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+Project Gutenberg's Clue of the Twisted Candle, by Edgar Wallace
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+Title:  The Clue of the Twisted Candle
+
+Author:  Edgar Wallace
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+June, 2001  [Etext #2688]
+[Date last updated: July 18, 2006]
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+Project Gutenberg's Clue of the Twisted Candle, by Edgar Wallace
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+
+THE CLUE OF THE TWISTED CANDLE
+
+by EDGAR WALLACE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The 4.15 from Victoria to Lewes had been held up at Three Bridges
+in consequence of a derailment and, though John Lexman was
+fortunate enough to catch a belated connection to Beston Tracey,
+the wagonette which was the sole communication between the village
+and the outside world had gone.
+
+"If you can wait half an hour, Mr. Lexman," said the
+station-master, "I will telephone up to the village and get Briggs
+to come down for you."
+
+John Lexman looked out upon the dripping landscape and shrugged
+his shoulders.
+
+"I'll walk," he said shortly and, leaving his bag in the
+station-master's care and buttoning his mackintosh to his chin, he
+stepped forth resolutely into the rain to negotiate the two miles
+which separated the tiny railway station from Little Tracey.
+
+The downpour was incessant and likely to last through the night.
+The high hedges on either side of the narrow road were so many
+leafy cascades; the road itself was in places ankle deep in mud.
+He stopped under the protecting cover of a big tree to fill and
+light his pipe and with its bowl turned downwards continued his
+walk.  But for the driving rain which searched every crevice and
+found every chink in his waterproof armor, he preferred, indeed
+welcomed, the walk.
+
+The road from Beston Tracey to Little Beston was associated in his
+mind with some of the finest situations in his novels.  It was on
+this road that he had conceived "The Tilbury Mystery." Between the
+station and the house he had woven the plot which had made
+"Gregory Standish" the most popular detective story of the year.
+For John Lexman was a maker of cunning plots.
+
+If, in the literary world, he was regarded by superior persons as
+a writer of "shockers," he had a large and increasing public who
+were fascinated by the wholesome and thrilling stories he wrote,
+and who held on breathlessly to the skein of mystery until they
+came to the denouement he had planned.
+
+But no thought of books, or plots, or stories filled his troubled
+mind as he strode along the deserted road to Little Beston.  He
+had had two interviews in London, one of which under ordinary
+circumstances would have filled him with joy: He had seen T. X.
+and "T. X." was T. X. Meredith, who would one day be Chief of the
+Criminal Investigation Department and was now an Assistant
+Commissioner of Police, engaged in the more delicate work of that
+department.
+
+In his erratic, tempestuous way, T. X. had suggested the greatest
+idea for a plot that any author could desire.  But it was not of
+T. X. that John Lexman thought as he breasted the hill, on the
+slope of which was the tiny habitation known by the somewhat
+magnificent title of Beston Priory.
+
+It was the interview he had had with the Greek on the previous day
+which filled his mind, and he frowned as he recalled it.  He
+opened the little wicket gate and went through the plantation to
+the house, doing his best to shake off the recollection of the
+remarkable and unedifying discussion he had had with the
+moneylender.
+
+Beston Priory was little more than a cottage, though one of its
+walls was an indubitable relic of that establishment which a pious
+Howard had erected in the thirteenth century.  A small and
+unpretentious building, built in the Elizabethan style with quaint
+gables and high chimneys, its latticed windows and sunken gardens,
+its rosary and its tiny meadow, gave it a certain manorial
+completeness which was a source of great pride to its owner.
+
+He passed under the thatched porch, and stood for a moment in the
+broad hallway as he stripped his drenching mackintosh.
+
+The hall was in darkness.  Grace would probably be changing for
+dinner, and he decided that in his present mood he would not
+disturb her.  He passed through the long passage which led to the
+big study at the back of the house.  A fire burnt redly in the
+old-fashioned grate and the snug comfort of the room brought a
+sense of ease and relief.  He changed his shoes, and lit the
+table lamp.
+
+The room was obviously a man's den.  The leather-covered chairs,
+the big and well-filled bookcase which covered one wall of the
+room, the huge, solid-oak writing-desk, covered with books and
+half-finished manuscripts, spoke unmistakably of its owner's
+occupation.
+
+After he had changed his shoes, he refilled his pipe, walked over
+to the fire, and stood looking down into its glowing heart.
+
+He was a man a little above medium height, slimly built, with a
+breadth of shoulder which was suggestive of the athlete.  He had
+indeed rowed 4 in his boat, and had fought his way into the
+semi-finals of the amateur boxing championship of England.  His
+face was strong, lean, yet well-moulded.  His eyes were grey and
+deep, his eyebrows straight and a little forbidding.  The
+clean-shaven mouth was big and generous, and the healthy tan of
+his cheek told of a life lived in the open air.
+
+There was nothing of the recluse or the student in his appearance.
+He was in fact a typical, healthy-looking Britisher, very much
+like any other man of his class whom one would meet in the
+mess-room of the British army, in the wardrooms of the fleet, or
+in the far-off posts of the Empire, where the administrative cogs
+of the great machine are to be seen at work.
+
+There was a little tap at the door, and before he could say "Come
+in" it was pushed open and Grace Lexman entered.
+
+If you described her as brave and sweet you might secure from that
+brief description both her manner and her charm.  He half crossed
+the room to meet her, and kissed her tenderly.
+
+"I didn't know you were back until - " she said; linking her arm
+in his.
+
+"Until you saw the horrible mess my mackintosh has made," he
+smiled.  "I know your methods, Watson!"
+
+She laughed, but became serious again.
+
+"I am very glad you've come back.  We have a visitor," she said.
+
+He raised his eyebrows.
+
+"A visitor?  Whoever came down on a day like this?"
+
+She looked at him a little strangely.
+
+"Mr. Kara," she said.
+
+"Kara?  How long has he been here?"
+
+"He came at four."
+
+There was nothing enthusiastic in her tone.
+
+"I can't understand why you don't like old Kara," rallied her
+husband.
+
+"There are very many reasons," she replied, a little curtly for
+her.
+
+"Anyway," said John Lexman, after a moment's thought, "his arrival
+is rather opportune.  Where is he?"
+
+"He is in the drawing-room."
+
+The Priory drawing-room was a low-ceilinged, rambling apartment,
+"all old print and chrysanthemums," to use Lexman's description.
+Cosy armchairs, a grand piano, an almost medieval open grate,
+faced with dull-green tiles, a well-worn but cheerful carpet and
+two big silver candelabras were the principal features which
+attracted the newcomer.
+
+There was in this room a harmony, a quiet order and a soothing
+quality which made it a haven of rest to a literary man with
+jagged nerves.  Two big bronze bowls were filled with early
+violets, another blazed like a pale sun with primroses, and the
+early woodland flowers filled the room with a faint fragrance.
+
+A man rose to his feet, as John Lexman entered and crossed the
+room with an easy carriage.  He was a man possessed of singular
+beauty of face and of figure.  Half a head taller than the author,
+he carried himself with such a grace as to conceal his height.
+
+"I missed you in town," he said, "so I thought I'd run down on the
+off chance of seeing you."
+
+He spoke in the well-modulated tone of one who had had a long
+acquaintance with the public schools and universities of England.
+There was no trace of any foreign accent, yet Remington Kara was a
+Greek and had been born and partly educated in the more turbulent
+area of Albania.
+
+The two men shook hands warmly.
+
+"You'll stay to dinner?"
+
+Kara glanced round with a smile at Grace Lexman.  She sat
+uncomfortably upright, her hands loosely folded on her lap, her
+face devoid of encouragement.
+
+"If Mrs. Lexman doesn't object," said the Greek.
+
+"I should be pleased, if you would," she said, almost
+mechanically; "it is a horrid night and you won't get anything
+worth eating this side of London and I doubt very much," she
+smiled a little, "if the meal I can give you will be worthy of
+that description."
+
+"What you can give me will be more than sufficient," he said, with
+a little bow, and turned to her husband.
+
+In a few minutes they were deep in a discussion of books and
+places, and Grace seized the opportunity to make her escape.  From
+books in general to Lexman's books in particular the conversation
+flowed.
+
+"I've read every one of them, you know," said Kara.
+
+John made a little face.  "Poor devil," he said sardonically.
+
+"On the contrary," said Kara, "I am not to be pitied.  There is a
+great criminal lost in you, Lexman."
+
+"Thank you," said John.
+
+"I am not being uncomplimentary, am I?" smiled the Greek.  "I am
+merely referring to the ingenuity of your plots.  Sometimes your
+books baffle and annoy me.  If I cannot see the solution of your
+mysteries before the book is half through, it angers me a little.
+Of course in the majority of cases I know the solution before I
+have reached the fifth chapter."
+
+John looked at him in surprise and was somewhat piqued.
+
+"I flatter myself it is impossible to tell how my stories will end
+until the last chapter," he said.
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+"That would be so in the case of the average reader, but you
+forget that I am a student.  I follow every little thread of the
+clue which you leave exposed."
+
+"You should meet T. X.," said John, with a laugh, as he rose from
+his chair to poke the fire.
+
+"T. X.?"
+
+"T. X. Meredith.  He is the most ingenious beggar you could meet.
+We were at Caius together, and he is by way of being a great pal
+of mine.  He is in the Criminal Investigation Department."
+
+Kara nodded.  There was the light of interest in his eyes and he
+would have pursued the discussion further, but at the moment
+dinner was announced.
+
+It was not a particularly cheerful meal because Grace did not as
+usual join in the conversation, and it was left to Kara and to her
+husband to supply the deficiencies.  She was experiencing a
+curious sense of depression, a premonition of evil which she could
+not define.  Again and again in the course of the dinner she took
+her mind back to the events of the day to discover the reason for
+her unease.
+
+Usually when she adopted this method she came upon the trivial
+causes in which apprehension was born, but now she was puzzled to
+find that a solution was denied her.  Her letters of the morning
+had been pleasant, neither the house nor the servants had given
+her any trouble.  She was well herself, and though she knew John
+had a little money trouble, since his unfortunate speculation in
+Roumanian gold shares, and she half suspected that he had had to
+borrow money to make good his losses, yet his prospects were so
+excellent and the success of his last book so promising that she,
+probably seeing with a clearer vision the unimportance of those
+money worries, was less concerned about the problem than he.
+
+"You will have your coffee in the study, I suppose," said Grace,
+"and I know you'll excuse me; I have to see Mrs. Chandler on the
+mundane subject of laundry."
+
+She favoured Kara with a little nod as she left the room and
+touched John's shoulder lightly with her hand in passing.
+
+Kara's eyes followed her graceful figure until she was out of
+view, then:
+
+"I want to see you, Kara," said John Lexman, "if you will give me
+five minutes."
+
+"You can have five hours, if you like," said the other, easily.
+
+They went into the study together; the maid brought the coffee and
+liqueur, and placed them on a little table near the fire and
+disappeared.
+
+For a time the conversation was general.  Kara, who was a frank
+admirer of the comfort of the room and who lamented his own
+inability to secure with money the cosiness which John had
+obtained at little cost, went on a foraging expedition whilst his
+host applied himself to a proof which needed correcting.
+
+"I suppose it is impossible for you to have electric light here,"
+Kara asked.
+
+"Quite," replied the other.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I rather like the light of this lamp."
+
+"It isn't the lamp," drawled the Greek and made a little grimace;
+"I hate these candles."
+
+He waved his hand to the mantle-shelf where the six tall, white,
+waxen candles stood out from two wall sconces.
+
+"Why on earth do you hate candles?" asked the other in surprise.
+
+Kara made no reply for the moment, but shrugged his shoulders.
+Presently he spoke.
+
+"If you were ever tied down to a chair and by the side of that
+chair was a small keg of black powder and stuck in that powder was
+a small candle that burnt lower and lower every minute - my God!"
+
+John was amazed to see the perspiration stand upon the forehead of
+his guest.
+
+"That sounds thrilling," he said.
+
+The Greek wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief and his hand
+shook a little.
+
+"It was something more than thrilling," he said.
+
+"And when did this occur?" asked the author curiously.
+
+"In Albania," replied the other; "it was many years ago, but the
+devils are always sending me reminders of the fact."
+
+He did not attempt to explain who the devils were or under what
+circumstances he was brought to this unhappy pass, but changed the
+subject definitely.
+
+Sauntering round the cosy room he followed the bookshelf which
+filled one wall and stopped now and again to examine some title.
+Presently he drew forth a stout volume.
+
+"'Wild Brazil'," he read, "by George Gathercole - do you know
+Gathercole?"
+
+John was filling his pipe from a big blue jar on his desk and
+nodded.
+
+"Met him once - a taciturn devil.  Very short of speech and, like
+all men who have seen and done things, less inclined to talk about
+himself than any man I know."
+
+Kara looked at the book with a thoughtful pucker of brow and
+turned the leaves idly.
+
+"I've never seen him," he said as he replaced the book, "yet, in a
+sense, his new journey is on my behalf."
+
+The other man looked up.
+
+"On your behalf?"
+
+"Yes - you know he has gone to Patagonia for me.  He believes
+there is gold there - you will learn as much from his book on the
+mountain systems of South America.  I was interested in his
+theories and corresponded with him.  As a result of that
+correspondence he undertook to make a geological survey for me.  I
+sent him money for his expenses, and he went off."
+
+"You never saw him?" asked John Lexman, surprised.
+
+Kara shook his head.
+
+"That was not - ?" began his host.
+
+"Not like me, you were going to say.  Frankly, it was not, but
+then I realized that he was an unusual kind of man.  I invited him
+to dine with me before he left London, and in reply received a
+wire from Southampton intimating that he was already on his way."
+
+Lexman nodded.
+
+"It must be an awfully interesting kind of life," he said.  "I
+suppose he will be away for quite a long time?"
+
+"Three years," said Kara, continuing his examination of the
+bookshelf.
+
+"I envy those fellows who run round the world writing books," said
+John, puffing reflectively at his pipe.  "They have all the best
+of it."
+
+Kara turned.  He stood immediately behind the author and the other
+could not see his face.  There was, however, in his voice an
+unusual earnestness and an unusual quiet vehemence.
+
+"What have you to complain about!" he asked, with that little
+drawl of his.  "You have your own creative work - the most
+fascinating branch of labour that comes to a man.  He, poor
+beggar, is bound to actualities.  You have the full range of all
+the worlds which your imagination gives to you.  You can create
+men and destroy them, call into existence fascinating problems,
+mystify and baffle ten or twenty thousand people, and then, at a
+word, elucidate your mystery."
+
+John laughed.
+
+"There is something in that," he said.
+
+"As for the rest of your life," Kara went on in a lower voice, "I
+think you have that which makes life worth living - an
+incomparable wife."
+
+Lexman swung round in his chair, and met the other's gaze, and
+there was something in the set of the other's handsome face which
+took his breath away.
+
+"I do not see - " he began.
+
+Kara smiled.
+
+"That was an impertinence, wasn't it!" he said, banteringly.  "But
+then you mustn't forget, my dear man, that I was very anxious to
+marry your wife.  I don't suppose it is secret.  And when I lost
+her, I had ideas about you which are not pleasant to recall."
+
+He had recovered his self-possession and had continued his aimless
+stroll about the room.
+
+"You must remember I am a Greek, and the modern Greek is no
+philosopher.  You must remember, too, that I am a petted child of
+fortune, and have had everything I wanted since I was a baby."
+
+"You are a fortunate devil," said the other, turning back to his
+desk, and taking up his pen.
+
+For a moment Kara did not speak, then he made as though he would
+say something, checked himself, and laughed.
+
+"I wonder if I am," he said.
+
+And now he spoke with a sudden energy.
+
+"What is this trouble you are having with Vassalaro?"
+
+John rose from his chair and walked over to the fire, stood gazing
+down into its depths, his legs wide apart, his hands clasped
+behind him, and Kara took his attitude to supply an answer to the
+question.
+
+"I warned you against Vassalaro," he said, stooping by the other's
+side to light his cigar with a spill of paper.  "My dear Lexman,
+my fellow countrymen are unpleasant people to deal with in certain
+moods."
+
+"He was so obliging at first," said Lexman, half to himself.
+
+"And now he is so disobliging," drawled Kara.  "That is a way
+which moneylenders have, my dear man; you were very foolish to go
+to him at all.  I could have lent you the money."
+
+"There were reasons why I should not borrow money from you,", said
+John, quietly, "and I think you yourself have supplied the
+principal reason when you told me just now, what I already knew,
+that you wanted to marry Grace."
+
+"How much is the amount?" asked Kara, examining his well-manicured
+finger-nails.
+
+"Two thousand five hundred pounds," replied John, with a short
+laugh, "and I haven't two thousand five hundred shillings at this
+moment."
+
+"Will he wait?"
+
+John Lexman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Look here, Kara," he said, suddenly, "don't think I want to
+reproach you, but it was through you that I met Vassalaro so that
+you know the kind of man he is."
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+"Well, I can tell you he has been very unpleasant indeed," said
+John, with a frown, "I had an interview with him yesterday in
+London and it is clear that he is going to make a lot of trouble.
+I depended upon the success of my play in town giving me enough to
+pay him off, and I very foolishly made a lot of promises of
+repayment which I have been unable to keep."
+
+"I see," said Kara, and then, "does Mrs. Lexman know about this
+matter?"
+
+"A little," said the other.
+
+He paced restlessly up and down the room, his hands behind him and
+his chin upon his chest.
+
+"Naturally I have not told her the worst, or how beastly
+unpleasant the man has been."
+
+He stopped and turned.
+
+"Do you know he threatened to kill me?" he asked.
+
+Kara smiled.
+
+"I can tell you it was no laughing matter," said the other,
+angrily, "I nearly took the little whippersnapper by the scruff of
+the neck and kicked him."
+
+Kara dropped his hand on the other's arm.
+
+"I am not laughing at you," he said; "I am laughing at the thought
+of Vassalaro threatening to kill anybody.  He is the biggest
+coward in the world.  What on earth induced him to take this
+drastic step?"
+
+"He said he is being hard pushed for money," said the other,
+moodily, "and it is possibly true.  He was beside himself with
+anger and anxiety, otherwise I might have given the little
+blackguard the thrashing he deserved."
+
+Kara who had continued his stroll came down the room and halted in
+front of the fireplace looking at the young author with a paternal
+smile.
+
+"You don't understand Vassalaro," he said; "I repeat he is the
+greatest coward in the world.  You will probably discover he is
+full of firearms and threats of slaughter, but you have only to
+click a revolver to see him collapse.  Have you a revolver, by the
+way?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense," said the other, roughly, "I cannot engage myself
+in that kind of melodrama."
+
+"It is not nonsense," insisted the other, "when you are in Rome,
+et cetera, and when you have to deal with a low-class Greek you
+must use methods which will at least impress him.  If you thrash
+him, he will never forgive you and will probably stick a knife
+into you or your wife.  If you meet his melodrama with melodrama
+and at the psychological moment produce your revolver; you will
+secure the effect you require.  Have you a revolver?"
+
+John went to his desk and, pulling open a drawer, took out a small
+Browning.
+
+"That is the extent of my armory," he said, "it has never been
+fired and was sent to me by an unknown admirer last Christmas."
+
+"A curious Christmas present," said the other, examining the
+weapon.
+
+"I suppose the mistaken donor imagined from my books that I lived
+in a veritable museum of revolvers, sword sticks and noxious
+drugs," said Lexman, recovering some of his good humour; "it was
+accompanied by a card."
+
+"Do you know how it works?" asked the other.
+
+"I have never troubled very much about it," replied Lexman, "I
+know that it is loaded by slipping back the cover, but as my
+admirer did not send ammunition, I never even practised with it."
+
+There was a knock at the door.
+
+"That is the post," explained John.
+
+The maid had one letter on the salver and the author took it up
+with a frown.
+
+"From Vassalaro," he said, when the girl had left the room.
+
+The Greek took the letter in his hand and examined it.
+
+"He writes a vile fist," was his only comment as he handed it back
+to John.
+
+He slit open the thin, buff envelope and took out half a dozen
+sheets of yellow paper, only a single sheet of which was written
+upon.  The letter was brief:
+
+  "I must see you to-night without fail," ran the scrawl; "meet me
+   at the crossroads between Beston Tracey and the Eastbourne
+Road.  I shall be there at eleven o'clock, and, if you want to
+preserve your life, you had better bring me a substantial
+instalment."
+
+It was signed "Vassalaro."
+
+John read the letter aloud.  "He must be mad to write a letter
+like that," he said; "I'll meet the little devil and teach him
+such a lesson in politeness as he is never likely to forget."
+
+He handed the letter to the other and Kara read it in silence.
+
+"Better take your revolver," he said as he handed it back.
+
+John Lexman looked at his watch.
+
+"I have an hour yet, but it will take me the best part of twenty
+minutes to reach the Eastbourne Road."
+
+"Will you see him?" asked Kara, in a tone of surprise.
+
+"Certainly," Lexman replied emphatically: "I cannot have him
+coming up to the house and making a scene and that is certainly
+what the little beast will do."
+
+"Will you pay him?" asked Kara softly.
+
+John made no answer.  There was probably 10 pounds in the house
+and a cheque which was due on the morrow would bring him another
+30 pounds.  He looked at the letter again.  It was written on
+paper of an unusual texture.  The surface was rough almost like
+blotting paper and in some places the ink absorbed by the porous
+surface had run.  The blank sheets had evidently been inserted by
+a man in so violent a hurry that he had not noticed the
+extravagance.
+
+"I shall keep this letter," said John.
+
+"I think you are well advised.  Vassalaro probably does not know
+that he transgresses a law in writing threatening letters and that
+should be a very strong weapon in your hand in certain
+eventualities."
+
+There was a tiny safe in one corner of the study and this John
+opened with a key which he took from his pocket.  He pulled open
+one of the steel drawers, took out the papers which were in it and
+put in their place the letter, pushed the drawer to, and locked
+it.
+
+All the time Kara was watching him intently as one who found more
+than an ordinary amount of interest in the novelty of the
+procedure.
+
+He took his leave soon afterwards.
+
+"I would like to come with you to your interesting meeting," he
+said, "but unfortunately I have business elsewhere.  Let me enjoin
+you to take your revolver and at the first sign of any
+bloodthirsty intention on the part of my admirable compatriot,
+produce it and click it once or twice, you won't have to do more."
+
+Grace rose from the piano as Kara entered the little drawing-room
+and murmured a few conventional expressions of regret that the
+visitor's stay had been so short.  That there was no sincerity in
+that regret Kara, for one, had no doubt.  He was a man singularly
+free from illusions.
+
+They stayed talking a little while.
+
+"I will see if your chauffeur is asleep," said John, and went out
+of the room.
+
+There was a little silence after he had gone.
+
+"I don't think you are very glad to see me," said Kara.  His
+frankness was a little embarrassing to the girl and she flushed
+slightly.
+
+"I am always glad to see you, Mr. Kara, or any other of my
+husband's friends," she said steadily.
+
+He inclined his head.
+
+"To be a friend of your husband is something," he said, and then
+as if remembering something, "I wanted to take a book away with me
+- I wonder if your husband would mind my getting it?"
+
+"I will find it for you."
+
+"Don't let me bother you," he protested, "I know my way."
+
+Without waiting for her permission he left the girl with the
+unpleasant feeling that he was taking rather much for granted.  He
+was gone less than a minute and returned with a book under his
+arm.
+
+"I have not asked Lexman's permission to take it," he said, "but I
+am rather interested in the author.  Oh, here you are," he turned
+to John who came in at that moment.  "Might I take this book on
+Mexico?" he asked.  "I will return it in the morning."
+
+They stood at the door, watching the tail light of the motor
+disappear down the drive; and returned in silence to the drawing
+room.
+
+"You look worried, dear," she said, laying her hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+He smiled faintly.
+
+"Is it the money?" she asked anxiously.
+
+For a moment he was tempted to tell her of the letter.  He stifled
+the temptation realizing that she would not consent to his going
+out if she knew the truth.
+
+"It is nothing very much," he said.  "I have to go down to Beston
+Tracey to meet the last train.  I am expecting some proofs down."
+
+He hated lying to her, and even an innocuous lie of this character
+was repugnant to him.
+
+"I'm afraid you have had a dull evening," he said, "Kara was not
+very amusing."
+
+She looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"He has not changed very much," she said slowly.
+
+"He's a wonderfully handsome chap, isn't he?" he asked in a tone
+of admiration.  "I can't understand what you ever saw in a fellow
+like me, when you had a man who was not only rich, but possibly
+the best-looking man in the world."
+
+She shivered a little.
+
+"I have seen a side of Mr. Kara that is not particularly
+beautiful," she said.  "Oh, John, I am afraid of that man!"
+
+He looked at her in astonishment.
+
+"Afraid?" he asked.  "Good heavens, Grace, what a thing to say!
+Why I believe he'd do anything for you."
+
+"That is exactly what I am afraid of," she said in a low voice.
+
+She had a reason which she did not reveal.  She had first met
+Remington Kara in Salonika two years before.  She had been doing a
+tour through the Balkans with her father - it was the last tour
+the famous archeologist made - and had met the man who was fated
+to have such an influence upon her life at a dinner given by the
+American Consul.
+
+Many were the stories which were told about this Greek with his
+Jove-like face, his handsome carriage and his limitless wealth.
+It was said that his mother was an American lady who had been
+captured by Albanian brigands and was sold to one of the Albanian
+chiefs who fell in love with her, and for her sake became a
+Protestant.  He had been educated at Yale and at Oxford, and was
+known to be the possessor of vast wealth, and was virtually king
+of a hill district forty miles out of Durazzo.  Here he reigned
+supreme, occupying a beautiful house which he had built by an
+Italian architect, and the fittings and appointments of which had
+been imported from the luxurious centres of the world.
+
+In Albania they called him "Kara Rumo," which meant "The Black
+Roman," for no particular reason so far as any one could judge,
+for his skin was as fair as a Saxon's, and his close-cropped curls
+were almost golden.
+
+He had fallen in love with Grace Terrell.  At first his attentions
+had amused her, and then there came a time when they frightened
+her, for the man's fire and passion had been unmistakable.  She
+had made it plain to him that he could base no hopes upon her
+returning his love, and, in a scene which she even now shuddered
+to recall, he had revealed something of his wild and reckless
+nature.  On the following day she did not see him, but two days
+later, when returning through the Bazaar from a dance which had
+been given by the Governor General, her carriage was stopped, she
+was forcibly dragged from its interior, and her cries were stifled
+with a cloth impregnated with a scent of a peculiar aromatic
+sweetness.  Her assailants were about to thrust her into another
+carriage, when a party of British bluejackets who had been on
+leave came upon the scene, and, without knowing anything of the
+nationality of the girl, had rescued her.
+
+In her heart of hearts she did not doubt Kara's complicity in this
+medieval attempt to gain a wife, but of this adventure she had
+told her husband nothing.  Until her marriage she was constantly
+receiving valuable presents which she as constantly returned to
+the only address she knew - Kara's estate at Lemazo.  A few months
+after her marriage she had learned through the newspapers that
+this "leader of Greek society" had purchased a big house near
+Cadogan Square, and then, to her amazement and to her dismay, Kara
+had scraped an acquaintance with her husband even before the
+honeymoon was over.
+
+His visits had been happily few, but the growing intimacy between
+John and this strange undisciplined man had been a source of
+constant distress to her.
+
+Should she, at this, the eleventh hour, tell her husband all her
+fears and her suspicions?
+
+She debated the point for some time.  And never was she nearer
+taking him into her complete confidence than she was as he sat in
+the big armchair by the side of the piano, a little drawn of face,
+more than a little absorbed in his own meditations.  Had he been
+less worried she might have spoken.  As it was, she turned the
+conversation to his last work, the big mystery story which, if it
+would not make his fortune, would mean a considerable increase to
+his income.
+
+At a quarter to eleven he looked at his watch, and rose.  She
+helped him on with his coat.  He stood for some time irresolutely.
+
+"Is there anything you have forgotten?" she asked.
+
+He asked himself whether he should follow Kara's advice.  In any
+circumstance it was not a pleasant thing to meet a ferocious
+little man who had threatened his life, and to meet him unarmed
+was tempting Providence.  The whole thing was of course
+ridiculous, but it was ridiculous that he should have borrowed,
+and it was ridiculous that the borrowing should have been
+necessary, and yet he had speculated on the best of advice - it
+was Kara's advice.
+
+The connection suddenly occurred to him, and yet Kara had not
+directly suggested that he should buy Roumanian gold shares, but
+had merely spoken glowingly of their prospects.  He thought a
+moment, and then walked back slowly into the study, pulled open
+the drawer of his desk, took out the sinister little Browning, and
+slipped it into his pocket.
+
+"I shan't be long, dear," he said, and kissing the girl he strode
+out into the darkness.
+
+
+Kara sat back in the luxurious depths of his car, humming a little
+tune, as the driver picked his way cautiously over the uncertain
+road.  The rain was still falling, and Kara had to rub the windows
+free of the mist which had gathered on them to discover where he
+was.  From time to time he looked out as though he expected to see
+somebody, and then with a little smile he remembered that he had
+changed his original plan, and that he had fixed the waiting room
+of Lewes junction as his rendezvous.
+
+Here it was that he found a little man muffled up to the ears in a
+big top coat, standing before the dying fire.  He started as Kara
+entered and at a signal followed him from the room.
+
+The stranger was obviously not English.  His face was sallow and
+peaked, his cheeks were hollow, and the beard he wore was
+irregular-almost unkempt.
+
+Kara led the way to the end of the dark platform, before he spoke.
+
+"You have carried out my instructions?" he asked brusquely.
+
+The language he spoke was Arabic, and the other answered him in
+that language.
+
+"Everything that you have ordered has been done, Effendi," he said
+humbly.
+
+"You have a revolver?"
+
+The man nodded and patted his pocket.
+
+"Loaded?"
+
+"Excellency," asked the other, in surprise, "what is the use of a
+revolver, if it is not loaded?"
+
+"You understand, you are not to shoot this man," said Kara.  "You
+are merely to present the pistol.  To make sure, you had better
+unload it now."
+
+Wonderingly the man obeyed, and clicked back the ejector.
+
+"I will take the cartridges," said Kara, holding out his hand.
+
+He slipped the little cylinders into his pocket, and after
+examining the weapon returned it to its owner.
+
+"You will threaten him," he went on.  "Present the revolver
+straight at his heart.  You need do nothing else."
+
+The man shuffled uneasily.
+
+"I will do as you say, Effendi," he said.  "But - "
+
+"There are no 'buts,' " replied the other harshly.  "You are to
+carry out my instructions without any question.  What will happen
+then you shall see.  I shall be at hand.  That I have a reason for
+this play be assured."
+
+"But suppose he shoots?" persisted the other uneasily.
+
+"He will not shoot," said Kara easily.  "Besides, his revolver is
+not loaded.  Now you may go.  You have a long walk before you.
+You know the way?"
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"I have been over it before," he said confidently.
+
+Kara returned to the big limousine which had drawn up some
+distance from the station.  He spoke a word or two to the
+chauffeur in Greek, and the man touched his hat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Assistant Commissioner of Police T. X. Meredith did not occupy
+offices in New Scotland Yard.  It is the peculiarity of public
+offices that they are planned with the idea of supplying the
+margin of space above all requirements and that on their
+completion they are found wholly inadequate to house the various
+departments which mysteriously come into progress coincident with
+the building operations.
+
+"T. X.," as he was known by the police forces of the world, had a
+big suite of offices in Whitehall.  The house was an old one
+facing the Board of Trade and the inscription on the ancient door
+told passers-by that this was the "Public Prosecutor, Special
+Branch."
+
+The duties of T. X. were multifarious.  People said of him - and
+like most public gossip, this was probably untrue - that he was
+the head of the "illegal" department of Scotland Yard.  If by
+chance you lost the keys of your safe, T. X. could supply you (so
+popular rumour ran) with a burglar who would open that safe in
+half an hour.
+
+If there dwelt in England a notorious individual against whom the
+police could collect no scintilla of evidence to justify a
+prosecution, and if it was necessary for the good of the community
+that that person should be deported, it was T. X. who arrested the
+obnoxious person, hustled him into a cab and did not loose his
+hold upon his victim until he had landed him on the indignant
+shores of an otherwise friendly power.
+
+It is very certain that when the minister of a tiny power which
+shall be nameless was suddenly recalled by his government and
+brought to trial in his native land for putting into circulation
+spurious bonds, it was somebody from the department which T. X.
+controlled, who burgled His Excellency's house, burnt the locks
+from his safe and secured the necessary incriminating evidence.
+
+I say it is fairly certain and here I am merely voicing the
+opinion of very knowledgeable people indeed, heads of public
+departments who speak behind their hands, mysterious
+under-secretaries of state who discuss things in whispers in the
+remote corners of their clubrooms and the more frank views of
+American correspondents who had no hesitation in putting those
+views into print for the benefit of their readers.
+
+That T. X. had a more legitimate occupation we know, for it was
+that flippant man whose outrageous comment on the Home Office
+Administration is popularly supposed to have sent one Home
+Secretary to his grave, who traced the Deptford murderers through
+a labyrinth of perjury and who brought to book Sir Julius Waglite
+though he had covered his trail of defalcation through the balance
+sheets of thirty-four companies.
+
+On the night of March 3rd, T. X. sat in his inner office
+interviewing a disconsolate inspector of metropolitan police,
+named Mansus.
+
+In appearance T. X. conveyed the impression of extreme youth, for
+his face was almost boyish and it was only when you looked at him
+closely and saw the little creases about his eyes, the setting of
+his straight mouth, that you guessed he was on the way to forty.
+In his early days he had been something of a poet, and had written
+a slight volume of "Woodland Lyrics," the mention of which at this
+later stage was sufficient to make him feel violently unhappy.
+
+In manner he was tactful but persistent, his language was at times
+marked by a violent extravagance and he had had the distinction of
+having provoked, by certain correspondence which had seen the
+light, the comment of a former Home Secretary that "it was
+unfortunate that Mr. Meredith did not take his position with the
+seriousness which was expected from a public official."
+
+His language was, as I say, under great provocation, violent and
+unusual.  He had a trick of using words which never were on land
+or sea, and illustrating his instruction or his admonition with
+the quaintest phraseology.
+
+Now he was tilted back in his office chair at an alarming angle,
+scowling at his distressed subordinate who sat on the edge of a
+chair at the other side of his desk.
+
+"But, T. X.," protested the Inspector, "there was nothing to be
+found."
+
+It was the outrageous practice of Mr. Meredith to insist upon his
+associates calling him by his initials, a practice which had earnt
+disapproval in the highest quarters.
+
+"Nothing is to be found!" he repeated wrathfully.  "Curious Mike!"
+
+He sat up with a suddenness which caused the police officer to
+start back in alarm.
+
+"Listen," said T. X., grasping an ivory paperknife savagely in his
+hand and tapping his blotting-pad to emphasize his words, "you're
+a pie!"
+
+"I'm a policeman," said the other patiently.
+
+"A policeman!" exclaimed the exasperated T. X. "You're worse than
+a pie, you're a slud!  I'm afraid I shall never make a detective
+of you," he shook his head sorrowfully at the smiling Mansus who
+had been in the police force when T. X. was a small boy at school,
+"you are neither Wise nor Wily; you combine the innocence of a
+Baby with the grubbiness of a County Parson - you ought to be in
+the choir."
+
+At this outrageous insult Mr. Mansus was silent; what he might
+have said, or what further provocation he might have received may
+be never known, for at that moment, the Chief himself walked in.
+
+The Chief of the Police in these days was a grey man, rather
+tired, with a hawk nose and deep eyes that glared under shaggy
+eyebrows and he was a terror to all men of his department save to
+T. X. who respected nothing on earth and very little elsewhere.
+He nodded curtly to Mansus.
+
+"Well, T. X.," he said, "what have you discovered about our friend
+Kara?"
+
+He turned from T. X. to the discomforted inspector.
+
+"Very little," said T. X. "I've had Mansus on the job."
+
+"And you've found nothing, eh?" growled the Chief.
+
+"He has found all that it is possible to find," said T. X. "We do
+not perform miracles in this department, Sir George, nor can we
+pick up the threads of a case at five minutes' notice."
+
+Sir George Haley grunted.
+
+"Mansus has done his best," the other went on easily, "but it is
+rather absurd to talk about one's best when you know so little of
+what you want."
+
+Sir George dropped heavily into the arm-chair, and stretched out
+his long thin legs.
+
+"What I want," he said, looking up at the ceiling and putting his
+hands together, "is to discover something about one Remington
+Kara, a wealthy Greek who has taken a house in Cadogan Square, who
+has no particular position in London society and therefore has no
+reason for coming here, who openly expresses his detestation of
+the climate, who has a magnificent estate in some wild place in
+the Balkans, who is an excellent horseman, a magnificent shot and
+a passable aviator."
+
+T. X. nodded to Mansus and with something of gratitude in his eyes
+the inspector took his leave.
+
+"Now Mansus has departed," said T. X., sitting himself on the edge
+of his desk and selecting with great care a cigarette from the
+case he took from his pocket, "let me know something of the reason
+for this sudden interest in the great ones of the earth."
+
+Sir George smiled grimly.
+
+"I have the interest which is the interest of my department," he
+said.  "That is to say I want to know a great deal about abnormal
+people.  We have had an application from him," he went on, "which
+is rather unusual.  Apparently he is in fear of his life from some
+cause or other and wants to know if he can have a private
+telephone connection between his house and the central office.  We
+told him that he could always get the nearest Police Station on
+the 'phone, but that doesn't satisfy him.  He has made bad friends
+with some gentleman of his own country who sooner or later, he
+thinks, will cut his throat."
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"All this I know," he said patiently, "if you will further unfold
+the secret dossier, Sir George, I am prepared to be thrilled."
+
+"There is nothing thrilling about it," growled the older man,
+rising, "but I remember the Macedonian shooting case in South
+London and I don't want a repetition of that sort of thing.  If
+people want to have blood feuds, let them take them outside the
+metropolitan area."
+
+"By all means," said T. X., "let them.  Personally, I don't care
+where they go.  But if that is the extent of your information I
+can supplement it.  He has had extensive alterations made to the
+house he bought in Cadogan Square; the room in which he lives is
+practically a safe."
+
+Sir George raised his eyebrows.
+
+"A safe," he repeated.
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"A safe," he said; "its walls are burglar proof, floor and roof
+are reinforced concrete, there is one door which in addition to
+its ordinary lock is closed by a sort of steel latch which he lets
+fall when he retires for the night and which he opens himself
+personally in the morning.  The window is unreachable, there are
+no communicating doors, and altogether the room is planned to
+stand a siege."
+
+The Chief Commissioner was interested.
+
+"Any more?" he asked.
+
+"Let me think," said T. X., looking up at the ceiling.  "Yes, the
+interior of his room is plainly furnished, there is a big
+fireplace, rather an ornate bed, a steel safe built into the wall
+and visible from its outer side to the policeman whose beat is in
+that neighborhood."
+
+"How do you know all this?" asked the Chief Commissioner.
+
+"Because I've been in the room," said T. X. simply, "having by an
+underhand trick succeeded in gaining the misplaced confidence of
+Kara's housekeeper, who by the way" - he turned round to his desk
+and scribbled a name on the blotting-pad - "will be discharged
+to-morrow and must be found a place."
+
+"Is there any -er -?" began the Chief.
+
+"Funny business?" interrupted T. X., "not a bit.  House and man
+are quite normal save for these eccentricities.  He has announced
+his intention of spending three months of the year in England and
+nine months abroad.  He is very rich, has no relations, and has a
+passion for power."
+
+"Then he'll be hung," said the Chief, rising.
+
+"I doubt it," said the other, "people with lots of money seldom
+get hung.  You only get hung for wanting money."
+
+"Then you're in some danger, T. X.," smiled the Chief, "for
+according to my account you're always more or less broke."
+
+"A genial libel," said T. X., "but talking about people being
+broke, I saw John Lexman to-day - you know him!"
+
+The Chief Commissioner nodded.
+
+"I've an idea he's rather hit for money.  He was in that Roumanian
+gold swindle, and by his general gloom, which only comes to a man
+when he's in love (and he can't possibly be in love since he's
+married) or when he's in debt, I fear that he is still feeling the
+effect of that rosy adventure."
+
+A telephone bell in the corner of the room rang sharply, and T. X.
+picked up the receiver.  He listened intently.
+
+"A trunk call," he said over his shoulder to the departing
+commissioner, "it may be something interesting."
+
+A little pause; then a hoarse voice spoke to him.  "Is that you,
+T. X.?"
+
+"That's me," said the Assistant Commissioner, commonly.
+
+"It's John Lexman speaking."
+
+"I shouldn't have recognized your voice," said T. X., "what is
+wrong with you, John, can't you get your plot to went?"
+
+"I want you to come down here at once," said the voice urgently,
+and even over the telephone T. X. recognized the distress.  "I
+have shot a man, killed him!"
+
+T. X. gasped.
+
+"Good Lord," he said, "you are a silly ass!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+In the early hours of the morning a tragic little party was
+assembled in the study at Beston Priory.  John Lexman, white and
+haggard, sat on the sofa with his wife by his side.  Immediate
+authority as represented by a village constable was on duty in the
+passage outside, whilst T. X. sitting at the table with a writing
+pad and a pencil was briefly noting the evidence.
+
+The author had sketched the events of the day.  He had described
+his interview with the money-lender the day before and the arrival
+of the letter.
+
+"You have the letter!" asked T. X.
+
+John Lexman nodded.
+
+"I am glad of that," said the other with a sigh of relief, "that
+will save you from a great deal of unpleasantness, my poor old
+chap.  Tell me what happened afterward."
+
+"I reached the village," said John Lexman, "and passed through it.
+There was nobody about, the rain was still falling very heavily
+and indeed I didn't meet a single soul all the evening.  I reached
+the place appointed about five minutes before time.  It was the
+corner of Eastbourne Road on the station side and there I found
+Vassalaro waiting.  I was rather ashamed of myself at meeting him
+at all under these conditions, but I was very keen on his not
+coming to the house for I was afraid it would upset Grace.  What
+made it all the more ridiculous was this infernal pistol which was
+in my pocket banging against my side with every step I took as
+though to nudge me to an understanding of my folly."
+
+"Where did you meet Vassalaro?" asked T. X.
+
+"He was on the other side of the Eastbourne Road and crossed the
+road to meet me.  At first he was very pleasant though a little
+agitated but afterward he began to behave in a most extraordinary
+manner as though he was lashing himself up into a fury which he
+didn't feel.  I promised him a substantial amount on account, but
+he grew worse and worse and then, suddenly, before I realised what
+he was doing, he was brandishing a revolver in my face and
+uttering the most extraordinary threats.  Then it was I remembered
+Kara's warning."
+
+"Kara," said T. X. quickly.
+
+"A man I know and who was responsible for introducing me to
+Vassalaro.  He is immensely wealthy."
+
+"I see," said T. X., "go on."
+
+"I remembered this warning," the other proceeded, "and I thought
+it worth while trying it out to see if it had any effect upon the
+little man.  I pulled the pistol from my pocket and pointed it at
+him, but that only seemed to make it - and then I pressed the
+trigger . . . .
+
+"To my horror four shots exploded before I could recover
+sufficient self-possession to loosen my hold of the butt.  He fell
+without a word.  I dropped the revolver and knelt by his side.  I
+could tell he was dangerously wounded, and indeed I knew at that
+moment that nothing would save him.  My pistol had been pointed in
+the region of his heart . . . . "
+
+He shuddered, dropping his face in his hands, and the girl by his
+side, encircling his shoulder with a protecting arm, murmured
+something in his ear.  Presently he recovered.
+
+"He wasn't quite dead.  I heard him murmur something but I wasn't
+able to distinguish what he said.  I went straight to the village
+and told the constable and had the body removed."
+
+T. X. rose from the table and walked to the door and opened it.
+
+"Come in, constable," he said, and when the man made his
+appearance, "I suppose you were very careful in removing this
+body, and you took everything which was lying about in the
+immediate ate vicinity'?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the man, "I took his hat and his walkingstick,
+if that's what you mean."
+
+"And the revolver!" asked T. X.
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"There warn't any revolver, sir, except the pistol which Mr.
+Lexman had."
+
+He fumbled in his pocket and pulled it out gingerly, and T. X.
+took it from him.
+
+"I'll look after your prisoner; you go down to the village, get
+any help you can and make a most careful search in the place where
+this man was killed and bring me the revolver which you will
+discover.  You'll probably find it in a ditch by the side of the
+road.  I'll give a sovereign to the man who finds it."
+
+The constable touched his hat and went out.
+
+"It looks rather a weird case to me," said T. X., as he came back
+to the table, "can't you see the unusual features yourself,
+Lexman!  It isn't unusual for you to owe money and it isn't
+unusual for the usurer to demand the return of that money, but in
+this case he is asking for it before it was due, and further than
+that he was demanding it with threats.  It is not the practice of
+the average money lender to go after his clients with a loaded
+revolver.  Another peculiar thing is that if he wished to
+blackmail you, that is to say, bring you into contempt in the eyes
+of your friends, why did he choose to meet you in a dark and
+unfrequented road, and not in your house where the moral pressure
+would be greatest?  Also, why did he write you a threatening
+letter which would certainly bring him into the grip of the law
+and would have saved you a great deal of unpleasantness if he had
+decided upon taking action!"
+
+He tapped his white teeth with the end of his pencil and then
+suddenly,
+
+"I think I'll see that letter," he said.
+
+John Lexman rose from the sofa, crossed to the safe, unlocked it
+and was unlocking the steel drawer in which he had placed the
+incriminating document.  His hand was on the key when T. X.
+noticed the look of surprise on his face.
+
+"What is it!" asked the detective suddenly.
+
+"This drawer feels very hot," said John, - he looked round as
+though to measure the distance between the safe and the fire.
+
+T. X. laid his hand upon the front of the drawer.  It was indeed
+warm.
+
+"Open it," said T. X., and Lexman turned the key and pulled the
+drawer open.
+
+As he did so, the whole contents burst up in a quick blaze of
+flame.  It died down immediately and left only a little coil of
+smoke that flowed from the safe into the room.
+
+"Don't touch anything inside," said T. X. quickly.
+
+He lifted the drawer carefully and placed it under the light.  In
+the bottom was no more than a few crumpled white ashes and a
+blister of paint where the flame had caught the side.
+
+"I see," said T. X. slowly.
+
+He saw something more than that handful of ashes, he saw the
+deadly peril in which his friend was standing.  Here was one half
+of the evidence in Lexman's favour gone, irredeemably.
+
+"The letter was written on a paper which was specially prepared by
+a chemical process which disintegrated the moment the paper was
+exposed to the air.  Probably if you delayed putting the letter in
+the drawer another five minutes, you would have seen it burn
+before your eyes.  As it was, it was smouldering before you had
+turned the key of the box.  The envelope!"
+
+"Kara burnt it," said Lexman in a low voice, "I remember seeing
+him take it up from the table and throw it in the fire."
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"There remains the other half of the evidence," he said grimly,
+and when an hour later, the village constable returned to report
+that in spite of his most careful search he had failed to discover
+the dead man's revolver, his anticipations were realized.
+
+The next morning John Lexman was lodged in Lewes gaol on a charge
+of wilful murder.
+
+
+A telegram brought Mansus from London to Beston Tracey, and T. X.
+received him in the library.
+
+"I sent for you, Mansus, because I suffer from the illusion that
+you have more brains than most of the people in my department, and
+that's not saying much."
+
+"I am very grateful to you, sir, for putting me right with
+Commissioner," began Mansus, but T. X. stopped him.
+
+"It is the duty of every head of departments," he said oracularly,
+"to shield the incompetence of his subordinates.  It is only by
+the adoption of some such method that the decencies of the public
+life can be observed.  Now get down to this."  He gave a sketch of
+the case from start to finish in as brief a space of time as
+possible.
+
+"The evidence against Mr. Lexman is very heavy," he said.  "He
+borrowed money from this man, and on the man's body were found
+particulars of the very Promissory Note which Lexman signed.  Why
+he should have brought it with him, I cannot say.  Anyhow I doubt
+very much whether Mr. Lexman will get a jury to accept his
+version.  Our only chance is to find the Greek's revolver - I
+don't think there's any very great chance, but if we are to be
+successful we must make a search at once."
+
+Before he went out he had an interview with Grace.  The dark
+shadows under her eyes told of a sleepless night.  She was
+unusually pale and surprisingly calm.
+
+"I think there are one or two things I ought to tell you," she
+said, as she led the way into the drawing room, closing the door
+behind him.
+
+"And they concern Mr. Kara, I think," said T. X.
+
+She looked at him startled.
+
+"How did you know that?"
+
+"I know nothing."
+
+He hesitated on the brink of a flippant claim of omniscience, but
+realizing in time the agony she must be suffering he checked his
+natural desire.
+
+"I really know nothing," he continued, "but I guess a lot," and
+that was as near to the truth as you might expect T. X. to reach
+on the spur of the moment.
+
+She began without preliminary.
+
+"In the first place I must tell you that Mr. Kara once asked me to
+marry him, and for reasons which I will give you, I am dreadfully
+afraid of him."
+
+She described without reserve the meeting at Salonika and Kara's
+extravagant rage and told of the attempt which had been made upon
+her.
+
+"Does John know this?" asked T. X.
+
+She shook her head sadly.
+
+"I wish I had told him now," she said.  "Oh, how I wish I had!"
+She wrung her hands in an ecstasy of sorrow and remorse.
+
+T. X. looked at her sympathetically.  Then he asked,
+
+"Did Mr. Kara ever discuss your husband's financial position with
+you!"
+
+"Never."
+
+"How did John Lexman happen to meet Vassalaro!"
+
+"I can tell you that," she answered, "the first time we met Mr.
+Kara in England was when we were staying at Babbacombe on a summer
+holiday - which was really a prolongation of our honeymoon.  Mr.
+Kara came to stay at the same hotel.  I think Mr. Vassalaro must
+have been there before; at any rate they knew one another and
+after Kara's introduction to my husband the rest was easy.
+
+"Can I do anything for John!" she asked piteously.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+"So far as your story is concerned, I don't think you will
+advantage him by telling it," he said.  "There is nothing whatever
+to connect Kara with this business and you would only give your
+husband a great deal of pain.  I'll do the best I can."
+
+He held out his hand and she grasped it and somehow at that moment
+there came to T. X. Meredith a new courage, a new faith and a
+greater determination than ever to solve this troublesome mystery.
+
+He found Mansus waiting for him in a car outside and in a few
+minutes they were at the scene of the tragedy.  A curious little
+knot of spectators had gathered, looking with morbid interest at
+the place where the body had been found.  There was a local
+policeman on duty and to him was deputed the ungracious task of
+warning his fellow villagers to keep their distance.  The ground
+had already been searched very carefully.  The two roads crossed
+almost at right angles and at the corner of the cross thus formed,
+the hedges were broken, admitting to a field which had evidently
+been used as a pasture by an adjoining dairy farm.  Some rough
+attempt had been made to close the gap with barbed wire, but it
+was possible to step over the drooping strands with little or no
+difficulty.  It was to this gap that T. X. devoted his principal
+attention.  All the fields had been carefully examined without
+result, the four drains which were merely the connecting pipes
+between ditches at the sides of the crossroads had been swept out
+and only the broken hedge and its tangle of bushes behind offered
+any prospect of the new search being rewarded.
+
+"Hullo!" said Mansus, suddenly, and stooping down he picked up
+something from the ground.
+
+T. X. took it in his hand.
+
+It was unmistakably a revolver cartridge.  He marked the spot
+where it had been found by jamming his walking stick into the
+ground and continued his search, but without success.
+
+"I am afraid we shall find nothing more here," said T. X., after
+half an hour's further search.  He stood with his chin in his
+hand, a frown on his face.
+
+"Mansus," he said, "suppose there were three people here, Lexman,
+the money lender and a third witness.  And suppose this third
+person for some reason unknown was interested in what took place
+between the two men and he wanted to watch unobserved.  Isn't it
+likely that if he, as I think, instigated the meeting, he would
+have chosen this place because this particular hedge gave him a
+chance of seeing without being seen?"
+
+Mansus thought.
+
+"He could have seen just as well from either of the other hedges,
+with less chance of detection," he said, after a long pause.
+
+T. X. grinned.
+
+"You have the makings of a brain," he said admiringly.  "I agree
+with you.  Always remember that, Mansus.  That there was one
+occasion in your life when T. X. Meredith and you thought alike."
+
+Mansus smiled a little feebly.
+
+"Of course from the point of view of the observer this was the
+worst place possible, so whoever came here, if they did come here,
+dropping revolver bullets about, must have chosen the spot because
+it was get-at-able from another direction.  Obviously he couldn't
+come down the road and climb in without attracting the attention
+of the Greek who was waiting for Mr. Lexman.  We may suppose there
+is a gate farther along the road, we may suppose that he entered
+that gate, came along the field by the side of the hedge and that
+somewhere between here and the gate, he threw away his cigar."
+
+"His cigar!" said Mansus in surprise.
+
+"His cigar," repeated T. X., "if he was alone, he would keep his
+cigar alight until the very last moment."
+
+"He might have thrown it into the road," said Mansus.
+
+"Don't jibber," said T. X., and led the way along the hedge.  From
+where they stood they could see the gate which led on to the road
+about a hundred yards further on.  Within a dozen yards of that
+gate, T. X. found what he had been searching for, a half-smoked
+cigar.  It was sodden with rain and he picked it up tenderly.
+
+"A good cigar, if I am any judge," he said, "cut with a penknife,
+and smoked through a holder."
+
+They reached the gate and passed through.   Here they were on the
+road again and this they followed until they reached another cross
+road that to the left inclining southward to the new  Eastbourne
+Road and that to the westward looking back to the Lewes-Eastbourne
+railway.  The rain had obliterated much that T. X. was looking
+for, but presently he found a faint indication of a car wheel.
+
+"This is where she turned and backed," he said, and walked slowly
+to the road on the left, "and this is where she stood.  There is
+the grease from her engine."
+
+He stooped down and moved forward in the attitude of a Russian
+dancer, "And here are the wax matches which the chauffeur struck,"
+he counted, "one, two, three, four, five, six, allow three for
+each cigarette on a boisterous night like last night, that makes
+three cigarettes.  Here is a cigarette end, Mansus, Gold Flake
+brand," he said, as he examined it carefully, "and a Gold Flake
+brand smokes for twelve minutes in normal weather, but about eight
+minutes in gusty weather.  A car was here for about twenty-four
+minutes -  what do you think of that, Mansus?"
+
+"A good bit of reasoning, T. X.," said the other calmly, "if it
+happens to be the car you're looking for."
+
+"I am looking for any old car," said T. X.
+
+He found no other trace of car wheels though he carefully followed
+up the little lane until it reached the main road.  After that it
+was hopeless to search because rain had fallen in the night and in
+the early hours of the morning.  He drove his assistant to the
+railway station in time to catch the train at one o'clock to
+London.
+
+"You will go straight to Cadogan Square and arrest the chauffeur
+of Mr. Kara," he said.
+
+"Upon what charge!" asked Mansus hurriedly.
+
+When it came to the step which T. X. thought fit to take in the
+pursuance of his duty, Mansus was beyond surprise.
+
+"You can charge him with anything you like," said T. X., with fine
+carelessness, "probably something will occur to you on your way up
+to town.  As a matter of fact the chauffeur has been called
+unexpectedly away to Greece and has probably left by this
+morning's train for the Continent.  If that is so, we can do
+nothing, because the boat will have left Dover and will have
+landed him at Boulogne, but if by any luck you get him, keep him
+busy until I get back."
+
+T. X. himself was a busy man that day, and it was not until night
+was falling that he again turned to Beston Tracey to find a
+telegram waiting for him.  He opened it and read,
+
+"Chauffeur's name, Goole.  Formerly waiter English Club,
+Constantinople.  Left for east by early train this morning, his
+mother being ill."
+
+"His mother ill," said T. X. contemptuously, "how very feeble, - I
+should have thought Kara could have gone one better than that."
+
+He was in John Lexman's study as the door opened and the maid
+announced, "Mr. Remington Kara."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+T. X. folded the telegram very carefully and slipped it into his
+waistcoat pocket.
+
+He favoured the newcomer with a little bow and taking upon himself
+the honours of the establishment, pushed a chair to his visitor.
+
+"I think you know my name," said Kara easily, "I am a friend of
+poor Lexman's."
+
+"So I am told," said T. X., "but don't let your friendship for
+Lexman prevent your sitting down."
+
+For a moment the Greek was nonplussed and then, with a little
+smile and bow, he seated himself by the writing table.
+
+"I am very distressed at this happening," he went on, "and I am
+more distressed because I feel that as I introduced Lexman to this
+unfortunate man, I am in a sense responsible."
+
+"If I were you," said T. X., leaning back in the chair and looking
+half questioningly and half earnestly into the face of the other,
+"I shouldn't let that fact keep me awake at night.  Most people
+are murdered as a result of an introduction.  The cases where
+people murder total strangers are singularly rare.  That I think
+is due to the insularity of our national character."
+
+Again the other was taken back and puzzled by the flippancy of the
+man from whom he had expected at least the official manner.
+
+"When did you see Mr. Vassalaro last?" asked T. X. pleasantly.
+
+Kara raised his eyes as though considering.
+
+"I think it must have been nearly a week ago."
+
+"Think again," said T. X.
+
+For a second the Greek started and again relaxed into a smile.
+
+"I am afraid," he began.
+
+"Don't worry about that," said T. X., "but let me ask you this
+question.  You were here last night when Mr. Lexman received a
+letter.  That he did receive a letter, there is considerable
+evidence," he said as he saw the other hesitate, "because we have
+the supporting statements of the servant and the postman."
+
+"I was here," said the other, deliberately, "and I was present
+when Mr. Lexman received a letter."
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"A letter written on some brownish paper and rather bulky," he
+suggested.
+
+Again there was that momentary hesitation.
+
+"I would not swear to the color of the paper or as to the bulk of
+the letter," he said.
+
+"I should have thought you would," suggested T. X., "because you
+see, you burnt the envelope, and I presumed you would have noticed
+that."
+
+"I have no recollection of burning any envelope," said the other
+easily.
+
+"At any rate," T. X. went on, "when Mr. Lexman read this letter
+out to you . . ."
+
+"To which letter are you referring?" asked the other, with a lift
+of his eyebrows.
+
+"Mr. Lexman received a threatening letter," repeated T. X.
+patiently, "which he read out to you, and which was addressed to
+him by Vassalaro.   This letter was handed to you and you also
+read it.  Mr. Lexman to your knowledge put the letter in his safe
+- in a steel drawer."
+
+The other shook his head, smiling gently.
+
+"I am afraid you've made a great mistake," he said almost
+apologetically, "though I have a recollection of his receiving a
+letter, I did not read it, nor was it read to me."
+
+The eyes of T. X. narrowed to the very slits and his voice became
+metallic and hard.
+
+"And if I put you into the box, will you swear, that you did not
+see that letter, nor read it, nor have it read to you, and that
+you have no knowledge whatever of such a letter having been
+received by Mr. Lexman?"
+
+"Most certainly," said the other coolly.
+
+"Would you swear that you have not seen Vassalaro for a week?"
+
+"Certainly," smiled the Greek.
+
+"That you did not in fact see him last night," persisted T. X.,
+"and interview him on the station platform at Lewes, that you did
+not after leaving him continue on your way to London and then turn
+your car and return to the neighbourhood of Beston Tracey?"
+
+The Greek was white to the lips, but not a muscle of his face
+moved.
+
+"Will you also swear," continued T. X. inexorably, "that you did
+not stand at the corner of what is known as Mitre's Lot and
+re-enter a gate near to the side where your car was, and that you
+did not watch the whole tragedy?"
+
+"I'd swear to that," Kara's voice was strained and cracked.
+
+"Would you also swear as to the hour of your arrival in London?"
+
+"Somewhere in the region of ten or eleven," said the Greek.
+
+T. X. smiled.
+
+"Would you swear that you did not go through Guilford at half-past
+twelve and pull up to replenish your petrol?"
+
+The Greek had now recovered his self-possession and rose.
+
+"You are a very clever man, Mr. Meredith - I think that is your
+name?"
+
+"That is my name," said T. X. calmly.  "There has been, no need
+for me to change it as often as you have found the necessity."
+
+He saw the fire blazing in the other's eyes and knew that his shot
+had gone home.
+
+"I am afraid I must go," said Kara.  "I came here intending to see
+Mrs. Lexman, and I had no idea that I should meet a policeman."
+
+"My dear Mr. Kara," said T. X., rising and lighting a cigarette,
+"you will go through life enduring that unhappy experience."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say.  You will always be expecting to meet one
+person, and meeting another, and unless you are very fortunate
+indeed, that other will always be a policeman."
+
+His eyes twinkled for he had recovered from the gust of anger
+which had swept through him.
+
+"There are two pieces of evidence I require to save Mr. Lexman
+from very serious trouble," he said, "the first of these is the
+letter which was burnt, as you know."
+
+"Yes," said Kara.
+
+T. X. leant across the desk.
+
+"How did you know?" he snapped.
+
+"Somebody told me, I don't know who it was."
+
+"That's not true," replied T. X.; "nobody knows except myself and
+Mrs. Lexman."
+
+"But my dear good fellow," said Kara, pulling on his gloves, "you
+have already asked me whether I didn't burn the letter."
+
+"I said envelope," said T. X., with a little laugh.
+
+"And you were going to say something about the other clue?"
+
+"The other is the revolver," said T. X.
+
+"Mr. Lexman's revolver!" drawled the Greek.
+
+"That we have," said T. X. shortly.  "What we want is the weapon
+which the Greek had when he threatened Mr. Lexman."
+
+"There, I'm afraid I cannot help you."
+
+Kara walked to the door and T. X. followed.
+
+"I think I will see Mrs. Lexman."
+
+"I think not," said T. X.
+
+The other turned with a sneer.
+
+"Have you arrested her, too?" he asked.
+
+"Pull yourself together!" said T. X. coarsely.  He escorted Kara
+to his waiting limousine.
+
+"You have a new chauffeur to-night, I observe," he said.
+
+Kara towering with rage stepped daintily into the car.
+
+"If you are writing to the other you might give him my love," said
+T. X., "and make most tender enquiries after his mother.  I
+particularly ask this."
+
+Kara said nothing until the car was out of earshot then he lay
+back on the down cushions and abandoned himself to a paroxysm of
+rage and blasphemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Six months later T. X. Meredith was laboriously tracing an elusive
+line which occurred on an ordnance map of Sussex when the Chief
+Commissioner announced himself.
+
+Sir George described T. X. as the most wholesome corrective a
+public official could have, and never missed an opportunity of
+meeting his subordinate (as he said) for this reason.
+
+"What are you doing there?" he growled.
+
+"The lesson this morning," said T. X. without looking up, "is
+maps."
+
+Sir George passed behind his assistant and looked over his
+shoulder.
+
+"That is a very old map you have got there," he said.
+
+"1876.  It shows the course of a number of interesting little
+streams in this neighbourhood which have been lost sight of for
+one reason or the other by the gentleman who made the survey at a
+later period.  I am perfectly sure that in one of these streams I
+shall find what I am seeking."
+
+"You haven't given up hope, then, in regard to Lexman?"
+
+"I shall never give up hope," said T. X., "until I am dead, and
+possibly not then."
+
+"Let me see, what did he get - fifteen years!"
+
+"Fifteen years," repeated T. X., "and a very fortunate man to
+escape with his life."
+
+Sir George walked to the window and stared out on to busy
+Whitehall.
+
+"I am told you are quite friendly with Kara again."
+
+T. X. made a noise which might be taken to indicate his assent to
+the statement.
+
+"I suppose you know that gentleman has made a very heroic attempt
+to get you fired," he said.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," said T. X. "I made as heroic an attempt to
+get him hung, and one good turn deserves another.  What did he do?
+See ministers and people?"
+
+"He did," said Sir George.
+
+"He's a silly ass," responded T. X.
+
+"I can understand all that" - the Chief Commissioner turned round -
+"but what I cannot understand is your apology to him."
+
+"There are so many things you don't understand, Sir George," said
+T. X. tartly, "that I despair of ever cataloguing them."
+
+"You are an insolent cub," growled his Chief.  "Come to lunch."
+
+"Where will you take me?" asked T. X. cautiously.
+
+"To my club."
+
+"I'm sorry," said the other, with elaborate politeness, "I have
+lunched once at your club.  Need I say more?"
+
+He smiled, as he worked after his Chief had gone, at the
+recollection of Kara's profound astonishment and the gratification
+he strove so desperately to disguise.
+
+Kara was a vain man, immensely conscious of his good looks,
+conscious of his wealth.  He had behaved most handsomely, for not
+only had he accepted the apology, but he left nothing undone to
+show his desire to create a good impression upon the man who had
+so grossly insulted him.
+
+T. X. had accepted an invitation to stay a weekend at Kara's
+"little place in the country," and had found there assembled
+everything that the heart could desire in the way of fellowship,
+eminent politicians who might conceivably be of service to an
+ambitious young Assistant Commissioner of Police, beautiful ladies
+to interest and amuse him.  Kara had even gone to the length of
+engaging a theatrical company to play "Sweet Lavender," and for
+this purpose the big ballroom at Hever Court had been transformed
+into a theatre.
+
+As he was undressing for bed that night T. X. remembered that he
+had mentioned to Kara that "Sweet Lavender" was his favorite play,
+and he realized that the entertainment was got up especially for
+his benefit.
+
+In a score of other ways Kara had endeavoured to consolidate the
+friendship.  He gave the young Commissioner advice about a railway
+company which was operating in Asia Minor, and the shares of which
+stood a little below par.  T. X. thanked him for the advice, and
+did not take it, nor did he feel any regret when the shares rose 3
+pounds in as many weeks.
+
+T. X. had superintended the disposal of Beston Priory.  He had the
+furniture removed to London, and had taken a flat for Grace
+Lexman.
+
+She had a small income of her own, and this, added to the large
+royalties which came to her (as she was bitterly conscious) in
+increasing volume as the result of the publicity of the trial,
+placed her beyond fear of want.
+
+"Fifteen years," murmured T. X., as he worked and whistled.
+
+There had been no hope for John Lexman from the start.  He was in
+debt to the man he killed.  His story of threatening letters was
+not substantiated.  The revolver which he said had been flourished
+at him had never been found.  Two people believed implicitly in
+the story, and a sympathetic Home Secretary had assured T. X.
+personally that if he could find the revolver and associate it
+with the murder beyond any doubt, John Lexman would be pardoned.
+
+Every stream in the neighbourhood had been dragged.  In one case a
+small river had been dammed, and the bed had been carefully dried
+and sifted, but there was no trace of the weapon, and T. X. had
+tried methods more effective and certainly less legal.
+
+A mysterious electrician had called at 456 Cadogan Square in
+Kara's absence, and he was armed with such indisputable authority
+that he was permitted to penetrate to Kara's private room, in
+order to examine certain fitments.
+
+Kara returning next day thought no more of the matter when it was
+reported to him, until going to his safe that night he discovered
+that it had been opened and ransacked.
+
+As it happened, most of Kara's valuable and confidential
+possessions were at the bank.  In a fret of panic and at
+considerable cost he had the safe removed and another put in its
+place of such potency that the makers offered to indemnify him
+against any loss from burglary.
+
+T. X. finished his work, washed his hands, and was drying them
+when Mansus came bursting into the room.  It was not usual for
+Mansus to burst into anywhere.  He was a slow, methodical,
+painstaking man, with a deliberate and an official, manner.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked T. X. quickly.
+
+"We didn't search Vassalaro's lodgings," cried Mansus
+breathlessly.  "It just occurred to me as I was coming over
+Westminster Bridge.  I was on top of a bus - "
+
+"Wake up!" said T. X. "You're amongst friends and cut all that
+'bus' stuff out.  Of course we searched Vassalaro's lodgings!"
+
+"No, we didn't, sir," said the other triumphantly.  "He lived in
+Great James Street."
+
+"He lived in the Adelphi," corrected T. X.
+
+"There were two places where he lived," said Mansus.
+
+"When did you learn this?" asked his Chief, dropping his
+flippancy.
+
+"This morning.  I was on a bus coming across Westminster Bridge,
+and there were two men in front of me, and I heard the word
+'Vassalaro' and naturally I pricked up my ears."
+
+"It was very unnatural, but proceed," said T. X.
+
+"One of the men - a very respectable person - said, 'That chap
+Vassalaro used to lodge in my place, and I've still got a lot of
+his things.  What do you think I ought to do?'"
+
+"And you said," suggested the other.
+
+"I nearly frightened his life out of him," said Mansus.  "I said,
+'I am a police officer and I want you to come along with me.'"
+
+"And of course he shut up and would not say another word," said T.
+X.
+
+"That's true, sir," said Mansus, "but after awhile I got him to
+talk.  Vassalaro lived in Great James Street, 604, on the third
+floor.  In fact, some of his furniture is there still.  He had a
+good reason for keeping two addresses by all accounts."
+
+T. X. nodded wisely.
+
+"What was her name?" he asked.
+
+"He had a wife," said the other, "but she left him about four
+months before he was killed.  He used the Adelphi address for
+business purposes and apparently he slept two or three nights of
+the week at Great James Street.  I have told the man to leave
+everything as it is, and that we will come round."
+
+Ten minutes later the two officers were in the somewhat gloomy
+apartments which Vassalaro had occupied.
+
+The landlord explained that most of the furniture was his, but
+that there were certain articles which were the property of the
+deceased man.  He added, somewhat unnecessarily, that the late
+tenant owed him six months' rent.
+
+The articles which had been the property of Vassalaro included a
+tin trunk, a small writing bureau, a secretaire bookcase and a few
+clothes.  The secretaire was locked, as was the writing bureau.
+The tin box, which had little or nothing of interest, was
+unfastened.
+
+The other locks needed very little attention.  Without any
+difficulty Mansus opened both.  The leaf of the bureau, when let
+down, formed the desk, and piled up inside was a whole mass of
+letters opened and unopened, accounts, note-books and all the
+paraphernalia which an untidy man collects.
+
+Letter by letter, T. X. went through the accumulation without
+finding anything to help him.  Then his eye was attracted by a
+small tin case thrust into one of the oblong pigeon holes at the
+back of the desk.  This he pulled out and opened and found a small
+wad of paper wrapped in tin foil.
+
+"Hello, hello!" said T. X., and he was pardonably exhilarated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+A Man stood in the speckless courtyard before the Governor's house
+at Dartmoor gaol.  He wore the ugly livery of shame which marks
+the convict.  His head was clipped short, and there was two days'
+growth of beard upon his haggard face.  Standing with his hands
+behind him, he waited for the moment when he would be ordered to
+his work.
+
+John Lexman - A. O. 43 - looked up at the blue sky as he had
+looked so many times from the exercise yard, and wondered what the
+day would bring forth.  A day to him was the beginning and the end
+of an eternity.  He dare not let his mind dwell upon the long
+aching years ahead.  He dare not think of the woman he left, or
+let his mind dwell upon the agony which she was enduring.  He had
+disappeared from the world, the world he loved, and the world that
+knew him, and all that there was in life; all that was worth while
+had been crushed and obliterated into the granite of the
+Princetown quarries, and its wide horizon shrunken by the gaunt
+moorland with its menacing tors.
+
+New interests made up his existence.  The quality of the food was
+one.  The character of the book he would receive from the prison
+library another.  The future meant Sunday chapel; the present
+whatever task they found him.  For the day he was to paint some
+doors and windows of an outlying cottage.  A cottage occupied by a
+warder who, for some reason, on the day previous, had spoken to
+him with a certain kindness and a certain respect which was
+unusual.
+
+"Face the wall," growled a voice, and mechanically he turned, his
+hands still behind him, and stood staring at the grey wall of the
+prison storehouse.
+
+He heard the shuffling feet of the quarry gang, his ears caught
+the clink of the chains which bound them together.  They were
+desperate men, peculiarly interesting to him, and he had watched
+their faces furtively in the early period of his imprisonment.
+
+He had been sent to Dartmoor after spending three months in
+Wormwood Scrubbs.  Old hands had told him variously that he was
+fortunate or unlucky.  It was usual to have twelve months at the
+Scrubbs before testing the life of a convict establishment.  He
+believed there was some talk of sending him to Parkhurst, and here
+he traced the influence which T. X. would exercise, for Parkhurst
+was a prisoner's paradise.
+
+He heard his warder's voice behind him.
+
+"Right turn, 43, quick march."
+
+He walked ahead of the armed guard, through the great and gloomy
+gates of the prison, turned sharply to the right, and walked up
+the village street toward the moors, beyond the village of
+Princetown, and on the Tavistock Road where were two or three
+cottages which had been lately taken by the prison staff; and it
+was to the decoration of one of these that A. O. 43 had been sent.
+
+The house was as yet without a tenant.
+
+A paper-hanger under the charge of another warder was waiting for
+the arrival of the painter.  The two warders exchanged greetings,
+and the first went off leaving the other in charge of both men.
+
+For an hour they worked in silence under the eyes of the guard.
+Presently the warder went outside, and John Lexman had an
+opportunity of examining his fellow sufferer.
+
+He was a man of twenty-four or twenty-five, lithe and alert.  By
+no means bad looking, he lacked that indefinable suggestion of
+animalism which distinguished the majority of the inhabitants at
+Dartmoor.
+
+They waited until they heard the warder's step clear the passage,
+and until his iron-shod boots were tramping over the cobbled path
+which led from the door, through the tiny garden to the road,
+before the second man spoke.
+
+"What are you in for?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+"Murder," said John Lexman, laconically.
+
+He had answered the question before, and had noticed with a little
+amusement the look of respect which came into the eyes of the
+questioner.
+
+"What have you got!"
+
+"Fifteen years," said the other.
+
+"That means 11 years and 9 months," said the first man.  "You've
+never been here before, I suppose?"
+
+"Hardly," said Lexman, drily.
+
+"I was here when I was a kid," confessed the paper-hanger.  "I am
+going out next week."
+
+John Lexman looked at him enviously.  Had the man told him that he
+had inherited a great fortune and a greater title his envy would
+not have been so genuine.
+
+Going out!
+
+The drive in the brake to the station, the ride to London in
+creased, but comfortable clothing, free as the air, at liberty to
+go to bed and rise when he liked, to choose his own dinner, to
+answer no call save the call of his conscience, to see - he
+checked himself.
+
+"What are you in for?" he asked in self-defence.
+
+"Conspiracy and fraud," said the other cheerfully.  "I was put
+away by a woman after three of us had got clear with 12,000
+pounds.  Damn rough luck, wasn't it?"
+
+John nodded.
+
+It was curious, he thought, how sympathetic one grows with these
+exponents of crimes.  One naturally adopts their point of view and
+sees life through their distorted vision.
+
+"I bet I'm not given away with the next lot," the prisoner went
+on.  "I've got one of the biggest ideas I've ever had, and I've
+got a real good man to help me."
+
+"How?" asked John, in surprise.
+
+The man jerked his head in the direction of the prison.
+
+"Larry Green," he said briefly.  "He's coming out next month, too,
+and we are all fixed up proper.  We are going to get the pile and
+then we're off to South America, and you won't see us for dust."
+
+Though he employed all the colloquialisms which were common, his
+tone was that of a man of education, and yet there was something
+in his address which told John as clearly as though the man had
+confessed as much, that he had never occupied any social position
+in life.
+
+The warder's step on the stones outside reduced them to silence.
+Suddenly his voice came up the stairs.
+
+"Forty-three," he called sharply, "I want you down here."
+
+John took his paint pot and brush and went clattering down the
+uncarpeted stairs.
+
+"Where's the other man?" asked the warder, in a low voice.
+
+"He's upstairs in the back room."
+
+The warder stepped out of the door and looked left and right.
+Coming up from Princetown was a big, grey car.
+
+"Put down your paint pot," he said.
+
+His voice was shaking with excitement.
+
+"I am going upstairs.  When that car comes abreast of the gate,
+ask no questions and jump into it.  Get down into the bottom and
+pull a sack over you, and do not get up until the car stops."
+
+The blood rushed to John Lexman's head, and he staggered.
+
+"My God!" he whispered.
+
+"Do as I tell you," hissed the warder.
+
+Like an automaton John put down his brushes, and walked slowly to
+the gate.  The grey car was crawling up the hill, and the face of
+the driver was half enveloped in a big rubber mask.  Through the
+two great goggles John could see little to help him identify the
+man.  As the machine came up to the gate, he leapt into the
+tonneau and sank instantly to the bottom.  As he did so he felt
+the car leap forward underneath him.  Now it was going fast, now
+faster, now it rocked and swayed as it gathered speed.  He felt it
+sweeping down hill and up hill, and once he heard a hollow rumble
+as it crossed a wooden bridge.
+
+He could not detect from his hiding place in what direction they
+were going, but he gathered they had switched off to the left and
+were making for one of the wildest parts of the moor.  Never once
+did he feel the car slacken its pace, until, with a grind of
+brakes, it stopped suddenly.
+
+"Get out," said a voice.
+
+John Lexman threw off the cover and leapt out and as he did so the
+car turned and sped back the way it had come.
+
+For a moment he thought he was alone, and looked around.  Far away
+in the distance he saw the grey bulk of Princetown Gaol.  It was
+an accident that he should see it, but it so happened that a ray
+of the sun fell athwart it and threw it into relief.
+
+He was alone on the moors!  Where could he go?
+
+He turned at the sound of a voice.
+
+He was standing on the slope of a small tor.  At the foot there
+was a smooth stretch of green sward.  It was on this stretch that
+the people of Dartmoor held their pony races in the summer months.
+There was no sign of horses; but only a great bat-like machine
+with out-stretched pinions of taut white canvas, and by that
+machine a man clad from head to foot in brown overalls.
+
+John stumbled down the slope.  As he neared the machine he stopped
+and gasped.
+
+"Kara," he said, and the brown man smiled.
+
+"But, I do not understand.  What are you going to do!" asked
+Lexman, when he had recovered from his surprise.
+
+"I am going to take you to a place of safety," said the other.
+
+"I have no reason to be grateful to you, as yet, Kara," breathed
+Lexman.  "A word from you could have saved me."
+
+"I could not lie, my dear Lexman.  And honestly, I had forgotten
+the existence of the letter; if that is what you are referring to,
+but I am trying to do what I can for you and for your wife."
+
+"My wife!"
+
+"She is waiting for you," said the other.
+
+He turned his head, listening.
+
+Across the moor came the dull sullen boom of a gun.
+
+"You haven't time for argument.  They discovered your escape," he
+said.  "Get in."
+
+John clambered up into the frail body of the machine and Kara
+followed.
+
+"This is a self-starter," he said, "one of the newest models of
+monoplanes."
+
+He clicked over a lever and with a roar the big three-bladed
+tractor screw spun.
+
+The aeroplane moved forward with a jerk, ran with increasing gait
+for a hundred yards, and then suddenly the jerky progress ceased.
+The machine swayed gently from side to side, and looking over, the
+passenger saw the ground recede beneath him.
+
+Up, up, they climbed in one long sweeping ascent, passing through
+drifting clouds till the machine soared like a bird above the blue
+sea.
+
+John Lexman looked down.  He saw the indentations of the coast and
+recognized the fringe of white houses that stood for Torquay, but
+in an incredibly short space of time all signs of the land were
+blotted out.
+
+Talking was impossible.  The roar of the engines defied
+penetration.
+
+Kara was evidently a skilful pilot.  From time to time he
+consulted the compass on the board before him, and changed his
+course ever so slightly.  Presently he released one hand from the
+driving wheel, and scribbling on a little block of paper which was
+inserted in a pocket at the side of the seat he passed it back.
+
+John Lexman read:
+
+  "If you cannot swim there is a life belt under your seat."
+
+John nodded.
+
+Kara was searching the sea for something, and presently he found
+it.  Viewed from the height at which they flew it looked no more
+than a white speck in a great blue saucer, but presently the
+machine began to dip, falling at a terrific rate of speed, which
+took away the breath of the man who was hanging on with both hands
+to the dangerous seat behind.
+
+He was deadly cold, but had hardly noticed the fact.  It was all
+so incredible, so impossible.  He expected to wake up and wondered
+if the prison was also part of the dream.
+
+Now he saw the point for which Kara was making.
+
+A white steam yacht, long and narrow of beam, was steaming slowly
+westward.  He could see the feathery wake in her rear, and as the
+aeroplane fell he had time to observe that a boat had been put
+off.  Then with a jerk the monoplane flattened out and came like a
+skimming bird to the surface of the water; her engines stopped.
+
+"We ought to be able to keep afloat for ten minutes," said Kara,
+"and by that time they will pick us up."
+
+His voice was high and harsh in the almost painful silence which
+followed the stoppage of the engines.
+
+In less than five minutes the boat had come alongside, manned, as
+Lexman gathered from a glimpse of the crew, by Greeks.  He
+scrambled aboard and five minutes later he was standing on the
+white deck of the yacht, watching the disappearing tail of the
+monoplane.  Kara was by his side.
+
+"There goes fifteen hundred pounds," said the Greek, with a smile,
+"add that to the two thousand I paid the warder and you have a
+tidy sum-but some things are worth all the money in the world!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+T. X. came from Downing Street at 11 o'clock one night, and his
+heart was filled with joy and gratitude.
+
+He swung his stick to the common danger of the public, but the
+policeman on point duty at the end of the street, who saw him,
+recognized and saluted him, did not think it fit to issue any
+official warning.
+
+He ran up the stairs to his office, and found Mansus reading the
+evening paper.
+
+"My poor, dumb beast," said T. X.  "I am afraid I have kept you
+waiting for a very long time, but tomorrow you and I will take a
+little journey to Devonshire.  It will be good for you, Mansus -
+where did you get that ridiculous name, by the way!"
+
+"M. or N.," replied Mansus, laconically.
+
+"I repeat that there is the dawn of an intellect in you," said T.
+X., offensively.
+
+He became more serious as he took from a pocket inside his
+waistcoat a long blue envelope containing the paper which had cost
+him so much to secure.
+
+"Finding the revolver was a master-stroke of yours, Mansus," he
+said, and he was in earnest as he spoke.
+
+The man coloured with pleasure for the subordinates of T. X. loved
+him, and a word of praise was almost equal to promotion.  It was
+on the advice of Mansus that the road from London to Lewes had
+been carefully covered and such streams as passed beneath that
+road had been searched.
+
+The revolver had been found after the third attempt between
+Gatwick and Horsley.  Its identification was made easier by the
+fact that Vassalaro's name was engraved on the butt.  It was
+rather an ornate affair and in its earlier days had been silver
+plated; the handle was of mother-o'-pearl.
+
+"Obviously the gift of one brigand to another," was T. X.'s
+comment.
+
+Armed with this, his task would have been fairly easy, but when to
+this evidence he added a rough draft of the threatening letter
+which he had found amongst Vassalaro's belongings, and which had
+evidently been taken down at dictation, since some of the words
+were misspelt and had been corrected by another hand, the case was
+complete.
+
+But what clinched the matter was the finding of a wad of that
+peculiar chemical paper, a number of sheets of which T. X. had
+ignited for the information of the Chief Commissioner and the Home
+Secretary by simply exposing them for a few seconds to the light
+of an electric lamp.
+
+Instantly it had filled the Home Secretary's office with a pungent
+and most disagreeable smoke, for which he was heartily cursed by
+his superiors.  But it had rounded off the argument.
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"I wonder if it is too late to see Mrs. Lexman," he said.
+
+"I don't think any hour would be too late," suggested Mansus.
+
+"You shall come and chaperon me," said his superior.
+
+But a disappointment awaited.  Mrs. Lexman was not in and neither
+the ringing at her electric bell nor vigorous applications to the
+knocker brought any response.  The hall porter of the flats where
+she lived was under the impression that Mrs. Lexman had gone out
+of town.  She frequently went out on Saturdays and returned on the
+Monday and, he thought, occasionally on Tuesdays.
+
+It happened that this particular night was a Monday night and T.
+X. was faced with a dilemma.  The night porter, who had only the
+vaguest information on the subject, thought that the day porter
+might know more, and aroused him from his sleep.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Lexman had gone.  She went on the Sunday, an unusual day
+to pay a week-end visit, and she had taken with her two bags.  The
+porter ventured the opinion that she was rather excited, but when
+asked to define the symptoms relapsed into a chaos of incoherent
+"you-knows" and "what-I-means."
+
+"I don't like this," said T. X., suddenly.  "Does anybody know that
+we have made these discoveries?"
+
+"Nobody outside the office," said Mansus, "unless, unless . . . "
+
+"Unless what?" asked the other, irritably.  "Don't be a jimp,
+Mansus.  Get it off your mind.  What is it?"
+
+"I am wondering," said Mansus slowly, "if the landlord at Great
+James Street said anything.  He knows we have made a search."
+
+"We can easily find that out," said T. X.
+
+They hailed a taxi and drove to Great James Street.  That
+respectable thoroughfare was wrapped in sleep and it was some time
+before the landlord could be aroused.  Recognizing T. X. he
+checked his sarcasm, which he had prepared for a keyless lodger,
+and led the way into the drawing room.
+
+"You didn't tell me not to speak about it, Mr. Meredith," he said,
+in an aggrieved tone, "and as a matter of fact I have spoken to
+nobody except the gentleman who called the same day."
+
+"What did he want?" asked T. X.
+
+"He said he had only just discovered that Mr. Vassalaro had stayed
+with me and he wanted to pay whatever rent was due," replied the
+other.
+
+"What like of man was he?" asked T. X.
+
+The brief description the man gave sent a cold chill to the
+Commissioner's heart.
+
+"Kara for a ducat!" he said, and swore long and variously.
+
+"Cadogan Square," he ordered.
+
+His ring was answered promptly.  Mr. Kara was out of town, had
+indeed been out of town since Saturday.  This much the man-servant
+explained with a suspicious eye upon his visitors, remembering
+that his predecessor had lost his job from a too confiding
+friendliness with spurious electric fitters.  He did not know when
+Mr. Kara would return, perhaps it would be a long time and perhaps
+a short time.  He might come back that night or he might not.
+
+"You are wasting your young life," said T. X. bitterly.  "You
+ought to be a fortune teller."
+
+"This settles the matter," he said, in the cab on the way back.
+"Find out the first train for Tavistock in the morning and wire
+the George Hotel to have a car waiting."
+
+"Why not go to-night?" suggested the other.  "There is the
+midnight train.  It is rather slow, but it will get you there by
+six or seven in the morning."
+
+"Too late," he said, "unless you can invent a method of getting
+from here to Paddington in about fifty seconds."
+
+The morning journey to Devonshire was a dispiriting one despite
+the fineness of the day.  T. X. had an uncomfortable sense that
+something distressing had happened.  The run across the moor in
+the fresh spring air revived him a little.
+
+As they spun down to the valley of the Dart, Mansus touched his
+arm.
+
+"Look at that," he said, and pointed to the blue heavens where, a
+mile above their heads, a white-winged aeroplane, looking no
+larger than a very distant dragon fly, shimmered in the sunlight.
+
+"By Jove!" said T. X. "What an excellent way for a man to escape!"
+
+"It's about the only way," said Mansus.
+
+The significance of the aeroplane was borne in upon T. X. a few
+minutes later when he was held up by an armed guard.  A glance at
+his card was enough to pass him.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+
+"A prisoner has escaped," said the sentry.
+
+"Escaped - by aeroplane?" asked T. X.
+
+"I don't know anything about aeroplanes, sir.  All I know is that
+one of the working party got away."
+
+The car came to the gates of the prison and T. X. sprang out,
+followed by his assistant.  He had no difficulty in finding the
+Governor, a greatly perturbed man, for an escape is a very serious
+matter.
+
+The official was inclined to be brusque in his manner, but again
+the magic card produced a soothing effect.
+
+"I am rather rattled," said the Governor.  "One of my men has got
+away.  I suppose you know that?"
+
+"And I am afraid another of your men is going away, sir," said T.
+X., who had a curious reverence for military authority.  He
+produced his paper and laid it on the governor's table.
+
+"This is an order for the release of John Lexman, convicted under
+sentence of fifteen years penal servitude."
+
+The Governor looked at it.
+
+"Dated last night," he said, and breathed a long sigh of relief.
+"Thank the Lord! - that is the man who escaped!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Two years after the events just described, T. X. journeying up to
+London from Bath was attracted by a paragraph in the Morning Post.
+It told him briefly that Mr. Remington Kara, the influential
+leader of the Greek Colony, had been the guest of honor at a
+dinner of the Hellenic Society.
+
+T. X. had only seen Kara for a brief space of time following that
+tragic morning, when he had discovered not only that his best
+friend had escaped from Dartmoor prison and disappeared, as it
+were, from the world at a moment when his pardon had been signed,
+but that that friend's wife had also vanished from the face of the
+earth.
+
+At the same time - it might, as even T. X. admitted, have been the
+veriest coincidence that Kara had also cleared out of London to
+reappear at the end of six months.  Any question addressed to him,
+concerning the whereabouts of the two unhappy people, was met with
+a bland expression of ignorance as to their whereabouts.
+
+John Lexman was somewhere in the world, hiding as he believed from
+justice, and with him was his wife.  T. X. had no doubt in his
+mind as to this solution of the puzzle.  He had caused to be
+published the story of the pardon and the circumstances under
+which that pardon had been secured, and he had, moreover, arranged
+for an advertisement to be inserted in the principal papers of
+every European country.
+
+It was a moot question amongst the departmental lawyers as to
+whether John Lexman was not guilty of a technical and punishable
+offence for prison breaking, but this possibility did not keep T.
+X. awake at nights.  The circumstances of the escape had been
+carefully examined.  The warder responsible had been discharged
+from the service, and had almost immediately purchased for himself
+a beer house in Falmouth, for a sum which left no doubt in the
+official mind that he had been the recipient of a heavy bribe.
+
+Who had been the guiding spirit in that escape - Mrs. Lexman, or
+Kara?
+
+It was impossible to connect Kara with the event.  The motor car
+had been traced to Exeter, where it had been hired by a
+"foreign-looking gentleman," but the chauffeur, whoever he was,
+had made good his escape.  An inspection of Kara's hangars at
+Wembley showed that his two monoplanes had not been removed, and
+T. X. failed entirely to trace the owner of the machine he had
+seen flying over Dartmoor on the fatal morning.
+
+T. X. was somewhat baffled and a little amused by the
+disinclination of the authorities to believe that the escape had
+been effected by this method at all.  All the events of the trial
+came back to him, as he watched the landscape spinning past.
+
+He set down the newspaper with a little sigh, put his feet on the
+cushions of the opposite seat and gave himself up to reverie.
+Presently he returned to his journals and searched them idly for
+something to interest him in the final stretch of journey between
+Newbury and Paddington.
+
+Presently he found it in a two column article with the uninspiring
+title, "The Mineral Wealth of Tierra del Fuego."  It was written
+brightly with a style which was at once easy and informative.  It
+told of adventures in the marshes behind St. Sebastian Bay and
+journeys up the Guarez Celman river, of nights spent in primeval
+forests and ended in a geological survey, wherein the commercial
+value of syenite, porphyry, trachite and dialite were severally
+canvassed.
+
+The article was signed "G. G."  It is said of T. X. that his
+greatest virtue was his curiosity.  He had at the tip of his
+fingers the names of all the big explorers and author-travellers,
+and for some reason he could not place "G. G." to his
+satisfaction, in fact he had an absurd desire to interpret the
+initials into "George Grossmith."  His inability to identify the
+writer irritated him, and his first act on reaching his office was
+to telephone to one of the literary editors of the Times whom he
+knew.
+
+"Not my department," was the chilly reply, "and besides we never
+give away the names of our contributors.  Speaking as a person
+outside the office I should say that "G. G." was 'George
+Gathercole' the explorer you know, the fellow who had an arm
+chewed off by a lion or something."
+
+"George Gathercole!" repeated T. X. "What an ass I am."
+
+"Yes," said the voice at the other end the wire, and he had rung
+off before T. X.  could think of something suitable to say.
+
+Having elucidated this little side-line of mystery, the matter
+passed from the young Commissioner's mind.  It happened that
+morning that his work consisted of dealing with John Lexman's
+estate.
+
+With the disappearance of the couple he had taken over control of
+their belongings.  It had not embarrassed him to discover that he
+was an executor under Lexman's will, for he had already acted as
+trustee to the wife's small estate, and had been one of the
+parties to the ante-nuptial contract which John Lexman had made
+before his marriage.
+
+The estate revenues had increased very considerably.  All the
+vanished author's books were selling as they had never sold
+before, and the executor's work was made the heavier by the fact
+that Grace Lexman had possessed an aunt who had most in
+inconsiderately died, leaving a considerable fortune to her
+"unhappy niece."
+
+"I will keep the trusteeship another year," he told the solicitor
+who came to consult him that morning.  "At the end of that time I
+shall go to the court for relief."
+
+"Do you think they will ever turn up?" asked the solicitor, an
+elderly and unimaginative man.
+
+"Of course, they'll turn up!" said T. X. impatiently; "all the
+heroes of Lexman's books turn up sooner or later.  He will
+discover himself to us at a suitable moment, and we shall be
+properly thrilled."
+
+That Lexman would return he was sure.  It was a faith from which
+he did not swerve.
+
+He had as implicit a confidence that one day or other Kara, the
+magnificent, would play into his hands.
+
+There were some queer stories in circulation concerning the Greek,
+but on the whole they were stories and rumours which were
+difficult to separate from the malicious gossip which invariably
+attaches itself to the rich and to the successful.
+
+One of these was that Kara desired something more than an Albanian
+chieftainship, which he undoubtedly enjoyed.  There were whispers
+of wider and higher ambitions.  Though his father had been born a
+Greek, he had indubitably descended in a direct line from one of
+those old Mprets of Albania, who had exercised their brief
+authority over that turbulent land.
+
+The man's passion was for power.  To this end he did not spare
+himself.  It was said that he utilized his vast wealth for this
+reason, and none other, and that whatever might have been the
+irregularities of his youth - and there were adduced concrete
+instances - he was working toward an end with a singleness of
+purpose, from which it was difficult to withhold admiration.
+
+T. X. kept in his locked desk a little red book, steel bound and
+triple locked, which he called his "Scandalaria."  In this he
+inscribed in his own irregular writing the titbits which might not
+be published, and which often helped an investigator to light upon
+the missing threads of a problem.  In truth he scorned no source
+of information, and was conscienceless in the compilation of this
+somewhat chaotic record.
+
+The affairs of John Lexman recalled Kara, and Kara's great
+reception.  Mansus would have made arrangements to secure a
+verbatim report of the speeches which were made, and these would
+be in his hands by the night.  Mansus did not tell him that Kara
+was financing some very influential people indeed, that a certain
+Under-secretary of State with a great number of very influential
+relations had been saved from bankruptcy by the timely advances
+which Kara had made.  This T. X. had obtained through sources
+which might be hastily described as discreditable.  Mansus knew of
+the baccarat establishment in Albemarle Street, but he did not
+know that the neurotic wife of a very great man indeed, no less
+than the Minister of Justice, was a frequent visitor to that
+establishment, and that she had lost in one night some 6,000
+pounds.  In these circumstances it was remarkable, thought T. X.,
+that she should report to the police so small a matter as the
+petty pilfering of servants.  This, however, she had done and
+whilst the lesser officers of Scotland Yard were interrogating
+pawnbrokers, the men higher up were genuinely worried by the
+lady's own lapses from grace.
+
+It was all sordid but, unfortunately, conventional, because highly
+placed people will always do underbred things, where money or
+women are concerned, but it was necessary, for the proper conduct
+of the department which T. X. directed, that, however sordid and
+however conventional might be the errors which the great ones of
+the earth committed, they should be filed for reference.
+
+The motto which T. X. went upon in life was, "You never know."
+
+The Minister of Justice was a very important person, for he was a
+personal friend of half the monarchs of Europe.  A poor man, with
+two or three thousand a year of his own, with no very definite
+political views and uncommitted to the more violent policies of
+either party, he succeeded in serving both, with profit to
+himself, and without earning the obloquy of either.  Though he did
+not pursue the blatant policy of the Vicar of Bray, yet it is fact
+which may be confirmed from the reader's own knowledge, that he
+served in four different administrations, drawing the pay and
+emoluments of his office from each, though the fundamental
+policies of those four governments were distinct.
+
+Lady Bartholomew, the wife of this adaptable Minister, had
+recently departed for San Remo.  The newspapers announced the fact
+and spoke vaguely of a breakdown which prevented the lady from
+fulfilling her social engagements.
+
+T. X., ever a Doubting Thomas, could trace no visit of nerve
+specialist, nor yet of the family practitioner, to the official
+residence in Downing Street, and therefore he drew conclusions.
+In his own "Who's Who" T. X. noted the hobbies of his victims
+which, by the way, did not always coincide with the innocent
+occupations set against their names in the more pretentious
+volume.  Their follies and their weaknesses found a place and were
+recorded at a length (as it might seem to the uninformed observer)
+beyond the limit which charity allowed.
+
+Lady Mary Bartholomew's name appeared not once, but many times, in
+the erratic records which T. X. kept.  There was a plain
+matter-of-fact and wholly unobjectionable statement that she was
+born in 1874, that she was the seventh daughter of the Earl of
+Balmorey, that she had one daughter who rejoiced in the somewhat
+unpromising name of Belinda Mary, and such further information as
+a man might get without going to a great deal of trouble.
+
+T. X., refreshing his memory from the little red book, wondered
+what unexpected tragedy had sent Lady Bartholomew out of London in
+the middle of the season.  The information was that the lady was
+fairly well off at this moment, and this fact made matters all the
+more puzzling and almost induced him to believe that, after all,
+the story was true, and a nervous breakdown really was the cause
+of her sudden departure.  He sent for Mansus.
+
+"You saw Lady Bartholomew off at Charing Cross, I suppose?"
+
+Mansus nodded.
+
+"She went alone?"
+
+"She took her maid, but otherwise she was alone.  I thought she
+looked ill."
+
+"She has been looking ill for months past," said T. X., without
+any visible expression of sympathy.
+
+"Did she take Belinda Mary?"
+
+Mansus was puzzled.  "Belinda Mary?" he repeated slowly.  "Oh, you
+mean the daughter.  No, she's at a school somewhere in France."
+
+T. X. whistled a snatch of a popular song, closed the little red
+book with a snap and replaced it in his desk.
+
+"I wonder where on earth people dig up names like Belinda Mary?"
+he mused.  "Belinda Mary must be rather a weird little animal -
+the Lord forgive me for speaking so about my betters!  If heredity
+counts for anything she ought to be something between a head
+waiter and a pack of cards.  Have you lost anything'?"
+
+Mansus was searching his pockets.
+
+"I made a few notes, some questions I wanted to ask you about and
+Lady Bartholomew was the subject of one of them.  I have had her
+under observation for six months; do you want it kept up?"
+
+T. X. thought awhile, then shook his head.
+
+"I am only interested in Lady Bartholomew in so far as Kara is
+interested in her.  There is a criminal for you, my friend!" he
+added, admiringly.
+
+Mansus busily engaged in going through the bundles of letters,
+slips of paper and little notebooks he had taken from his pocket,
+sniffed audibly.
+
+"Have you a cold?" asked T. X. politely.
+
+"No, sir," was the reply, "only I haven't much opinion of Kara as
+a criminal.  Besides, what has he got to be a criminal about? He
+has all that he requires in the money department, he's one of the
+most popular people in London, and certainly one of the
+best-looking men I've ever seen in my life.  He needs nothing."
+
+T. X. regarded him scornfully.
+
+"You're a poor blind brute," he said, shaking his head; don't you
+know that great criminals are never influenced by material
+desires, or by the prospect of concrete gains?  The man, who robs
+his employer's till in order to give the girl of his heart the
+25-pearl and ruby brooch her soul desires, gains nothing but the
+glow of satisfaction which comes to the man who is thought well
+of.  The majority of crimes in the world are committed by people
+for the same reason - they want to be thought well of.  Here is
+Doctor X.  who murdered his wife because she was a drunkard and a
+slut, and he dared not leave her for fear the neighbours would
+have doubts as to his respectability.  Here is another gentleman
+who murders his wives in their baths in order that he should keep
+up some sort of position and earn the respect of his friends and
+his associates.  Nothing roused him more quickly to a frenzy of
+passion than the suggestion that he was not respectable.  Here is
+the great financier, who has embezzled a million and a quarter,
+not because he needed money, but because people looked up to him.
+Therefore, he must build great mansions, submarine pleasure courts
+and must lay out huge estates - because he wished that he should
+be thought well of.
+
+Mansus sniffed again.
+
+"What about the man who half murders his wife, does he do that to
+be well thought of?" he asked, with a tinge of sarcasm.
+
+T. X. looked at him pityingly.
+
+"The low-brow who beats his wife, my poor Mansus," he said, "does
+so because she doesn't think well of him.  That is our ruling
+passion, our national characteristic, the primary cause of most
+crimes, big or little.  That is why Kara is a bad criminal and
+will, as I say, end his life very violently."
+
+He took down his glossy silk hat from the peg and slipped into his
+overcoat.
+
+"I am going down to see my friend Kara," he said.  "I have a
+feeling that I should like to talk with him.  He might tell me
+something."
+
+His acquaintance with Kara's menage had been mere hearsay.  He had
+interviewed the Greek once after his return, but since all his
+efforts to secure information concerning the whereabouts of John
+Lexman and his wife - the main reason for his visit - had been in
+vain, he had not repeated his visit.
+
+The house in Cadogan Square was a large one, occupying a corner
+site.  It was peculiarly English in appearance with its window
+boxes, its discreet curtains, its polished brass and enamelled
+doorway.  It had been the town house of Lord Henry Gratham, that
+eccentric connoisseur of wine and follower of witless pleasure.
+It had been built by him "round a bottle of port," as his friends
+said, meaning thereby that his first consideration had been the
+cellarage of the house, and that when those cellars had been built
+and provision made for the safe storage of his priceless wines,
+the house had been built without the architect's being greatly
+troubled by his lordship.  The double cellars of Gratham House
+had, in their time, been one of the sights of London.  When
+Henry Gratham lay under eight feet of Congo earth (he was killed
+by an elephant whilst on a hunting trip) his executors had been
+singularly fortunate in finding an immediate purchaser.  Rumour
+had it that Kara, who was no lover of wine, had bricked up the
+cellars, and their very existence passed into domestic legendary.
+
+The door was opened by a well-dressed and deferential man-servant
+and T. X. was ushered into the hall.  A fire burnt cheerily in a
+bronze grate and T. X. had a glimpse of a big oil painting of Kara
+above the marble mantle-piece.
+
+"Mr. Kara is very busy, sir," said the man.
+
+"Just take in my card," said T. X. "I think he may care to see
+me."
+
+The man bowed, produced from some mysterious corner a silver
+salver and glided upstairs in that manner which well-trained
+servants have, a manner which seems to call for no bodily effort.
+In a minute he returned.
+
+"Will you come this way, sir," he said, and led the way up a broad
+flight of stairs.
+
+At the head of the stairs was a corridor which ran to the left and
+to the right.  From this there gave four rooms.  One at the
+extreme end of the passage on the right, one on the left, and two
+at fairly regular intervals in the centre.
+
+When the man's hand was on one of the doors, T. X. asked quietly,
+"I think I have seen you before somewhere, my friend."
+
+The man smiled.
+
+"It is very possible, sir.  I was a waiter at the Constitutional
+for some time."
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"That is where it must have been," he said.
+
+The man opened the door and announced the visitor.
+
+T. X. found himself in a large room, very handsomely furnished,
+but just lacking that sense of cosiness and comfort which is the
+feature of the Englishman's home.
+
+Kara rose from behind a big writing table, and came with a smile
+and a quick step to greet the visitor.
+
+"This is a most unexpected pleasure," he said, and shook hands
+warmly.
+
+T. X. had not seen him for a year and found very little change in
+this strange young man.  He could not be more confident than he
+had been, nor bear himself with a more graceful carriage.
+Whatever social success he had achieved, it had not spoiled him,
+for his manner was as genial and easy as ever.
+
+"I think that will do, Miss Holland," he said, turning to the girl
+who, with notebook in hand, stood by the desk.
+
+"Evidently," thought T. X., "our Hellenic friend has a pretty taste
+in secretaries."
+
+In that one glance he took her all in - from the bronze-brown of
+her hair to her neat foot.
+
+T. X. was not readily attracted by members of the opposite sex.
+He was self-confessed a predestined bachelor, finding life and its
+incidence too absorbing to give his whole mind to the serious
+problem of marriage, or to contract responsibilities and interests
+which might divert his attention from what he believed was the
+greater game.  Yet he must be a man of stone to resist the
+freshness, the beauty and the youth of this straight, slender
+girl; the pink-and-whiteness of her, the aliveness and buoyancy
+and the thrilling sense of vitality she carried in her very
+presence.
+
+"What is the weirdest name you have ever heard?" asked Kara
+laughingly.  "I ask you, because Miss Holland and I have been
+discussing a begging letter addressed to us by a Maggie Goomer."
+
+The girl smiled slightly and in that smile was paradise, thought
+T. X.
+
+"The weirdest name?" he repeated, "why I think the worst I have
+heard for a long time is Belinda Mary."
+
+"That has a familiar ring," said Kara.
+
+T. X. was looking at the girl.
+
+She was staring at him with a certain languid insolence which made
+him curl up inside.  Then with a glance at her employer she swept
+from the room.
+
+"I ought to have introduced you," said Kara.  "That was my
+secretary, Miss Holland.  Rather a pretty girl, isn't she?"
+
+"Very," said T. X., recovering his breath.
+
+"I like pretty things around me," said Kara, and somehow the
+complacency of the remark annoyed the detective more than anything
+that Kara had ever said to him.
+
+The Greek went to the mantlepiece, and taking down a silver
+cigarette box, opened and offered it to his visitor.  Kara was
+wearing a grey lounge suit; and although grey is a very trying
+colour for a foreigner to wear, this suit fitted his splendid
+figure and gave him just that bulk which he needed.
+
+"You are a most suspicious man, Mr. Meredith," he smiled.
+
+"Suspicious! I?" asked the innocent T. X.
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+"I am sure you want to enquire into the character of all my
+present staff.  I am perfectly satisfied that you will never be at
+rest until you learn the antecedents of my cook, my valet, my
+secretary - "
+
+T. X. held up his hand with a laugh.
+
+"Spare me," he said.  "It is one of my failings, I admit, but I
+have never gone much farther into your domestic affairs than to
+pry into the antecedents of your very interesting chauffeur."
+
+A little cloud passed over Kara's face, but it was only momentary.
+
+"Oh, Brown," he said, airily, with just a perceptible pause
+between the two words.
+
+"It used to be Smith," said T. X., "but no matter.  His name is
+really Poropulos."
+
+"Oh, Poropulos," said Kara gravely, "I dismissed him a long time
+ago."
+
+"Pensioned hire, too, I understand," said T. X.
+
+The other looked at him awhile, then, "I am very good to my old
+servants," he said slowly and, changing the subject; "to what good
+fortune do I owe this visit?"
+
+T. X. selected a cigarette before he replied.
+
+"I thought you might be of some service to me," he said,
+apparently giving his whole attention to the cigarette.
+
+"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," said Kara, a little
+eagerly.  "I am afraid you have not been very keen on continuing
+what I hoped would have ripened into a valuable friendship, more
+valuable to me perhaps," he smiled, "than to you."
+
+"I am a very shy man," said the shameless T. X., "difficult to a
+fault, and rather apt to underrate my social attractions.  I have
+come to you now because you know everybody - by the way, how long
+have you had your secretary!" he asked abruptly.
+
+Kara looked up at the ceiling for inspiration.
+
+"Four, no three months," he corrected, "a very efficient young
+lady who came to me from one of the training establishments.
+Somewhat uncommunicative, better educated than most girls in her
+position - for example, she speaks and writes modern Greek fairly
+well."
+
+"A treasure!" suggested T. X.
+
+"Unusually so," said Kara.  "She lives in Marylebone Road, 86a is
+the address.  She has no friends, spends most of her evenings in
+her room, is eminently respectable and a little chilling in her
+attitude to her employer."
+
+T. X. shot a swift glance at the other.
+
+"Why do you tell me all this?" he asked.
+
+"To save you the trouble of finding out," replied the other
+coolly.  "That insatiable curiosity which is one of the equipments
+of your profession, would, I feel sure, induce you to conduct
+investigations for your own satisfaction."
+
+T. X. laughed.
+
+"May I sit down?" he said.
+
+The other wheeled an armchair across the room and T. X. sank into
+it.  He leant back and crossed his legs, and was, in a second, the
+personification of ease.
+
+"I think you are a very clever man, Monsieur Kara," he said.
+
+The other looked down at him this time without amusement.
+
+"Not so clever that I can discover the object of your visit," he
+said pleasantly enough.
+
+"It is very simply explained," said T. X. "You know everybody in
+town.  You know, amongst other people, Lady Bartholomew."
+
+"I know the lady very well indeed," said Kara, readily, - too
+readily in fact, for the rapidity with which answer had followed
+question, suggested to T. X. that Kara had anticipated the reason
+for the call.
+
+"Have you any idea," asked T. X., speaking with deliberation, "as
+to why Lady Bartholomew has gone out of town at this particular
+moment?"
+
+Kara laughed.
+
+"What an extraordinary question to ask me - as though Lady
+Bartholomew confided her plans to one who is little more than a
+chance acquaintance!"
+
+"And yet," said T. X., contemplating the burning end of his
+cigarette, "you know her well enough to hold her promissory note."
+
+"Promissory note?" asked the other.
+
+His tone was one of involuntary surprise and T. X. swore softly to
+himself for now he saw the faintest shade of relief in Kara's
+face.  The Commissioner realized that he had committed an error  -
+he had been far too definite.
+
+"When I say promissory note," he went on easily, as though he had
+noticed nothing, "I mean, of course, the securities which the
+debtor invariably gives to one from whom he or she has borrowed
+large sums of money."
+
+Kara made no answer, but opening a drawer of his desk he took out
+a key and brought it across to where T. X. was sitting.
+
+"Here is the key of my safe," he said quietly.  "You are at
+liberty to go carefully through its contents and discover for
+yourself any promissory note which I hold from Lady Bartholomew.
+My dear fellow, you don't imagine I'm a moneylender, do you?" he
+said in an injured tone.
+
+"Nothing was further from my thoughts," said T. X., untruthfully.
+
+But the other pressed the key upon him.
+
+"I should be awfully glad if you would look for yourself," he said
+earnestly.  "I feel that in some way you associate Lady
+Bartholomew's illness with some horrible act of usury on my part -
+will you satisfy yourself and in doing so satisfy me?"
+
+Now any ordinary man, and possibly any ordinary detective, would
+have made the conventional answer.  He would have protested that
+he had no intention of doing anything of the sort; he would have
+uttered, if he were a man in the position which T. X. occupied,
+the conventional statement that he had no authority to search the
+private papers, and that he would certainly not avail himself of
+the other's kindness.  But T. X. was not an ordinary person.  He
+took the key and balanced it lightly in the palm of his hand.
+
+"Is this the key of the famous bedroom safe?" he said banteringly.
+
+Kara was looking down at him with a quizzical smile.  "It isn't
+the safe you opened in my absence, on one memorable occasion, Mr.
+Meredith," he said.  "As you probably know, I have changed that
+safe, but perhaps you don't feel equal to the task?"
+
+"On the contrary," said T. X., calmly, and rising from the chair,
+"I am going to put your good faith to the test."
+
+For answer Kara walked to the door and opened it.
+
+"Let me show you the way," he said politely.
+
+He passed along the corridor and entered the apartment at the end.
+The room was a large one and lighted by one big square window
+which was protected by steel bars.  In the grate which was broad
+and high a huge fire was burning and the temperature of the room
+was unpleasantly close despite the coldness of the day.
+
+"That is one of the eccentricities which you, as an Englishman,
+will never excuse in me," said Kara.
+
+Near the foot of the bed, let into, and flush with, the wall, was
+a big green door of the safe.
+
+"Here you are, Mr. Meredith," said Kara.  "All the precious
+secrets of Remington Kara are yours for the seeking."
+
+"I am afraid I've had my trouble for nothing," said T. X., making
+no attempt to use the key.
+
+"That is an opinion which I share," said Kara, with a smile.
+
+"Curiously enough," said T. X. "I mean just what you mean."
+
+He handed the key to Kara.
+
+"Won't you open it?" asked the Greek.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+"The safe as far as I can see is a Magnus, the key which you have
+been kind enough to give me is legibly inscribed upon the handle
+'Chubb.'  My experience as a police officer has taught me that
+Chubb keys very rarely open Magnus safes."
+
+Kara uttered an exclamation of annoyance.
+
+"How stupid of me!" he said, "yet now I remember, I sent the key
+to my bankers, before I went out of town - I only came back this
+morning, you know.  I will send for it at once."
+
+"Pray don't trouble," murmured T. X. politely.  He took from his
+pocket a little flat leather case and opened it.  It contained a
+number of steel implements of curious shape which were held in
+position by a leather loop along the centre of the case.  From one
+of these loops he extracted a handle, and deftly fitted something
+that looked like a steel awl to the socket in the handle.  Looking
+in wonder, and with no little apprehension, Kara saw that the awl
+was bent at the head.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he asked, a little alarmed.
+
+"I'll show you," said T. X. pleasantly.
+
+Very gingerly he inserted the instrument in the small keyhole and
+turned it cautiously first one way and then the other.  There was
+a sharp click followed by another.  He turned the handle and the
+door of the safe swung open.
+
+"Simple, isn't it!" he asked politely.
+
+In that second of time Kara's face had undergone a transformation.
+The eyes which met T. X. Meredith's blazed with an almost insane
+fury.  With a quick stride Kara placed himself before the open
+safe.
+
+"I think this has gone far enough, Mr. Meredith," he said harshly.
+"If you wish to search my safe you must get a warrant."
+
+T. X. shrugged his shoulders, and carefully unscrewing the
+instrument he had employed and replacing it in the case, he
+returned it to his inside pocket.
+
+"It was at your invitation, my dear Monsieur Kara," he said
+suavely.  "Of course I knew that you were putting a bluff up on me
+with the key and that you had no more intention of letting me see
+the inside of your safe than you had of telling me exactly what
+happened to John Lexman."
+
+The shot went home.
+
+The face which was thrust into the Commissioner's was ridged and
+veined with passion.  The lips were turned back to show the big
+white even teeth, the eyes were narrowed to slits, the jaw thrust
+out, and almost every semblance of humanity had vanished from his
+face.
+
+"You - you - " he hissed, and his clawing hands moved suspiciously
+backward.
+
+"Put up your hands," said T. X. sharply, "and be damned quick
+about it!"
+
+In a flash the hands went up, for the revolver which T. X. held
+was pressed uncomfortably against the third button of the Greek's
+waistcoat.
+
+"That's not the first time you've been asked to put up your hands,
+I think," said T. X. pleasantly.
+
+His own left hand slipped round to Kara's hip pocket.  He found
+something in the shape of a cylinder and drew it out from the
+pocket.  To his surprise it was not a revolver, not even a knife;
+it looked like a small electric torch, though instead of a bulb
+and a bull's-eye glass, there was a pepper-box perforation at one
+end.
+
+He handled it carefully and was about to press the small nickel
+knob when a strangled cry of horror broke from Kara.
+
+"For God's sake be careful!" he gasped.  "You're pointing it at
+me!  Do not press that lever, I beg!"
+
+"Will it explode!" asked T. X. curiously.
+
+"No, no!"
+
+T. X. pointed the thing downward to the carpet and pressed the
+knob cautiously.  As he did so there was a sharp hiss and the
+floor was stained with the liquid which the instrument contained.
+Just one gush of fluid and no more.  T. X. looked down.  The
+bright carpet had already changed colour, and was smoking.  The
+room was filled with a pungent and disagreeable scent.  T. X.
+looked from the floor to the white-faced man.
+
+"Vitriol, I believe," he said, shaking his head admiringly.  "What
+a dear little fellow you are!"
+
+The man, big as he was, was on the point of collapse and mumbled
+something about self-defence, and listened without a word, whilst
+T. X., labouring under an emotion which was perfectly pardonable,
+described Kara, his ancestors and the possibilities of his future
+estate.
+
+Very slowly the Greek recovered his self-possession.
+
+"I didn't intend using it on you, I swear I didn't," he pleaded.
+"I'm surrounded by enemies, Meredith.  I had to carry some means
+of protection.  It is because my enemies know I carry this that
+they fight shy of me.  I'll swear I had no intention of using it
+on you.  The idea is too preposterous.  I am sorry I fooled you
+about the safe."
+
+"Don't let that worry you," said T. X. "I am afraid I did all the
+fooling.  No, I cannot let you have this back again," he said, as
+the Greek put out his hand to take the infernal little instrument.
+"I must take this back to Scotland Yard; it's quite a long time
+since we had anything new in this shape.  Compressed air, I
+presume."
+
+Kara nodded solemnly.
+
+"Very ingenious indeed," said T. X. "If I had a brain like yours,"
+he paused, "I should do something with it - with a gun," he added,
+as he passed out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+  "My dear Mr. Meredith,
+
+  "I cannot tell you how unhappy and humiliated I feel that my
+   little joke with you should have had such an uncomfortable
+  ending.  As you know, and as I have given you proof, I have the
+  greatest admiration in the world for one whose work for
+humanity has won such universal recognition.
+
+  "I hope that we shall both forget this unhappy morning and that
+  you will give me an opportunity of rendering to you in person,
+  the apologies which are due to you.  I feel that anything less
+  will neither rehabilitate me in your esteem, nor secure for me
+  the remnants of my shattered self-respect.
+
+  "I am hoping you will dine with me next week and meet a most
+interesting man, George Gathercole, who has just returned from
+Patagonia, - I only received his letter this morning - having
+made most remarkable discoveries concerning that country.
+
+  "I feel sure that you are large enough minded and too much a man
+   of the world to allow my foolish fit of temper to disturb a
+relationship which I have always hoped would be mutually
+pleasant.  If you will allow Gathercole, who will be
+unconscious of the part he is playing, to act as peacemaker
+between yourself and myself, I shall feel that his trip, which
+has cost me a large sum of money, will not have been wasted.
+
+        "I am, dear Mr. Meredith,
+                     "Yours very sincerely,
+                                   "REMINGTON KARA."
+
+Kara folded the letter and inserted it in its envelope.  He rang a
+bell on his table and the girl who had so filled T. X. with a
+sense of awe came from an adjoining room.
+
+"You will see that this is delivered, Miss Holland."
+
+She inclined her head and stood waiting.  Kara rose from his desk
+and began to pace the room.
+
+"Do you know T. X. Meredith?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"I have heard of him," said the girl.
+
+"A man with a singular mind," said Kara; "a man against whom my
+favourite weapon would fail."
+
+She looked at him with interest in her eyes.
+
+"What is your favourite weapon, Mr. Kara?" she asked.
+
+"Fear," he said.
+
+If he expected her to give him any encouragement to proceed he was
+disappointed.  Probably he required no such encouragement, for in
+the presence of his social inferiors he was somewhat monopolizing.
+
+"Cut a man's flesh and it heals," he said.  "Whip a man and the
+memory of it passes, frighten him, fill him with a sense of
+foreboding and apprehension and let him believe that something
+dreadful is going to happen either to himself or to someone he
+loves - better the latter - and you will hurt him beyond
+forgetfulness.  Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than
+the rack, more potent than the stake.  Fear is many-eyed and sees
+horrors where normal vision only sees the ridiculous."
+
+"Is that your creed?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Part of it, Miss Holland," he smiled.
+
+She played idly with the letter she held in her hand, balancing it
+on the edge of the desk, her eyes downcast.
+
+"What would justify the use of such an awful weapon?" she asked.
+
+"It is amply justified to secure an end," he said blandly.  "For
+example - I want something - I cannot obtain that something
+through the ordinary channel or by the employment of ordinary
+means.  It is essential to me, to my happiness, to my comfort, or
+my amour-propre, that that something shall be possessed by me.  If
+I can buy it, well and good.  If I can buy those who can use their
+influence to secure this thing for me, so much the better.  If I
+can obtain it by any merit I possess, I utilize that merit,
+providing always, that I can secure my object in the time,
+otherwise - "
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I see," she said, nodding her head quickly.  "I suppose that is
+how blackmailers feel."
+
+He frowned.
+
+"That is a word I never use, nor do I like to hear it employed,"
+he said.  "Blackmail suggests to me a vulgar attempt to obtain
+money."
+
+"Which is generally very badly wanted by the people who use it,"
+said the girl, with a little smile, "and, according to your
+argument, they are also justified."
+
+"It is a matter of plane," he said airily.  "Viewed from my
+standpoint, they are sordid criminals - the sort of person that T.
+X. meets, I presume, in the course of his daily work.  T.  X.," he
+went on somewhat oracularly, "is a man for whom I have a great
+deal of respect.  You will probably meet him again, for he will
+find an opportunity of asking you a few questions about myself.  I
+need hardly tell you - "
+
+He lifted his shoulders with a deprecating smile.
+
+"I shall certainly not discuss your business with any person,"
+said the girl coldly.
+
+"I am paying you 3 pounds a week, I think," he said.  "I intend
+increasing that to 5 pounds because you suit me most admirably."
+
+"Thank you," said the girl quietly, "but I am already being paid
+quite sufficient."
+
+She left him, a little astonished and not a little ruffled.
+
+To refuse the favours of Remington Kara was, by him, regarded as
+something of an affront.  Half his quarrel with T. X. was that
+gentleman's curious indifference to the benevolent attitude which
+Kara had persistently adopted in his dealings with the detective.
+
+He rang the bell, this time for his valet.
+
+"Fisher," he said, "I am expecting a visit from a gentleman named
+Gathercole - a one-armed gentleman whom you must look after if he
+comes.  Detain him on some pretext or other because he is rather
+difficult to get hold of and I want to see him.  I am going out
+now and I shall be back at 6.30.  Do whatever you can to prevent
+him going away until I return.  He will probably be interested if
+you take him into the library."
+
+"Very good, sir," said the urbane Fisher, "will you change before
+you go out?"
+
+Kara shook his head.
+
+"I think I will go as I am," he said.  "Get me my fur coat.  This
+beastly cold kills me," he shivered as he glanced into the bleak
+street.  "Keep my fire going, put all my private letters in my
+bedroom, and see that Miss Holland has her lunch."
+
+Fisher followed him to his car, wrapped the fur rug about his
+legs, closed the door carefully and returned to the house.  From
+thence onward his behaviour was somewhat extraordinary for a
+well-bred servant.  That he should return to Kara's study and set
+the papers in order was natural and proper.
+
+That he should conduct a rapid examination of all the drawers in
+Kara's desk might be excused on the score of diligence, since he
+was, to some extent, in the confidence of his employer.
+
+Kara was given to making friends of his servants - up to a point.
+In his more generous moments he would address his bodyguard as
+"Fred," and on more occasions than one, and for no apparent
+reason, had tipped his servant over and above his salary.
+
+Mr. Fred Fisher found little to reward him for his search until he
+came upon Kara's cheque book which told him that on the previous
+day the Greek had drawn 6,000 pounds in cash from the bank.  This
+interested him mightily and he replaced the cheque book with the
+tightened lips and the fixed gaze of a man who was thinking
+rapidly.  He paid a visit to the library, where the secretary was
+engaged in making copies of Kara's correspondence, answering
+letters appealing for charitable donations, and in the hack words
+which fall to the secretaries of the great.
+
+He replenished the fire, asked deferentially for any instructions
+and returned again to his quest.  This time he made the bedroom
+the scene of his investigations.  The safe he did not attempt to
+touch, but there was a small bureau in which Kara would have
+placed his private correspondence of the morning.  This however
+yielded no result.
+
+By the side of the bed on a small table was a telephone, the sight
+of which apparently afforded the servant a little amusement.  This
+was the private 'phone which Kara had been instrumental in having
+fixed to Scotland Yard - as he had explained to his servants.
+
+"Rum cove," said Fisher.
+
+He paused for a moment before the closed door of the room and
+smilingly surveyed the great steel latch which spanned the door
+and fitted into an iron socket securely screwed to the framework.
+He lifted it gingerly - there was a little knob for the purpose -
+and let it fall gently into the socket which had been made to
+receive it on the door itself.
+
+"Rum cove," he said again, and lifting the latch to the hook which
+held it up, left the room, closing the door softly behind him.  He
+walked down the corridor, with a meditative frown, and began to
+descend the stairs to the hall.
+
+He was less than half-way down when the one maid of Kara's
+household came up to meet him.
+
+"There's a gentleman who wants to see Mr. Kara," she said, "here
+is his card."
+
+Fisher took the card from the salver and read, "Mr. George
+Gathercole, Junior Travellers' Club."
+
+"I'll see this gentleman," he said, with a sudden brisk interest.
+
+He found the visitor standing in the hall.
+
+He was a man who would have attracted attention, if only from the
+somewhat eccentric nature of his dress and his unkempt appearance.
+He was dressed in a well-worn overcoat of a somewhat pronounced
+check, he had a top-hat, glossy and obviously new, at the back of
+his head, and the lower part of his face was covered by a ragged
+beard.  This he was plucking with nervous jerks, talking to
+himself the while, and casting a disparaging eye upon the portrait
+of Remington Kara which hung above the marble fireplace.  A pair
+of pince-nez sat crookedly on his nose and two fat volumes under
+his arm completed the picture.  Fisher, who was an observer of
+some discernment, noticed under the overcoat a creased blue suit,
+large black boots and a pair of pearl studs.
+
+The newcomer glared round at the valet.
+
+"Take these!" he ordered peremptorily, pointing to the books under
+his arm.
+
+Fisher hastened to obey and noted with some wonder that the
+visitor did not attempt to assist him either by loosening his hold
+of the volumes or raising his hand.  Accidentally the valet's hand
+pressed against the other's sleeve and he received a shock, for
+the forearm was clearly an artificial one.  It was against a
+wooden surface beneath the sleeve that his knuckles struck, and
+this view of the stranger's infirmity was confirmed when the other
+reached round with his right hand, took hold of the gloved left
+hand and thrust it into the pocket of his overcoat.
+
+"Where is Kara?" growled the stranger.
+
+"He will be back very shortly, sir," said the urbane Fisher.
+
+"Out, is he?" boomed the visitor.  "Then I shan't wait.  What the
+devil does he mean by being out?  He's had three years to be out!"
+
+"Mr. Kara expects you, sir.  He told me he would be in at six
+o'clock at the latest."
+
+"Six o'clock, ye gods'." stormed the man impatiently.  "What dog
+am I that I should wait till six?"
+
+He gave a savage little tug at his beard.
+
+"Six o'clock, eh?  You will tell Mr. Kara that I called.  Give me
+those books."
+
+"But I assure you, sir, - " stammered Fisher.
+
+"Give me those books!" roared the other.
+
+Deftly he lifted his left hand from the pocket, crooked the elbow
+by some quick manipulation, and thrust the books, which the valet
+most reluctantly handed to him, back to the place from whence he
+had taken them.
+
+"Tell Mr. Kara I will call at my own time - do you understand, at
+my own time.  Good morning to you."
+
+"If you would only wait, sir," pleaded the agonized Fisher.
+
+"Wait be hanged," snarled the other.  "I've waited three years, I
+tell you.  Tell Mr. Kara to expect me when he sees me!"
+
+He went out and most unnecessarily banged the door behind him.
+Fisher went back to the library.  The girl was sealing up some
+letters as he entered and looked up.
+
+"I am afraid, Miss Holland, I've got myself into very serious
+trouble."
+
+"What is that, Fisher!" asked the girl.
+
+"There was a gentleman coming to see Mr. Kara, whom Mr. Kara
+particularly wanted to see."
+
+"Mr. Gathercole," said the girl quickly.
+
+Fisher nodded.
+
+"Yes, miss, I couldn't get him to stay though."
+
+She pursed her lips thoughtfully.
+
+"Mr. Kara will be very cross, but I don't see how you can help it.
+I wish you had called me."
+
+"He never gave a chance, miss," said Fisher, with a little smile,
+"but if he comes again I'll show him straight up to you."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Is there anything you want, miss?" he asked as he stood at the
+door.
+
+"What time did Mr. Kara say he would be back?"
+
+"At six o'clock, miss," the man replied.
+
+"There is rather an important letter here which has to be
+delivered."
+
+"Shall I ring up for a messenger?"
+
+"No, I don't think that would be advisable.  You had better take
+it yourself."
+
+Kara was in the habit of employing Fisher as a confidential
+messenger when the occasion demanded such employment.
+
+"I will go with pleasure, miss," he said.
+
+It was a heaven-sent opportunity for Fisher, who had been
+inventing some excuse for leaving the house.  She handed him the
+letter and he read without a droop of eyelid the superscription:
+
+"T. X. Meredith, Esq., Special Service Dept., Scotland Yard,
+Whitehall."
+
+He put it carefully in his pocket and went from the room to
+change.  Large as the house was Kara did not employ a regular
+staff of servants.  A maid and a valet comprised the whole of the
+indoor staff.  His cook, and the other domestics, necessary for
+conducting an establishment of that size, were engaged by the day.
+
+Kara had returned from the country earlier than had been
+anticipated, and, save for Fisher, the only other person in the
+house beside the girl, was the middle-aged domestic who was
+parlour-maid, serving-maid and housekeeper in one.
+
+Miss Holland sat at her desk to all appearance reading over the
+letters she had typed that afternoon but her mind was very far
+from the correspondence before her.  She heard the soft thud of
+the front door closing, and rising she crossed the room rapidly
+and looked down through the window to the street.  She watched
+Fisher until he was out of sight; then she descended to the hall
+and to the kitchen.
+
+It was not the first visit she had made to the big underground
+room with its vaulted roof and its great ranges - which were
+seldom used nowadays, for Kara gave no dinners.
+
+The maid - who was also cook - arose up as the girl entered.
+
+"It's a sight for sore eyes to see you in my kitchen, miss," she
+smiled.
+
+"I'm afraid you're rather lonely, Mrs.  Beale," said the girl
+sympathetically.
+
+"Lonely, miss!" cried the maid.  "I fairly get the creeps sitting
+here hour after hour.  It's that door that gives me the hump."
+
+She pointed to the far end of the kitchen to a soiled looking door
+of unpainted wood.
+
+"That's Mr. Kara's wine cellar - nobody's been in it but him.  I
+know he goes in sometimes because I tried a dodge that my brother
+- who's a policeman - taught me.  I stretched a bit of white
+cotton across it an' it was broke the next morning."
+
+"Mr. Kara keeps some of his private papers in there," said the
+girl quietly, "he has told me so himself."
+
+"H'm," said the woman doubtfully, "I wish he'd brick it up - the
+same as he has the lower cellar - I get the horrors sittin' here
+at night expectin' the door to open an' the ghost of the mad lord
+to come out - him that was killed in Africa."
+
+Miss Holland laughed.
+
+"I want you to go out now," she said, "I have no stamps."
+
+Mrs. Beale obeyed with alacrity and whilst she was assuming a hat
+- being desirous of maintaining her prestige as housekeeper in the
+eyes of Cadogan Square, the girl ascended to the upper floor.
+
+Again she watched from the window the disappearing figure.
+
+Once out of sight Miss Holland went to work with a remarkable
+deliberation and thoroughness.  From her bag she produced a small
+purse and opened it.  In that case was a new steel key.  She
+passed swiftly down the corridor to Kara's room and made straight
+for the safe.
+
+In two seconds it was open and she was examining its contents.  It
+was a large safe of the usual type.  There were four steel drawers
+fitted at the back and at the bottom of the strong box.  Two of
+these were unlocked and contained nothing more interesting than
+accounts relating to Kara's estate in Albania.
+
+The top pair were locked.  She was prepared for this contingency
+and a second key was as efficacious as the first.  An examination
+of the first drawer did not produce all that she had expected.
+She returned the papers to the drawer, pushed it to and locked it.
+She gave her attention to the second drawer.  Her hand shook a
+little as she pulled it open.  It was her last chance, her last
+hope.
+
+There were a number of small jewel-boxes almost filling the
+drawer.  She took them out one by one and at the bottom she found
+what she had been searching for and that which had filled her
+thoughts for the past three months.
+
+It was a square case covered in red morocco leather.  She inserted
+her shaking hand and took it out with a triumphant little cry.
+
+"At last," she said aloud, and then a hand grasped her wrist and
+in a panic she turned to meet the smiling face of Kara.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+She felt her knees shake under her and thought she was going to
+swoon.  She put out her disengaged hand to steady herself, and if
+the face which was turned to him was pale, there was a steadfast
+resolution in her dark eyes.
+
+"Let me relieve you of that, Miss Holland," said Kara, in his
+silkiest tones.
+
+He wrenched rather than took the box from her hand, replaced it
+carefully in the drawer, pushed the drawer to and locked it,
+examining the key as he withdrew it.  Then he closed the safe and
+locked that.
+
+"Obviously," he said presently, "I must get a new safe."
+
+He had not released his hold of her wrist nor did he, until he had
+led her from the room back to the library.  Then he released the
+girl, standing between her and the door, with folded arms and that
+cynical, quiet, contemptuous smile of his upon his handsome face.
+
+"There are many courses which I can adopt," he said slowly.  "I
+can send for the police - when my servants whom you have
+despatched so thoughtfully have returned, or I can take your
+punishment into my own hands."
+
+"So far as I am concerned," said the girl coolly, "you may send
+for the police."
+
+She leant back against the edge of the desk, her hands holding the
+edge, and faced him without so much as a quaver.
+
+"I do not like the police," mused Kara, when there came a knock at
+the door.
+
+Kara turned and opened it and after a low strained conversation he
+returned, closing the door and laid a paper of stamps on the
+girl's table.
+
+"As I was saying, I do not care for the police, and I prefer my
+own method.  In this particular instance the police obviously
+would not serve me, because you are not afraid of them and in all
+probability you are in their pay - am I right in supposing that
+you are one of Mr. T. X. Meredith's accomplices!"
+
+"I do not know Mr. T. X. Meredith," she replied calmly, "and I am
+not in any way associated with the police."
+
+"Nevertheless," he persisted, "you do not seem to be very scared
+of them and that removes any temptation I might have to place you
+in the hands of the law.  Let me see," he pursed his lips as he
+applied his mind to the problem.
+
+She half sat, half stood, watching him without any evidence of
+apprehension, but with a heart which began to quake a little.  For
+three months she had played her part and the strain had been
+greater than she had confessed to herself.  Now the great moment
+had come and she had failed.  That was the sickening, maddening
+thing about it all.  It was not the fear of arrest or of
+conviction, which brought a sinking to her heart; it was the
+despair of failure, added to a sense of her helplessness against
+this man.
+
+"If I had you arrested your name would appear in all the papers,
+of course," he said, narrowly, "and your photograph would probably
+adorn the Sunday journals," he added expectantly.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"That doesn't appeal to me," she said.
+
+"I am afraid it doesn't," he replied, and strolled towards her as
+though to pass her on his way to the window.  He was abreast of
+her when he suddenly swung round and catching her in his arms he
+caught her close to him.  Before she could realise what he
+planned, he had stooped swiftly and kissed her full upon the
+mouth.
+
+"If you scream, I shall kiss you again," he said, "for I have sent
+the maid to buy some more stamps - to the General Post Office."
+
+"Let me go," she gasped.
+
+Now for the first time he saw the terror in her eyes, and there
+surged within him that mad sense of triumph, that intoxication of
+power which had been associated with the red letter days of his
+warped life.
+
+"You're afraid!" he bantered her, half whispering the words,
+"you're afraid now, aren't you?  If you scream I shall kiss you
+again, do you hear?"
+
+"For God's sake, let me go," she whispered.
+
+He felt her shaking in his arms, and suddenly he released her with
+a little laugh, and she sank trembling from head to foot upon the
+chair by her desk.
+
+"Now you're going to tell me who sent you here," he went on
+harshly, "and why you came.  I never suspected you.  I thought you
+were one of those strange creatures one meets in England, a
+gentlewoman who prefers working for her living to the more simple
+business of getting married.  And all the time you were spying -
+clever - very clever!"
+
+The girl was thinking rapidly.  In five minutes Fisher would
+return.  Somehow she had faith in Fisher's ability and willingness
+to save her from a situation which she realized was fraught with
+the greatest danger to herself.  She was horribly afraid.  She
+knew this man far better than he suspected, realized the treachery
+and the unscrupulousness of him.  She knew he would stop short of
+nothing, that he was without honour and without a single attribute
+of goodness.
+
+He must have read her thoughts for he came nearer and stood over
+her.
+
+"You needn't shrink, my young friend," he said with a little
+chuckle.  "You are going to do just what I want you to do, and
+your first act will be to accompany me downstairs.  Get up."
+
+He half lifted, half dragged her to her feet and led her from the
+room.  They descended to the hall together and the girl spoke no
+word.  Perhaps she hoped that she might wrench herself free and
+make her escape into the street, but in this she was disappointed.
+The grip about her arm was a grip of steel and she knew safety did
+not lie in that direction.  She pulled back at the head of the
+stairs that led down to the kitchen.
+
+"Where are you taking me?" she asked.
+
+"I am going to put you into safe custody," he said.  "On the whole
+I think it is best that the police take this matter in hand and I
+shall lock you into my wine cellar and go out in search of a
+policeman."
+
+The big wooden door opened, revealing a second door and this Kara
+unbolted.  She noticed that both doors were sheeted with steel,
+the outer on the inside, and the inner door on the outside.  She
+had no time to make any further observations for Kara thrust her
+into the darkness.  He switched on a light.
+
+"I will not deny you that," he said, pushing her back as she made
+a frantic attempt to escape.  He swung the outer door to as she
+raised her voice in a piercing scream, and clapping his hand over
+her mouth held her tightly for a moment.
+
+"I have warned you," he hissed.
+
+She saw his face distorted with rage.  She saw Kara transfigured
+with devilish anger, saw that handsome, almost godlike countenance
+thrust into hers, flushed and seamed with malignity and a
+hatefulness beyond understanding and then her senses left her and
+she sank limp and swooning into his arms.
+
+
+When she recovered consciousness she found herself lying on a
+plain stretcher bed.  She sat up suddenly.  Kara had gone and the
+door was closed.  The cellar was dry and clean and its walls were
+enamelled white.  Light was supplied by two electric lamps in the
+ceiling.  There was a table and a chair and a small washstand, and
+air was evidently supplied through unseen ventilators.  It was
+indeed a prison and no less, and in her first moments of panic she
+found herself wondering whether Kara had used this underground
+dungeon of his before for a similar purpose.
+
+She examined the room carefully.  At the farthermost end was
+another door and this she pushed gently at first and then
+vigorously without producing the slightest impression.  She still
+had her bag, a small affair of black moire, which hung from her
+belt, in which was nothing more formidable than a penknife, a
+small bottle of smelling salts and a pair of scissors.  The latter
+she had used for cutting out those paragraphs from the daily
+newspapers which referred to Kara's movements.
+
+They would make a formidable weapon, and wrapping her handkerchief
+round the handle to give it a better grip she placed it on the
+table within reach.  She was dimly conscious all the time that she
+had heard something about this wine cellar - something which, if
+she could recollect it, would be of service to her.
+
+Then in a flash she remembered that there was a lower cellar,
+which according to Mrs.  Beale was never used and was bricked up.
+It was approached from the outside, down a circular flight of
+stairs.  There might be a way out from that direction and would
+there not be some connection between the upper cellar and the
+lower!
+
+She set to work to make a closer examination of the apartment.
+
+The floor was of concrete, covered with a light rush matting.
+This she carefully rolled up, starting at the door.  One half of
+the floor was uncovered without revealing the existence of any
+trap.  She attempted to pull the table into the centre of the
+room, better to roll the matting, but found it fixed to the wall,
+and going down on her knees, she discovered that it had been fixed
+after the matting had been laid.
+
+Obviously there was no need for the fixture and, she tapped the
+floor with her little knuckle.  Her heart started racing.  The
+sound her knocking gave forth was a hollow one.  She sprang up,
+took her bag from the table, opened the little penknife and cut
+carefully through the thin rushes.  She might have to replace the
+matting and it was necessary she should do her work tidily.
+
+Soon the whole of the trap was revealed.  There was an iron ring,
+which fitted flush with the top and which she pulled.  The trap
+yielded and swung back as though there were a counterbalance at
+the other end, as indeed there was.  She peered down.  There was a
+dim light below - the reflection of a light in the distance.  A
+flight of steps led down to the lower level and after a second's
+hesitation she swung her legs over the cavity and began her
+descent.
+
+She was in a cellar slightly smaller than that above her.  The
+light she had seen came from an inner apartment which would be
+underneath the kitchen of the house.  She made her way cautiously
+along, stepping on tip-toe.  The first of the rooms she came to
+was well-furnished.  There was a thick carpet on the floor,
+comfortable easy-chairs, a little bookcase well filled, and a
+reading lamp.  This must be Kara's underground study, where he
+kept his precious papers.
+
+A smaller room gave from this and again it was doorless.  She
+looked in and after her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness
+she saw that it was a bathroom handsomely fitted.
+
+The room she was in was also without any light which came from the
+farthermost chamber.  As the girl strode softly across the
+well-carpeted room she trod on something hard.  She stooped and
+felt along the floor and her fingers encountered a thin steel
+chain.  The girl was bewildered-almost panic-stricken.  She shrunk
+back from the entrance of the inner room, fearful of what she
+would see.  And then from the interior came a sound that made her
+tingle with horror.
+
+It was a sound of a sigh, long and trembling.  She set her teeth
+and strode through the doorway and stood for a moment staring with
+open eyes and mouth at what she saw.
+
+"My God!" she breathed, "London .  .  .  .  in the twentieth
+century .  .  .  !"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Superintendent Mansus had a little office in Scotland Yard proper,
+which, he complained, was not so much a private bureau, as a
+waiting-room to which repaired every official of the police
+service who found time hanging on his hands.  On the afternoon of
+Miss Holland's surprising adventure, a plainclothes man of "D"
+Division brought to Mr. Mansus's room a very scared domestic
+servant, voluble, tearful and agonizingly penitent.  It was a mood
+not wholly unfamiliar to a police officer of twenty years
+experience and Mr. Mansus was not impressed.
+
+"If you will kindly shut up," he said, blending his natural
+politeness with his employment of the vernacular, "and if you will
+also answer a few questions I will save you a lot of trouble. You
+were Lady Bartholomew's maid weren't you?"
+
+"Yes, sir," sobbed the red-eyed Mary Ann.
+
+"And you have been detected trying to pawn a gold bracelet, the
+property of Lady Bartholomew?"
+
+The maid gulped, nodded and started breathlessly upon a recital of
+her wrongs.
+
+"Yes, sir - but she practically gave it to me, sir, and I haven't
+had my wages for two months, sir, and she can give that foreigner
+thousands and thousands of pounds at a time, sir, but her poor
+servants she can't pay - no, she can't.  And if Sir William knew
+especially about my lady's cards and about the snuffbox, what
+would he think, I wonder, and I'm going to have my rights, for if
+she can pay thousands to a swell like Mr. Kara she can pay me
+and - "
+
+Mansus jerked his head.
+
+"Take her down to the cells," he said briefly, and they led her
+away, a wailing, woeful figure of amateur larcenist.
+
+In three minutes Mansus was with T. X. and had reduced the girl's
+incoherence to something like order.
+
+"This is important," said T. X.; "produce the Abigail."
+
+"The - ?" asked the puzzled officer.
+
+"The skivvy - slavey - hired help - get busy," said T. X.
+impatiently.
+
+They brought her to T. X. in a condition bordering upon collapse.
+
+"Get her a cup of tea," said the wise chief.  "Sit down, Mary Ann,
+and forget all your troubles."
+
+"Oh, sir, I've never been in this position before," she began, as
+she flopped into the chair they put for her.
+
+"Then you've had a very tiring time," said T. X. "Now listen - "
+
+"I've been respectable - "
+
+"Forget it!" said T.  X., wearily.  "Listen!  If you'll tell me
+the whole truth about Lady Bartholomew and the money she paid to
+Mr. Kara - "
+
+"Two thousand pounds - two separate thousand and by all accounts-"
+
+"If you will tell me the truth, I'll compound a felony and let you
+go free."
+
+It was a long time before he could prevail upon her to clear her
+speech of the ego which insisted upon intruding.  There were gaps
+in her narrative which he bridged.  In the main it was a
+believable story.  Lady Bartholomew had lost money and had
+borrowed from Kara.  She had given as security, the snuffbox
+presented to her husband's father, a doctor, by one of the Czars
+for services rendered, and was "all blue enamel and gold, and
+foreign words in diamonds."  On the question of the amount Lady
+Bartholomew had borrowed, Abigail was very vague.  All that she
+knew was that my lady had paid back two thousand pounds and that
+she was still very distressed ("in a fit" was the phrase the girl
+used), because apparently Kara refused to restore the box.
+
+There had evidently been terrible scenes in the Bartholomew
+menage, hysterics and what not, the principal breakdown having
+occurred when Belinda Mary came home from school in France.
+
+"Miss Bartholomew is home then.  Where is she?" asked T. X.
+
+Here the girl was more vague than ever.  She thought the young
+lady had gone back again, anyway Miss Belinda had been very much
+upset.  Miss Belinda had seen Dr. Williams and advised that her
+mother should go away for a change.
+
+"Miss Belinda seems to be a precocious young person," said T. X.
+"Did she by any chance see Mr. Kara?"
+
+"Oh, no," explained the girl.  "Miss Belinda was above that sort
+of person.  Miss Belinda was a lady, if ever there was one."
+
+"And how old is this interesting young woman?" asked T. X.
+curiously.
+
+"She is nineteen," said the girl, and the Commissioner, who had
+pictured Belinda in short plaid frocks and long pigtails, and had
+moreover visualised her as a freckled little girl with thin legs
+and snub nose, was abashed.
+
+He delivered a short lecture on the sacred rights of property,
+paid the girl the three months' wages which were due to her - he
+had no doubt as to the legality of her claim - and dismissed her
+with instructions to go back to the house, pack her box and clear
+out.
+
+After the girl had gone, T. X. sat down to consider the position.
+He might see Kara and since Kara had expressed his contrition and
+was probably in a more humble state of mind, he might make
+reparation.  Then again he might not.  Mansus was waiting and T.
+X. walked back with him to his little office.
+
+"I hardly know what to make of it," he said in despair.
+
+"If you can give me Kara's motive, sir, I can give you a
+solution," said Mansus.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+"That is exactly what I am unable to give you," he said.
+
+He perched himself on Mansus's desk and lit a cigar.
+
+"I have a good mind to go round and see him," he said after a
+while.
+
+"Why not telephone to him?" asked Mansus.  "There is his 'phone
+straight into his boudoir."
+
+He pointed to a small telephone in a corner of the room.
+
+"Oh, he persuaded the Commissioner to run the wire, did he?" said
+T. X. interested, and walked over to the telephone.
+
+He fingered the receiver for a little while and was about to take
+it off, but changed his mind.
+
+"I think not," he said, "I'll go round and see him to-morrow.  I
+don't hope to succeed in extracting the confidence in the case of
+Lady Bartholomew, which he denied me over poor Lexman."
+
+"I suppose you'll never give up hope of seeing Mr. Lexman again,"
+smiled Mansus, busily arranging a new blotting pad.
+
+Before T. X. could answer there came a knock at the door, and a
+uniformed policeman, entered.  He saluted T. X.
+
+"They've just sent an urgent letter across from your office, sir.
+I said I thought you were here."
+
+He handed the missive to the Commissioner.  T. X. took it and
+glanced at the typewritten address.  It was marked "urgent" and
+"by hand." He took up the thin, steel, paper-knife from the desk
+and slit open the envelope.  The letter consisted of three or four
+pages of manuscript and, unlike the envelope, it was handwritten.
+
+"My dear T. X.," it began, and the handwriting was familiar.
+
+Mansus, watching the Commissioner, saw the puzzled frown gather on
+his superior's forehead, saw the eyebrows arch and the mouth open
+in astonishment, saw him hastily turn to the last page to read the
+signature and then:
+
+"Howling apples!" gasped T. X.  "It's from John Lexman!"
+
+His hand shook as he turned the closely written pages.  The letter
+was dated that afternoon.  There was no other address than
+"London."
+
+"My dear T. X.," it began, "I do not doubt that this letter will
+give you a little shock, because most of my friends will have
+believed that I am gone beyond return.  Fortunately or
+unfortunately that is not so.  For myself I could wish - but I am
+not going to take a very gloomy view since I am genuinely pleased
+at the thought that I shall be meeting you again.  Forgive this
+letter if it is incoherent but I have only this moment returned
+and am writing at the Charing Cross Hotel.  I am not staying here,
+but I will let you have my address later.  The crossing has been a
+very severe one so you must forgive me if my letter sounds a
+little disjointed.  You will be sorry to hear that my dear wife is
+dead.  She died abroad about six months ago.  I do not wish to
+talk very much about it so you will forgive me if I do not tell
+you any more.
+
+"My principal object in writing to you at the moment is an
+official one.  I suppose I am still amenable to punishment and I
+have decided to surrender myself to the authorities to-night.  You
+used to have a most excellent assistant in Superintendent Mansus,
+and if it is convenient to you, as I hope it will be, I will
+report myself to him at 10.15.  At any rate, my dear T. X., I do
+not wish to mix you up in my affairs and if you will let me do
+this business through Mansus I shall be very much obliged to you.
+
+"I know there is no great punishment awaiting me, because my
+pardon was apparently signed on the night before my escape.  I
+shall not have much to tell you, because there is not much in the
+past two years that I would care to recall.  We endured a great
+deal of unhappiness and death was very merciful when it took my
+beloved from me.
+
+"Do you ever see Kara in these days?
+
+"Will you tell Mansus to expect me at between ten and half-past,
+and if he will give instructions to the officer on duty in the
+hall I will come straight up to his room.
+
+"With affectionate regards, my dear fellow, I am, 
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"JOHN LEXMAN."
+
+T. X. read the letter over twice and his eyes were troubled.
+
+"Poor girl," he said softly, and handed the letter to Mansus.  "He
+evidently wants to see you because he is afraid of using my
+friendship to his advantage.  I shall be here, nevertheless."
+
+"What will be the formality?" asked Mansus.
+
+"There will be no formality," said the other briskly.  "I will
+secure the necessary pardon from the Home Secretary and in point
+of fact I have it already promised, in writing."
+
+He walked back to Whitehall, his mind fully occupied with the
+momentous events of the day.  It was a raw February evening, sleet
+was falling in the street, a piercing easterly wind drove even
+through his thick overcoat.  In such doorways as offered
+protection from the bitter elements the wreckage of humanity which
+clings to the West end of London, as the singed moth flutters
+about the flame that destroys it, were huddled for warmth.
+
+T. X. was a man of vast human sympathies.
+
+All his experience with the criminal world, all his
+disappointments, all his disillusions had failed to quench the
+pity for his unfortunate fellows.  He made it a rule on such
+nights as these, that if, by chance, returning late to his office
+he should find such a shivering piece of jetsam sheltering in his
+own doorway, he would give him or her the price of a bed.
+
+In his own quaint way he derived a certain speculative excitement
+from this practice.  If the doorway was empty he regarded himself
+as a winner, if some one stood sheltered in the deep recess which
+is a feature of the old Georgian houses in this historic
+thoroughfare, he would lose to the extent of a shilling.
+
+He peered forward through the semi-darkness as he neared the door
+of his offices.
+
+"I've lost," he said, and stripped his gloves preparatory to
+groping in his pocket for a coin.
+
+Somebody was standing in the entrance, but it was obviously a very
+respectable somebody.  A dumpy, motherly somebody in a seal-skin
+coat and a preposterous bonnet.
+
+"Hullo," said T. X. in surprise, "are you trying to get in here?"
+
+"I want to see Mr. Meredith," said the visitor, in the mincing
+affected tones of one who excused the vulgar source of her
+prosperity by frequently reiterated claims to having seen better
+days.
+
+"Your longing shall be gratified," said T. X. gravely.
+
+He unlocked the heavy door, passed through the uncarpeted passage
+- there are no frills on Government offices - and led the way up
+the stairs to the suite on the first floor which constituted his
+bureau.
+
+He switched on all the lights and surveyed his visitor, a
+comfortable person of the landlady type.
+
+"A good sort," thought T. X., "but somewhat overweighted with
+lorgnettes and seal-skin."
+
+"You will pardon my coming to see you at this hour of the night,"
+she began deprecatingly, "but as my dear father used to say, 'Hopi
+soit qui mal y pense.'"
+
+"Your dear father being in the garter business?" suggested T. X.
+humorously.  "Won't you sit down, Mrs.- "
+
+"Mrs. Cassley," beamed the lady as she seated herself.  "He was in
+the paper hanging business.  But needs must, when the devil
+drives, as the saying goes."
+
+"What particular devil is driving you, Mrs. Cassley?" asked T.
+X., somewhat at a loss to understand the object of this visit.
+
+"I may be doing wrong," began the lady, pursing her lips, "and two
+blacks will never make a white."
+
+"And all that glitters is not gold," suggested T. X. a little
+wearily.  "Will you please tell me your business, Mrs. Cassley? I
+am a very hungry man."
+
+"Well, it's like this, sir," said Mrs. Cassley, dropping her
+erudition, and coming down to bedrock homeliness; "I've got a
+young lady stopping with me, as respectable a gel as I've had to
+deal with.  And I know what respectability is, I might tell you,
+for I've taken professional boarders and I have been housekeeper
+to a doctor."
+
+"You are well qualified to speak," said T. X. with a smile.  "And
+what about this particular young lady of yours!  By the way what
+is your address?"
+
+"86a Marylebone Road," said the lady.
+
+T. X. sat up.
+
+"Yes?" he said quickly.  "What about your young lady?"
+
+"She works as far as I can understand," said the loquacious
+landlady, "with a certain Mr. Kara in the typewriting line.  She
+came to me four months ago."
+
+"Never mind when she came to you," said T. X. impatiently.  "Have
+you a message from the lady?"
+
+"Well, it's like this, sir," said Mrs. Cassley, leaning forward
+confidentially and speaking in the hollow tone which she had
+decided should accompany any revelation to a police officer, "this
+young lady said to me, 'If I don't come any night by 8 o'clock you
+must go to T. X. and tell him - '!"
+
+She paused dramatically.
+
+"Yes, yes," said T. X. quickly, "for heaven's sake go on, woman."
+
+"'Tell him,'" said Mrs. Cassley,  "'that Belinda Mary - ' "
+
+He sprang to his feet.
+
+"Belinda Mary!" he breathed, "Belinda Mary!"  In a flash he saw it
+all.  This girl with a knowledge of modern Greek, who was working
+in Kara's house, was there for a purpose.  Kara had something of
+her mother's, something that was vital and which he would not part
+with, and she had adopted this method of securing that some thing.
+Mrs. Cassley was prattling on, but her voice was merely a haze of
+sound to him.  It brought a strange glow to his heart that Belinda
+Mary should have thought of him.
+
+"Only as a policeman, of course," said the still, small voice of
+his official self.  "Perhaps!" said the human T. X., defiantly.
+
+He got on the telephone to Mansus and gave a few instructions.
+
+"You stay here," he ordered the astounded Mrs. Cassley; "I am
+going to make a few investigations."
+
+Kara was at home, but was in bed.  T. X. remembered that this
+extraordinary man invariably went to bed early and that it was his
+practice to receive visitors in this guarded room of his.  He was
+admitted almost at once and found Kara in his silk dressing-gown
+lying on the bed smoking.  The heat of the room was unbearable
+even on that bleak February night.
+
+"This is a pleasant surprise," said Kara, sitting up; "I hope you
+don't mind my dishabille."
+
+T. X. came straight to the point.
+
+"Where is Miss Holland!" he asked.
+
+"Miss Holland?" Kara's eyebrows advertised his astonishment.
+"What an extraordinary question to ask me, my dear man!  At her
+home, or at the theatre or in a cinema palace - I don't know how
+these people employ their evenings."
+
+"She is not at home," said T. X., "and I have reason to believe
+that she has not left this house."
+
+"What a suspicious person you are, Mr. Meredith!"  Kara rang the
+bell and Fisher came in with a cup of coffee on a tray.
+
+"Fisher," drawled Kara.  "Mr. Meredith is anxious to know where
+Miss Holland is.  Will you be good enough to tell him, you know
+more about her movements than I do."
+
+"As far as I know, sir," said Fisher deferentially, "she left the
+house about 5.30, her usual hour.  She sent me out a little before
+five on a message and when I came back her hat and her coat had
+gone, so I presume she had gone also."
+
+"Did you see her go?" asked T. X.
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"No, sir, I very seldom see the lady come or go.  There has been
+no restrictions placed upon the young lady and she has been at
+liberty to move about as she likes.  I think I am correct in
+saying that, sir," he turned to Kara.
+
+Kara nodded.
+
+"You will probably find her at home."
+
+He shook his finger waggishly at T. X.
+
+"What a dog you are," he jibed, "I ought to keep the beauties of
+my household veiled, as we do in the East, and especially when I
+have a susceptible policeman wandering at large."
+
+T. X. gave jest for jest.  There was nothing to be gained by
+making trouble here.  After a few amiable commonplaces he took his
+departure.  He found Mrs. Cassley being entertained by Mansus with
+a wholly fictitious description of the famous criminals he had
+arrested.
+
+"I can only suggest that you go home," said T. X.  "I will send a
+police officer with you to report to me, but in all probability
+you will find the lady has returned.  She may have had a
+difficulty in getting a bus on a night like this."
+
+A detective was summoned from Scotland Yard and accompanied by him
+Mrs. Cassley returned to her domicile with a certain importance.
+T. X. looked at his watch.  It was a quarter to ten.
+
+"Whatever happens, I must see old Lexman," he said.  "Tell the
+best men we've got in the department to stand by for
+eventualities.  This is going to be one of my busy days."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Kara lay back on his down pillows with a sneer on his face and his
+brain very busy.  What started the train of thought he did not
+know, but at that moment his mind was very far away.  It carried
+him back a dozen years to a dirty little peasant's cabin on the
+hillside outside Durazzo, to the livid face of a young Albanian
+chief, who had lost at Kara's whim all that life held for a man,
+to the hateful eyes of the girl's father, who stood with folded
+arms glaring down at the bound and manacled figure on the floor,
+to the smoke-stained rafters of this peasant cottage and the
+dancing shadows on the roof, to that terrible hour of waiting when
+he sat bound to a post with a candle flickering and spluttering
+lower and lower to the little heap of gunpowder that would start
+the trail toward the clumsy infernal machine under his chair.  He
+remembered the day well because it was Candlemas day, and this was
+the anniversary.  He remembered other things more pleasant.  The
+beat of hoofs on the rocky roadway, the crash of the door falling
+in when the Turkish Gendarmes had battered a way to his rescue.
+He remembered with a savage joy the spectacle of his would-be
+assassins twitching and struggling on the gallows at Pezara and -
+he heard the faint tinkle of the front door bell.
+
+Had T. X. returned!  He slipped from the bed and went to the door,
+opened it slightly and listened.  T. X. with a search warrant
+might be a source of panic especially if - he shrugged his
+shoulders.  He had satisfied T. X. and allayed his suspicions.  He
+would get Fisher out of the way that night and make sure.
+
+The voice from the hall below was loud and gruff.  Who could it
+be!  Then he heard Fisher's foot on the stairs and the valet
+entered.
+
+"Will you see Mr. Gathercole now!"
+
+"Mr. Gathercole!"
+
+Kara breathed a sigh of relief and his face was wreathed in
+smiles.
+
+"Why, of course.  Tell him to come up.  Ask him if he minds seeing
+me in my room."
+
+"I told him you were in bed, sir, and he used shocking language,"
+said Fisher.
+
+Kara laughed.
+
+"Send him up," he said, and then as Fisher was going out of the
+room he called him back.
+
+"By the way, Fisher, after Mr. Gathercole has gone, you may go out
+for the night.  You've got somewhere to go, I suppose, and you
+needn't come back until the morning."
+
+"Yes, sir," said the servant.
+
+Such an instruction was remarkably pleasing to him.  There was
+much that he had to do and that night's freedom would assist him
+materially.
+
+"Perhaps" Kara hesitated, "perhaps you had better wait until
+eleven o'clock.  Bring me up some sandwiches and a large glass of
+milk.  Or better still, place them on a plate in the hall."
+
+"Very good, sir," said the man and withdrew.
+
+Down below, that grotesque figure with his shiny hat and his
+ragged beard was walking up and down the tesselated hallway
+muttering to himself and staring at the various objects in the
+hall with a certain amused antagonism.
+
+"Mr. Kara will see you, sir," said Fisher.
+
+"Oh!" said the other glaring at the unoffending Fisher, "that's
+very good of him.  Very good of this person to see a scholar and a
+gentleman who has been about his dirty business for three years.
+Grown grey in his service!  Do you understand that, my man!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Fisher.
+
+"Look here!"
+
+The man thrust out his face.
+
+"Do you see those grey hairs in my beard?"
+
+The embarrassed Fisher grinned.
+
+"Is it grey!" challenged the visitor, with a roar.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the valet hastily.
+
+"Is it real grey?" insisted the visitor.  "Pull one out and see!"
+
+The startled Fisher drew back with an apologetic smile.
+
+"I couldn't think of doing a thing like that, sir."
+
+"Oh, you couldn't," sneered the visitor; "then lead on!"
+
+Fisher showed the way up the stairs.  This time the traveller
+carried no books.  His left arm hung limply by his side and Fisher
+privately gathered that the hand had got loose from the detaining
+pocket without its owner being aware of the fact.  He pushed open
+the door and announced, "Mr. Gathercole," and Kara came forward
+with a smile to meet his agent, who, with top hat still on the top
+of his head, and his overcoat dangling about his heels, must have
+made a remarkable picture.
+
+Fisher closed the door behind them and returned to his duties in
+the hall below.  Ten minutes later he heard the door opened and
+the booming voice of the stranger came down to him.  Fisher went
+up the stairs to meet him and found him addressing the occupant
+of the room in his own eccentric fashion.
+
+"No more Patagonia!" he roared, "no more Tierra del Fuego!" he
+paused.
+
+"Certainly!"  He replied to some question, "but not Patagonia," he
+paused again, and Fisher standing at the foot of the stairs
+wondered what had occurred to make the visitor so genial.
+
+"I suppose your cheque will be honoured all right?" asked the
+visitor sardonically, and then burst into a little chuckle of
+laughter as he carefully closed the door.
+
+He came down the corridor talking to himself, and greeted Fisher.
+
+"Damn all Greeks," he said jovially, and Fisher could do no more
+than smile reproachfully, the smile being his very own, the
+reproach being on behalf of the master who paid him.
+
+The traveller touched the other on the chest with his right hand.
+
+"Never trust a Greek," he said, "always get your money in advance.
+Is that clear to you?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Fisher, "but I think you will always find that
+Mr. Kara is always most generous about money."
+
+"Don't you believe it, don't you believe it, my poor man," said
+the other, "you - "
+
+At that moment there came from Kara's room a faint "clang."
+
+"What's that?" asked the visitor a little startled.
+
+"Mr. Kara's put down his steel latch," said Fisher with a smile,
+"which means that he is not to be disturbed until - " he looked at
+his watch, "until eleven o'clock at any rate."
+
+"He's a funk!" snapped the other, "a beastly funk!"
+
+He stamped down the stairs as though testing the weight of every
+tread, opened the front door without assistance, slammed it behind
+him and disappeared into the night.
+
+Fisher, his hands in his pockets, looked after the departing
+stranger, nodding his head in reprobation.
+
+"You're a queer old devil," he said, and looked at his watch
+again.
+
+It wanted five minutes to ten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"IF you would care to come in, sir, I'm sure Lexman would be glad
+to see you," said T. X.; "it's very kind of you to take an
+interest in the matter."
+
+The Chief Commissioner of Police growled something about being
+paid to take an interest in everybody and strolled with T. X. down
+one of the apparently endless corridors of Scotland Yard.
+
+"You won't have any bother about the pardon," he said.  "I was
+dining to-night with old man Bartholomew and he will fix that up
+in the morning."
+
+"There will be no necessity to detain Lexman in custody?" asked T.
+X.
+
+The Chief shook his head.
+
+"None whatever," he said.
+
+There was a pause, then,
+
+"By the way, did Bartholomew mention Belinda Mary!"
+
+The white-haired chief looked round in astonishment.
+
+"And who the devil is Belinda Mary?" he asked.
+
+T. X. went red.
+
+"Belinda Mary," he said a little quickly, "is Bartholomew's
+daughter."
+
+"By Jove," said the Commissioner, "now you mention it, he did -
+she is still in France."
+
+"Oh, is she?" said T. X. innocently, and in his heart of hearts he
+wished most fervently that she was.  They came to the room which
+Mansus occupied and found that admirable man waiting.
+
+Wherever policemen meet, their conversation naturally drifts to
+"shop" and in two minutes the three were discussing with some
+animation and much difference of opinion, as far as T. X. was
+concerned, a series of frauds which had been perpetrated in the
+Midlands, and which have nothing to do with this story.
+
+"Your friend is late," said the Chief Commissioner.
+
+"There he is," cried T. X., springing up.  He heard a familiar
+footstep on the flagged corridor, and sprung out of the room to
+meet the newcomer.
+
+For a moment he stood wringing the hand of this grave man, his
+heart too full for words.
+
+"My dear chap!" he said at last, "you don't know how glad I am to
+see you."
+
+John Lexman said nothing, then,
+
+"I am sorry to bring you into this business, T. X.," he said
+quietly.
+
+"Nonsense," said the other, "come in and see the Chief."
+
+He took John by the arm and led him into the Superintendent's
+room.
+
+There was a change in John Lexman.  A subtle shifting of balance
+which was not readily discoverable.  His face was older, the
+mobile mouth a little more grimly set, the eyes more deeply lined.
+He was in evening dress and looked, as T. X. thought, a typical,
+clean, English gentleman, such an one as any self-respecting valet
+would be proud to say he had "turned out."
+
+T. X. looking at him carefully could see no great change, save
+that down one side of his smooth shaven cheek ran the scar of an
+old wound; which could not have been much more than superficial.
+
+"I must apologize for this kit," said John, taking off his
+overcoat and laying it across the back of a chair, "but the fact
+is I was so bored this evening that I had to do something to pass
+the time away, so I dressed and went to the theatre - and was more
+bored than ever."
+
+T. X. noticed that he did not smile and that when he spoke it was
+slowly and carefully, as though he were weighing the value of
+every word.
+
+"Now," he went on, "I have come to deliver myself into your
+hands."
+
+"I suppose you have not seen Kara?" said T.  X.
+
+"I have no desire to see Kara," was the short reply.
+
+"Well, Mr. Lexman," broke in the Chief, "I don't think you are
+going to have any difficulty about your escape.  By the way, I
+suppose it was by aeroplane?"
+
+Lexman nodded.
+
+"And you had an assistant?"
+
+Again Lexman nodded.
+
+"Unless you press me I would rather not discuss the matter for
+some little time, Sir George," he said, "there is much that will
+happen before the full story of my escape is made known."
+
+Sir George nodded.
+
+"We will leave it at that," he said cheerily, "and now I hope you
+have come back to delight us all with one of your wonderful
+plots."
+
+"For the time being I have done with wonderful plots," said John
+Lexman in that even, deliberate tone of his.  "I hope to leave
+London next week for New York and take up such of the threads of
+life as remain.  The greater thread has gone."
+
+The Chief Commissioner understood.
+
+The silence which followed was broken by the loud and insistent
+ringing of the telephone bell.
+
+"Hullo," said Mansus rising quickly; "that's Kara's bell."
+
+With two quick strides he was at the telephone and lifted down the
+receiver.
+
+"Hullo," he cried.  "Hullo," he cried again.  There was no reply,
+only the continuous buzzing, and when he hung up the receiver
+again, the bell continued ringing.
+
+The three policemen looked at one another.
+
+"There's trouble there," said Mansus.
+
+"Take off the receiver," said T. X., "and try again."
+
+Mansus obeyed, but there was no response.
+
+"I am afraid this is not my affair," said John Lexman gathering up
+his coat.  "What do you wish me to do, Sir George?"
+
+"Come along to-morrow morning and see us, Lexman," said Sir
+George, offering his hand.
+
+"Where are you staying!" asked T. X.
+
+"At the Great Midland," replied the other, "at least my bags have
+gone on there."
+
+"I'll come along and see you to-morrow morning.  It's curious this
+should have happened the night you returned," he said, gripping
+the other's shoulder affectionately.
+
+John Lexman did not speak for the moment.
+
+"If anything happened to Kara," he said slowly, "if the worst that
+was possible happened to him, believe me I should not weep."
+
+T. X. looked down into the other's eyes sympathetically.
+
+"I think he has hurt you pretty badly, old man," he said gently.
+
+John Lexman nodded.
+
+"He has, damn him," he said between his teeth.
+
+The Chief Commissioner's motor car was waiting outside and in this
+T. X., Mansus, and a detective-sergeant were whirled off to
+Cadogan Square.  Fisher was in the hall when they rung the bell
+and opened the door instantly.
+
+He was frankly surprised to see his visitors.  Mr. Kara was in his
+room he explained resentfully, as though T. X. should have been
+aware of the fact without being told.  He had heard no bell
+ringing and indeed had not been summoned to the room.
+
+"I have to see him at eleven o'clock," he said, "and I have had
+standing instructions not to go to him unless I am sent for."
+
+T. X. led the way upstairs, and went straight to Kara's room.  He
+knocked, but there was no reply.  He knocked again and on this
+failing to evoke any response kicked heavily at the door.
+
+"Have you a telephone downstairs!" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Fisher.
+
+T. X. turned to the detective-sergeant.
+
+"'Phone to the Yard," he said, "and get a man up with a bag of
+tools.  We shall have to pick this lock and I haven't got my case
+with me."
+
+"Picking the lock would be no good, sir," said Fisher, an
+interested spectator, "Mr. Kara's got the latch down."
+
+"I forgot that," said T. X.  "Tell him to bring his saw, we'll
+have to cut through the panel here."
+
+While they were waiting for the arrival of the police officer T.
+X. strove to attract the attention of the inmates of the room, but
+without success.
+
+"Does he take opium or anything!" asked Mansus.
+
+Fisher shook his head.
+
+"I've never known him to take any of that kind of stuff," he said.
+
+T. X. made a rapid survey of the other rooms on that floor.  The
+room next to Kara's was the library, beyond that was a dressing
+room which, according to Fisher, Miss Holland had used, and at the
+farthermost end of the corridor was the dining room.
+
+Facing the dining room was a small service lift and by its side a
+storeroom in which were a number of trunks, including a very large
+one smothered in injunctions in three different languages to
+"handle with care."  There was nothing else of interest on this
+floor and the upper and lower floors could wait.  In a quarter of
+an hour the carpenter had arrived from Scotland Yard, and had
+bored a hole in the rosewood panel of Kara's room and was busily
+applying his slender saw.
+
+Through the hole he cut T. X. could see no more than that the room
+was in darkness save for the glow of a blazing fire.  He inserted
+his hand, groped for the knob of the steel latch, which he had
+remarked on his previous visit to the room, lifted it and the door
+swung open.
+
+"Keep outside, everybody," he ordered.
+
+He felt for the switch of the electric, found it and instantly the
+room was flooded with light.  The bed was hidden by the open door.
+T. X. took one stride into the room and saw enough.  Kara was
+lying half on and half off the bed.  He was quite dead and the
+blood-stained patch above his heart told its own story.
+
+T. X. stood looking down at him, saw the frozen horror on the dead
+man's face, then drew his eyes away and slowly surveyed the room.
+There in the middle of the carpet he found his clue, a bent and
+twisted little candle such as you find on children's Christmas
+trees.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was Mansus who found the second candle, a stouter affair.  It
+lay underneath the bed.  The telephone, which stood on a fairly
+large-sized table by the side of the bed, was overturned and the
+receiver was on the floor.  By its side were two books, one being
+the "Balkan Question," by Villari, and the other "Travels and
+Politics in the Near East," by Miller.  With them was a long,
+ivory paper-knife.
+
+There was nothing else on the bedside-table save a silver
+cigarette box.  T. X. drew on a pair of gloves and examined the
+bright surface for finger-prints, but a superficial view revealed
+no such clue.
+
+"Open the window," said T. X., "the heat here is intolerable.  Be
+very careful, Mansus.  By the way, is the window fastened?"
+
+"Very well fastened," said the superintendent after a careful
+scrutiny.
+
+He pushed back the fastenings, lifted the window and as he did, a
+harsh bell rang in the basement.
+
+"That is the burglar alarm, I suppose," said T. X.; "go down and
+stop that bell."
+
+He addressed Fisher, who stood with a troubled face at the door.
+When he had disappeared T. X. gave a significant glance to one of
+the waiting officers and the man sauntered after the valet.
+
+Fisher stopped the bell and came back to the hall and stood before
+the hall fire, a very troubled man.  Near the fire was a big,
+oaken writing table and on this there lay a small envelope which
+he did not remember having seen before, though it might have been
+there for some time, for he had spent a greater portion of the
+evening in the kitchen with the cook.
+
+He picked up the envelope, and, with a start, recognised that it
+was addressed to himself.  He opened it and took out a card.
+There were only a few words written upon it, but they were
+sufficient to banish all the colour from his face and set his
+hands shaking.  He took the envelope and card and flung them into
+the fire.
+
+It so happened that, at that moment, Mansus had called from
+upstairs, and the officer, who had been told off to keep the valet
+under observation, ran up in answer to the summons.  For a moment
+Fisher hesitated, then hatless and coatless as he was, he crept to
+the door, opened it, leaving it ajar behind him and darting down
+the steps, ran like a hare from the house.
+
+The doctor, who came a little later, was cautious as to the hour
+of death.
+
+"If you got your telephone message at 10.25, as you say, that was
+probably the hour he was killed," he said.  "I could not tell
+within half an hour.  Obviously the man who killed him gripped his
+throat with his left hand - there are the bruises on his neck -
+and stabbed him with the right."
+
+It was at this time that the disappearance of Fisher was noticed,
+but the cross-examination of the terrified Mrs. Beale removed any
+doubt that T. X. had as to the man's guilt.
+
+"You had better send out an 'All Stations' message and pull him
+in," said T. X.  "He was with the cook from the moment the visitor
+left until a few minutes before we rang.  Besides which it is
+obviously impossible for anybody to have got into this room or out
+again.  Have you searched the dead man?"
+
+Mansus produced a tray on which Kara's belongings had been
+disposed.  The ordinary keys Mrs. Beale was able to identify.
+There were one or two which were beyond her.  T. X. recognised one
+of these as the key of the safe, but two smaller keys baffled him
+not a little, and Mrs. Beale was at first unable to assist him.
+
+"The only thing I can think of, sir," she said, "is the wine
+cellar."
+
+"The wine cellar?" said T. X. slowly.  "That must be - " he
+stopped.
+
+The greater tragedy of the evening, with all its mystifying
+aspects had not banished from his mind the thought of the girl -
+that Belinda Mary, who had called upon him in her hour of danger
+as he divined.  Perhaps - he descended into the kitchen and was
+brought face to face with the unpainted door.
+
+"It looks more like a prison than a wine cellar," he said.
+
+"That's what I've always thought, sir," said Mrs. Beale, "and
+sometimes I've had a horrible feeling of fear."
+
+He cut short her loquacity by inserting one of the keys in the
+lock - it did not turn, but he had more success with the second.
+The lock snapped back easily and he pulled the door back.  He
+found the inner door bolted top and bottom.  The bolts slipped
+back in their well-oiled sockets without any effort.  Evidently
+Kara used this place pretty frequently, thought T. X.
+
+He pushed the door open and stopped with an exclamation of
+surprise.  The cellar apartment was brilliantly lit - but it was
+unoccupied.
+
+"This beats the band," said T. X.
+
+He saw something on the table and lifted it up.  It was a pair of
+long-bladed scissors and about the handle was wound a
+handkerchief.  It was not this fact which startled him, but that
+the scissors' blades were dappled with blood and blood, too, was
+on the handkerchief.  He unwound the flimsy piece of cambric and
+stared at the monogram "B. M. B."
+
+He looked around.  Nobody had seen the weapon and he dropped it in
+his overcoat pocket, and walked from the cellar to the kitchen
+where Mrs. Beale and Mansus awaited him.
+
+"There is a lower cellar, is there not!" he asked in a strained
+voice.
+
+"That was bricked up when Mr. Kara took the house," explained the
+woman.
+
+"There is nothing more to look for here," he said.
+
+He walked slowly up the stairs to the library, his mind in a
+whirl.  That he, an accredited officer of police, sworn to the
+business of criminal detection, should attempt to screen one who
+was conceivably a criminal was inexplicable.  But if the girl had
+committed this crime, how had she reached Kara's room and why had
+she returned to the locked cellar!
+
+He sent for Mrs. Beale to interrogate her.  She had heard nothing
+and she had been in the kitchen all the evening.  One fact she did
+reveal, however, that Fisher had gone from the kitchen and had
+been absent a quarter of an hour and had returned a little
+agitated.
+
+"Stay here," said T. X., and went down again to the cellar to make
+a further search.
+
+"Probably there is some way out of this subterranean jail," he
+thought and a diligent search of the room soon revealed it.
+
+He found the iron trap, pulled it open, and slipped down the
+stairs.  He, too, was puzzled by the luxurious character of the
+vault.  He passed from room to room and finally came to the inner
+chamber where a light was burning.
+
+The light, as he discovered, proceeded from a small reading lamp
+which stood by the side of a small brass bedstead.  The bed had
+recently been slept in, but there was no sign of any occupant.  T.
+X. conducted a very careful search and had no difficulty in
+finding the bricked up door.  Other exits there were none.
+
+The floor was of wood block laid on concrete, the ventilation was
+excellent and in one of the recesses which had evidently held at
+so time or other, a large wine bin, there was a prefect electrical
+cooking plant.  In a small larder were a number of baskets,
+bearing the name of a well-known caterer, one of them containing
+an excellent assortment of cold and potted meats, preserves, etc.
+
+T. X. went back to the bedroom and took the little lamp from the
+table by the side of the bed and began a more careful examination.
+Presently he found traces of blood, and followed an irregular
+trail to the outer room.  He lost it suddenly at the foot of
+stairs leading down from the upper cellar.  Then he struck it
+again. He had reached the end of his electric cord and was now
+depending upon an electric torch he had taken from his pocket.
+
+There were indications of something heavy having been dragged
+across the room and he saw that it led to a small bathroom.  He
+had made a cursory examination of this well-appointed apartment,
+and now he proceeded to make a close investigation and was well
+rewarded.
+
+The bathroom was the only apartment which possess anything
+resembling a door - a two-fold screen and -  as he pressed this
+back, he felt some thing which prevented its wider extension.  He
+slipped into the room and flashed his lamp in the space behind the
+screen.  There stiff in death with glazed eyes and lolling tongue
+lay a great gaunt dog, his yellow fangs exposed in a last grimace.
+
+
+About the neck was a collar and attached to that, a few links of
+broken chain.  T. X. mounted the steps thoughtfully and passed out
+to the kitchen.
+
+Did Belinda Mary stab Kara or kill the dog?  That she killed one
+hound or the other was certain.  That she killed both was
+possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+After a busy and sleepless night he came down to report to the
+Chief Commissioner the next morning.  The evening newspaper bills
+were filled with the "Chelsea Sensation" but the information given
+was of a meagre character.
+
+Since Fisher had disappeared, many of the details which could have
+been secured by the enterprising pressmen were missing.  There was
+no reference to the visit of Mr. Gathercole and in self-defence
+the press had fallen back upon a statement, which at an earlier
+period had crept into the newspapers in one of those chatty
+paragraphs which begin "I saw my friend Kara at Giros" and end
+with a brief but inaccurate summary of his hobbies.  The paragraph
+had been to the effect that Mr. Kara had been in fear of his life
+for some time, as a result of a blood feud which existed between
+himself and another Albanian family.  Small wonder, therefore, the
+murder was everywhere referred to as "the political crime of the
+century."
+
+"So far," reported T. X. to his superior, "I have been unable to
+trace either Gathercole or the valet.  The only thing we know
+about Gathercole is that he sent his article to The Times with his
+card.  The servants of his Club are very vague as to his
+whereabouts.  He is a very eccentric man, who only comes in
+occasionally, and the steward whom I interviewed says that it
+frequently happened that Gathercole arrived and departed without
+anybody being aware of the fact.  We have been to his old lodgings
+in Lincoln's Inn, but apparently he sold up there before he went
+away to the wilds of Patagonia and relinquished his tenancy.
+
+"The only clue I have is that a man answering to some extent to
+his description left by the eleven o'clock train for Paris last
+night."
+
+"You have seen the secretary of course," said the Chief.
+
+It was a question which T. X. had been dreading.
+
+"Gone too," he answered shortly; "in fact she has not been seen
+since 5:30 yesterday evening."
+
+Sir George leant back in his chair and rumpled his thick grey
+hair.
+
+"The only person who seems to have remained," he said with heavy
+sarcasm, "was Kara himself.  Would you like me to put somebody
+else on this case - it isn't exactly your job - or will you carry
+it on?"
+
+"I prefer to carry it on, sir," said T. X. firmly.
+
+"Have you found out anything more about Kara?"
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"All that I have discovered about him is eminently discreditable,"
+he said.  "He seems to have had an ambition to occupy a very
+important position in Albania.  To this end he had bribed and
+subsidized the Turkish and Albanian officials and had a fairly
+large following in that country.  Bartholomew tells me that Kara
+had already sounded him as to the possibility of the British
+Government recognising a fait accompli in Albania and had been
+inducing him to use his influence with the Cabinet to recognize
+the consequence of any revolution.  There is no doubt whatever
+that Kara has engineered all the political assassinations which
+have been such a feature in the news from Albania during this past
+year.  We also found in the house very large sums of money and
+documents which we have handed over to the Foreign Office for
+decoding."
+
+Sir George thought for a long time.
+
+Then he said, "I have an idea that if you find your secretary you
+will be half way to solving the mystery."
+
+T. X. went out from the office in anything but a joyous mood.  He
+was on his way to lunch when he remembered his promise to call
+upon John Lexman.
+
+Could Lexman supply a key which would unravel this tragic tangle?
+He leant out of his taxi-cab and redirected the driver.  It
+happened that the cab drove up to the door of the Great Midland
+Hotel as John Lexman was coming out.
+
+"Come and lunch with me," said T. X. "I suppose you've heard all
+the news."
+
+"I read about Kara being killed, if that's what you mean," said
+the other.  "It was rather a coincidence that I should have been
+discussing the matter last night at the very moment when his
+telephone bell rang - I wish to heaven you hadn't been in this,"
+he said fretfully.
+
+"Why?" asked the astonished Assistant Commissioner, "and what do
+you mean by 'in it'?"
+
+"In the concrete sense I wish you had not been present when I
+returned," said the other moodily, "I wanted to be finished with
+the whole sordid business without in any way involving my
+friends."
+
+"I think you are too sensitive," laughed the other, clapping him
+on the shoulder.  "I want you to unburden yourself to me, my dear
+chap, and tell me anything you can that will help me to clear up
+this mystery."
+
+John Lexman looked straight ahead with a worried frown.
+
+"I would do almost anything for you, T. X.," he said quietly, "the
+more so since I know how good you were to Grace, but I can't help
+you in this matter.  I hated Kara living, I hate him dead," he
+cried, and there was a passion in his voice which was
+unmistakable; "he was the vilest thing that ever drew the breath
+of life.  There was no villainy too despicable, no cruelty so
+horrid but that he gloried in it.  If ever the devil were
+incarnate on earth he took the shape and the form of Remington
+Kara.  He died too merciful a death by all accounts.  But if there
+is a God, this man will suffer for his crimes in hell through all
+eternity."
+
+T. X. looked at him in astonishment.  The hate in the man's face
+took his breath away.  Never before had he experienced or
+witnessed such a vehemence of loathing.
+
+"What did Kara do to you?" he demanded.
+
+The other looked out of the window.
+
+"I am sorry," he said in a milder tone; "that is my weakness.
+Some day I will tell you the whole story but for the moment it
+were better that it were not told.  I will tell you this," he
+turned round and faced the detective squarely, "Kara tortured and
+killed my wife."
+
+T. X. said no more.
+
+Half way through lunch he returned indirectly to the subject.
+
+"Do you know Gathercole?" he asked.
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"I think you asked me that question once before, or perhaps it was
+somebody else.  Yes, I know him, rather an eccentric man with an
+artificial arm."
+
+"That's the cove," said T. X. with a little sigh; "he's one of the
+few men I want to meet just now."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he was apparently the last man to see Kara alive."
+
+John Lexman looked at the other with an impatient jerk of his
+shoulders.
+
+"You don't suspect Gathercole, do you?" he asked.
+
+"Hardly," said the other drily; "in the first place the man that
+committed this murder had two hands and needed them both.  No, I
+only want to ask that gentleman the subject of his conversation.
+I also want to know who was in the room with Kara when Gathercole
+went in."
+
+"H'm," said John Lexman.
+
+"Even if I found who the third person was, I am still puzzled as
+to how they got out and fastened the heavy latch behind them.  Now
+in the old days, Lexman," he said good humouredly, "you would have
+made a fine mystery story out of this.  How would you have made
+your man escape?"
+
+Lexman thought for a while.
+
+"Have you examined the safe!" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said the other.
+
+"Was there very much in it?"
+
+T. X. looked at him in astonishment.
+
+"Just the ordinary books and things.  Why do you ask?"
+
+"Suppose there were two doors to that safe, one on the outside of
+the room and one on the inside, would it be possible to pass
+through the safe and go down the wall?"
+
+"I have thought of that," said T. X.
+
+"Of course," said Lexman, leaning back and toying with a
+salt-spoon, "in writing a story where one hasn't got to deal with
+the absolute possibilities, one could always have made Kara have a
+safe of that character in order to make his escape in the event of
+danger.  He might keep a rope ladder stored inside, open the back
+door, throw out his ladder to a friend and by some trick
+arrangement could detach the ladder and allow the door to swing to
+again."
+
+"A very ingenious idea," said T. X., "but unfortunately it doesn't
+work in this case.  I have seen the makers of the safe and there
+is nothing very eccentric about it except the fact that it is
+mounted as it is.  Can you offer another suggestion?"
+
+John Lexman thought again.
+
+"I will not suggest trap doors, or secret panels or anything so
+banal," he said, "nor mysterious springs in the wall which, when
+touched, reveal secret staircases."
+
+He smiled slightly.
+
+"In my early days, I must confess, I was rather keen upon that
+sort of thing, but age has brought experience and I have
+discovered the impossibility of bringing an architect to one's way
+of thinking even in so commonplace a matter as the position of a
+scullery.  It would be much more difficult to induce him to
+construct a house with double walls and secret chambers."
+
+T. X. waited patiently.
+
+"There is a possibility, of course," said Lexman slowly, "that the
+steel latch may have been raised by somebody outside by some
+ingenious magnetic arrangement and lowered in a similar manner."
+
+"I have thought about it," said T. X. triumphantly, "and I have
+made the most elaborate tests only this morning.  It is quite
+impossible to raise the steel latch because once it is dropped it
+cannot be raised again except by means of the knob, the pulling of
+which releases the catch which holds the bar securely in its
+place.  Try another one, John."
+
+John Lexman threw back his head in a noiseless laugh.
+
+"Why I should be helping you to discover the murderer of Kara is
+beyond my understanding," he said, "but I will give you another
+theory, at the same time warning you that I may be putting you off
+the track.  For God knows I have more reason to murder Kara than
+any man in the world."
+
+He thought a while.
+
+"The chimney was of course impossible?"
+
+"There was a big fire burning in the grate," explained T. X.; "so
+big indeed that the room was stifling."
+
+John Lexman nodded.
+
+"That was Kara's way," he said; "as a matter of fact I know the
+suggestion about magnetism in the steel bar was impossible,
+because I was friendly with Kara when he had that bar put in and
+pretty well know the mechanism, although I had forgotten it for
+the moment.  What is your own theory, by the way?"
+
+T. X. pursed his lips.
+
+"My theory isn't very clearly formed," he said cautiously, "but so
+far as it goes, it is that Kara was lying on the bed probably
+reading one of the books which were found by the bedside when his
+assailant suddenly came upon him.  Kara seized the telephone to
+call for assistance and was promptly killed."
+
+Again there was silence.
+
+"That is a theory," said John Lexman, with his curious
+deliberation of speech, "but as I say I refuse to be definite -
+have you found the weapon?"
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+"Were there any peculiar features about the room which astonished
+you, and which you have not told me?"
+
+T. X. hesitated.
+
+"There were two candles," he said, "one in the middle of the room
+and one under the bed.  That in the middle of the room was a small
+Christmas candle, the one under the bed was the ordinary candle of
+commerce evidently roughly cut and probably cut in the room.  We
+found traces of candle chips on the floor and it is evident to me
+that the portion which was cut off was thrown into the fire, for
+here again we have a trace of grease."
+
+Lexman nodded.
+
+"Anything further?" he asked.
+
+"The smaller candle was twisted into a sort of corkscrew shape."
+
+"The Clue of the Twisted Candle," mused John Lexman "that's a very
+good title - Kara hated candles."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Lexman leant back in his chair, selected a cigarette from a silver
+case.
+
+"In my wanderings," he said, "I have been to many strange places.
+I have been to the country which you probably do not know, and
+which the traveller who writes books about countries seldom
+visits.  There are queer little villages perched on the spurs of
+the bleakest hills you ever saw.  I have lived with communities
+which acknowledge no king and no government.  These have their
+laws handed down to them from father to son - it is a nation
+without a written language.  They administer their laws rigidly
+and drastically.  The punishments they award are cruel - inhuman.
+I have seen, the woman taken in adultery stoned to death as in the
+best Biblical traditions, and I have seen the thief blinded."
+
+T. X. shivered.
+
+"I have seen the false witness stand up in a barbaric market place
+whilst his tongue was torn from him.  Sometimes the Turks or the
+piebald governments of the state sent down a few gendarmes and
+tried a sort of sporadic administration of the country.  It
+usually ended in the representative of the law lapsing into
+barbarism, or else disappearing from the face of the earth, with a
+whole community of murderers eager to testify, with singular
+unanimity, to the fact that he had either committed suicide or had
+gone off with the wife of one of the townsmen.
+
+"In some of these communities the candle plays a big part.  It is
+not the candle of commerce as you know it, but a dip made from
+mutton fat.  Strap three between the fingers of your hands and
+keep the hand rigid with two flat pieces of wood; then let the
+candles burn down lower and lower - can you imagine?  Or set a
+candle in a gunpowder trail and lead the trail to a well-oiled
+heap of shavings thoughtfully heaped about your naked feet.  Or a
+candle fixed to the shaved head of a man - there are hundreds of
+variations and the candle plays a part in all of them.  I don't
+know which Kara had cause to hate the worst, but I know one or two
+that he has employed."
+
+"Was he as bad as that?" asked T. X.
+
+John Lexman laughed.
+
+"You don't know how bad he was," he said.
+
+Towards the end of the luncheon the waiter brought a note in to T.
+X. which had been sent on from his office.
+
+"Dear Mr.  Meredith,
+
+"In answer to your enquiry I believe my daughter is in London,
+but I did not know it until this morning.  My banker informs me
+that my daughter called at the bank this morning and drew a
+considerable sum of money from her private account, but where she
+has gone and what she is doing with the money I do not know.  I
+need hardly tell you that I am very worried about this matter and
+I should be glad if you could explain what it is all about."
+
+It was signed "William Bartholomew."
+
+T. X. groaned.
+
+"If I had only had the sense to go to the bank this morning, I
+should have seen her," he said.  "I'm going to lose my job over
+this."
+
+The other looked troubled.
+
+"You don't seriously mean that."
+
+"Not exactly," smiled T. X., "but I don't think the Chief is very
+pleased with me just now.  You see I have butted into this
+business without any authority - it isn't exactly in my
+department.  But you have not given me your theory about the
+candles."
+
+"I have no theory to offer," said the other, folding up his
+serviette; "the candles suggest a typical Albanian murder.  I do
+not say that it was so, I merely say that by their presence they
+suggest a crime of this character."
+
+With this T. X. had to be content.
+
+If it were not his business to interest himself in commonplace
+murder - though this hardly fitted such a description - it was
+part of the peculiar function which his department exercised to
+restore to Lady Bartholomew a certain very elaborate snuff-box
+which he discovered in the safe.
+
+Letters had been found amongst his papers which made clear the
+part which Kara had played.  Though he had not been a vulgar
+blackmailer he had retained his hold, not only upon this
+particular property of Lady Bartholomew, but upon certain other
+articles which were discovered, with no other object, apparently,
+than to compel influence from quarters likely to be of assistance
+to him in his schemes.
+
+The inquest on the murdered man which the Assistant Commissioner
+attended produced nothing in the shape of evidence and the
+coroner's verdict of "murder against some person or persons
+unknown" was only to be expected.
+
+T. X. spent a very busy and a very tiring week tracing elusive
+clues which led him nowhere.  He had a letter from John Lexman
+announcing the fact that he intended leaving for the United
+States.  He had received a very good offer from a firm of magazine
+publishers in New York and was going out to take up the
+appointment.
+
+Meredith's plans were now in fair shape.  He had decided upon the
+line of action he would take and in the pursuance of this he
+interviewed his Chief and the Minister of Justice.
+
+"Yes, I have heard from my daughter," said that great man
+uncomfortably, "and really she has placed me in a most
+embarrassing position.  I cannot tell you, Mr. Meredith, exactly
+in what manner she has done this, but I can assure you she has."
+
+"Can I see her letter or telegram?" asked T. X.
+
+"I am afraid that is impossible," said the other solemnly; "she
+begged me to keep her communication very secret.  I have written
+to my wife and asked her to come home.  I feel the constant strain
+to which I am being subjected is more than human can endure."
+
+"I suppose," said T. X. patiently, "it is impossible for you to
+tell me to what address you have replied?"
+
+"To no address," answered the other and corrected himself
+hurriedly; "that is to say I only received the telegram - the
+message this morning and there is no address - to reply to."
+
+"I see," said T. X.
+
+That afternoon he instructed his secretary.
+
+"I want a copy of all the agony advertisements in to-morrow's
+papers and in the last editions of the evening papers - have them
+ready for me tomorrow morning when I come."
+
+They were waiting for him when he reached the office at nine
+o'clock the next day and he went through them carefully.
+Presently he found the message he was seeking.
+
+B. M. You place me awkward position.  Very thoughtless.  Have
+received package addressed your mother which have placed in
+mother's sitting-room.  Cannot understand why you want me to go
+away week-end and give servants holiday but have done so.  Shall
+require very full explanation.  Matter gone far enough.  Father.
+
+"This," said T. X. exultantly, as he read the advertisement, "is
+where I get busy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+February as a rule is not a month of fogs, but rather a month of
+tempestuous gales, of frosts and snowfalls, but the night of
+February 17th, 19--, was one of calm and mist.  It was not the
+typical London fog so dreaded by the foreigner, but one of those
+little patchy mists which smoke through the streets, now
+enshrouding and making the nearest object invisible, now clearing
+away to the finest diaphanous filament of pale grey.
+
+Sir William Bartholomew had a house in Portman Place, which is a
+wide thoroughfare, filled with solemn edifices of unlovely and
+forbidding exterior, but remarkably comfortable within.  Shortly
+before eleven on the night of February 17th, a taxi drew up at the
+junction of Sussex Street and Portman Place, and a girl alighted.
+The fog at that moment was denser than usual and she hesitated a
+moment before she left the shelter which the cab afforded.
+
+She gave the driver a few instructions and walked on with a firm
+step, turning abruptly and mounting the steps of Number 173.  Very
+quickly she inserted her key in the lock, pushed the door open and
+closed it behind her.  She switched on the hall light.  The house
+sounded hollow and deserted, a fact which afforded her
+considerable satisfaction.  She turned the light out and found her
+way up the broad stairs to the first floor, paused for a moment to
+switch on another light which she knew would not be observable
+from the street outside and mounted the second flight.
+
+Miss Belinda Mary Bartholomew congratulated herself upon the
+success of her scheme, and the only doubt that was in her mind now
+was whether the boudoir had been locked, but her father was rather
+careless in such matters and Jacks the butler was one of those
+dear, silly, old men who never locked anything, and, in
+consequence, faced every audit with a long face and a longer tale
+of the peculations of occasional servants.
+
+To her immense relief the handle turned and the door opened to her
+touch.  Somebody had had the sense to pull down the blinds and the
+curtains were drawn.  She switched on the light with a sigh of
+relief.  Her mother's writing table was covered with unopened
+letters, but she brushed these aside in her search for the little
+parcel.  It was not there and her heart sank.  Perhaps she had put
+it in one of the drawers.  She tried them all without result.
+
+She stood by the desk a picture of perplexity, biting a finger
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Thank goodness!" she said with a jump, for she saw the parcel on
+the mantel shelf, crossed the room and took it down.
+
+With eager hands she tore off the covering and came to the
+familiar leather case.  Not until she had opened the padded lid
+and had seen the snuffbox reposing in a bed of cotton wool did she
+relapse into a long sigh of relief.
+
+"Thank heaven for that," she said aloud.
+
+"And me," said a voice.
+
+She sprang up and turned round with a look of terror.
+
+"Mr. - Mr. Meredith," she stammered.
+
+T. X. stood by the window curtains from whence he had made his
+dramatic entry upon the scene.
+
+"I say you have to thank me also, Miss Bartholomew," he said
+presently.
+
+"How do you know my name?" she asked with some curiosity.
+
+"I know everything in the world," he answered, and she smiled.
+Suddenly her face went serious and she demanded sharply,
+
+"Who sent you after me - Mr. Kara?"
+
+"Mr. Kara?" he repeated, in wonder.
+
+"He threatened to send for the police," she went on rapidly, "and
+I told him he might do so.  I didn't mind the police - it was Kara
+I was afraid of.  You know what I went for, my mother's property."
+
+She held the snuff-box in her outstretched hand.
+
+"He accused me of stealing and was hateful, and then he put me
+downstairs in that awful cellar and - "
+
+"And?" suggested T. X.
+
+"That's all," she replied with tightened lips; "what are you going
+to do now?"
+
+"I am going to ask you a few questions if I may," he said.  "In
+the first place have you not heard anything about Mr. Kara since
+you went away?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I have kept out of his way," she said grimly.
+
+"Have you seen the newspapers?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I have seen the advertisement column - I wired asking Papa to
+reply to my telegram."
+
+"I know - I saw it," he smiled; "that is what brought me here."
+
+"I was afraid it would," she said ruefully; "father is awfully
+loquacious in print - he makes speeches you know.  All I wanted
+him to say was yes or no.  What do you mean about the newspapers?"
+she went on.  "Is anything wrong with mother?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"So far as I know Lady Bartholomew is in the best of health and is
+on her way home."
+
+"Then what do you mean by asking me about the newspapers!" she
+demanded; "why should I see the newspapers - what is there for me
+to see?"
+
+"About Kara?" he suggested.
+
+She shook her head in bewilderment.
+
+"I know and want to know nothing about Kara.  Why do you say this
+to me?"
+
+"Because," said T. X. slowly, "on the night you disappeared from
+Cadogan Square, Remington Kara was murdered."
+
+"Murdered," she gasped.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"He was stabbed to the heart by some person or persons unknown."
+
+T. X. took his hand from his pocket and pulled something out which
+was wrapped in tissue paper.  This he carefully removed and the
+girl watched with fascinated gaze, and with an awful sense of
+apprehension.  Presently the object was revealed.  It was a pair
+of scissors with the handle wrapped about with a small
+handkerchief dappled with brown stains.  She took a step backward,
+raising her hands to her cheeks.
+
+"My scissors," she said huskily; "you won't think - "
+
+She stared up at him, fear and indignation struggling for mastery.
+
+"I don't think you committed the murder," he smiled; "if that's
+what you mean to ask me, but if anybody else found those scissors
+and had identified this handkerchief you would have been in rather
+a fix, my young friend."
+
+She looked at the scissors and shuddered.
+
+"I did kill something," she said in a low voice, "an awful dog ...
+I don't know how I did it, but the beastly thing jumped at me and
+I just stabbed him and killed him, and I am glad," she nodded many
+times and repeated, "I am glad."
+
+"So I gather - I found the dog and now perhaps you'll explain why
+I didn't find you?"
+
+Again she hesitated and he felt that she was hiding something from
+him.
+
+"I don't know why you didn't find me," she said; "I was there."
+
+"How did you get out?"
+
+"How did you get out?" she challenged him boldly.
+
+"I got out through the door," he confessed; "it seems a
+ridiculously commonplace way of leaving but that's the only way I
+could see."
+
+"And that's how I got out," she answered, with a little smile.
+
+"But it was locked."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I see now," she said; "I was in the cellar.  I heard your key in
+the lock and bolted down the trap, leaving those awful scissors
+behind.  I thought it was Kara with some of his friends and then
+the voices died away and I ventured to come up and found you had
+left the door open.  So - so I - "
+
+These queer little pauses puzzled T. X.  There was something she
+was not telling him.  Something she had yet to reveal.
+
+"So I got away you see," she went on.  "I came out into the
+kitchen; there was nobody there, and I passed through the area
+door and up the steps and just round the corner I found a taxicab,
+and that is all."
+
+She spread out her hands in a dramatic little gesture.
+
+"And that is all, is it?" said T. X.
+
+"That is all," she repeated; "now what are you going to do?"
+
+T. X. looked up at the ceiling and stroked his chin.
+
+"I suppose that I ought to arrest you.  I feel that something is
+due from me.  May I ask if you were sleeping in the bed
+downstairs?"
+
+"In the lower cellar?" she demanded, - a little pause and then,
+"Yes, I was sleeping in the cellar downstairs."
+
+There was that interval of hesitation almost between each word.
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked again.
+
+She was feeling more sure of herself and had suppressed the panic
+which his sudden appearance had produced in her.  He rumpled his
+hair, a gross imitation, did she but know it, of one of his
+chief's mannerisms and she observed that his hair was very thick
+and inclined to curl.  She saw also that he was passably good
+looking, had fine grey eyes, a straight nose and a most firm chin.
+
+"I think," she suggested gently, "you had better arrest me."
+
+"Don't be silly," he begged.
+
+She stared at him in amazement.
+
+"What did you say?" she asked wrathfully.
+
+"I said 'don't be silly,'" repeated the calm young man.
+
+"Do you know that you're being very rude?" she asked.
+
+He seemed interested and surprised at this novel view of his
+conduct.
+
+"Of course," she went on carefully smoothing her dress and
+avoiding his eye, "I know you think I am silly and that I've got a
+most comic name."
+
+"I have never said your name was comic," he replied coldly; "I
+would not take so great a liberty."
+
+"You said it was 'weird' which was worse," she claimed.
+
+"I may have said it was 'weird,"' he admitted, "but that's rather
+different to saying it was 'comic.'  There is dignity in weird
+things.  For example, nightmares aren't comic but they're weird."
+
+"Thank you," she said pointedly.
+
+"Not that I mean your name is anything approaching a nightmare."
+He made this concession with a most magnificent sweep of hand as
+though he were a king conceding her the right to remain covered in
+his presence.  "I think that Belinda Ann - "
+
+"Belinda Mary," she corrected.
+
+"Belinda Mary, I was going to say, or as a matter of fact," he
+floundered, "I was going to say Belinda and Mary."
+
+"You were going to say nothing of the kind," she corrected him.
+
+"Anyway, I think Belinda Mary is a very pretty name."
+
+"You think nothing of the sort."
+
+She saw the laughter in his eyes and felt an insane desire to
+laugh.
+
+"You said it was a weird name and you think it is a weird name,
+but I really can't be bothered considering everybody's views.  I
+think it's a weird name, too.  I was named after an aunt," she
+added in self-defence.
+
+"There you have the advantage of me," he inclined his head
+politely; "I was named after my father's favourite dog."
+
+"What does T. X. stand for?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Thomas Xavier," he said, and she leant back in the big chair on
+the edge of which a few minutes before she had perched herself in
+trepidation and dissolved into a fit of immoderate laughter.
+
+"It is comic, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I am sorry I'm so rude," she gasped.  "Fancy being called
+Tommy Xavier - I mean Thomas Xavier."
+
+"You may call me Tommy if you wish - most of my friends do."
+
+"Unfortunately I'm not your friend," she said, still smiling and
+wiping the tears from her eyes, "so I shall go on calling you Mr.
+Meredith if you don't mind."
+
+She looked at her watch.
+
+"If you are not going to arrest me I'm going," she said.
+
+"I have certainly no intention of arresting you," said he, "but I
+am going to see you home!"
+
+She jumped up smartly.
+
+"You're not," she commanded.
+
+She was so definite in this that he was startled.
+
+"My dear child," he protested.
+
+"Please don't 'dear child' me," she said seriously; "you're going
+to be a good little Tommy and let me go home by myself."
+
+She held out her hand frankly and the laughing appeal in her eyes
+was irresistible.
+
+"Well, I'll see you to a cab," he insisted.
+
+"And listen while I give the driver instructions where he is to
+take me?"
+
+She shook her head reprovingly.
+
+"It must be an awful thing to be a policeman."
+
+He stood back with folded arms, a stern frown on his face.
+
+"Don't you trust me?" he asked.
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"Quite right," he approved; "anyway I'll see you to the cab and
+you can tell the driver to go to Charing Cross station and on your
+way you can change your direction."
+
+"And you promise you won't follow me?" she asked.
+
+"On my honour," he swore; "on one condition though."
+
+"I will make no conditions," she replied haughtily.
+
+"Please come down from your great big horse," he begged, "and
+listen to reason.  The condition I make is that I can always bring
+you to an appointed rendezvous whenever I want you.  Honestly,
+this is necessary, Belinda Mary."
+
+"Miss Bartholomew," she corrected, coldly.
+
+"It is necessary," he went on, "as you will understand.  Promise
+me that, if I put an advertisement in the agonies of either an
+evening paper which I will name or in the Morning Port, you will
+keep the appointment I fix, if it is humanly possible."
+
+She hesitated a moment, then held out her hand.
+
+"I promise," she said.
+
+"Good for you, Belinda Mary," said he, and tucking her arm in his
+he led her out of the room switching off the light and racing her
+down the stairs.
+
+If there was a lot of the schoolgirl left in Belinda Mary
+Bartholomew, no less of the schoolboy was there in this
+Commissioner of Police.  He would have danced her through the fog,
+contemptuous of the proprieties, but he wasn't so very anxious to
+get her to her cab and to lose sight of her.
+
+"Good-night," he said, holding her hand.
+
+"That's the third time you've shaken hands with me to-night," she
+interjected.
+
+"Don't let us have any unpleasantness at the last," he pleaded,
+"and remember."
+
+"I have promised," she replied.
+
+"And one day," he went on, "you will tell me all that happened in
+that cellar."
+
+"I have told you," she said in a low voice.
+
+"You have not told me everything, child."
+
+He handed her into the cab.  He shut the door behind her and leant
+through the open window.
+
+"Victoria or Marble Arch?" he asked politely.
+
+"Charing Cross," she replied, with a little laugh.
+
+He watched the cab drive away and then suddenly it stopped and a
+figure lent out from the window beckoning him frantically.  He ran
+up to her.
+
+"Suppose I want you," she asked.
+
+"Advertise," he said promptly, "beginning your advertisement 'Dear
+Tommy."'
+
+"I shall put 'T. X.,' " she said indignantly.
+
+"Then I shall take no notice of your advertisement," he replied
+and stood in the middle of the street, his hat in his hand, to the
+intense annoyance of a taxi-cab driver who literally all but ran
+him down and in a figurative sense did so until T. X. was out of
+earshot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Thomas Xavier Meredith was a shrewd young man.  It was said of him
+by Signor Paulo Coselli, the eminent criminologist, that he had a
+gift of intuition which was abnormal.  Probably the mystery of the
+twisted candle was solved by him long before any other person in
+the world had the dimmest idea that it was capable of solution.
+
+The house in Cadogan Square was still in the hands of the police.
+To this house and particularly to Kara's bedroom T. X. from time
+to time repaired, and reproduced as far as possible the conditions
+which obtained on the night of the murder.  He had the same
+stifling fire, the same locked door.  The latch was dropped in its
+socket, whilst T. X., with a stop watch in his hand, made
+elaborate calculations and acted certain parts which he did not
+reveal to a soul.
+
+Three times, accompanied by Mansus, he went to the house, three
+times went to the death chamber and was alone on one occasion for
+an hour and a half whilst the patient Mansus waited outside.
+Three times he emerged looking graver on each occasion, and after
+the third visit he called into consultation John Lexman.
+
+Lexman had been spending some time in the country, having deferred
+his trip to the United States.
+
+"This case puzzles me more and more, John," said T. X., troubled
+out of his usual boisterous self, "and thank heaven it worries
+other people besides me.  De Mainau came over from France the
+other day and brought all his best sleuths, whilst O'Grady of the
+New York central office paid a flying visit just to get hold of
+the facts.  Not one of them has given me the real solution, though
+they've all been rather ingenious.  Gathercole has vanished and is
+probably on his way to some undiscoverable region, and our people
+have not yet traced the valet."
+
+"He should be the easiest for you," said John Lexman,
+reflectively.
+
+"Why Gathercole should go off I can't understand," T. X.
+continued.  "According to the story which was told me by Fisher,
+his last words to Kara were to the effect that he was expecting a
+cheque or that he had received a cheque.  No cheque has been
+presented or drawn and apparently Gathercole has gone off without
+waiting for any payment.  An examination of Kara's books show
+nothing against the Gathercole account save the sum of 600 pounds
+which was originally advanced, and now to upset all my
+calculations, look at this."
+
+He took from his pocketbook a newspaper cutting and pushed it
+across the table, for they were dining together at the Carlton.
+John Lexman picked up the slip and read.  It was evidently from a
+New York paper:
+
+"Further news has now come to hand by the Antarctic Trading
+Company's steamer, Cyprus, concerning the wreck of the City of the
+Argentine.  It is believed that this ill-fated vessel, which
+called at South American ports, lost her propellor and drifted
+south out of the track of shipping.  This theory is now confirmed.
+Apparently the ship struck an iceberg on December 23rd and
+foundered with all aboard save a few men who were able to launch a
+boat and who were picked up by the Cyprus.  The following is the
+passenger list."
+
+John Lexman ran down the list until he came upon the name which
+was evidently underlined in ink by T. X.  That name was George
+Gathercole and after it in brackets (Explorer).
+
+"If that were true, then, Gathercole could not have come to
+London."
+
+"He may have taken another boat," said T. X., "and I cabled to the
+Steamship Company without any great success.  Apparently
+Gathercole was an eccentric sort of man and lived in terror of
+being overcrowded.  It was a habit of his to make provisional
+bookings by every available steamer.  The company can tell me no
+more than that he had booked, but whether he shipped on the City
+of the Argentine or not, they do not know."
+
+"I can tell you this about Gathercole," said John slowly and
+thoughtfully, "that he was a man who would not hurt a fly.  He was
+incapable of killing any man, being constitutionally averse to
+taking life in any shape.  For this reason he never made
+collections of butterflies or of bees, and I believe has never
+shot an animal in his life.  He carried his principles to such an
+extent that he was a vegetarian - poor old Gathercole!" he said,
+with the first smile which T. X. had seen on his face since he
+came back.
+
+"If you want to sympathize with anybody," said T. X. gloomily,
+"sympathize with me."
+
+On the following day T. X. was summoned to the Home Office and
+went steeled for a most unholy row.  The Home Secretary, a large
+and worthy gentleman, given to the making of speeches on every
+excuse, received him, however, with unusual kindness.
+
+"I've sent for you, Mr.  Meredith," he said, "about this
+unfortunate Greek.  I've had all his private papers looked into
+and translated and in some cases decoded, because as you are
+probably aware his diaries and a great deal of his correspondence
+were in a code which called for the attention of experts."
+
+T. X. had not troubled himself greatly about Kara's private papers
+but had handed them over, in accordance with instructions, to the
+proper authorities.
+
+"Of course, Mr. Meredith," the Home Secretary went on, beaming
+across his big table, "we expect you to continue your search for
+the murderer, but I must confess that your prisoner when you
+secure him will have a very excellent case to put to a jury."
+
+"That I can well believe, sir," said T. X.
+
+"Seldom in my long career at the bar," began the Home Secretary in
+his best oratorical manner, "have I examined a record so utterly
+discreditable as that of the deceased man."
+
+Here he advanced a few instances which surprised even T. X.
+
+"The men was a lunatic," continued the Home Secretary, "a vicious,
+evil man who loved cruelty for cruelty's sake.  We have in this
+diary alone sufficient evidence to convict him of three separate
+murders, one of which was committed in this country."
+
+T. X. looked his astonishment.
+
+"You will remember, Mr. Meredith, as I saw in one of your reports,
+that he had a chauffeur, a Greek named Poropulos."
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"He went to Greece on the day following the shooting of
+Vassalaro," he said.
+
+The Home Secretary shook his head.
+
+"He was killed on the same night," said the Minister, "and you
+will have no difficulty in finding what remains of his body in the
+disused house which Kara rented for his own purpose on the
+Portsmouth Road.  That he has killed a number of people in Albania
+you may well suppose.  Whole villages have been wiped out to
+provide him with a little excitement.  The man was a Nero without
+any of Nero's amiable weaknesses.  He was obsessed with the idea
+that he himself was in danger of assassination, and saw an enemy
+even in his trusty servant.  Undoubtedly the chauffeur Poropulos
+was in touch with several Continental government circles.  You
+understand," said the Minister in conclusion, "that I am telling
+you this, not with the idea of expecting you, to relax your
+efforts to find the murderer and clear up the mystery, but in
+order that you may know something of the possible motive for this
+man's murder."
+
+T. X. spent an hour going over the decoded diary and documents and
+left the Home Office a little shakily.  It was inconceivable,
+incredible.  Kara was a lunatic, but the directing genius was a
+devil.
+
+T. X. had a flat in Whitehall Gardens and thither he repaired to
+change for dinner.  He was half dressed when the evening paper
+arrived and he glanced as was his wont first at the news' page and
+then at the advertisement column.  He looked down the column
+marked "Personal" without expecting to find anything of particular
+interest to himself, but saw that which made him drop the paper
+and fly round the room in a frenzy to complete his toilet.
+
+"Tommy X.," ran the brief announcement, "most urgent, Marble Arch
+8."
+
+He had five minutes to get there but it seemed like five hours.
+He was held up at almost every crossing and though he might have
+used his authority to obtain right of way, it was a step which his
+curious sense of honesty prevented him taking.  He leapt out of
+the cab before it stopped, thrust the fare into the driver's hands
+and looked round for the girl.  He saw her at last and walked
+quickly towards her.  As he approached her, she turned about and
+with an almost imperceptible beckoning gesture walked away.  He
+followed her along the Bayswater Road and gradually drew level.
+
+"I am afraid I have been watched," she said in a low voice.  "Will
+you call a cab?"
+
+He hailed a passing taxi, helped her in and gave at random the
+first place that suggested itself to him, which was Finsbury Park.
+
+"I am very worried," she said, "and I don't know anybody who can
+help me except you."
+
+"Is it money?" he asked.
+
+"Money," she said scornfully, "of course it isn't money.  I want
+to show you a letter," she said after a while.
+
+She took it from her bag and gave it to him and he struck a match
+and read it with difficulty.
+
+It was written in a studiously uneducated hand.
+
+
+
+"Dear Miss,
+
+"I know who you are.  You are wanted by the police but I will not
+give you away.  Dear Miss.  I am very hard up and 20 pounds will
+be very useful to me and I shall not trouble you again.  Dear
+Miss.  Put the money on the window sill of your room.  I know you
+sleep on the ground floor and I will come in and take it.  And if
+not - well, I don't want to make any trouble.
+
+                                         "Yours truly,
+                                                   "A FRIEND."
+
+"When did you get this?" he asked.
+
+"This morning," she replied.  "I sent the Agony to the paper by
+telegram, I knew you would come."
+
+"Oh, you did, did you?" he said.
+
+Her assurance was very pleasing to him.  The faith that her words
+implied gave him an odd little feeling of comfort and happiness.
+
+"I can easily get you out of this," he added; "give me your
+address and when the gentleman comes - "
+
+"That is impossible," she replied hurriedly.  "Please don't think
+I'm ungrateful, and don't think I'm being silly - you do think I'm
+being silly, don't you!"
+
+"I have never harboured such an unworthy thought," he said
+virtuously.
+
+"Yes, you have," she persisted, "but really I can't tell you where
+I am living.  I have a very special reason for not doing so.  It's
+not myself that I'm thinking about, but there's a life involved."
+
+This was a somewhat dramatic statement to make and she felt she
+had gone too far.
+
+"Perhaps I don't mean that," she said, "but there is some one I
+care for - " she dropped her voice.
+
+"Oh," said T. X. blankly.
+
+He came down from his rosy heights into the shadow and darkness of
+a sunless valley.
+
+"Some one you care for," he repeated after a while.
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was another long silence, then,
+
+"Oh, indeed," said T. X.
+
+Again the unbroken interval of quiet and after a while she said in
+a low voice, "Not that way."
+
+"Not what way!" asked T. X. huskily, his spirits doing a little
+mountaineering.
+
+"The way you mean," she said.
+
+"Oh," said T. X.
+
+He was back again amidst the rosy snows of dawn, was in fact
+climbing a dizzy escalier on the topmost height of hope's Mont
+Blanc when she pulled the ladder from under him.
+
+"I shall, of course, never marry," she said with a certain prim
+decision.
+
+T. X. fell with a dull sickening thud, discovering that his rosy
+snows were not unlike cold, hard ice in their lack of resilience.
+
+"Who said you would?" he asked somewhat feebly, but in self
+defence.
+
+"You did," she said, and her audacity took his breath away.
+
+"Well, how am I to help you!" he asked after a while.
+
+"By giving me some advice," she said; "do you think I ought to put
+the money there!"
+
+"Indeed I do not," said T. X., recovering some of his natural
+dominance; "apart from the fact that you would be compounding a
+felony, you would merely be laying out trouble for yourself in the
+future.  If he can get 20 pounds so easily, he will come for 40
+pounds.  But why do you stay away, why don't you return home?
+There's no charge and no breath of suspicion against you."
+
+"Because I have something to do which I have set my mind to," she
+said, with determination in her tones.
+
+"Surely you can trust me with your address," he urged her, "after
+all that has passed between us, Belinda Mary - after all the years
+we have known one another."
+
+"I shall get out and leave you," she said steadily.
+
+"But how the dickens am I going to help you?" he protested.
+
+"Don't swear," she could be very severe indeed; "the only way you
+can help me is by being kind and sympathetic."
+
+"Would you like me to burst into tears?" he asked sarcastically.
+
+"I ask you to do nothing more painful or repugnant to your natural
+feelings than to be a gentleman," she said.
+
+"Thank you very kindly," said T. X., and leant back in the cab
+with an air of supreme resignation.
+
+"I believe you're making faces in the dark," she accused him.
+
+"God forbid that I should do anything so low," said he hastily;
+"what made you think that?"
+
+"Because I was putting my tongue out at you," she admitted, and
+the taxi driver heard the shrieks of laughter in the cab behind
+him above the wheezing of his asthmatic engine.
+
+At twelve that night in a certain suburb of London an overcoated
+man moved stealthily through a garden.  He felt his way carefully
+along the wall of the house and groped with hope, but with no
+great certainty, along the window sill.  He found an envelope
+which his fingers, somewhat sensitive from long employment in
+nefarious uses, told him contained nothing more substantial than a
+letter.
+
+He went back through the garden and rejoined his companion, who
+was waiting under an adjacent lamp-post.
+
+"Did she drop?" asked the other eagerly.
+
+"I don't know yet," growled the man from the garden.
+
+He opened the envelope and read the few lines.
+
+"She hasn't got the money," he said, "but she's going to get it.
+I must meet her to-morrow afternoon at the corner of Oxford Street
+and Regent Street."
+
+"What time!" asked the other.
+
+"Six o'clock," said the first man.  "The chap who takes the money
+must carry a copy of the Westminster Gazette in his hand."
+
+"Oh, then it's a plant," said the other with conviction.
+
+The other laughed.
+
+"She won't work any plants.  I bet she's scared out of her life."
+
+The second man bit his nails and looked up and down the road,
+apprehensively.
+
+"It's come to something," he said bitterly; "we went out to make
+our thousands and we've come down to 'chanting' for 20 pounds."
+
+"It's the luck," said the other philosophically, "and I haven't
+done with her by any means.  Besides we've still got a chance of
+pulling of the big thing, Harry.  I reckon she's good for a
+hundred or two, anyway."
+
+At six o'clock on the following afternoon, a man dressed in a dark
+overcoat, with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes stood
+nonchalantly by the curb near where the buses stop at Regent
+Street slapping his hand gently with a folded copy of the
+Westminster Gazette.
+
+That none should mistake his Liberal reading, he stood as near as
+possible to a street lamp and so arranged himself and his attitude
+that the minimum of light should fall upon his face and the
+maximum upon that respectable organ of public opinion.  Soon after
+six he saw the girl approaching, out of the tail of his eye, and
+strolled off to meet her.  To his surprise she passed him by and
+he was turning to follow when an unfriendly hand gripped him by
+the arm.
+
+"Mr. Fisher, I believe," said a pleasant voice.
+
+"What do you mean?" said the man, struggling backward.
+
+"Are you going quietly!" asked the pleasant Superintendent Mansus,
+"or shall I take my stick to you'?"
+
+Mr. Fisher thought awhile.
+
+"It's a cop," he confessed, and allowed himself to be hustled into
+the waiting cab.
+
+He made his appearance in T. X.'s office and that urbane gentleman
+greeted him as a friend.
+
+"And how's Mr. Fisher!" he asked; "I suppose you are Mr. Fisher
+still and not Mr. Harry Gilcott, or Mr. George Porten."
+
+Fisher smiled his old, deferential, deprecating smile.
+
+"You will always have your joke, sir.  I suppose the young lady
+gave me away."
+
+"You gave yourself away, my poor Fisher," said T. X., and put a
+strip of paper before him; "you may disguise your hand, and in
+your extreme modesty pretend to an ignorance of the British
+language, which is not creditable to your many attainments, but
+what you must be awfully careful in doing in future when you write
+such epistles," he said, "is to wash your hands."
+
+"Wash my hands!" repeated the puzzled Fisher.
+
+T. X. nodded.
+
+"You see you left a little thumb print, and we are rather whales
+on thumb prints at Scotland Yard, Fisher."
+
+"I see.  What is the charge now, sir!"
+
+"I shall make no charge against you except the conventional one of
+being a convict under license and failing to report."
+
+Fisher heaved a sigh.
+
+"That'll only mean twelve months.  Are you going to charge me with
+this business?" he nodded to the paper.
+
+T. X. shook his head.
+
+"I bear you no ill-will although you tried to frighten Miss
+Bartholomew.  Oh yes, I know it is Miss Bartholomew, and have
+known all the time.  The lady is there for a reason which is no
+business of yours or of mine.  I shall not charge you with attempt
+to blackmail and in reward for my leniency I hope you are going to
+tell me all you know about the Kara murder.  You wouldn't like me
+to charge you with that, would you by any chance!"
+
+Fisher drew a long breath.
+
+"No, sir, but if you did I could prove my innocence," he said
+earnestly.  "I spent the whole of the evening in the kitchen."
+
+"Except a quarter of an hour," said T. X.
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"That's true, sir, I went out to see a pal of mine."
+
+"The man who is in this!" asked T. X.
+
+Fisher hesitated.
+
+"Yes, sir.  He was with me in this but there was nothing wrong
+about the business - as far as we went.  I don't mind admitting
+that I was planning a Big Thing.  I'm not going to blow on it, if
+it's going to get me into trouble, but if you'll promise me that
+it won't, I'll tell you the whole story."
+
+"Against whom was this coup of yours planned?"
+
+"Against Mr. Kara, sir," said Fisher.
+
+"Go on with your story," nodded T. X.
+
+The story was a short and commonplace one.  Fisher had met a man
+who knew another man who was either a Turk or an Albanian.  They
+had learnt that Kara was in the habit of keeping large sums of
+money in the house and they had planned to rob him.  That was the
+story in a nutshell.  Somewhere the plan miscarried.  It was when
+he came to the incidents that occurred on the night of the murder
+that T. X. followed him with the greatest interest.
+
+"The old gentleman came in," said Fisher, "and I saw him up to the
+room.  I heard him coming out and I went up and spoke to him while
+he was having a chat with Mr.  Kara at the open door."
+
+"Did you hear Mr. Kara speak?"
+
+"I fancy I did, sir," said Fisher; "anyway the old gentleman was
+quite pleased with himself."
+
+"Why do you say 'old gentleman'!" asked T. X.; "he was not an old
+man."
+
+"Not exactly, sir," said Fisher, "but he had a sort of fussy
+irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got
+it fixed in my mind that he was old.  As a matter of fact, he was
+about forty-five, he may have been fifty."
+
+"You have told me all this before.  Was there anything peculiar
+about him!"
+
+Fisher hesitated.
+
+"Nothing, sir, except the fact that one of his arms was a game
+one."
+
+"Meaning that it was - "
+
+"Meaning that it was an artificial one, sir, so far as I can make
+out."
+
+"Was it his right or his left arm that was game!" interrupted T.
+X.
+
+"His left arm, sir."
+
+"You're sure?"
+
+"I'd swear to it, sir."
+
+"Very well, go on."
+
+"He came downstairs and went out and I never saw him again.  When
+you came and the murder was discovered and knowing as I did that I
+had my own scheme on and that one of your splits might pinch me, I
+got a bit rattled.  I went downstairs to the hall and the first
+thing I saw lying on the table was a letter.  It was addressed to
+me."
+
+He paused and T. X. nodded.
+
+"Go on," he said again.
+
+"I couldn't understand how it came to be there, but as I'd been in
+the kitchen most of the evening except when I was seeing my pal
+outside to tell him the job was off for that night, it might have
+been there before you came.  I opened the letter.  There were only
+a few words on it and I can tell you those few words made my heart
+jump up into my mouth, and made me go cold all over."
+
+"What were they!" asked T. X.
+
+"I shall not forget them, sir.  They're sort of permanently fixed
+in my brain," said the man earnestly; "the note started with just
+the figures 'A. C. 274.' "
+
+"What was that!" asked T. X.
+
+"My convict number when I was in Dartmoor Prison, sir."
+
+"What did the note say?"
+
+"'Get out of here quick' - I don't know who had put it there, but
+I'd evidently been spotted and I was taking no chances.  That's
+the whole story from beginning to end.  I accidentally happened to
+meet the young lady, Miss Holland - Miss Bartholomew as she is -
+and followed her to her house in Portman Place.  That was the
+night you were there."
+
+T. X. found himself to his intense annoyance going very red.
+
+"And you know no more?" he asked.
+
+"No more, sir - and if I may be struck dead - "
+
+"Keep all that sabbath talk for the chaplain," commended T. X.,
+and they took away Mr. Fisher, not an especially dissatisfied man.
+
+That night T. X. interviewed his prisoner at Cannon Row police
+station and made a few more enquiries.
+
+"There is one thing I would like to ask you," said the girl when
+he met her next morning in Green Park.
+
+"If you were going to ask whether I made enquiries as to where
+your habitation was," he warned her, "I beg of you to refrain."
+
+She was looking very beautiful that morning, he thought.  The keen
+air had brought a colour to her face and lent a spring to her
+gait, and, as she strode along by his side with the free and
+careless swing of youth, she was an epitome of the life which even
+now was budding on every tree in the park.
+
+"Your father is back in town, by the way," he said, "and he is
+most anxious to see you."
+
+She made a little grimace.
+
+"I hope you haven't been round talking to father about me."
+
+"Of course I have," he said helplessly; "I have also had all the
+reporters up from Fleet Street and given them a full description
+of your escapades."
+
+She looked round at him with laughter in her eyes.
+
+"You have all the manners of an early Christian martyr," she said.
+"Poor soul!  Would you like to be thrown to the lions?"
+
+"I should prefer being thrown to the demnition ducks and drakes,"
+he said moodily.
+
+"You're such a miserable man," she chided him, "and yet you have
+everything to make life worth living."
+
+"Ha, ha!" said T. X.
+
+"You have, of course you have!  You have a splendid position.
+Everybody looks up to you and talks about you.  You have got a
+wife and family who adore you - "
+
+He stopped and looked at her as though she were some strange
+insect.
+
+"I have a how much?" he asked credulously.
+
+"Aren't you married?" she asked innocently.
+
+He made a strange noise in his throat.
+
+"Do you know I have always thought of you as married," she went
+on; "I often picture you in your domestic circle reading to the
+children from the Daily Megaphone those awfully interesting
+stories about Little Willie Waterbug."
+
+He held on to the railings for support.
+
+"May we sit down?" he asked faintly.
+
+She sat by his side, half turned to him, demure and wholly
+adorable.
+
+"Of course you are right in one respect," he said at last, "but
+you're altogether wrong about the children."
+
+"Are you married!" she demanded with no evidence of amusement.
+
+"Didn't you know?" he asked.
+
+She swallowed something.
+
+"Of course it's no business of mine and I'm sure I hope you are
+very happy."
+
+"Perfectly happy," said T. X. complacently.  "You must come out
+and see me one Saturday afternoon when I am digging the potatoes.
+I am a perfect devil when they let me loose in the vegetable
+garden."
+
+"Shall we go on?" she said.
+
+He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he
+thought she was vexed with him at his fooling.
+
+"I haven't made you cross, have I?" he asked.
+
+"Oh no," she replied.
+
+"I mean you don't believe all this rot about my being married and
+that sort of thing?"
+
+"I'm not interested," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders,
+"not very much.  You've been very kind to me and I should be an
+awful boor if I wasn't grateful.  Of course, I don't care whether
+you're married or not, it's nothing to do with me, is it?"
+
+"Naturally it isn't," he replied.  "I suppose you aren't married
+by any chance?"
+
+"Married," she repeated bitterly; "why, you will make my fourth!"
+
+She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized
+her terrible error.  A second later she was in his arms and he was
+kissing her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and
+dirty-faced little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at
+the proceedings which he watched through a yellow and malignant
+eye.
+
+"Belinda Mary," said T. X. at parting, "you have got to give up
+your little country establishment, wherever it may be and come
+back to the discomforts of Portman Place.  Oh, I know you can't
+come back yet.  That 'somebody' is there, and I can pretty well
+guess who it is."
+
+"Who?" she challenged.
+
+"I rather fancy your mother has come back," he suggested.
+
+A look of scorn dawned into her pretty face.
+
+"Good lord, Tommy!" she said in disgust, "you don't think I should
+keep mother in the suburbs without her telling the world all about
+it!"
+
+"You're an undutiful little beggar," he said.
+
+They had reached the Horse Guards at Whitehall and he was saying
+good-bye to her.
+
+"If it comes to a matter of duty," she answered, "perhaps you will
+do your duty and hold up the traffic for me and let me cross this
+road."
+
+"My dear girl," he protested, "hold up the traffic?"
+
+"Of course," she said indignantly, "you're a policeman."
+
+"Only when I am in uniform," he said hastily, and piloted her
+across the road.
+
+It was a new man who returned to the gloomy office in Whitehall.
+A man with a heart that swelled and throbbed with the pride and
+joy of life's most precious possession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+
+T. X. sat at his desk, his chin in his hands, his mind remarkably
+busy.  Grave as the matter was which he was considering, he rose
+with alacrity to meet the smiling girl who was ushered through the
+door by Mansus, preternaturally solemn and mysterious.
+
+She was radiant that day.  Her eyes were sparkling with an unusual
+brightness.
+
+"I've got the most wonderful thing to tell you," she said, "and I
+can't tell you."
+
+"That's a very good beginning," said T. X., taking her muff from
+her hand.
+
+"Oh, but it's really wonderful," she cried eagerly, "more
+wonderful than anything you have ever heard about."
+
+"We are interested," said T. X. blandly.
+
+"No, no, you mustn't make fun," she begged, "I can't tell you now,
+but it is something that will make you simply - " she was at a loss
+for a simile.
+
+"Jump out of my skin?" suggested T. X.
+
+"I shall astonish you," she nodded her head solemnly.
+
+"I take a lot of astonishing, I warn you," he smiled; "to know you
+is to exhaust one's capacity for surprise."
+
+"That can be either very, very nice or very, very nasty," she said
+cautiously.
+
+"But accept it as being very, very nice," he laughed.  "Now come,
+out with this tale of yours."
+
+She shook her head very vigorously.
+
+"I can't possibly tell you anything," she said.
+
+"Then why the dickens do you begin telling anything for?" he
+complained, not without reason.
+
+"Because I just want you to know that I do know something."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" he groaned.  "Of course you know everything.  Belinda
+Mary, you're really the most wonderful child."
+
+He sat on the edge of her arm-chair and laid his hand on her
+shoulder.
+
+"And you've come to take me out to lunch!"
+
+"What were you worrying about when I came in?" she asked.
+
+He made a little gesture as if to dismiss the subject.
+
+"Nothing very much.  You've heard me speak of John Lexman?"
+
+She bent her head.
+
+"Lexman's the writer of a great many mystery stories, but you've
+probably read his books."
+
+She nodded again, and again T. X. noticed the suppressed eagerness
+in her eyes.
+
+"You're not ill or sickening for anything, are you?" he asked
+anxiously; "measles, or mumps or something?"
+
+"Don't be silly," she said; "go on and tell me something about Mr.
+Lexman."
+
+"He's going to America," said T. X., "and before he goes he wants
+to give a little lecture."
+
+"A lecture?"
+
+"It sounds rum, doesn't it, but that's just what he wants to do."
+
+"Why is he doing it!" she asked.
+
+T. X. made a gesture of despair.
+
+"That is one of the mysteries which may never be revealed to me,
+except - " he pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at the girl.
+"There are times," he said, "when there is a great struggle going
+on inside a man between all the human and better part of him and
+the baser professional part of him.  One side of me wants to hear
+this lecture of John Lexman's very much, the other shrinks from
+the ordeal."
+
+"Let us talk it over at lunch," she said practically, and carried
+him off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+One would not readily associate the party of top-booted sewermen
+who descend nightly to the subterranean passages of London with
+the stout viceconsul at Durazzo.  Yet it was one unimaginative man
+who lived in Lambeth and had no knowledge that there was such a
+place as Durazzo who was responsible for bringing this comfortable
+official out of his bed in the early hours of the morning causing
+him - albeit reluctantly and with violent and insubordinate
+language - to conduct certain investigations in the crowded
+bazaars.
+
+At first he was unsuccessful because there were many Hussein
+Effendis in Durazzo.  He sent an invitation to the American Consul
+to come over to tiffin and help him.
+
+"Why the dickens the Foreign Office should suddenly be interested
+in Hussein Effendi, I cannot for the life of me understand."
+
+"The Foreign Department has to be interested in something, you
+know," said the genial American.  "I receive some of the quaintest
+requests from Washington; I rather fancy they only wire you to
+find if they are there."
+
+"Why are you doing this!"
+
+"I've seen Hakaat Bey," said the English official.  "I wonder what
+this fellow has been doing?  There is probably a wigging for me in
+the offing."
+
+At about the same time the sewerman in the bosom of his own family
+was taking loud and noisy sips from a big mug of tea.
+
+"Don't you be surprised," he said to his admiring better half, "if
+I have to go up to the Old Bailey to give evidence."
+
+"Lord!  Joe!" she said with interest, "what has happened!"
+
+The sewer man filled his pipe and told the story with a wealth of
+rambling detail. He gave particulars of the hour he had descended
+the Victoria Street shaft, of what Bill Morgan had said to him as
+they were going down, of what he had said to Harry Carter as they
+splashed along the low-roofed tunnel, of how he had a funny
+feeling that he was going to make a discovery, and so on and so
+forth until he reached his long delayed climax.
+
+T. X. waited up very late that night and at twelve o'clock his
+patience was rewarded, for the Foreign Office' messenger brought a
+telegram to him.  It was addressed to the Chief Secretary and ran:
+
+"No. 847.  Yours 63952 of yesterday's date.  Begins.  Hussein
+Effendi a prosperous merchant of this city left for Italy to place
+his daughter in convent Marie Theressa, Florence Hussein being
+Christian.  He goes on to Paris.  Apply Ralli Theokritis et Cie.,
+Rue de l'Opera.  Ends."
+
+Half an hour later T. X. had a telephone connection through to
+Paris and was instructing the British police agent in that city.
+He received a further telephone report from Paris the next morning
+and one which gave him infinite satisfaction.  Very slowly but
+surely he was gathering together the pieces of this baffling
+mystery and was fitting them together.  Hussein Effendi would
+probably supply the last missing segments.
+
+At eight o'clock that night the door opened and the man who
+represented T. X. in Paris came in carrying a travelling ulster on
+his arm.  T. X. gave him a nod and then, as the newcomer stood
+with the door open, obviously waiting for somebody to follow him,
+he said,
+
+"Show him in - I will see him alone."
+
+There walked into his office, a tall man wearing a frock coat and
+a red fez.  He was a man from fifty-five to sixty, powerfully
+built, with a grave dark face and a thin fringe of white beard.
+He salaamed as he entered.
+
+"You speak French, I believe," said T. X. presently.
+
+The other bowed.
+
+"My agent has explained to you," said T. X. in French, "that I
+desire some information for the purpose of clearing up a crime
+which has been committed in this country.  I have given you my
+assurance, if that assurance was necessary, that you would come to
+no harm as a result of anything you might tell me."
+
+"That I understand, Effendi," said the tall Turk; "the Americans
+and the English have always been good friends of mine and I have
+been frequently in London.  Therefore, I shall be very pleased to
+be of any help to you."
+
+T. X. walked to a closed bookcase on one side of the room,
+unlocked it, took out an object wrapped in white tissue paper.  He
+laid this on the table, the Turk watching the proceedings with an
+impassive face.  Very slowly the Commissioner unrolled the little
+bundle and revealed at last a long, slim knife, rusted and
+stained, with a hilt, which in its untarnished days had evidently
+been of chased silver.  He lifted the dagger from the table and
+handed it to the Turk.
+
+"This is yours, I believe," he said softly.
+
+The man turned it over, stepping nearer the table that he might
+secure the advantage of a better light.  He examined the blade
+near the hilt and handed the weapon back to T. X.
+
+"That is my knife," he said.
+
+T. X. smiled.
+
+"You understand, of course, that I saw 'Hussein Effendi of
+Durazzo' inscribed in Arabic near the hilt."
+
+The Turk inclined his head.
+
+"With this weapon," T. X. went on, speaking with slow emphasis, "a
+murder was committed in this town."
+
+There was no sign of interest or astonishment, or indeed of any
+emotion whatever.
+
+"It is the will of God," he said calmly; "these things happen even
+in a great city like London."
+
+"It was your knife," suggested T. X.
+
+"But my hand was in Durazzo, Effendi," said the Turk.
+
+He looked at the knife again.
+
+"So the Black Roman is dead, Effendi."
+
+"The Black Roman?" asked T. X., a little puzzled.
+
+"The Greek they call Kara," said the Turk; "he was a very wicked
+man."
+
+T. X. was up on his feet now, leaning across the table and looking
+at the other with narrowed eyes.
+
+"How did you know it was Kara?" he asked quickly.
+
+The Turk shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Who else could it be?" he said; "are not your newspapers
+filled with the story?"
+
+T. X. sat back again, disappointed and a little annoyed with himself.
+
+"That is true, Hussein Effendi, but I did not think you read the
+papers."
+
+"Neither do I, master," replied the other coolly, "nor did I know
+that Kara had been killed until I saw this knife.  How came this
+in your possession!"
+
+"It was found in a rain sewer," said T. X., "into which the
+murderer had apparently dropped it.  But if you have not read the
+newspapers, Effendi, then you admit that you know who committed
+this murder."
+
+The Turk raised his hands slowly to a level with his shoulders.
+
+"Though I am a Christian," he said, "there are many wise sayings
+of my father's religion which I remember.  And one of these,
+Effendi, was, 'the wicked must die in the habitations of the just,
+by the weapons of the worthy shall the wicked perish.' Your
+Excellency, I am a worthy man, for never have I done a dishonest
+thing in my life.  I have traded fairly with Greeks, with
+Italians, have with Frenchmen and with Englishmen, also with Jews.
+I have never sought to rob them nor to hurt them.  If I have
+killed men, God knows it was not because I desired their death,
+but because their lives were dangerous to me and to mine.  Ask the
+blade all your questions and see what answer it gives.  Until it
+speaks I am as dumb as the blade, for it is also written that 'the
+soldier is the servant of his sword,' and also, 'the wise servant
+is dumb about his master's affairs.' "
+
+T. X. laughed helplessly.
+
+"I had hoped that you might be able to help me, hoped and feared,"
+he said; "if you cannot speak it is not my business to force you
+either by threat or by act.  I am grateful to you for having come
+over, although the visit has been rather fruitless so far as I am
+concerned."
+
+He smiled again and offered his hand.
+
+"Excellency," said the old Turk soberly, "there are some things in
+life that are well left alone and there are moments when justice
+should be so blind that she does not see guilt; here is such a
+moment."
+
+And this ended the interview, one on which T. X. had set very high
+hopes.  His gloom carried to Portman Place, where he had arranged
+to meet Belinda Mary.
+
+"Where is Mr. Lexman going to give this famous lecture of his?"
+was the question with which she greeted him, "and, please, what is
+the subject?"
+
+"It is on a subject which is of supreme interest to me;" he said
+gravely; "he has called his lecture 'The Clue of the Twisted
+Candle.'  There is no clearer brain being employed in the business
+of criminal detection than John Lexman's.  Though he uses his
+genius for the construction of stories, were it employed in the
+legitimate business of police work, I am certain he would make a
+mark second to none in the world.  He is determined on giving this
+lecture and he has issued a number of invitations.  These include
+the Chiefs of the Secret Police of nearly all the civilized
+countries of the world.  O'Grady is on his way from America, he
+wirelessed me this morning to that effect.  Even the Chief of the
+Russian police has accepted the invitation, because, as you know,
+this murder has excited a great deal of interest in police circles
+everywhere.  John Lexman is not only going to deliver this
+lecture," he said slowly, "but he is going to tell us who
+committed the murder and how it was committed."
+
+She thought a moment.
+
+"Where will it be delivered!"
+
+"I don't know," he said in astonishment; "does that matter?"
+
+"It matters a great deal," she said emphatically, "especially if I
+want it delivered in a certain place.  Would you induce Mr.
+Lexman to lecture at my house?"
+
+"At Portman Place!" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, I have a house of my own.  A furnished house I have rented at
+Blackheath.  Will you induce Mr. Lexman to give the lecture
+there?"
+
+"But why?" he asked.
+
+"Please don't ask questions," she pleaded, "do this for me,
+Tommy."
+
+He saw she was in earnest.
+
+"I'll write to old Lexman this afternoon," he promised.
+
+John Lexman telephoned his reply.
+
+"I should prefer somewhere out of London," he said, "and since
+Miss Bartholomew has some interest in the matter, may I extend my
+invitation to her?  I promise she shall not be any more shocked than
+a good woman need be."
+
+And so it came about that the name of Belinda Mary Bartholomew was
+added to the selected list of police chiefs, who were making for
+London at that moment to hear from the man who had guaranteed the
+solution of the story of Kara and his killing; the unravelment of
+the mystery which surrounded his death, and the significance of
+the twisted candles, which at that moment were reposing in the
+Black Museum at Scotland Yard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+The room was a big one and most of the furniture had been cleared
+out to admit the guests who had come from the ends of the earth to
+learn the story of the twisted candles, and to test John Lexman's
+theory by their own.
+
+They sat around chatting cheerfully of men and crimes, of great
+coups planned and frustrated, of strange deeds committed and
+undetected.  Scraps of their conversation came to Belinda Mary as
+she stood in the chintz-draped doorway which led from the
+drawing-room to the room she used as a study.
+
+". . . do you remember, Sir George, the Bolbrook case!  I took the
+man at Odessa . . . ."
+
+". . . the curious thing was that I found no money on the body,
+only a small gold charm set with a single emerald, so I knew it
+was the girl with the fur bonnet who had . . ."
+
+". . . Pinot got away after putting three bullets into me, but I
+dragged myself to the window and shot him dead - it was a real
+good shot . . . !"
+
+They rose to meet her and T. X. introduced her to the men.  It was
+at that moment that John Lexman was announced.
+
+He looked tired, but returned the Commissioner's greeting with a
+cheerful mien.  He knew all the men present by name, as they knew
+him.  He had a few sheets of notes, which he laid on the little
+table which had been placed for him, and when the introductions
+were finished he went to this and with scarcely any preliminary
+began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+THE NARRATIVE OF JOHN LEXMAN
+
+"I am, as you may all know, a writer of stories which depend for
+their success upon the creation and unravelment of criminological
+mysteries.  The Chief Commissioner has been good enough to tell
+you that my stories were something more than a mere seeking after
+sensation, and that I endeavoured in the course of those
+narratives to propound obscure but possible situations, and, with
+the ingenuity that I could command, to offer to those problems a
+solution acceptable, not only to the general reader, but to the
+police expert.
+
+"Although I did not regard my earlier work with any great
+seriousness and indeed only sought after exciting situations and
+incidents, I can see now, looking back, that underneath the work
+which seemed at the time purposeless, there was something very
+much like a scheme of studies.
+
+"You must forgive this egotism in me because it is necessary that
+I should make this explanation and you, who are in the main police
+officers of considerable experience and discernment, should
+appreciate the fact that as I was able to get inside the minds of
+the fictitious criminals I portrayed, so am I now able to follow
+the mind of the man who committed this murder, or if not to follow
+his mind, to recreate the psychology of the slayer of Remington
+Kara.
+
+"In the possession of most of you are the vital facts concerning
+this man.  You know the type of man he was, you have instances of
+his terrible ruthlessness, you know that he was a blot upon God's
+earth, a vicious wicked ego, seeking the gratification of that
+strange blood-lust and pain-lust, which is to be found in so few
+criminals."
+
+John Lexman went on to describe the killing of Vassalaro.
+
+"I know now how that occurred," he said.  "I had received on the
+previous Christmas eve amongst other presents, a pistol from an
+unknown admirer.  That unknown admirer was Kara, who had planned
+this murder some three months ahead.  He it was, who sent me the
+Browning, knowing as he did that I had never used such a weapon
+and that therefore I would be chary about using it.  I might have
+put the pistol away in a cupboard out of reach and the whole of
+his carefully thought out plan would have miscarried.
+
+"But Kara was systematic in all things.  Three weeks after I
+received the weapon, a clumsy attempt was made to break into my
+house in the middle of the night.  It struck me at the time it was
+clumsy, because the burglar made a tremendous amount of noise and
+disappeared soon after he began his attempt, doing no more damage
+than to break a window in my dining-room.  Naturally my mind went
+to the possibility of a further attempt of this kind, as my house
+stood on the outskirts of the village, and it was only natural
+that I should take the pistol from one of my boxes and put it
+somewhere handy.  To make doubly sure, Kara came down the next day
+and heard the full story of the outrage.
+
+"He did not speak of pistols, but I remember now, though I did not
+remember at the time, that I mentioned the fact that I had a handy
+weapon.  A fortnight later a second attempt was made to enter the
+house.  I say an attempt, but again I do not believe that the
+intention was at all serious.  The outrage was designed to keep
+that pistol of mine in a get-at-able place.
+
+"And again Kara came down to see us on the day following the
+burglary, and again I must have told him, though I have no
+distinct recollection of the fact, of what had happened the
+previous night.  It would have been unnatural if I had not
+mentioned the fact, as it was a matter which had formed a subject
+of discussion between myself, my wife and the servants.
+
+"Then came the threatening letter, with Kara providentially at
+hand.  On the night of the murder, whilst Kara was still in my
+house, I went out to find his chauffeur.  Kara remained a few
+minutes with my wife and then on some excuse went into the
+library.  There he loaded the pistol, placing one cartridge in the
+chamber, and trusting to luck that I did not pull the trigger
+until I had it pointed at my victim.  Here he took his biggest
+chance, because, before sending the weapon to me, he had had the
+spring of the Browning so eased that the slightest touch set it
+off and, as you know, the pistol being automatic, the explosion of
+one cartridge, reloading and firing the next and so on, it was
+probably that a chance touch would have brought his scheme to
+nought - probably me also.
+
+"Of what happened on that night you are aware."
+
+He went on to tell of his trial and conviction and skimmed over
+the life he led until that morning on Dartmoor.
+
+"Kara knew my innocence had been proved and his hatred for me
+being his great obsession, since I had the thing he had wanted but
+no longer wanted, let that be understood - he saw the misery he
+had planned for me and my dear wife being brought to a sudden end.
+He had, by the way, already planned and carried his plan into
+execution, a system of tormenting her.
+
+"You did not know," he turned to T. X., "that scarcely a month
+passed, but some disreputable villain called at her flat, with a
+story that he had been released from Portland or Wormwood Scrubbs
+that morning and that he had seen me.  The story each messenger
+brought was one sufficient to break the heart of any but the
+bravest woman.  It was a story of ill-treatment by brutal
+officials, of my illness, of my madness, of everything calculated
+to harrow the feelings of a tender-hearted and faithful wife.
+
+"That was Kara's scheme.  Not to hurt with the whip or with the
+knife, but to cut deep at the heart with his evil tongue, to cut
+to the raw places of the mind.  When he found that I was to be
+released, - he may have guessed, or he may have discovered by some
+underhand method; that a pardon was about to be signed, - he
+conceived his great plan.  He had less than two days to execute
+it.
+
+"Through one of his agents he discovered a warder who had been in
+some trouble with the authorities, a man who was avaricious and
+was even then on the brink of being discharged from the service
+for trafficking with prisoners.  The bribe he offered this man was
+a heavy one and the warder accepted.
+
+"Kara had purchased a new monoplane and as you know he was an
+excellent aviator.  With this new machine he flew to Devon and
+arrived at dawn in one of the unfrequented parts of the moor.
+
+"The story of my own escape needs no telling.  My narrative really
+begins from the moment I put my foot upon the deck of the Mpret.
+The first person I asked to see was, naturally, my wife.  Kara,
+however, insisted on my going to the cabin he had prepared and
+changing my clothes, and until then I did not realise I was still
+in my convict's garb.  A clean change was waiting for me, and the
+luxury of soft shirts and well-fitting garments after the prison
+uniform I cannot describe.
+
+"After I was dressed I was taken by the Greek steward to the
+larger stateroom and there I found my darling waiting for me."
+
+His voice sank almost to a whisper, and it was a minute or two
+before he had mastered his emotions.
+
+"She had been suspicious of Kara, but he had been very insistent.
+He had detailed the plans and shown her the monoplane, but even
+then she would not trust herself on board, and she had been
+waiting in a motor-boat, moving parallel with the yacht, until she
+saw the landing and realized, as she thought, that Kara was not
+playing her false.  The motor-boat had been hired by Kara and the
+two men inside were probably as well-bribed as the warder.
+
+"The joy of freedom can only be known to those who have suffered
+the horrors of restraint.  That is a trite enough statement, but
+when one is describing elemental things there is no room for
+subtlety.  The voyage was a fairly eventless one.  We saw very
+little of Kara, who did not intrude himself upon us, and our main
+excitement lay in the apprehension that we should be held up by a
+British destroyer or, that when we reached Gibraltar, we should be
+searched by the Brit's authorities.  Kara had foreseen that
+possibility and had taken in enough coal to last him for the run.
+
+"We had a fairly stormy passage in the Mediterranean, but after
+that nothing happened until we arrived at Durazzo.  We had to go
+ashore in disguise, because Kara told us that the English Consul
+might see us and make some trouble.  We wore Turkish dresses,
+Grace heavily veiled and I wearing a greasy old kaftan which, with
+my somewhat emaciated face and my unshaven appearance, passed me
+without comment.
+
+"Kara's home was and is about eighteen miles from Durazzo.  It is
+not on the main road, but it is reached by following one of the
+rocky mountain paths which wind and twist among the hills to the
+south-east of the town.  The country is wild and mainly
+uncultivated.  We had to pass through swamps and skirt huge
+lagoons as we mounted higher and higher from terrace to terrace
+and came to the roads which crossed the mountains.
+
+"Kara's, palace, you could call it no less, is really built within
+sight of the sea.  It is on the Acroceraunian Peninsula near Cape
+Linguetta.  Hereabouts the country is more populated and better
+cultivated.  We passed great slopes entirely covered with mulberry
+and olive trees, whilst in the valleys there were fields of maize
+and corn.  The palazzo stands on a lofty plateau.  It is
+approached by two paths, which can be and have been well defended
+in the past against the Sultan's troops or against the bands which
+have been raised by rival villages with the object of storming and
+plundering this stronghold.
+
+"The Skipetars, a blood-thirsty crowd without pity or remorse,
+were faithful enough to their chief, as Kara was.  He paid them so
+well that it was not profitable to rob him; moreover he kept their
+own turbulent elements fully occupied with the little raids which
+he or his agents organized from time to time.  The palazzo was
+built rather in the Moorish than in the Turkish style.
+
+"It was a sort of Eastern type to which was grafted an Italian
+architecture - a house of white-columned courts, of big paved
+yards, fountains and cool, dark rooms.
+
+"When I passed through the gates I realized for the first time
+something of Kara's importance. There were a score of servants, 
+all Eastern, perfectly trained, silent and obsequious.  He led 
+us to his own room.
+
+"It was a big apartment with divans running round the wall, the
+most ornate French drawing room suite and an enormous Persian
+carpet, one of the finest of the kind that has ever been turned
+out of Shiraz.  Here, let me say, that throughout the trip his
+attitude to me had been perfectly friendly and towards Grace all
+that I could ask of my best friend, considerate and tactful.
+
+"'We had hardly reached his room before he said to me with that
+bonhomie which he had observed throughout the trip, 'You would
+like to see your room?'
+
+"I expressed a wish to that effect.  He clapped his hands and a
+big Albanian servant came through the curtained doorway, made the
+usual salaam, and Kara spoke to him a few words in a language
+which I presume was Turkish.
+
+"'He will show you the way,' said Kara with his most genial smile.
+
+"I followed the servant through the curtains which had hardly
+fallen behind me before I was seized by four men, flung violently
+on the ground, a filthy tarbosch was thrust into my mouth and
+before I knew what was happening I was bound hand and foot.
+
+"As I realised the gross treachery of the man, my first frantic
+thoughts were of Grace and her safety.  I struggled with the
+strength of three men, but they were too many for me and I was
+dragged along the passage, a door was opened and I was flung into
+a bare room.  I must have been lying on the floor for half an hour
+when they came for me, this time accompanied by a middle-aged man
+named Savolio, who was either an Italian or a Greek.
+
+"He spoke English fairly well and he made it clear to me that I
+had to behave myself.  I was led back to the room from whence I
+had come and found Kara sitting in one of those big armchairs
+which he affected, smoking a cigarette.  Confronting him, still in
+her Turkish dress, was poor Grace.  She was not bound I was
+pleased to see, but when on my entrance she rose and made as if to
+come towards me, she was unceremoniously thrown back by the
+guardian who stood at her side.
+
+"'Mr. John Lexman,' drawled Kara, 'you are at the beginning of a
+great disillusionment.  I have a few things to tell you which will
+make you feel rather uncomfortable.'  It was then that I heard for
+the first time that my pardon had been signed and my innocence
+discovered.
+
+"'Having taken a great deal of trouble to get you in prison,' said
+Kara, 'it isn't likely that I'm going to allow all my plans to be
+undone, and my plan is to make you both extremely uncomfortable.'
+
+"He did not raise his voice, speaking still in the same
+conversational tone, suave and half amused.
+
+"'I hate you for two things,' he said, and ticked them off on his
+fingers: 'the first is that you took the woman that I wanted.  To
+a man of my temperament that is an unpardonable crime.  I have
+never wanted women either as friends or as amusement.  I am one of
+the few people in the world who are self-sufficient.  It happened
+that I wanted your wife and she rejected me because apparently she
+preferred you.'
+
+"He looked at me quizzically.
+
+"'You are thinking at this moment,' he went on slowly, "that I
+want her now, and that it is part of my revenge that I shall put
+her straight in my harem.  Nothing is farther from my desires or
+my thoughts.  The Black Roman is not satisfied with the leavings
+of such poor trash as you.  I hate you both equally and for both
+of you there is waiting an experience more terrible than even your
+elastic imagination can conjure.  You understand what that means!'
+he asked me still retaining his calm.
+
+"I did not reply.  I dared not look at Grace, to whom he turned.
+
+"'I believe you love your husband, my friend,' he said; 'your love
+will be put to a very severe test.  You shall see him the mere
+wreckage of the man he is.  You shall see him brutalized below the
+level of the cattle in the field.  I will give you both no joys,
+no ease of mind.  From this moment you are slaves, and worse than
+slaves.'
+
+"He clapped his hands.  The interview was ended and from that
+moment I only saw Grace once."
+
+John Lexman stopped and buried his face in his hands.
+
+"They took me to an underground dungeon cut in the solid rock.  In
+many ways it resembled the dungeon of the Chateau of Chillon, in
+that its only window looked out upon a wild, storm-swept lake and
+its floor was jagged rock.  I have called it underground, as
+indeed it was on that side, for the palazzo was built upon a steep
+slope running down from the spur of the hills.
+
+"They chained me by the legs and left me to my own devices.  Once
+a day they gave me a little goat flesh and a pannikin of water and
+once a week Kara would come in and outside the radius of my chain
+he would open a little camp stool and sitting down smoke his
+cigarette and talk.  My God! the things that man said!  The things
+he described!  The horrors he related!  And always it was Grace
+who was the centre of his description.  And he would relate the
+stories he was telling to her about myself.  I cannot describe
+them.  They are beyond repetition."
+
+John Lexman shuddered and closed his eyes.
+
+"That was his weapon.  He did not confront me with the torture of
+my darling, he did not bring tangible evidence of her suffering -
+he just sat and talked, describing with a remarkable clarity of
+language which seemed incredible in a foreigner, the 'amusements'
+which he himself had witnessed.
+
+"I thought I should go mad.  Twice I sprang at him and twice the
+chain about my legs threw me headlong on that cruel floor.  Once
+he brought the jailer in to whip me, but I took the whipping with
+such phlegm that it gave him no satisfaction.  I told you I had
+seen Grace only once and this is how it happened.
+
+"It was after the flogging, and Kara, who was a veritable demon in
+his rage, planned to have his revenge for my indifference.  They
+brought Grace out upon a boat and rowed the boat to where I could
+see it from my window.  There the whip which had been applied to
+me was applied to her.  I can't tell you any more about that," he
+said brokenly, "but I wish, you don't know how fervently, that I
+had broken down and given the dog the satisfaction he wanted.  My
+God!  It was horrible!
+
+"When the winter came they used to take me out with chains on my
+legs to gather in wood from the forest.  There was no reason why I
+should be given this work, but the truth was, as I discovered from
+Salvolio, that Kara thought my dungeon was too warm.  It was
+sheltered from the winds by the hill behind and even on the
+coldest days and nights it was not unbearable.  Then Kara went
+away for some time.  I think he must have gone to England, and he
+came back in a white fury.  One of his big plans had gone wrong
+and the mental torture he inflicted upon me was more acute than
+ever.
+
+"In the old days he used to come once a week; now he came almost
+every day.  He usually arrived in the afternoon and I was
+surprised one night to be awakened from my sleep to see him
+standing at the door, a lantern in his hand, his inevitable
+cigarette in his mouth.  He always wore the Albanian costume when
+he was in the country, those white kilted skirts and zouave
+jackets which the hillsmen affect and, if anything, it added to
+his demoniacal appearance.  He put down the lantern and leant
+against the wall.
+
+"'I'm afraid that wife of yours is breaking up, Lexman,' he
+drawled; 'she isn't the good, stout, English stuff that I thought
+she was.'
+
+"I made no reply.  I had found by bitter experience that if I
+intruded into the conversation, I should only suffer the more.
+
+"'I have sent down to Durazzo to get a doctor,' he went on;
+'naturally having taken all this trouble I don't want to lose you
+by death.  She is breaking up,' he repeated with relish and yet
+with an undertone of annoyance in his voice; "she asked for you
+three times this morning.'
+
+"I kept myself under control as I had never expected that a man so
+desperately circumstanced could do.
+
+"'Kara,' I said as quietly as I could, 'what has she done that she
+should deserve this hell in which she has lived?'
+
+"He sent out a long ring of smoke and watched its progress across
+the dungeon.
+
+"'What has she done?' he said, keeping his eye on the ring - I
+shall always remember every look, every gesture, and every
+intonation of his voice.  'Why, she has done all that a woman can
+do for a man like me.  She has made me feel little.  Until I had a
+rebuff from her, I had all the world at my feet, Lexman.  I did as
+I liked.  If I crooked my little finger, people ran after me and
+that one experience with her has broken me.  Oh, don't think,' he
+went on quickly, 'that I am broken in love.  I never loved her
+very much, it was just a passing passion, but she killed my
+self-confidence.  After then, whenever I came to a crucial moment
+in my affairs, when the big manner, the big certainty was
+absolutely necessary for me to carry my way, whenever I was most
+confident of myself and my ability and my scheme, a vision of this
+damned girl rose and I felt that momentary weakening, that memory
+of defeat, which made all the difference between success and
+failure.
+
+"'I hated her and I hate her still,' he said with vehemence; 'if
+she dies I shall hate her more because she will remain
+everlastingly unbroken to menace my thoughts and spoil my schemes
+through all eternity.'
+
+"He leant forward, his elbows on his knees, his clenched fist
+under his chin - how well I can see him! - and stared at me.
+
+"'I could have been king here in this land,' he said, waving his
+hand toward the interior, 'I could have bribed and shot my way to
+the throne of Albania.  Don't you realize what that means to a man
+like me?   There is still a chance and if I could keep your wife
+alive, if I could see her broken in reason and in health, a poor,
+skeleton, gibbering thing that knelt at my feet when I came near
+her I should recover the mastery of myself.  Believe me,' he said,
+nodding his head, 'your wife will have the best medical advice
+that it is possible to obtain.'
+
+"Kara went out and I did not see him again for a very long time.
+He sent word, just a scrawled note in the morning, to say my wife
+had died."
+
+John Lexman rose up from his seat, and paced the apartment, his
+head upon his breast.
+
+"From that moment," he said, "I lived only for one thing, to
+punish Remington Kara.  And gentlemen, I punished him."
+
+He stood in the centre of the room and thumped his broad chest
+with his clenched hand.
+
+"I killed Remington Kara," he said, and there was a little gasp of
+astonishment from every man present save one.  That one was T. X.
+Meredith, who had known all the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+After a while Lexman resumed his story.
+
+"I told you that there was a man at the palazzo named Salvolio.
+Salvolio was a man who had been undergoing a life sentence in one
+of the prisons of southern Italy.  In some mysterious fashion he
+escaped and got across the Adriatic in a small boat.  How Kara
+found him I don't know.  Salvolio was a very uncommunicative
+person.  I was never certain whether he was a Greek or an Italian.
+All that I am sure about is that he was the most unmitigated
+villain next to his master that I have ever met.
+
+"He was a quick man with his knife and I have seen him kill one of
+the guards whom he had thought was favouring me in the matter of
+diet with less compunction than you would kill a rat.
+
+"It was he who gave me this scar," John Lexman pointed to his
+cheek.  "In his master's absence he took upon himself the task of
+conducting a clumsy imitation of Kara's persecution.  He gave me,
+too, the only glimpse I ever had of the torture poor Grace
+underwent.  She hated dogs, and Kara must have come to know this
+and in her sleeping room - she was apparently better accommodated
+than I - he kept four fierce beasts so chained that they could
+almost reach her.
+
+"Some reference to my wife from this low brute maddened me beyond
+endurance and I sprang at him.  He whipped out his knife and
+struck at me as I fell and I escaped by a miracle.  He evidently
+had orders not to touch me, for he was in a great panic of mind,
+as he had reason to be, because on Kara's return he discovered the
+state of my face, started an enquiry and had Salvolio taken to the
+courtyard in the true eastern style and bastinadoed until his feet
+were pulp.
+
+"You may be sure the man hated me with a malignity which almost
+rivalled his employer's.  After Grace's death Kara went away
+suddenly and I was left to the tender mercy of this man.
+Evidently he had been given a fairly free hand.  The principal
+object of Kara's hate being dead, he took little further interest
+in me, or else wearied of his hobby.  Salvolio began his
+persecutions by reducing my diet.  Fortunately I ate very little.
+Nevertheless the supplies began to grow less and less, and I was
+beginning to feel the effects of this starvation system when there
+happened a thing which changed the whole course of my life and
+opened to me a way to freedom and to vengeance.
+
+"Salvolio did not imitate the austerity of his master and in
+Kara's absence was in the habit of having little orgies of his
+own.  He would bring up dancing girls from Durazzo for his
+amusement and invite prominent men in the neighbourhood to his
+feasts and entertainments, for he was absolutely lord of the
+palazzo when Kara was away and could do pretty well as he liked.
+On this particular night the festivities had been more than
+usually prolonged, for as near as I could judge by the day-light
+which was creeping in through my window it was about four o'clock
+in the morning when the big steel-sheeted door was opened and
+Salvolio came in, more than a little drunk.  He brought with him,
+as I judged, one of his dancing girls, who apparently was
+privileged to see the sights of the palace.
+
+"For a long time he stood in the doorway talking incoherently in a
+language which I think must have been Turkish, for I caught one or
+two words.
+
+"Whoever the girl was, she seemed a little frightened, I could see
+that, because she shrank back from him though his arm was about
+her shoulders and he was half supporting his weight upon her.
+There was fear, not only in the curious little glances she shot at
+me from time to time, but also in the averted face.  Her story I
+was to learn.  She was not of the class from whence Salvolio found
+the dancers who from time to time came up to the palace for his
+amusement and the amusement of his guests.  She was the daughter
+of a Turkish merchant of Scutari who had been received into the
+Catholic Church.
+
+"Her father had gone down to Durazzo during the first Balkan war
+and then Salvolio had seen the girl unknown to her parent, and
+there had been some rough kind of courtship which ended in her
+running away on this very day and joining her ill-favoured lover
+at the palazzo.  I tell you this because the fact had some bearing
+on my own fate.
+
+"As I say, the girl was frightened and made as though to go from
+the dungeon.  She was probably scared both by the unkempt prisoner
+and by the drunken man at her side.  He, however, could not leave
+without showing to her something of his authority.  He came
+lurching over near where I lay, his long knife balanced in his
+hand ready for emergencies, and broke into a string of
+vituperations of the character to which I was quite hardened.
+
+"Then he took a flying kick at me and got home in my ribs, but
+again I experienced neither a sense of indignity nor any great
+hurt.  Salvolio had treated me like this before and I had survived
+it.  In the midst of the tirade, looking past him, I was a new
+witness to an extraordinary scene.
+
+"The girl stood in the open doorway, shrinking back against the
+door, looking with distress and pity at the spectacle which
+Salvolio's brutality afforded.  Then suddenly there appeared
+beside her a tall Turk.  He was grey-bearded and forbidding.  She
+looked round and saw him, and her mouth opened to utter a cry, but
+with a gesture he silenced her and pointed to the darkness
+outside.
+
+"Without a word she cringed past him, her sandalled feet making no
+noise.  All this time Salvolio was continuing his stream of abuse,
+but he must have seen the wonder in my eyes for he stopped and
+turned.
+
+"The old Turk took one stride forward, encircled his body with his
+left arm, and there they stood grotesquely like a couple who were
+going to start to waltz.  The Turk was a head taller than Salvolio
+and, as I could see, a man of immense strength.
+
+"They looked at one another, face to face, Salvolio rapidly
+recovering his senses . . . and then the Turk gave him a gentle
+punch in the ribs.  That is what it seemed like to me, but
+Salvolio coughed horribly, went limp in the other's arms and
+dropped with a thud to the ground.  The Turk leant down soberly
+and wiped his long knife on the other's jacket before he put it
+back in the sash at his waist.
+
+"Then with a glance at me he turned to go, but stopped at the door
+and looked back thoughtfully.  He said something in Turkish which
+I could not understand, then he spoke in French.
+
+"'Who are you?' he asked.
+
+"In as few words as possible I explained.  He came over and looked
+at the manacle about my leg and shook his head.
+
+"'You will never be able to get that undone,' he said.
+
+"He caught hold of the chain, which was a fairly long one, bound
+it twice round his arm and steadying his arm across his thigh, he
+turned with a sudden jerk.  There was a smart 'snap' as the chain
+parted.  He caught me by the shoulder and pulled me to my feet.
+" 'Put the chain about your waist, Effendi,' he said, and he took
+a revolver from his belt and handed it to me.
+
+"'You may need this before we get back to Durazzo,' he said.  His
+belt was literally bristling with weapons - I saw three revolvers
+beside the one I possessed - and he had, evidently come prepared
+for trouble.  We made our way from the dungeon into the
+clean-smelling world without.
+
+"It was the second time I had been in the open air for eighteen
+months and my knees were trembling under me with weakness and
+excitement.  The old man shut the prison door behind us and walked
+on until we came up to the girl waiting for us by the lakeside.
+She was weeping softly and he spoke to her a few words in a low
+voice and her weeping ceased.
+
+"'This daughter of mine will show us the way,' he said, 'I do not
+know this part of the country - she knows it too well.'
+
+"To cut a long story short," said Lexman, "we reached Durazzo in
+the afternoon.  There was no attempt made to follow us up and
+neither my absence nor the body of Salvolio were discovered until
+late in the afternoon.  You must remember that nobody but Salvolio
+was allowed into my prison and therefore nobody had the courage to
+make any investigations.
+
+"The old man got me to his house without being observed, and
+brought a brother-in-law or some relative of his to remove the
+anklet.  The name of my host was Hussein Effendi.
+
+"That same night we left with a little caravan to visit some of
+the old man's relatives.  He was not certain what would be the
+consequence of his act, and for safety's sake took this trip,
+which would enable him if need be to seek sanctuary with some of
+the wilder Turkish tribes, who would give him protection.
+
+"In that three months I saw Albania as it is - it was an
+experience never to be forgotten!
+
+"If there is a better man in God's world than Hiabam Hussein
+Effendi, I have yet to meet him.  It was he who provided me with
+money to leave Albania.  I begged from him, too, the knife with
+which he had killed Salvolio.  He had discovered that Kara was in
+England and told me something of the Greek's occupation which I
+had not known before.  I crossed to Italy and went on to Milan.
+There it was that I learnt that an eccentric Englishman who had
+arrived a few days previously on one of the South American boats
+at Genoa, was in my hotel desperately ill.
+
+"My hotel I need hardly tell you was not a very expensive one and
+we were evidently the only two Englishmen in the place.  I could
+do no less than go up and see what I could do for the poor fellow
+who was pretty well gone when I saw him.  I seemed to remember
+having seen him before and when looking round for some
+identification I discovered his name I readily recalled the
+circumstance.
+
+"It was George Gathercole, who had returned from South America.
+He was suffering from malarial fever and blood poisoning and for a
+week, with an Italian doctor, I fought as hard as any man could
+fight for his life.  He was a trying patient," John Lexman smiled
+suddenly at the recollection, "vitriolic in his language,
+impatient and imperious in his attitude to his friends.  He was,
+for example, terribly sensitive about his lost arm and would not
+allow either the doctor or my-self to enter the room until he was
+covered to the neck, nor would he eat or drink in our presence.
+Yet he was the bravest of the brave, careless of himself and only
+fretful because he had not time to finish his new book.  His
+indomitable spirit did not save him.  He died on the 17th of
+January of this year.  I was in Genoa at the time, having gone
+there at his request to save his belongings.  When I returned he
+had been buried.  I went through his papers and it was then that I
+conceived my idea of how I might approach Kara.
+
+"I found a letter from the Greek, which had been addressed to
+Buenos Ayres, to await arrival, and then I remembered in a flash,
+how Kara had told me he had sent George Gathercole to South
+America to report upon possible gold formations.  I was determined
+to kill Kara, and determined to kill him in such a way that I
+myself would cover every trace of my complicity.
+
+"Even as he had planned my downfall, scheming every step and
+covering his trail, so did I plan to bring about his death that no
+suspicion should fall on me.
+
+"I knew his house.  I knew something of his habits.  I knew the
+fear in which he went when he was in England and away from the
+feudal guards who had surrounded him in Albania.  I knew of his
+famous door with its steel latch and I was planning to circumvent
+all these precautions and bring to him not only the death he
+deserved, but a full knowledge of his fate before he died.
+
+"Gathercole had some money, - about 140 pounds -  I took 100
+pounds of this for my own use, knowing that I should have
+sufficient in London to recompense his heirs, and the remainder of
+the money with all such documents as he had, save those which
+identified him with Kara, I handed over to the British Consul.
+
+"I was not unlike the dead man.  My beard had grown wild and I
+knew enough of Gathercole's eccentricities to live the part.  The
+first step I took was to announce my arrival by inference.  I am a
+fairly good journalist with a wide general knowledge and with
+this, corrected by reference to the necessary books which I found
+in the British Museum library, I was able to turn out a very
+respectable article on Patagonia.
+
+"This I sent to The Times with one of Gathercole's cards and, as
+you know, it was printed.  My next step was to find suitable
+lodgings between Chelsea and Scotland Yard.  I was fortunate in
+being able to hire a furnished flat, the owner of which was going
+to the south of France for three months.  I paid the rent in
+advance and since I dropped all the eccentricities I had assumed
+to support the character of Gathercole, I must have impressed the
+owner, who took me without references.
+
+"I had several suits of new clothes made, not in London," he
+smiled, "but in Manchester, and again I made myself as trim as
+possible to avoid after-identification.  When I had got these
+together in my flat, I chose my day.  In the morning I sent two
+trunks with most of my personal belongings to the Great Midland
+Hotel.
+
+"In the afternoon I went to Cadogan Square and hung about until I
+saw Kara drive off.  It was my first view of him since I had left
+Albania and it required all my self-control to prevent me
+springing at him in the street and tearing at him with my hands.
+
+"Once he was out of sight I went to the house adopting all the
+style and all the mannerisms of poor Gathercole.  My beginning was
+unfortunate for, with a shock, I recognised in the valet a
+fellow-convict who had been with me in the warder's cottage on the
+morning of my escape from Dartmoor.  There was no mistaking him,
+and when I heard his voice I was certain.  Would he recognise me I
+wondered, in spite of my beard and my eye-glasses?
+
+"Apparently he did not.  I gave him every chance.  I thrust my
+face into his and on my second visit challenged him, in the
+eccentric way which poor old Gathercole had, to test the grey of
+my beard.  For the moment however, I was satisfied with my brief
+experiment and after a reasonable interval I went away, returning
+to my place off Victoria Street and waiting till the evening.
+
+"In my observation of the house, whilst I was waiting for Kara to
+depart, I had noticed that there were two distinct telephone wires
+running down to the roof.  I guessed, rather than knew, that one
+of these telephones was a private wire and, knowing something of
+Kara's fear, I presumed that that wire would lead to a police
+office, or at any rate to a guardian of some kind or other.  Kara
+had the same arrangement in Albania, connecting the palazzo with
+the gendarme posts at Alesso.  This much Hussein told me.
+
+"That night I made a reconnaissance of the house and saw Kara's
+window was lit and at ten minutes past ten I rang the bell and I
+think it was then that I applied the test of the beard.  Kara was
+in his room, the valet told me, and led the way upstairs.  I had
+come prepared to deal with this valet for I had an especial reason
+for wishing that he should not be interrogated by the police.  On
+a plain card I had written the number he bore in Dartmoor and had
+added the words, 'I know you, get out of here quick.'
+
+"As he turned to lead the way upstairs I flung the envelope
+containing the card on the table in the hall.  In an inside
+pocket, as near to my body as I could put them, I had the two
+candles.  How I should use them both I had already decided.  The
+valet ushered me into Kara's room and once more I stood in the
+presence of the man who had killed my girl and blotted out all
+that was beautiful in life for me."
+
+There was a breathless silence when he paused.  T. X. leaned back
+in his chair, his head upon his breast, his arms folded, his eyes
+watching the other intently.
+
+The Chief Commissioner, with a heavy frown and pursed lips, sat
+stroking his moustache and looking under his shaggy eyebrows at
+the speaker.  The French police officer, his hands thrust deep in
+his pockets, his head on one side, was taking in every word
+eagerly.  The sallow-faced Russian, impassive of face, might have
+been a carved ivory mask.  O'Grady, the American, the stump of a
+dead cigar between his teeth, shifted impatiently with every pause
+as though he would hurry forward the denouement.
+
+Presently John Lexman went on.
+
+"He slipped from the bed and came across to meet me as I closed
+the door behind me.
+
+"'Ah, Mr.  Gathercole,' he said, in that silky tone of his, and
+held out his hand.
+
+"I did not speak.  I just looked at him with a sort of fierce joy
+in my heart the like of which I had never before experienced.
+
+"'And then he saw in my eyes the truth and half reached for the
+telephone.
+
+"But at that moment I was on him.  He was a child in my hands.
+All the bitter anguish he had brought upon me, all the hardships
+of starved days and freezing nights had strengthened and hardened
+me.  I had come back to London disguised with a false arm and this
+I shook free.  It was merely a gauntlet of thin wood which I had
+had made for me in Paris.
+
+"I flung him back on the bed and half knelt, half laid on him.
+
+"'Kara,' I said, 'you are going to die, a more merciful death than
+my wife died.'
+
+"He tried to speak.  His soft hands gesticulated wildly, but I was
+half lying on one arm and held the other.
+
+"I whispered in his ear:
+
+"'Nobody will know who killed you, Kara, think of that!  I shall
+go scot free - and you will be the centre of a fine mystery!  All
+your letters will be read, all your life will be examined and the
+world will know you for what you are!'
+
+"I released his arm for just as long as it took to draw my knife
+and strike.  I think he died instantly," John Lexman said simply.
+
+"I left him where he was and went to the door.  I had not much
+time to spare.  I took the candles from my pocket.  They were
+already ductile from the heat of my body.
+
+"I lifted up the steel latch of the door and propped up the latch
+with the smaller of the two candles, one end of which was on the
+middle socket and the other beneath the latch.  The heat of the
+room I knew would still further soften the candle and let the
+latch down in a short time.
+
+"I was prepared for the telephone by his bedside though I did not
+know to whither it led.  The presence of the paper-knife decided
+me.  I balanced it across the silver cigarette box so that one end
+came under the telephone receiver; under the other end I put the
+second candle which I had to cut to fit.  On top of the
+paper-knife at the candle end I balanced the only two books I
+could find in the room, and fortunately they were heavy.
+
+"I had no means of knowing how long it would take to melt the
+candle to a state of flexion which would allow the full weight of
+the books to bear upon the candle end of the paper-knife and fling
+off the receiver.  I was hoping that Fisher had taken my warning
+and had gone.  When I opened the door softly, I heard his
+footsteps in the hall below.  There was nothing to do but to
+finish the play.
+
+"I turned and addressed an imaginary conversation to Kara.  It was
+horrible, but there was something about it which aroused in me a
+curious sense of humour and I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh!
+
+"I heard the man coming up the stairs and closed the door
+gingerly.  What length of time would it take for the candle to
+bend!
+
+"To completely establish the alibi I determined to hold Fisher in
+conversation and this was all the easier since apparently he had
+not seen the envelope I had left on the table downstairs.  I had
+not long to wait for suddenly with a crash I heard the steel latch
+fall in its place.  Under the effect of the heat the candle had
+bent sooner than I had expected.  I asked Fisher what was the
+meaning of the sound and he explained.  I passed down the stairs
+talking all the time.  I found a cab at Sloane Square and drove to
+my lodgings.  Underneath my overcoat I was partly dressed in
+evening kit.
+
+"Ten minutes after I entered the door of my flat I came out a
+beardless man about town, not to be distinguished from the
+thousand others who would be found that night walking the
+promenade of any of the great music-halls.  From Victoria Street I
+drove straight to Scotland Yard.  It was no more than a
+coincidence that whilst I should have been speaking with you all,
+the second candle should have bent and the alarm be given in the
+very office in which I was sitting.
+
+"I assure you all in all earnestness that I did not suspect the
+cause of that ringing until Mr. Mansus spoke.
+
+"There, gentlemen, is my story!"  He threw out his arms.
+
+"You may do with me as you will.  Kara was a murderer, dyed a
+hundred times in innocent blood.  I have done all that I set
+myself to do - that and no more - that and no less.  I had thought
+to go away to America, but the nearer the day of my departure
+approached, the more vivid became the memory of the plans which
+she and I had formed, my girl . . . my poor martyred girl!"
+
+He sat at the little table, his hands clasped before him, his face
+lined and white.
+
+"And that is the end!" he said suddenly, with a wry smile.
+
+"Not quite!" T. X. swung round with a gasp.  It was Belinda Mary
+who spoke.
+
+"I can carry it on," she said.
+
+She was wonderfully self-possessed, thought T. X., but then T. X.
+never thought anything of her but that she was "wonderfully"
+something or the other.
+
+"Most of your story is true, Mr. Lexman," said this astonishing
+girl, oblivious of the amazed eyes that were staring at her, "but
+Kara deceived you in one respect."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked John Lexman, rising unsteadily to his
+feet.
+
+For answer she rose and walked back to the door with the chintz
+curtains and flung it open: There was a wait which seemed an
+eternity, and then through the doorway came a girl, slim and
+grave and beautiful.
+
+"My God!" whispered T. X.  "Grace Lexman!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+They went out and left them alone, two people who found in this
+moment a heaven which is not beyond the reach of humanity, but
+which is seldom attained to.  Belinda Mary had an eager audience
+all to her very self.
+
+"Of course she didn't die," she said scornfully.  "Kara was
+playing on his fears all the time.  He never even harmed her - in
+the way Mr. Lexman feared.  He told Mrs. Lexman that her husband
+was dead just as he told John Lexman his wife was gone.  What
+happened was that he brought her back to England - "
+
+"Who?" asked T. X., incredulously.
+
+"Grace Lexman," said the girl, with a smile.  "You wouldn't think
+it possible, but when you realize that he had a yacht of his own
+and that he could travel up from whatever landing place he chose
+to his house in Cadogan Square by motorcar and that he could take
+her straight away into his cellar without disturbing his
+household, you'll understand that the only difficulty he had was
+in landing her.  It was in the lower cellar that I found her."
+
+"You found her in the cellar?" demanded the Chief Commissioner.
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"I found her and the dog - you heard how Kara terrified her - and
+I killed the dog with my own hands," she said a little proudly,
+and then shivered.  "It was very beastly," she admitted.
+
+"And she's been living with you all this time and you've said
+nothing!" asked T. X., incredulously.  Belinda Mary nodded.
+
+"And that is why you didn't want me to know where you were
+living?"  She nodded again.
+
+"You see she was very ill," she said, "and I had to nurse her up,
+and of course I knew that it was Lexman who had killed Kara and I
+couldn't tell you about Grace Lexman without betraying him.  So
+when Mr. Lexman decided to tell his story, I thought I'd better
+supply the grand denouement."
+
+The men looked at one another.
+
+"What are you going to do about Lexman?" asked the Chief
+Commissioner, "and, by the way, T. X., how does all this fit your
+theories!"
+
+"Fairly well," replied T. X. coolly; "obviously the man who
+committed the murder was the man introduced into the room as
+Gathercole and as obviously it was not Gathercole, although to all
+appearance, he had lost his left arm."
+
+"Why obvious?" asked the Chief Commissioner.
+
+"Because," answered T. X. Meredith, "the real Gathercole had lost
+his right arm - that was the one error Lexman made."
+
+"H'm," the Chief pulled at his moustache and looked enquiringly
+round the room, "we have to make up our minds very quickly about
+Lexman," he said.  "What do you think, Carlneau?"
+
+The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"For my part I should not only importune your Home Secretary to
+pardon him, but I should recommend him for a pension," he said
+flippantly.
+
+"What do you think, Savorsky?"
+
+The Russian smiled a little.
+
+"It is a very impressive story," he said dispassionately; "it
+occurs to me that if you intend bringing your M. Lexman to
+judgment you are likely to expose some very pretty scandals.
+Incidentally," he said, stroking his trim little moustache, "I
+might remark that any exposure which drew attention to the lawless
+conditions of Albania would not be regarded by my government with
+favour."
+
+The Chief Commissioner's eyes twinkled and he nodded.
+
+"That is also my view," said the Chief of the Italian bureau;
+"naturally we are greatly interested in all that happens on the
+Adriatic littoral.  It seems to me that Kara has come to a very
+merciful end and I am not inclined to regard a prosecution of Mr.
+Lexman with equanimity."
+
+"Well, I guess the political aspect of the case doesn't affect us
+very much," said O'Grady, "but as one who was once mighty near
+asphyxiated by stirring up the wrong kind of mud, I should leave
+the matter where it is."
+
+The Chief Commissioner was deep in thought and Belinda Mary eyed
+him anxiously.
+
+"Tell them to come in," he said bluntly.
+
+The girl went and brought John Lexman and his wife, and they came
+in hand in hand supremely and serenely happy whatever the future
+might hold for them.  The Chief Commissioner cleared his throat.
+
+"Lexman, we're all very much obliged to you," he said, "for a very
+interesting story and a most interesting theory.  What you have
+done, as I understand the matter," he proceeded deliberately, "is
+to put yourself in the murderer's place and advance a theory not
+only as to how the murder was actually committed, but as to the
+motive for that murder.  It is, I might say, a remarkable piece of
+reconstruction," he spoke very deliberately, and swept away John
+Lexman's astonished interruption with a stern hand, "please wait
+and do not speak until I am out of hearing," he growled.  "You
+have got into the skin of the actual assassin and have spoken most
+convincingly.  One might almost think that the man who killed
+Remington Kara was actually standing before us.  For that piece of
+impersonation we are all very grateful;" he glared round over his
+spectacles at his understanding colleagues and they murmured
+approvingly.
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"Now I am afraid I must be off," he crossed the room and put out
+his hand to John Lexman.  "I wish you good luck," he said, and
+took both Grace Lexman's hands in his.  "One of these days," he
+said paternally, "I shall come down to Beston Tracey and your
+husband shall tell me another and a happier story."
+
+He paused at the door as he was going out and looking back caught
+the grateful eyes of Lexman.
+
+"By the way, Mr. Lexman," he said hesitatingly, "I don't think I
+should ever write a story called 'The Clue of the Twisted Candle,'
+if I were you."
+
+John Lexman shook his head.
+
+"It will never be written," he said, " - by me."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Clue of the Twisted Candle, by Edgar Wallace
+
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