
+to do with these blood-thirsty foreigners, eh? New buildings and
+all--character ruined. No one come to live here now, eh? Tenants--noisy
+niggers--murdered by my own servants--terrible! _You_ formed any opinion,
+eh?"
+
+"I dare say I might if I went into the case."
+
+"Yes, yes--same opinion as inspector's, eh? I mean an opinion of your
+own?" The old man scrutinized Hewitt's face sharply.
+
+"If you'd like me to look into the matter----" Hewitt began.
+
+"Eh? Oh, look into it! Well, I can't commission you, you know--matter for
+the police. Mischief's done. Police doing very well, I think--must be
+Goujon. But look about the place, certainly, if you like. If you see
+anything likely to serve _my_ interests, tell me, and--and--perhaps I'll
+employ you, eh, eh? Good-afternoon."
+
+The landlord vanished, and the inspector laughed. "Likes to see what he's
+buying, does Mr. Styles," he said.
+
+Hewitt's first impulse was to walk out of the place at once. But his
+interest in the case had been roused, and he determined, at any rate, to
+examine the rooms, and this he did very minutely. By the side of the lobby
+was a bath-room, and in this was fitted a tip-up wash-basin, which Hewitt
+inspected with particular attention. Then he called the housekeeper, and
+made inquiries about Rameau's clothes and linen. The housekeeper could
+give no idea of how many overcoats or how much linen he had had. He had
+all a negro's love of display, and was continually buying new clothes,
+which, indeed, were lying, hanging, littering, and choking up the bedroom
+in all directions. The housekeeper, however, on Hewitt's inquiring after
+such a garment in particular, did remember one heavy black ulster, which
+Rameau had very rarely worn--only in the coldest weather.
+
+"After the body was discovered," Hewitt asked the housekeeper, "was any
+stranger observed about the place--whether carrying anything or not?"
+
+"No, sir," the housekeeper replied. "There's been particular inquiries
+about that. Of course, after we knew what was wrong and the body was gone,
+nobody was seen, or he'd have been stopped. But the hall-porter says he's
+certain no stranger came or went for half an hour or more before that--the
+time about when the housemaid saw the body and fainted."
+
+At this moment a clerk from the landlord's office arrived and handed
+Nettings a paper. "Here you are," said Nettings to Hewitt; "they've found
+a specimen of Goujon's handwriting at last, if you'd like to see it. I
+don't want it; I'm not a graphologist, and the case is clear enough for me
+anyway."
+
+Hewitt took the paper. "This" he said, "is a different sort of handwriting
+from that on the paper. The red-ink note about the avenger of the tortoise
+is in a crude, large, clumsy, untaught style of writing. This is small,
+neat, and well formed--except that it is a trifle shaky, probably because
+of the hand injury."
+
+"That's nothing," contended Nettings. "handwriting clues are worse than
+useless, as a rule. It's so easy to disguise and imitate writing; and
+besides, if Goujon is such a good penman as you seem to say, why, he could
+all the easier alter his style. Say now yourself, can any fiddling
+question of handwriting get over this thing about 'avenging the
+tortoise'--practically a written confession--to say nothing of the
+chopper, and what he said to the housemaid as he left?"
+
+"Well," said Hewitt, "perhaps not; but we'll see. Meantime"--turning to
+the landlord's clerk--"possibly you will be good enough to tell me one or
+two things. First, what was Goujon's character?"
+
+"Excellent, as far as we know. We never had a complaint about him except
+for little matters of carelessness--leaving coal-scuttles on the
+staircases for people to fall over, losing shovels, and so on. He was
+certainly a bit careless, but, as far as we could see, quite a decent
+little fellow. One would never have thought him capable of committing
+murder for the sake of a tortoise, though he was rather fond of the
+animal."
+
+"The tortoise is dead now, I understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you a lift in this building?"
+
+"Only for coals and heavy parcels. Goujon used to work it, sometimes going
+up and down in it himself with coals, and so on; it goes into the
+basement."
+
+"And are the coals kept under this building?"
+
+"No. The store for the whole row is under the next two houses--the
+basements communicate."
+
+"Do you know Rameau's other name?"
+
+"Cesar Rameau he signed in our agreement."
+
+"Did he ever mention his relations?"
+
+"No. That is to say, he did say something one day when he was very drunk;
+but, of course, it was all rot. Some one told him not to make such a
+row--he was a beastly tenant--and he said he was the best man in the
+place, and his brother was Prime Minister, and all sorts of things. Mere
+drunken rant! I never heard of his saying anything sensible about
+relations. We know nothing of his connections; he came here on a banker's
+reference."
+
+"Thanks. I think that's all I want to ask. You notice," Hewitt proceeded,
+turning to Nettings, "the only ink in this place is scented and violet, and
+the only paper is tinted and scented, too, with a monogram--characteristic
+of a negro with money. The paper that was pinned on Rameau's breast is
+in red ink on common and rather grubby paper, therefore it was written
+somewhere else and brought here. Inference, premeditation."
+
+"Yes, yes. But are you an inch nearer with all these speculations? Can you
+get nearer than I am now without them?"
+
+"Well, perhaps not," Hewitt replied. "I don't profess at this moment to
+know the criminal; you do. I'll concede you that point for the present.
+But you don't offer an opinion as to who removed Rameau's body--which I
+think I know."
+
+"Who was it, then?"
+
+"Come, try and guess that yourself. It wasn't Goujon; I don't mind letting
+you know that. But it was a person quite within your knowledge of the
+case. You've mentioned the person's name more than once."
+
+Nettings stared blankly. "I don't understand you in the least," he said.
+"But, of course, you mean that this mysterious person you speak of as
+having moved the body committed the murder?"
+
+"No, I don't. Nobody could have been more innocent of that."
+
+"Well," Nettings concluded with resignation, "I'm afraid one of us is
+rather thick-headed. What will you do?"
+
+"Interview the person who took away the body," Hewitt replied, with a
+smile.
+
+"But, man alive, why? Why bother about the person if it isn't the
+criminal?"
+
+"Never mind--never mind; probably the person will be a most valuable
+witness."
+
+"Do you mean you think this person--whoever it is--saw the crime?"
+
+"I think it very probable indeed."
+
+"Well, I won't ask you any more. I shall get hold of Goujon; that's simple
+and direct enough for me. I prefer to deal with the heart of the case--the
+murder itself--when there's such clear evidence as I have."
+
+"I shall look a little into that, too, perhaps," Hewitt said, "and, if you
+like, I'll tell you the first thing I shall do."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I shall have a good look at a map of the West Indies, and I advise you to
+do the same. Good-morning."
+
+Nettings stared down the corridor after Hewitt, and continued staring for
+nearly two minutes after he had disappeared. Then he said to the clerk,
+who had remained: "What was he talking about?"
+
+"Don't know," replied the clerk. "Couldn't make head nor tail of it."
+
+"I don't believe there _is_ a head to it," declared Nettings; "nor a tail
+either. He's kidding us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nettings was better than his word, for within two hours of his
+conversation with Hewitt, Goujon was captured and safe in a cab bound for
+Bow Street. He had been stopped at Newhaven in the morning on his way to
+Dieppe, and was brought back to London. But now Nettings met a check.
+
+Late that afternoon he called on Hewitt to explain matters. "We've got
+Goujon," he said, gloomily, "but there's a difficulty. He's got two
+friends who can swear an _alibi_. Rameau was seen alive at half-past one
+on Saturday, and the girl found him dead about three. Now, Goujon's two
+friends, it seems, were with him from one o'clock till four in the
+afternoon, with the exception of five minutes when the girl saw him, and
+then he left them to take a key or something to the housekeeper before
+finally leaving. They were waiting on the landing below when Goujon spoke
+to the housemaid, heard him speaking, and had seen him go all the way up
+to the housekeeper's room and back, as they looked up the wide well of the
+staircase. They are men employed near the place, and seem to have good
+characters. But perhaps we shall find something unfavorable about them.
+They were drinking with Goujon, it seems, by way of 'seeing him off.'"
+
+"Well," Hewitt said, "I scarcely think you need trouble to damage these
+men's characters. They are probably telling the truth. Come, now, be
+plain. You've come here to get a hint as to whether my theory of the case
+helps you, haven't you?"
+
+"Well, if you can give me a friendly hint, although, of course, I may be
+right, after all. Still, I wish you'd explain a bit as to what you meant
+by looking at a map and all that mystery. Nice thing for me to be taking a
+lesson in my own business after all these years! But perhaps I deserve
+it."
+
+"See, now," quoth Hewitt, "you remember what map I told you to look at?"
+
+"The West Indies."
+
+"Right! Well, here you are." Hewitt reached an atlas from his book-shelf.
+"Now, look here: the biggest island of the lot on this map, barring Cuba,
+is Hayti. You know as well as I do that the western part of that island is
+peopled by the black republic of Hayti, and that the country is in a
+degenerate state of almost unexampled savagery, with a ridiculous show of
+civilization. There are revolutions all the time; the South American
+republics are peaceful and prosperous compared to Hayti. The state of the
+country is simply awful--read Sir Spenser St. John's book on it. President
+after president of the vilest sort forces his way to power and commits the
+most horrible and bloodthirsty excesses, murdering his opponents by the
+hundred and seizing their property for himself and his satellites, who are
+usually as bad, if not worse, than the president himself. Whole
+families--men, women, and children--are murdered at the instance of these
+ruffians, and, as a consequence, the most deadly feuds spring up, and the
+presidents and their followers are always themselves in danger of
+reprisals from others. Perhaps the very worst of these presidents in
+recent times has been the notorious Domingue, who was overthrown by an
+insurrection, as they all are sooner or later, and compelled to fly the
+country. Domingue and his nephews, one of whom was Chief Minister, while
+in power committed the cruellest bloodshed, and many members of the
+opposite party sought refuge in a small island lying just to the north of
+Hayti, but were sought out there and almost exterminated. Now, I will show
+you that island on the map. What is its name?"
+
+"Tortuga."
+
+"It is. 'Tortuga,' however, is only the old Spanish name; the Haytians
+speak French--Creole French. Here is a French atlas: now see the name of
+that island."
+
+"La Tortue!"
+
+"La Tortue it is--the tortoise. Tortuga means the same thing in Spanish.
+But that island is always spoken of in Hayti as La Tortue. Now, do you see
+the drift of that paper pinned to Rameau's breast?"
+
+"Punished by an avenger of--or from--the tortoise or La Tortue--clear
+enough. It would seem that the dead man had something to do with the
+massacre there, and somebody from the island is avenging it. The thing's
+most extraordinary."
+
+"And now listen. The name of Domingue's nephew, who was Chief Minister,
+was _Septimus Rameau_."
+
+"And this was Cesar Rameau--his brother, probably. I see. Well, this _is_
+a case."
+
+"I think the relationship probable. Now you understand why I was inclined
+to doubt that Goujon was the man you wanted."
+
+"Of course, of course! And now I suppose I must try to get a nigger--the
+chap who wrote that paper. I wish he hadn't been such an ignorant nigger.
+If he'd only have put the capitals to the words 'La Tortue,' I might have
+thought a little more about them, instead of taking it for granted that
+they meant that wretched tortoise in the basement of the house. Well, I've
+made a fool of a start, but I'll be after that nigger now."
+
+"And I, as I said before," said Hewitt, "shall be after the person that
+carried off Rameau's body. I have had something else to do this afternoon,
+or I should have begun already."
+
+"You said you thought he saw the crime. How did you judge that?"
+
+Hewitt smiled. "I think I'll keep that little secret to myself for the
+present," he said. "You shall know soon."
+
+"Very well," Nettings replied, with resignation. "I suppose I mustn't
+grumble if you don't tell me everything. I feel too great a fool
+altogether over this case to see any farther than you show me." And
+Inspector Nettings left on his search; while Martin Hewitt, as soon as he
+was alone, laughed joyously and slapped his thigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a cab-rank and shelter at the end of the street where Mr.
+Styles' building stood, and early that evening a man approached it and
+hailed the cabmen and the waterman. Any one would have known the new-comer
+at once for a cabman taking a holiday. The brim of the hat, the bird's-eye
+neckerchief, the immense coat-buttons, and, more than all, the rolling
+walk and the wrinkled trousers, marked him out distinctly.
+
+"Watcheer!" he exclaimed, affably, with the self-possessed nod only
+possible to cabbies and 'busmen. "I'm a-lookin' for a bilker. I'm told one
+o' the blokes off this rank carried 'im last Saturday, and I want to know
+where he went. I ain't 'ad a chance o' gettin' 'is address yet. Took a cab
+just as it got dark, I'm told. Tallish chap, muffled up a lot, in a long
+black overcoat. Any of ye seen 'im?"
+
+The cabbies looked at one another and shook their heads; it chanced that
+none of them had been on that particular rank at that time. But the
+waterman said: "'Old on--I bet 'e's the bloke wot old Bill Stammers took.
+Yorkey was fust on the rank, but the bloke wouldn't 'ave a 'ansom--wanted
+a four-wheeler, so old Bill took 'im. Biggish chap in a long black coat,
+collar up an' muffled thick; soft wide-awake 'at, pulled over 'is eyes;
+and he was in a 'urry, too. Jumped in sharp as a weasel."
+
+"Didn't see 'is face, did ye?"
+
+"No--not an inch of it; too much muffled. Couldn't tell if he 'ad a face."
+
+"Was his arm in a sling?"
+
+"Ay, it looked so. Had it stuffed through the breast of his coat, like as
+though there might be a sling inside."
+
+"That's 'im. Any of ye tell me where I might run across old Bill Stammers?
+He'll tell me where my precious bilker went to."
+
+As to this there was plenty of information, and in five minutes Martin
+Hewitt, who had become an unoccupied cabman for the occasion, was on his
+way to find old Bill Stammers. That respectable old man gave him full
+particulars as to the place in the East End where he had driven his
+muffled fare on Saturday, and Hewitt then begun an eighteen, or twenty
+hours' search beyond Whitechapel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At about three on Tuesday afternoon, as Nettings was in the act of leaving
+Bow Street Police Station, Hewitt drove up in a four-wheeler. Some
+prisoner appeared to be crouching low in the vehicle, but, leaving him to
+take care of himself, Hewitt hurried into the station and shook Nettings
+by the hand. "Well," he said, "have you got the murderer of Rameau yet?"
+
+"No," Nettings growled. "Unless--well, Goujon's under remand still, and,
+after all, I've been thinking that he may know something----"
+
+"Pooh, nonsense!" Hewitt answered. "You'd better let him go. Now, I _have_
+got somebody." Hewitt laughed and slapped the inspector's shoulder. "I've
+got the man who carried Rameau's body away!"
+
+"The deuce you have! Where? Bring him in. We must have him----"
+
+"All right, don't be in a hurry; he won't bolt." And Hewitt stepped out to
+the cab and produced his prisoner, who, pulling his hat farther over his
+eyes, hurried furtively into the station. One hand was stowed in the
+breast of his long coat, and below the wide brim of his hat a small piece
+of white bandage could be seen; and, as he lifted his face, it was seen to
+be that of a negro.
+
+"Inspector Nettings," Hewitt said ceremoniously, "allow me to introduce
+Mr. Cesar Rameau!"
+
+Netting's gasped.
+
+"What!" he at length ejaculated. "What! You--you're Rameau?"
+
+The negro looked round nervously, and shrank farther from the door.
+
+"Yes," he said; "but please not so loud--please not loud. Zey may be near,
+and I'm 'fraid."
+
+"You will certify, will you not," asked Hewitt, with malicious glee, "not
+only that you were not murdered last Saturday by Victor Goujon, but that,
+in fact, you were not murdered at all? Also, that you carried your own
+body away in the usual fashion, on your own legs."
+
+"Yes, yes," responded Rameau, looking haggardly about; "but is not
+zis--zis room publique? I should not be seen."
+
+"Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger and
+your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe
+enough."
+
+"I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind
+something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose--why, hang it, you must
+have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting
+upstairs, and walked out. They say there's nothing so hard as a nigger's
+skull, and yours has certainly made a fool of me. But, then, _somebody_
+must have chopped you over the head; who was it?"
+
+"My enemies--my great enemies--enemies politique. I am a great man"--this
+with a faint revival of vanity amid his fear--"a great man in my countree.
+Zey have great secret club-sieties to kill me--me and my fren's; and one
+enemy coming in my rooms does zis--one, two"--he indicated wrist and
+head--"wiz a choppa."
+
+Rameau made the case plain to Nettings, so far as the actual circumstances
+of the assault on himself were concerned. A negro whom he had noticed near
+the place more than once during the previous day or two had attacked him
+suddenly in his rooms, dealing him two savage blows with a chopper. The
+first he had caught on his wrist, which was seriously damaged, as well as
+excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken effect on his head. His
+assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving him for dead; but, as a
+matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock, and had, thanks to the
+adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the ill-direction of the
+chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being no more than grazed.
+He had lain insensible for some time, and must have come to his senses
+soon after the housemaid had left the room. Terrified at the knowledge
+that his enemies had found him out, his only thought was to get away and
+hide himself. He hastily washed and tied up his head, enveloped himself in
+the biggest coat he could find, and let himself down into the basement by
+the coal-lift, for fear of observation. He waited in the basement of one
+of the adjoining buildings till dark and then got away in a cab, with the
+idea of hiding himself in the East End. He had had very little money with
+him on his flight, and it was by reason of this circumstance that Hewitt,
+when he found him, had prevailed on him to leave his hiding-place, since
+it would be impossible for him to touch any of the large sums of money in
+the keeping of his bank so long as he was supposed to be dead. With much
+difficulty, and the promise of ample police protection, he was at last
+convinced that it would be safe to declare himself and get his property,
+and then run away and hide wherever he pleased.
+
+Nettings and Hewitt strolled off together for a few minutes and chatted,
+leaving the wretched Rameau to cower in a corner among several policemen.
+
+"Well, Mr. Hewitt," Nettings said, "this case has certainly been a
+shocking beating for me. I must have been as blind as a bat when I started
+on it. And yet I don't see that you had a deal to go on, even now. What
+struck you first?"
+
+"Well, in the beginning it seemed rather odd to me that the body should
+have been taken away, as I had been told it was, after the written paper
+had been pinned on it. Why should the murderer pin a label on the body of
+his victim if he meant carrying that body away? Who would read the label
+and learn of the nature of the revenge gratified? Plainly, that indicated
+that the person who had carried away the body was _not_ the person who had
+committed the murder. But as soon as I began to examine the place I saw
+the probability that there was no murder, after all. There were any number
+of indications of this fact, and I can't understand your not observing
+them. First, although there was a good deal of blood on the floor just
+below where the housemaid had seen Rameau lying, there was none between
+that place and the door. Now, if the body had been dragged, or even
+carried, to the door, blood must have become smeared about the floor, or
+at least there would have been drops, but there were none, and this seemed
+to hint that the corpse might have come to itself, sat up on the sofa,
+stanched the wound, and walked out. I reflected at once that Rameau was a
+full-blooded negro, and that a negro's head is very nearly invulnerable to
+anything short of bullets. Then, if the body had been dragged out--as such
+a heavy body must have been--almost of necessity the carpet and rugs would
+show signs of the fact, but there were no such signs. But beyond these
+there was the fact that no long black overcoat was left with the other
+clothes, although the housekeeper distinctly remembered Rameau's
+possession of such a garment. I judged he would use some such thing to
+assist his disguise, which was why I asked her. _Why_ he would want to
+disguise was plain, as you shall see presently. There were no towels left
+in the bath-room; inference, used for bandages. Everything seemed to show
+that the only person responsible for Rameau's removal was Rameau himself.
+Why, then, had he gone away secretly and hurriedly, without making
+complaint, and why had he stayed away? What reason would he have for doing
+this if it had been Goujon that had attacked him? None. Goujon was going
+to France. Clearly, Rameau was afraid of another attack from some
+implacable enemy whom he was anxious to avoid--one against whom he feared
+legal complaint or defense would be useless. This brought me at once to
+the paper found on the floor. If this were the work of Goujon and an open
+reference to his tortoise, why should he be at such pains to disguise his
+handwriting? He would have been already pointing himself out by the mere
+mention of the tortoise. And, if he could not avoid a shake in his
+natural, small handwriting, how could he have avoided it in a large,
+clumsy, slowly drawn, assumed hand? No, the paper was not Goujon's."
+
+"As to the writing on the paper," Nettings interposed, "I've told you how
+I made that mistake. I took the readiest explanation of the words, since
+they seemed so pat, and I wouldn't let anything else outweigh that. As to
+the other things--the evidences of Rameau's having gone off by
+himself--well, I don't usually miss such obvious things; but I never
+thought of the possibility of the _victim_ going away on the quiet and not
+coming back, as though _he'd_ done something wrong. Comes of starting with
+a set of fixed notions."
+
+"Well," answered Hewitt, "I fancy you must have been rather 'out of form,'
+as they say; everybody has his stupid days, and you can't keep up to
+concert pitch forever. To return to the case. The evidence of the chopper
+was very untrustworthy, especially when I had heard of Goujon's careless
+habits--losing shovels and leaving coal-scuttles on stairs. Nothing more
+likely than for the chopper to be left lying about, and a criminal who had
+calculated his chances would know the advantage to himself of using a
+weapon that belonged to the place, and leaving it behind to divert
+suspicion. It is quite possible, by the way, that the man who attacked
+Rameau got away down the coal-lift and out by an adjoining basement, just
+as did Rameau himself; this, however, is mere conjecture. The would-be
+murderer had plainly prepared for the crime: witness the previous
+preparation of the paper declaring his revenge, an indication of his pride
+at having run his enemy to earth at such a distant place as this--although
+I expect he was only in England by chance, for Haytians are not a
+persistently energetic race. In regard to the use of small instead of
+capital letters in the words 'La Tortue' on the paper, I observed, in the
+beginning, that the first letter of the whole sentence--the 'p' in
+'puni'--was a small one. Clearly, the writer was an illiterate man, and it
+was at once plain that he may have made the same mistake with ensuing
+words.
+
+"On the whole, it was plain that everybody had begun with a too ready
+disposition to assume that Goujon was guilty. Everybody insisted, too,
+that the body had been carried away--which was true, of course, although
+not in the sense intended--so I didn't trouble to contradict, or to say
+more than that I guessed who _had_ carried the body off. And, to tell you
+the truth, I was a little piqued at Mr. Styles' manner, and indisposed,
+interested in the case as I was, to give away my theories too freely.
+
+"The rest of the job was not very difficult. I found out the cabman who
+had taken Rameau away--you can always get readier help from cabbies if you
+go as one of themselves, especially if you are after a bilker--and from
+him got a sufficiently near East End direction to find Rameau after
+inquiries. I ventured, by the way, on a rather long shot. I described my
+man to the cabman as having an injured arm or wrist--and it turned out a
+correct guess. You see, a man making an attack with a chopper is pretty
+certain to make more than a single blow, and as there appeared to have
+been only a single wound on the head, it seemed probable that another had
+fallen somewhere else--almost certainly on the arm, as it would be raised
+to defend the head. At Limehouse I found he had had his head and wrist
+attended to at a local medico's, and a big nigger in a fright, with a long
+black coat, a broken head, and a lame hand, is not so difficult to find in
+a small area. How I persuaded him up here you know already; I think I
+frightened him a little, too, by explaining how easily I had tracked him,
+and giving him a hint that others might do the same. He is in a great
+funk. He seems to have quite lost faith in England as a safe asylum."
+
+The police failed to catch Rameau's assailant--chiefly because Rameau
+could not be got to give a proper description of him, nor to do anything
+except get out of the country in a hurry. In truth, he was glad to be quit
+of the matter with nothing worse than his broken head. Little Goujon made
+a wild storm about his arrest, and before he did go to France managed to
+extract twenty pounds from Rameau by way of compensation, in spite of the
+absence of any strictly legal claim against his old tormentor. So that, on
+the whole, Goujon was about the only person who derived any particular
+profit from the tortoise mystery.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Martin Hewitt, Investigator, by Arthur Morrison
+
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