moolah Khan, whose aid he meant to enlist in securing the Duke’s safety at his country-seat. In the meanwhile, he would go home and prepare the ladies for joining the party on the morrow, Beaumanoir’s formal invitations following by post.
On his way down the broad staircase General Sadgrove chuckled audibly to himself: “I thought the prospect of entertaining Leonie in his ancestral halls would fetch him. Mustn’t have her falling in love with him, though, till he can show a clean sheet.” A little lower down he stopped and stared at a huge canvas of the third Duke, but without heeding the bewigged and lace-ruffled counterfeit of the Georgian courtier. “Concentration!” he muttered. “The first axiom in a crime-problem is to concentrate the items. I shall have two of ’em now, by George, right under the same blanket—and with luck I’ll have three.”
In the hall Prince was hovering fatuously, assisted by a brace of tall flunkeys who fell under the General’s critical gaze. One of them was the absent-minded William, all unconscious that he had allowed “Inspector Chantrey’s” understudy to slip upstairs the
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