The Red Book Magazine/Volume 39/Number 5/The Mystery Advertisement

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

 

Illustrated by W. B. King

 

Illustration: “Now, Mr. Martin, or whatever your name is, let’s finish this job up,” he proposed.

 

The Mystery Advertisement

A new story in the greatest detective-mystery series since “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”

By

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Michael Sayers, arch-criminal at large, discloses the fact, in his own words, that even such a man as he possesses a heart—in this case gilded. Mr. Oppenheim has never written a better story.

IT has always been my custom, as a notorious and much-sought-after criminal, to give special care to the building up of a new identity. It is my success in the various impersonations I have attempted which has enabled me for many years completely to puzzle that highly astute body of men leagued together under the auspices of Scotland Yard.

After my brief but successful career as Colonel Escombe, of the Indian Army, I determined upon a complete change of characterization and circumstances. I established myself in modest rooms at the back of Russell Square, took a small office at the top of a block of buildings in Holborn, had cards and stationery printed and a brass plate engraved, and made a fresh appearance in the metropolis of my fancy as Mr. Sidney Buckross, jobbing stationer. I cannot say that my operations made very much impression upon the trade which I had adopted. I transferred a thousand pounds to my credit at a well-known London bank, wrote myself several letters a day, which I opened and replied to at my office, sallied out with a small black bag, soon after ten, and with the exception of a leisurely hour for my midday meal, spent the rest of my time in the safe seclusion of the British Museum.

I reëstablished a new hobby. In the intervals of idleness which the spasmodic activities of my profession had entailed, I had always been fascinated by the subject of ciphers. I knew quite well, for instance, that half of the advertisements in the personal column of the Times contained, to the person for whose eyes they were intended, a meaning utterly different from their obvious one. For example, one afternoon, after having wasted a score of sheets of paper and an immense amount of ingenuity, I was able at last to find the real message conveyed under this absurd medley of words:

“Charles. What you require may be found in 1740. Laughing Eyes bids you have courage. Bring James.”

With only one word of the cipher at first clear to me, I looked upon it as something of a triumph when I was able to extract from this rubbish the following message:

“Lady in green, man dinner jacket and white tie. Frascati's 8 o'clock Monday. Will bring documents. Have currency.”

The announcement interested me. If these documents were worth money to the person to whom this invitation was addressed, they were probably worth money to me. I decided, without a moment's hesitation, that I would meet the lady in green and the gentleman in a dinner coat and white tie on Monday at Frascati's, notwithstanding the shock to my sartorial instincts which the costume of the latter was likely to inflict. My only trouble was not to clash with the person for whom the advertisement was really intended. At this I could only make an attempt. I inserted the following advertisement in the personal column of the Times on the following morning:

“Frascati's 7 not 8.”

The upshot I was compelled to leave to Fate....

At ten minutes to seven on Monday evening I arrived at the restaurant indicated. I ordered a table for three and the best dinner the place could offer. The moment I stepped back into the reception-room I recognized, beyond a shadow of doubt, my prospective guests. The man was a powerful-looking fellow, with large, clumsy limbs, a mass of untidy hair, a bushy brown mustache streaked with gray, a somewhat coarse complexion and bulbous eyes. He wore, gracelessly, the costume which the advertisement had indicated. The woman in green had somewhat overdone her color-scheme. There was a green plush band in her hair, and she wore an evening gown of the same color, cut very low and distinguished by a general air of tawdriness. She was, or rather had been, good-looking in a bold, flamboyant sort of way, and she had still a profusion of yellow hair. They both stared at me when they saw me looking around, and with a little inward shiver, I took the plunge. I went boldly up to them and shook hands

“I have ordered dinner,” I announced. “Will you let me show you the way?”

They accepted the situation without demur, and viewed the gold-topped bottle in the ice-pail, and the other arrangements for their entertainment, with considerable satisfaction.

“I must say you're not quite the sort of chap we expected to find—is he, Lizzie?” the man remarked as he seated himself heavily and performed wonderful operations with his napkin. “I thought all your lot were water-drinkers.”

I smiled.

“We are often misunderstood,” I ventured.

We settled down and took stock of one another. The woman looked approvingly at my tie and studs. I have made it a rule never to be without a supply of the right sort of clothes.

“I'm sure, if I may say so, it's much more agreeable to do business with a gentleman,” she remarked with a sidelong glance at me. “Makes one feel so much more at home.”

“Cocktails, too!” her companion exclaimed cheerfully as the wine-waiter approached with a silver tray. “You're doing us proud and no mistake.”

I bowed and drank their healths. A cordial but cryptic silence seemed to me to be my best rôle. I had always the fear, however, of the other man arriving before the business part of our meeting had been broached. So as soon as the effects of the wine had begun to show themselves in some degree, I ordered another bottle and leaned confidentially forward.

“You have brought the documents with you?” I asked.

“You don't think we are out to make an April fool of a gentleman like you!” the lady replied with a languishing glance. “But I would like you to understand this, Mr.—Mr.—”

“Martin,” I suggested.

“Mr. Martin,” she went on: “I would never have rounded on Ted if he had kept straight. He and I didn't get on, and that's the long and short of it. He was all right so far as the drink was concerned; and I never see him look at another woman in his life. All the same, Mr. Martin, for a woman of my temperament, he was no fitting sort of a husband.”

I felt a moment's sympathy for Ted. The lady, however, had more to say.

Illustration: “Stop!” he shouted as I turned toward the door. “How did you come by this cock-and bull story?”

“When first he started those proceedings for divorce,” she went on, dropping her voice a little and adopting a more intimate manner, “I was knocked altogether silly like. You know that, Jim, wasn't I?” she added, appealing to her male companion

“Same here,” he growled. “I'd have broken his blooming 'ead if I'd thought he was 'aving us watched.”

“And it's a broken head he'll get, the way he's going on, if he not careful,” the woman continued truculently. “Talk about making him a Cabinet minister, indeed, and me left without a penny just because he got-his divorce! I'll show him!”

“To revert for a moment to the documents—” I ventured.

The lady touched a soiled, shabby hand-bag, opened it an gazed inside for a moment.

“They're here, all right,” she announced in a tone of satisfaction. “Mixed up with my powder and rouge and what-not. You shall have them presently, Mr. Martin.”

“That is, if you are prepared to part,” the man intervened “Cash down, and no humbug about it.”

“Part? Of course he's prepared to part!” the woman declared sharply. “Wouldn't be here if he weren't. That's right isn't it, Mr. Martin?”

“Naturally,” I agreed. “I have brought a considerable amount money with me, quite as much as I can afford to part with, and the only question left for me to decide is whether the documents are worth it.”

“You talk as if you were doing this little job on your own,” she remarked, looking at me curiously.

“I have to be as careful as though I were,” I replied. “I am sure you can understand that.”

Her escort laughed coarsely.

“I guess you'll see there's some pickings left for yourself,” he observed. “You know what I heard your boss say at Liverpool once.”

“That will do, Jim,” the woman interrupted impatiently. “Remember we are here for business.”

I returned to the subject of our meeting.

“I think,” I suggested, “the time has arrived when you might allow me to glance through those documents.”

The woman looked across the table at her companion. He nodded assent.

“No harm in that, so far as I can see,” he observed. “There's all in them as I promised, and a trifle more. Enough to cook Ted's goose, and his swell friend's.”

The woman opened her hand-bag and produced a dozen pages of typewritten manuscript, soiled and a little tattered.

“Just cast your eye over that first,” she invited. “That's an exact copy of the speech which Ted prepared for the mass-meeting in Liverpool in March.”

“In Liverpool?” I repeated, hoping for some elucidation.

“The meeting that was called to decide upon the shipping strike,” she explained a little impatiently.

I glanced through the typewritten pages. They seemed to consist of a vehement appeal to the dockers, bonders and Union of Seamen to inaugurate on the following day the greatest strike in history, promising them the support of the miners and railway men, and predicting the complete defeat of the government within six weeks. The speech concluded with a peroration, full of extreme revolutionary sentiments, and on a blank page at the end, under the heading “Approved of,” were the signatures of a dozen of the best known men in the Labor world.

“This speech—” I began, tentatively, for the matter was not yet clear to me

“Was never delivered, of course,” the man interrupted. “You know all about that. Ted went down to Liverpool as mild as a lamb. He stood up there on the platform and told them that the present moment was inopportune for a strike. Not only that, but the next day he bamboozled them into accepting the employers' terms.”

“Satisfactory so far as it goes,” I observed, didactically but with caution. “And now—”

“Here,” the woman interrupted triumphantly, “is Lord Kindersley's letter, delivered to Ted that afternoon in Liverpool.”

I read the letter, dated from South Audley Street, and its opening phrases were illuminative. I knew now that Ted was Mr. Edward Rendall, the present leader of the Labor party in the House of Commons. It read:

“My dear Mr. Rendall:

“This letter, which I am dispatching by airplane messenger, will reach you, I trust, before you address the meeting this evening. The matter with which it is concerned cannot be dealt with by the Federation of Shipowners, but confirming our recent conversations, Sir Philip Richardson and I are willing, between us, to advance tomorrow bank-notes to the value of fifty thousand pounds, to be paid to the funds of your cause or to be made use of in any way you think fit, provided the strike threatened for tomorrow does not take place.

“Faithfuly yours,
“Geoffrey Kindersley.

“P. S.—In your own interests, as well as ours, I suggest that you immediately destroy this letter.”

Things were now becoming quite clear to me. I even began to wonder if I had brought enough money.

“As a matter of curiosity,” I asked, “why did your husband not take Lord Kindersley's advice and destroy this letter?”

The woman laughed unpleasantly. There was mingled cunning and self-satisfaction in her expression.

“He told me to,” she replied. “As a matter of fact, he thought he saw me tear it up. It was just at the time that I was beginning to have my suspicions of Master Ted; so I tore up a circular instead and put this by for a bit.”

“A pretty clever stroke of work, too,” the man opposite murmured with an approving grin. “You put a rod in pickle for Ted that day, Lizzie.”

“And serve him right, too,” the lady remarked, glancing in her mirror and making some trifling rearrangement of her coiffure.

There was a brief silence. The man drew his chair a little closer to the table and addressed me with a businesslike air.

“Now, Mr. Martin, or whatever your name is, let's finish this job up,” he proposed. “You've got a copy of the speech that Ted Rendall promised his pals to deliver at Liverpool, typed at Mrs. Simons' office, Number 23 Dale Street. You've got the original letter from Lord Kindersley, proving up to the hilt why he didn't deliver it; and,” he went on, striking the table with his fist, “I am now going to tell you that that fifty thousand pounds was handed over to Ted at the National Liberal Club the following evening at six o'clock, and was paid in by him, to his own credit, to five different banks on the following morning. The names of the banks are in pencil, on the back of Lord Kindersley's letter.”

“And when I asked him for a hundred a year to keep me respectable,” the woman declared, with an angry color rising to her cheeks, “he sent my letter back through his lawyers, without a word.”

I leaned back in my chair and felt my way a little further.

“If we make a deal and you part with these documents to me,” I said, “what use do you expect me to make of them?”

“Any use you choose, so long as you pay enough,” the woman answered bluntly

“We know pretty well whom you're acting for,” the man put in, with a knowing grin I guess it wont be long before Charlie Payton handles these documents to terms.'

“You have no conditions to make?” I asked

“None!” the woman snapped. “I've finished with Ted. He's a cur. You can publish the whole lot in the Daily Mail, if you like, for all I care.”

“Then there remains only the question of price,” I concluded.

The flush of wine and the momentary expansiveness of good feeding seemed to pass from the faces of my two guests. A natural and anxious cupidity took its place. They feared to ask too little; they were terrified lest they might scare me away by asking too much.

“They'd be worth a pretty penny to Ted,” the woman muttered.

“You don't want to sell them to him,” I pointed out.

“I don't, and that's a fact,” she admitted. “Look here, Mr. Martin, they're yours for a thousand pounds.”

A thousand pounds was precisely the sum I had brought with me. Without remark. I counted out the notes and pocketed the documents. The man and woman seemed very surprised at this uneventful finish to the proceedings. The latter tucked away the notes in her handbag, while I paid the bill. When I rose to take leave of them, I could see, standing in the doorway and looking at us with a puzzled expression, a middle-aged man, who I decide at once was the individual whom I had impersonated. I said at once:

“The business is over, and, I trust, pleasantly. Forgive me if I take my leave. There are others anxious to hear from me.”

The woman clutched her bag with her left hand and extended her right

“Well, I'm sure you've been quite the gentleman, Mr.—Mr.—let me see, what was the name?”

“Well, it doesn't matter, does it,” I replied, “especially as it was only assumed for the evening. Good night, and good luck to you both,” I added, as I made my escape.....

There was a fine rain falling outside, but I walked steadily on, obsessed with the sudden desire for fresh air. The atmosphere of the place I had left, the character of my companions, the sordid ignominy of the transaction which I had just concluded had filled me with disgust. Then I began to laugh softly to myself. It was a queer anomaly, this—that I, for whom the police of the world were always searching, should feel distaste at so ordinary an ill deed. I had robbed, and struck ruthlessly enough in my time, at whomsoever might stand in my way, but as a matter of fact, blackmailing was the one malpractice which I had never happened to practice before. In any case, as I reminded myself, the ignominious part of the affair was over. Its continuation was likely to appeal more to my sense of humor.

Over a late whisky and soda that night in my room, I began to build my plans. It seemed to me that the career of Mr. Edward Rendall, M.P., and the reputation of Lord Kindersley, were equally in my hands. It was surely not possible that the two combined would not produce a reasonable profit upon my outlay of a thousand pounds. As I sat and smoked, another idea occurred to me, and before I retired to rest, I wrote a long letter of instructions to Mr. Younghusband....

I remained at my office in Holborn of the following morning until I heard from Mr. Younghusband upon the telephone. As usual he was most formal, addressing me as though I were one of his ordinary and respected clients. It was obvious, however, that was perturbed.

“I have carried out your instructions to the letter, Mr.—er—Buckross,” he announced, “but the magnitude of the operation which you have ventured upon has, I confess, rather staggered me.”

“Let me know -exactly what you have done,” I said.

“I have sold,” he continued, “for your account, through various firms of brokers, twenty-five thousand shares, common, it the Kindersley Shipping Company, at six pounds each. Fortunately, there is no immediate prospect of a rise in stocks of this description, and I was able to arrange to leave margin amounting to only ten shillings a share, namely, twelve thousand, five hundred pounds.”

“Very good,” I assented. “What is the price just now?”

“The stock has dropped a trifle naturally,” the lawyer replied, “owing to your operations. The broker, however, at whose office I now am, advises me to disregard that. He thinks that they will probably recover during the day.”

“Just so! When is settlement day?”

“On the 4th. Apropos of that, the various brokers with whom I have had dealings on your behalf desire to know whether you would wish to close your transactions or any portion of them during the next few days, if a profit of, say, a quarter a share is shown.”

“Not on any account,” I insisted. “The transaction must remain exactly as it is until I give the word.”

Illustration: “Give me five minutes to get clear away,” I said. “When I am gone, tell him Buckross changed his mind.”

I rang off, filled my bag, as usual, with stationery-samples and took the tube to Bond Street, whence I walked on to South Audley Street. Upon arrival at my destination, I was informed by an imposing-looking butler that Lord Kindersley was at home, but it was scarcely likely that he would receive me unless I had an appointment. I risked the butler's being human, and bought my way as far as the waiting-room. Once arrived there, I managed to impress an untidy and bespectacled secretary with the idea that it might be worth Lord Kindersley's while to spare me a few minutes of his time. In the end I was ushered into the great man's sanctum

“What can I do for you—er—Mr. Buckross?” he inquired, glancing at my card.

I was anxious to test my new identity and I stood full in the light It was obvious, however, that Lord Kindersley had not an idea that we had ever met before.

“I have come to see you on a very serious matter, Lord Kindersley,” I said, “and I am anxious that there should be no misunderstanding. I do not wish for a penny of your money. I am here, in fact, to save you from the loss of a great deal of it. My visit nevertheless, has a very serious side.”

HE looked at me steadily from under his bushy eyebrows.

“Go on,” he invited curtly.

“Last March,” I continued, “you averted the threatened shipping strike and saved yourself the loss of at least one of your millions by bribing a well-known Labor leader to declare for peace instead of war. You and one other great shipowner were alone concerned in this matter. That other man, I gather, is dead.”

Lord Kindersley was staring at me with a queer look in his eyes. His voice, when he answered me, was unsteady.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

I took the two documents from my pocket and moved a little nearer to him.

“Here,” I said, “is Rendall's proposed speech, counseling the strike and signed by the leaders of the various union. Here, also, is your letter to Rendall, making him the offer of fifty thousand pounds to withhold it, which sum was paid to him the next evening at the National Liberal Club.”

All the initial affability and condescension had gone from Lord Kindersley's manner. He looked like a man on the verge of a collapse.

“My God!” he muttered. “Rendall swore he had destroyed my letter!”

“He instructed his wife to do so. She retained it for her own purposes. A few months ago her husband divorced her. This is her revenge. She has a copy of the speech and the letter to me. I know, also, the other facts in connection with the case.”

Lord Kindersley took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Already he began to see his way.

“I will buy those documents from you,” he proposed.

“Your Lordship,” I replied, “I am not a blackmailer.”

“You shall receive the money quite safely,” he went on eagerly. “I should not dream of communicating with the police. I shall look upon it as an equitable business transaction. Name your price. I am not a mean man.”

“Neither, as I remarked before, am I a blackmailer,” I persisted. “My use for these letters is predestined. They go to the press.”

Lord Kindersley sprang to his feet.

“Listen,” he said impressively: “no newspaper would deal with you as liberally as I am prepared to do. Those documents must not be published. If it were generally known that I had—ah—influenced Rendall to hold up this speech, Labor would declare war against me tomorrow. Not a man would stay in my employ. Besides, it would bring discredit upon my party. It would ruin me politically as well as actually. Come, now, Mr. Buckross, you look like a business man. Let's talk business. I'll write you a check for ten thousand pounds this morning.”

“Your Lordship,” I replied, “if I dealt with you in the way you suggest, it would amount to a criminal offense. My conscience forbids it. I can deal with the press fairly and openly. Your political ruin I cannot help. Your financial ruin I may help you to modify. I offer you four days' grace, during which time you had better get rid of as many of your shares in the Kindersley Shipping Company as you can.”

“You promise to do nothing for four days?” Lord Kindersley exclaimed eagerly.

“I promise.”

He leaned back in his chair and mopped his forehead.

“Well, that's a respite, at any rate,” he said. “Now, Mr. Buckross, you and I have got to understand each other on this deal.”

“We shall never get any any nearer understanding each other than we do at present,” I assured him.

“Rubbish!” he answered. “What I want you to do is to get that blackmailing idea out of your head. Look here: stay and have lunch with me, and we'll discuss the matter over a cigar and a glass of wine.”

“I should be taking your lunch under false pretenses,” I replied, rising and buttoning my coat. “You shall have the four days' grace which I have promised.”

He followed me to the door, entreating me for my address. So convinced was he that I would change my mind, that he sent his secretary out into the street after me. In the end I made my escape by promising to see him again on the evening of the third day.

I TOOK my usual leisurely lunch and afterward made my way to the uninspiring neighborhood of Streatham. “The Towers,” which I had discovered from a book of reference to be Mr. Edward Rendall's address, was a hopelessly vulgar edifice of gray stone, approached by what is generally described as a short carriage-drive. The popular M.P., as was his boast, was not in the least difficult of access. He came into the room within a few minutes a pipe in his mouth, and giving evidence of all the easy good-nature which befitted his position.

“Don't know who you are, Mr. Buckross,” he said, noticing with some surprise that I had not availed myself of the opportunity of shaking hands with him, “but sit down, and welcome. What can I do for you?”

“I have brought you bad news, Mr. Rendall,” I announced.

“The devil you have!” he answered, removing his pipe from his teeth and staring at me. “Who are you, anyway? I don't seem to recognize your name.”

“That really doesn't matter,” I replied. “You can call me a journalist, if you like. It's as near the truth as anything about myself that I'm likely to tell you. Something very disagreeable is going to happen to you on the fourth day from now, and as I am partly responsible for it, I have come out here to give you a word of warning.”

“You're getting at me,” he protested uneasily.

“Not in the least,” I assured him. “The facts to which I allude are these: I have in my possession a copy of the speech which you ought to have made at Liverpool last March and didn't, and also the original letter from Lord Kindersley, offering you fifty thousand pounds to hold it up. I also know that you received that money on the following evening at the National Liberal Club, and I know what banks you intrusted it to.”

KENDALL was, I believe, at heart, just as much of a coward as Kindersley, but he showed it in a different fashion.

“You lying blackmailer!” he shouted. “How dare you come here with such a story! Get out of the house, or I'll throw you down the steps.”

“I have fulfilled my mission,” I told him. “I shall be very glad indeed to go.”

“Stop!” he shouted as I turned toward the door. “How did you come by this cock-and-bull story?”

“How should I have come by it at all unless it were the truth?” I answered. “The whole world will know the facts soon enough. I obtained the papers from your wife.”

“That's a lie, then,” he declared truculently, “for I saw her destroy the letter.”

I smiled. The man, after all, was a poor sport.

“She deceived you,” I replied. “You saw her destroy a circular. She kept the letter. Perhaps she had her reasons. I bought it from her and another man at Frascati's restaurant last night.”

Conviction seized upon Mr. Edward Rendall. His eyes narrowed a little.

“How do I know that the whole thing isn't a bluff?” he said suspiciously “Have you got the documents with you?”

“I have,” I told him.

He attempted nothing in the way of subtlety. He relied, I suppose, upon his six feet and his brawny shoulders. He came at me like a bull, head down and fists swinging. It was a very ridiculous encounter.

NEXT morning there were sensational paragraphs in most of the financial papers. Shipping shares all reacted slightly, but the slump in Kindersley's was a thing no one could account for. They had fallen from six to five within twenty-four hours, and as soon as I reached my offices in Holborn, i received frantic messages from Mr. Younghusband, imploring me to close with a profit of over twenty thousand pounds. There was nothing whatever wrong with the shares, he assured me, and they were bound to rally. I listened to all he had to say, gave him positive instructions not to disturb my operations in any way, and disregarding his piteous protests, rang off, and made my way to the great newspaper offices, where my business of the morning lay.

It took me an hour to get as far as the assistant editor. I told him my story and I showed him the documents. He went out of the room for a moment and returned with the editor. They both looked at me curiously.

“Who are you, Mr. Buckross?” the editor asked.

“A speculator,” I answered. “1 bought those papers from Rendall's divorced wife. She has a spite against him.”

“How can one be sure that they are genuine?”

“Anyone who studies them must know that they are,” I replied. “If you want confirmation, I told Lord Kindersley yesterday of their existence and forthcoming publication, and advised him to sell as many of his shares as possible. Your financial column will tell you the result.”

“What do you want us to do with these documents, Mr. Buckross?” the editor asked.

“I want you to give me a very large sum of money for them and then publish them,” I replied.

“You know that there will be the devil of a row?”

“That will be your lookout. Their genuineness will be your justification.”

The editor looked thoughtfully out of the window. His face was as hard as granite, but he had very gray, human eyes.

“We should have no compunction about bringing the thunders down upon Rendall,” he said. “But with Lord Kindersley it is a little different. He is a considerable and reputable figure in society.”

“He might survive the disclosures,” I suggested. “After all, there was a certain amount of justification for his conduct. He averted a national disaster, even if the means he used were immoral.”

“A case can be built up for him, certainly,” the editor remarked musingly. What is your price for these documents?”

“Ten thousand pounds, and they must not be used before Thursday.” I replied.

“Why not before Thursday?”

“I have given Lord Kindersley so much grace.”

“You will leave the documents in our hands?” the editor proposed.

I considered the matter. I could think of nothing likely to alter my plans, but I was conscious of a curious aversion to taking the irrevocable step.

“You shall have them,” I agreed, “if you will give me a letter acknowledging that they are my property, and promising to return them to me without publication, should I desire it, on Wednesday afternoon.”

“What about the money?” the editor asked. “Do you want anything on account?”

“You are prepared to give me the ten thousand pounds?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“We never bargain,” he said. “There is no standard value for such goods as you offer. The question is whether you want anything in advance?”

“No, thank you,” I answered. “I'll have the whole amount on Wednesday afternoon, or the documents back again. I think that it will be the money.”

“I trust so,” my two editorial friends replied in fervent unison.

ON Wednesday morning the Kindersley Shipping Company shares stood at three and three-quarters, and a brief notice in the Times announced that His Lordship was confined to his house in South Audley Street, suffering from a severe nervous breakdown. Some idiotic impulse prompted me, after I had paid my brief visit to my office, to take a stroll in that direction. A doctor's carriage was waiting outside Kindersley House, and as I passed on the other side of the way, the front door opened and the doctor himself stood on the threshold. The thought of Lord Kindersley's sufferings had, up to the present, inspired in me no other feeling than one of mild amusement. By the side of the doctor, however, Beatrice Kindersley was standing....

I knew then that the end of my career must be close at hand. I was weakening. My nerve had gone. The instincts of childhood were returning to me. The morbid curiosity which had brought me to the house had been gratified with a vengeance. I had received a psychological stroke. The girl's drawn and tear-stained face had disturbed the callousness which I had deemed impregnable. A new scheme was forcing its way into my mind. There was only one redeeming point about it all—I walked for the next few hours in peril of my life.

AT half-past two that afternoon Beatrice Kindersley hastened into the little morning-room on the ground floor of Kindersley House to receive an unexpected visitor. Her lips parted in amazement when she saw who it was. I held up my finger.

“Colonel Escombe,” I reminded her.

“You!” she exclaimed.

I knew that there was not a flaw in my make-up or deportment. I was the Colonel Escombe who had attended Norman Greyes' wedding, and whose presence there had led to some slight question concerning a pearl necklace.

“What do you want?” she asked breathlessly.

“To help you,” I answered. “I saw you this morning, and you seemed in trouble.”

She smiled at me gratefully, but a moment later her face was clouded with anxiety.

“It is dear of you,” she said, “but I must go away at once. You are running a terrible risk. Sir Norman Greyes is in the house. He is with my uncle now.”

“What is he doing here?” I demanded.

“My uncle sent for him to see if he could help. There is some serious trouble. I don't know what it is, but my uncle says that it means ruin.”

At the thought of the near presence of my old enemy, my whole being seemed to stiffen. Yet, alas, the weakness remained!

“Tell me,” I said, “—what does your distress mean? Has your uncle always been good to you? Is it for his sake that you are unhappy?”

“Entirely,” she answered without hesitation. “I know that a great many people call him hard and unscrupulous. To me he has been the dearest person in the world. It makes my heart ache to see him suffer.”

I glanced at my watch.

“Very well,” I said, “give me five minutes to get clear away. When I am gone, give him this message. Tell him that Buckross has changed his mind and that he will hear from him before five o'clock.”

“What have you to do with all this?” she asked wonderingly.

“Never mind,” I answered. “Be sure to give me five minutes, and don't deliver my message before Norman Greyes.”

She walked with me to the door, but when I would have opened it, she checked me. Already her step was lighter. She took my hands in hers and I felt her soft breath upon my face.

“I am going to thank you,” she whispered.

It was an absurd interlude.

BOTH the editor and the assistant editor did everything, short of gong down on their knees, to induce me to change my mind. They offered me practically a fortune. They hinted, even, that honors might be obtained for me. They tried to appeal to my patriotism, to sundry noble motives, not one of which I possessed. In the end I obtained the documents, addressed them to Miss Beatrice Kindersley, bought a great bunch of fragrant yellow roses, hired a messenger to go with me in the taxi-cab, and saw them delivered at Kindersley House.

That night I spent in my room, taking stock of myself. On the credit side, my deal in Kindersleys had brought me a profit of something like thirty thousand pounds, likely to be considerably added to, as I had bought again at four. Further, I had abstained from becoming a blackmailer, and I had knocked Mr. Edward Rendall down. On the other hand, I might easily have made a hundred thousand pounds—and I had behaved like a fool. Perhaps the most disquieting feature of it all was that I was satisfied with the deal.

You cannot imagine what the next adventure of Michael Sayers, the great criminal of this most unusual series of stories, will be. Read it in the forthcoming October issue.