"You will have the taxi-driver's evidence that when Merrill stepped down, after being driven from the station, he looked left and right, as though he were expecting somebody. The plan to some extent miscarried. The accomplice arrived ten minutes too late. On some pretext or other Merrill probably left the room. I suggest that he did not go into the dining room, but that he went out into the garden and was met by his accomplice, who handed him the weapon with which this crime was committed.

"It may be asked by the defense why the accomplice, who was presumably Rex Holland, did not himself commit the crime. I could offer two or three alternative suggestions, all of which are feasible. The deceased man was shot at close quarters, and was found in such an attitude as to suggest that he was wholly unprepared for the attack. We know that he was in some fear and that he invariably went armed; yet it is fairly certain that he made no attempt to draw his weapon, which he certainly would have done had he been suddenly confronted by an armed stranger.

"I do not pretend that I am explaining the strange relationship between Merrill and this mysterious forger. Merrill is the only man who has seen him and has given a vague and somewhat confused description of him. 'He was a man with a short, close-clipped beard' is Merrill's description. The woman who served him with tea near Uckfield describes him as a 'youngish man with a dark mustache, but otherwise clean shaven.'

"There is no reason, of course, why he should not have removed his beard, but as against that suggestion we will call evidence to prove that the man seen driving with the murdered chauffeur was invariably a man with a mustache and no beard, so that the balance of probability is on the side of the supposition that Merrill is not telling the truth. An unknown client with a large deposit at his bank would not be likely constantly to alter his appearance. If he were a criminal, as we know him to be, there would be another reason why he should not excite suspicion in this way."

His address covered the greater part of a day—but he returned to the scene in the garden, to the supposed meeting of the two men, and to the murder.

Saul Arthur Mann, sitting with Frank's solicitor, scratched his nose and grinned.

"I have never heard a more ingenious piece of reconstruction," he said; "though, of course, the whole thing is palpably absurd."

As a theory it was no doubt excellent; but men are not sentenced to death on theories, however ingenious they may be. Probably nobody in the court so completely admired the ingenuity as the man most affected. At the lunch interval on the day on which this theory was put forward he met his solicitor and Saul Arthur Mann in the bare room in which such interviews are permitted.

"It was really fascinating to hear him," said Frank, as he sipped the cup of tea which they had brought him. "I almost began to believe that I had committed the murder! But isn't it rather alarming? Will the jury take the same view?" he asked, a little troubled.

The solicitor shook his head.

"Unsupported theories of that sort do not go well with juries, and, of course, the whole story is so flimsy and so improbable that it will go for no more than a piece of clever reasoning."

"Did anybody see you at the railway station?"

Frank shook his head.

"I suppose hundreds of people saw me, but would hardly remember me."

"Was there any one on the train who knew you?"

"No," said Frank, after a moment's thought. "There were six people in my carriage until we got to Lewes, but I think I told you that, and you have not succeeded in tracing any of them."

"It is most difficult to get into touch with those people," said the lawyer. "Think of the scores of people one travels with, without ever remembering what they looked like or how they were dressed. If you had been a woman, traveling with women, every one of your five fellow passengers would have remembered you and would have recalled your hat."

Frank laughed.

"There are certain disadvantages in being a man," he said. "How do you think the case is going?"

"They have offered no evidence yet. I think you will agree, Mr. Mann," he said respectfully, for Saul Arthur Mann was a power in legal circles.

"None at all," the little fellow agreed.

Frank recalled the first day he had seen him, with his hat perched on the back of his head and his shabby, genteel exterior.

"Oh, by Jove!" he said. "I suppose they will be trying to fasten the death of that man upon me that we saw in Gray Square."

Saul Arthur Mann nodded.

"They have not put that in the indictment," he said, "nor the case of the chauffeur. You see, your conviction will rest entirely upon this present charge, and both the other matters are subsidiary."

Frank walked thoughtfully up and down the room, his hands behind his back.

"I wonder who Rex Holland is," he said, half to himself.

"You still have your theory?" asked the lawyer, eying him keenly.

Frank nodded.

"And you still would rather not put it into words?"

"Much rather not," said Frank gravely.

He returned to the court and glanced round for the girl, but she was not there. The rest of the afternoon's proceedings, taken up as they were with the preliminaries of the case, bored him.

It was on the twelfth day of the trial that Jasper Cole stepped on to the witness stand. He was dressed in black and was paler than usual, but he took the oath in a firm voice and answered the questions which were put to him without hesitation.

The story of Frank's quarrel with his uncle, of the forged checks, and of his own experience on the night of the crime filled the greater part of the forenoon, and it was in the afternoon when Bryan Bennett, one of the most brilliant barristers of his time, stood up to cross-examine.

"Had you any suspicion that your employer was being robbed?"

"I had a suspicion," replied Jasper.

"Did you communicate your suspicion to your employer?"

Jasper hesitated.

"No," he replied at last.

"Why do you hesitate?" asked Bennett sharply.

"Because, although I did not directly communicate my suspicions, I hinted to Mr. Minute that he should have an independent audit."

"So you thought the books were wrong?"

"I did."

"In these circumstances," asked Bennett slowly, "do you not think it was very unwise of you to touch those books yourself?"

"When did I touch them?" asked Jasper quickly.

"I suggest that on a certain night you came to the bank and remained in the bank by yourself, examining the ledgers on behalf of your employer, and that during that time you handled at least three books in which these falsifications were made."

"That is quite correct," said Jasper, after a moment's thought; "but my suspicions were general and did not apply to any particular group of books."

"But did you not think it was dangerous?"

Again the hesitation.

"It may have been foolish, and if I had known how matters were developing I should certainly not have touched them."

"You do admit that there were several periods of time from seven in the evening until nine and from nine-thirty until eleven-fifteen when you were absolutely alone in the bank?"

"That is true," said Jasper.

"And during those periods you could, had you wished and had you been a forger, for example, or had you any reason for falsifying the entries, have made those falsifications?"

"I admit there was time," said Jasper.

"Would you describe yourself as a friend of Frank Merrill's?"

"Not a close friend," replied Jasper.

"Did you like him?"

"I cannot say that I was fond of him," was the reply.

"He was a rival of yours?"

"In what respect?"

Counsel shrugged his shoulders.

"He was very fond of Miss Nuttall."

"Yes."

"And she was fond of him?"

"Yes."

"Did you not aspire to pay your addresses to Miss Nuttall?"

Jasper Cole looked down to the girl, and May averted her eyes. Her cheeks were burning and she had a wild desire to flee from the court.

"If you mean did I love Miss Nuttall," said Jasper Cole, in his quiet, even tone, "I reply that I did."

"You even secured the active support of Mr. Minute?"

"I never urged the matter with Mr. Minute," said Jasper.

"So that if he moved on your behalf he did so without your knowledge?"

"Without my pre-knowledge," corrected the witness. "He told me afterward that he had spoken to Miss Nuttall, and I was considerably embarrassed."

"I understand you were a man of curious habits, Mr. Cole."

"We are all people of curious habits," smiled the witness.

"But you in particular. You were an Orientalist, I believe?"

"I have studied Oriental languages and customs," said Jasper shortly.

"Have you ever extended your study to the realm of hypnotism?"

"I have," replied the witness.

"Have you ever made experiments?"

"On animals, yes."

"On human beings?"

"No, I have never made experiments on human beings."

"Have you also made a study of narcotics?"

The lawyer leaned forward over the table and looked at the witness between half-closed eyes.

"I have made experiments with narcotic herbs and plants," said Jasper, after a moment's hesitation. "I think you should know that the career which was planned for me was that of a doctor, and I have always been very interested in the effects of narcotics."

"You know of a drug called cannabis indica?" asked the counsel, consulting his paper.

"Yes; it is 'Indian hemp.'"

"Is there an infusion of cannabis indica to be obtained?"

"I do not think there is," said the other. "I can probably enlighten you because I see now the trend of your examination. I once told Frank Merrill, many years ago, when I was very enthusiastic, that an infusion of cannabis indica, combined with tincture of opium and hyocine, produced certain effects."

"It is inclined to sap the will power of a man or a woman who is constantly absorbing this poison in small doses?" suggested the counsel.

"That is so."

The counsel now switched off on a new tack.

"Do you know the East of London?"

"Yes, slightly."

"Do you know Silvers Rents?"

"Yes."

"Do you ever go to Silvers Rents?"

"Yes; I go there very regularly."

The readiness of the reply astonished both Frank and the girl. She had been feeling more and more uncomfortable as the cross-examination continued, and had a feeling that she had in some way betrayed Jasper Cole's confidence. She had listened to the cross-examination which revealed Jasper as a scientist with something approaching amazement. She had known of the laboratory, but had associated the place with those entertaining experiments that an idle dabbler in chemistry might undertake.

For a moment she doubted, and searched her mind for some occasion when he had practiced his medical knowledge. Dimly she realized that there had been some such occasion, and then she remembered that it had always been Jasper Cole who had concocted the strange drafts which had so relieved the headache to which, when she was a little younger, she had been something of a martyr. Could he—She struggled hard to dismiss the thought as being unworthy of her; and now, when the object of his visits to Silvers Rents was under examination, she found her curiosity growing.

"Why did you go to Silvers Rents?"

There was no answer.

"I will repeat my question: With what object did you go to Silvers Rents?"

"I decline to answer that question," said the man in the box coolly. "I merely tell you that I went there frequently."

"And you refuse to say why?"

"I refuse to say why," repeated the witness.

The judge on the bench made a little note.

"I put it to you," said counsel, speaking impressively, "that it was in Silvers Rents that you took on another identity."

"That is probably true," said the other, and the girl gasped; he was so cool, so self-possessed, so sure of himself.

"I suggest to you," the counsel went on, "that in those Rents Jasper Cole became Rex Holland."

There was a buzz of excitement, a sudden soft clamor of voices through which the usher's harsh demand for silence cut like a knife.

"Your suggestion is an absurd one," said Jasper, without heat, "and I presume that you are going to produce evidence to support so infamous a statement."

"What evidence I produce," said counsel, with asperity, "is a matter for me to decide."

"It is also a matter for the witness," interposed the soft voice of the judge. "As you have suggested that Holland was a party to the murder, and as you are inferring that Rex Holland is Jasper Cole, it is presumed that you will call evidence to support so serious a charge."

"I am not prepared to call evidence, my lord, and if your lordship thinks the question should not have been put I am willing to withdraw it."

The judge nodded and turned his head to the jury.

"You will consider that question as not having been put, gentlemen," he said. "Doubtless counsel is trying to establish the fact that one person might just as easily have been Rex Holland as another. There is no suggestion that Mr. Cole went to Silvers Rents—which I understand is in a very poor neighborhood—with any illegal intent, or that he was committing any crime or behaving in any way improperly by paying such frequent visits. There may be something in the witness's life associated with that poor house which has no bearing on the case and which he does not desire should be ventilated in this court. It happens to many of us," the judge went on, "that we have associations which it would embarrass us to reveal."

This little incident closed that portion of the cross-examination, and counsel went on to the night of the murder.

"When did you come to the house?" he asked.

"I came to the house soon after dark."

"Had you been in London?"

"Yes; I walked from Bexhill."

"It was dark when you arrived?"

"Yes, nearly dark."

"The servants had all gone out?"

"Yes."

"Was Mr. Minute pleased to see you?"

"Yes; he had expected me earlier in the day."

"Did he tell you that his nephew was coming to see him?"

"I knew that."

"You say he suggested that you should make yourself scarce?"

"Yes."

"And as you had a headache, you went upstairs and lay down on your bed?"

"Yes."

"What were you doing in Bexhill?"

"I came down from town and got into the wrong portion of the train."

A junior leaned over and whispered quickly to his leader.

"I see, I see," said the counsel petulantly. "Your ticket was found at Bexhill. Have you ever seen Mr. Rex Holland?" he asked.

"Never."

"You have never met any person of that name?"

"Never."

In this tame way the cross-examination closed, as cross-examinations have a habit of doing.

By the time the final addresses of counsel had ended, and the judge had finished a masterly summing-up, there was no doubt whatever in the mind of any person in the court as to what the verdict would be. The jury was absent from the box for twenty minutes and returned a verdict of "Not guilty!"

The judge discharged Frank Merrill without comment, and he left the court a free but ruined man.



CHAPTER XIII

THE MAN WHO CAME TO MONTREUX

It was two months after the great trial, on a warm day in October, when Frank Merrill stepped ashore from the big white paddle boat which had carried him across Lake Leman from Lausanne, and, handing his bag to a porter, made his way to the hotel omnibus. He looked at his watch. It pointed to a quarter to four, and May was not due to arrive until half past. He went to his hotel, washed and changed and came down to the vestibule to inquire if the instructions he had telegraphed had been carried out.

May was arriving in company with Saul Arthur Mann, who was taking one of his rare holidays abroad. Frank had only seen the girl once since the day of the trial. He had come to breakfast on the following morning, and very little had been said. He was due to leave that afternoon for the Continent. He had a little money, sufficient for his needs, and Jasper Cole had offered no suggestion that he would dispute the will, in so far as it affected Frank. So he had gone abroad and had idled away two months in France, Spain, and Italy, and had then made his leisurely way back to Switzerland by way of Maggiore.

He had grown a little graver, was a little more set in his movements, but he bore upon his face no mark to indicate the mental agony through which he must have passed in that long-drawn-out and wearisome trial. So thought the girl as she came through the swing doors of the hotel, passed the obsequious hotel servants, and greeted him in the big palm court.

If she saw any change in him he remarked a development in her which was a little short of wonderful. She was at that age when the woman is breaking through the beautiful chrysalis of girlhood. In those two months a remarkable change had come over her, a change which he could not for the moment define, for this phenomenon of development had been denied to his experience.

"Why, May," he said, "you are quite old."

She laughed, and again he noticed the change. The laugh was richer, sweeter, purer than the bubbling treble he had known.

"You are not getting complimentary, are you?" she asked.

She was exquisitely dressed, and had that poise which few Englishwomen achieve. She had the art of wearing clothes, and from the flimsy crest of her toque to the tips of her little feet she was all that the most exacting critic could desire. There are well-dressed women who are no more than mannequins. There are fine ladies who cannot be mistaken for anything but fine ladies, whose dresses are a horror and an abomination and whose expressed tastes are execrable.

May Nuttall was a fine lady, finely appareled.

"When you have finished admiring me, Frank," she said, "tell us what you have been doing. But first of all let us have some tea. You know Mr. Mann?"

The little investigator beaming in the background took Frank's hand and shook it heartily. He was dressed in what he thought was an appropriate costume for a mountainous country. His boots were stout, the woolen stockings which covered his very thin legs were very woolen, and his knickerbocker suit was warranted to stand wear and tear. He had abandoned his top hat for a large golf cap, which was perched rakishly over one eye. Frank looked round apprehensively for Saul Arthur's alpenstock, and was relieved when he failed to discover one.

The girl threw off her fur wrap and unbuttoned her gloves as the waiter placed the big silver tray on the table before her.

"I'm afraid I have not much to tell," said Frank in answer to her question. "I've just been loafing around. What is your news?"

"What is my news?" she asked. "I don't think I have any, except that everything is going very smoothly in England, and, oh, Frank, I am so immensely rich!"

He smiled.

"The appropriate thing would be to say that I am immensely poor," he said, "but as a matter of fact I am not. I went down to Aix and won quite a lot of money."

"Won it?" she said.

He nodded with an amused little smile.

"You wouldn't have thought I was a gambler, would you?" he asked solemnly. "I don't think I am, as a matter of fact, but somehow I wanted to occupy my mind."

"I understand," she said quickly.

Another little pause while she poured out the tea, which afforded Saul Arthur Mann an opportunity of firing off fifty facts about Geneva in as many sentences.

"What has happened to Jasper?" asked Frank after a while.

The girl flushed a little.

"Oh, Jasper," she said awkwardly, "I see him, you know. He has become more mysterious than ever, quite like one of those wicked people one reads about in sensational stories. He has a laboratory somewhere in the country, and he does quite a lot of motoring. I've seen him several times at Brighton, for instance."

Frank nodded slowly.

"I should think that he was a good driver," he said.

Saul Arthur Mann looked up and met his eye with a smile which was lost upon the girl.

"He has been kind to me," she said hesitatingly.

"Does he ever speak about—"

She shook her head.

"I don't want to think about that," she said; "please don't let us talk about it."

He knew she was referring to John Minute's death, and changed the conversation.

A few minutes later he had an opportunity of speaking with Mr. Mann.

"What is the news?" he asked.

Saul Arthur Mann looked round.

"I think we are getting near the truth," he said, dropping his voice. "One of my men has had him under observation ever since the day of the trial. There is no doubt that he is really a brilliant chemist."

"Have you a theory?"

"I have several," said Mr. Mann. "I am perfectly satisfied that the unfortunate fellow we saw together on the occasion of our first meeting was Rex Holland's servant. I was as certain that he was poisoned by a very powerful poisoning. When your trial was on the body was exhumed and examined, and the presence of that drug was discovered. It was the same as that employed in the case of the chauffeur. Obviously, Rex Holland is a clever chemist. I wanted to see you about that. He said at the trial that he had discussed such matters with you."

Frank nodded.

"We used to have quite long talks about drugs," he said. "I have recalled many of those conversations since the day of the trial. He even fired me with his enthusiasm, and I used to assist him in his little experiments, and obtained quite a working knowledge of these particular elements. Unfortunately I cannot remember very much, for my enthusiasm soon died, and beyond the fact that he employed hyocine and Indian hemp I have only the dimmest recollection of any of the constituents he employed."

Saul Arthur nodded energetically.

"I shall have more to tell you later, perhaps," he said, "but at present my inquiries are shaping quite nicely. He is going to be a difficult man to catch, because, if all I believe is true, he is one of the most cold-blooded and calculating men it has ever been my lot to meet—and I have met a few," he added grimly.

When he said men Frank knew that he had meant criminals.

"We are probably doing him a horrible injustice," he smiled. "Poor old Jasper!"

"You are not cut out for police work," snapped Saul Arthur Mann; "you've too many sympathies."

"I don't exactly sympathize," rejoined Frank, "but I just pity him in a way."

Again Mr. Mann looked round cautiously and again lowered his voice, which had risen.

"There is one thing I want to talk to you about. It is rather a delicate matter, Mr. Merrill," he said.

"Fire ahead!"

"It is about Miss Nuttall. She has seen a lot of our friend Jasper, and after every interview she seems to grow more and more reliant upon his help. Once or twice she has been embarrassed when I have spoken about Jasper Cole and has changed the subject."

Frank pursed his lips thoughtfully, and a hard little look came into his eyes, which did not promise well for Jasper.

"So that is it," he said, and shrugged his shoulders. "If she cares for him, it is not my business."

"But it is your business," said the other sharply. "She was fond enough of you to offer to marry you."

Further talk was cut short by the arrival of the girl. Their meeting at Geneva had been to some extent a chance one. She was going through to Chamonix to spend the winter, and Saul Arthur Mann seized the opportunity of taking a short and pleasant holiday. Hearing that Frank was in Switzerland, she had telegraphed him to meet her.

"Are you staying any time in Switzerland?" she asked him as they strolled along the beautiful quay.

"I am going back to London to-night," he replied.

"To-night," she said in surprise.

He nodded.

"But I am staying here for two or three days," she protested.

"I intended also staying for two or three days," he smiled, "but my business will not wait."

Nevertheless, she persuaded him to stay till the morrow.

They were at breakfast when the morning mail was delivered, and Frank noted that she went rapidly through the dozen letters which came to her, and she chose one for first reading. He could not help but see that that bore an English stamp, and his long acquaintance with the curious calligraphy of Jasper Cole left him in no doubt as to who was the correspondent. He saw with what eagerness she read the letter, the little look of disappointment when she turned to an inside sheet and found that it had not been filled, and his mind was made up. He had a post also, which he examined with some evidence of impatience.

"Your mail is not so nice as mine," said the girl with a smile.

"It is not nice at all," he grumbled; "the one thing I wanted, and, to be very truthful, May, the one inducement—"

"To stay over the night," she added, "was—what?"

"I have been trying to buy a house on the lake," he said, "and the infernal agent at Lausanne promised to write telling me whether my terms had been agreed to by his client."

He looked down at the table and frowned. Saul Arthur Mann had a great and extensive knowledge of human nature. He had remarked the disappointment on Frank's face, having identified also the correspondent whose letter claimed priority of attention. He knew that Frank's anger with the house agent was very likely the expression of his anger in quite another direction.

"Can I send the letter on?" suggested the girl.

"That won't help me," said Frank, with a little grimace. "I wanted to settle the business this week."

"I have it," she said. "I will open the letter and telegraph to you in Paris whether the terms are accepted or not."

Frank laughed.

"It hardly seems worth that," he said, "but I should take it as awfully kind of you if you would, May."

Saul Arthur Mann believed in his mind that Frank did not care tuppence whether the agent accepted the terms or not, but that he had taken this as a Heaven-sent opportunity for veiling his annoyance.

"You have had quite a large mail, Miss Nuttall," he said.

"I've only opened one, though. It is from Jasper," she said hurriedly.

Again both men noticed the faint flush, the strange, unusual light which came to her eyes.

"And where does Jasper write from?" asked Frank, steadying his voice.

"He writes from England, but he was going on the Continent to Holland the day he wrote," she said. "It is funny to think that he is here."

"In Switzerland?" asked Frank in surprise.

"Don't be silly," she laughed. "No, I mean on the mainland—I mean there is no sea between us."

She went crimson.

"It sounds thrilling," said Frank dryly.

She flashed round at him.

"You mustn't be horrid about Jasper," she said quickly; "he never speaks about you unkindly."

"I don't see why he should," said Frank; "but let's get off a subject which is—"

"Which is—what?" she challenged

"Which is controversial," said Frank diplomatically.

She came down to the station to see him off. As he looked out of the window, waving his farewells, he thought he had never seen a more lovely being or one more desirable.

It was in the afternoon of that day which saw Frank Merrill speeding toward the Swiss frontier and Paris that Mr. Rex Holland strode into the Palace Hotel at Montreux and seated himself at a table in the restaurant. The hour was late and the room was almost deserted. Giovanni, the head waiter, recognized him and came hurriedly across the room.

"Ah, m'sieur," he said, "you are back from England. I didn't expect you till the winter sports had started. Is Paris very dull?"

"I didn't come through Paris," said the other shortly; "there are many roads leading to Switzerland."

"But few pleasant roads, m'sieur. I have come to Montreux by all manner of ways—from Paris, through Pontarlier, through Ostend, Brussels, through the Hook of Holland and Amsterdam, but Paris is the only way for the man who is flying to this beautiful land."

The man at the table said nothing, scanning the menu carefully. He looked tired as one who had taken a very long journey.

"It may interest you to know," he said, after he had given his order and as Giovanni was turning away, "that I came by the longest route. Tell me, Giovanni, have you a man called Merrill staying at the hotel?"

"No, m'sieur," said the other. "Is he a friend of yours?"

Mr. Rex Holland smiled.

"In a sense he is a friend, in a sense he is not," he said flippantly, and offered no further enlightenment, although Giovanni waited with a deferential cock of his head.

Later, when he had finished his modest dinner, he strolled into the one long street of the town, returning to the writing room of the hotel with a number of papers which included the visitors' list, a publication printed in English, and which, as it related the comings and goings of visitors, not only to Lausanne, Montreux, and Teritet, but also to Evian and Geneva, enjoyed a fair circulation. He sat at the table, and, drawing a sheet of paper from the rack, wrote, addressed an envelope to Frank Merrill, esquire, Hotel de France, Geneva, slipped it into the hotel pillar box, and went to bed.

"There's a letter here for Frank," said the girl. "I wonder if it is from his agent."

She examined the envelope, which bore the Montreux postmark.

"I should imagine it is," said Saul Arthur Mann.

"Well, I am going to open it, anyway," said the girl. "Poor Frank! He will be in a state of suspense."

She tore open the envelope, and took out a letter. Mr. Mann saw her face go white, and the letter trembled in her hand. Without a word she passed it to him, and he read:

"Dear Frank Merrill," said the letter. "Give me another month's grace and then you may tell the whole story. Yours, Rex Holland."

Saul Arthur Mann stared at the letter with open mouth.

"What does it mean?" asked the girl in a whisper.

"It means that Merrill is shielding somebody," said the other. "It means—"

Suddenly his face lit up with excitement.

"The writing!" he gasped.

Her eyes followed his, and for a moment she did not understand; then, with a lightning sweep of her arm, she snatched the letter from his hand and crumpled it in a ball.

"The writing!" said Mr. Mann again. "I've seen it before. It is—Jasper Cole's!"

She looked at him steadily, though her face was white, and the hand which grasped the crumpled paper was shaking.

"I think you are mistaken, Mr. Mann," she said quietly.



CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN WHO LOOKED LIKE FRANK

Saul Arthur Mann came back to England full of his news, and found Frank at the little Jermyn Street hotel where he had installed himself, and Frank listened without interruption to the story of the letter.

"Of course," the little fellow went on, "I went straight over to Montreux. The note heading was not on the paper, but I had no difficulty, by comparing the qualities of papers used at the various hotels, in discovering that it was written from the Palace. The head waiter knew this Rex Holland, who had been a frequent visitor, had always tipped very liberally, and lived in something like style. He could not describe his patron, except that he was a young man with a very languid manner who had arrived the previous morning from Holland and had immediately inquired for Frank Merrill."

"From Holland! Are you sure it was the morning? I have a particular reason for asking," asked Frank quickly.

"No, it was not in the morning, now you mention it. It was in the evening. He left again the following morning by the northern train."

"How did he find my address?" asked Frank.

"Obviously from the visitors' list. The waiter on duty in the writing room remembered having seen him consulting the newspaper. Now, my boy, you have to be perfectly candid with me. What do you know about Rex Holland?"

Frank opened his case, took out a cigarette, and lit it before he replied.

"I know what everybody knows about him," he said, with a hint of bitterness in his voice, "and something which nobody knows but me."

"But, my dear fellow," said Saul Arthur Mann, laying his hand on the other's shoulder, "surely you realize how important it is for you that you should tell me all you know."

Frank shook his head.

"The time is not come," he said, and he would make no further statement.

But on another matter he was emphatic.

"By heaven, Mann, I am not going to stand by and see May ruin her life. There's something sinister in this influence which Jasper is exercising over her. You have seen it for yourself."

Saul Arthur nodded.

"I can't understand what it is," he confessed. "Of course Jasper is not a bad-looking fellow. He has perfect manners and is a charming companion. You don't think—"

"That he is winning on his merits?" Frank shook his head. "No, indeed, I do not. It is difficult for me to discuss my private affairs, and you know how reluctant I am to do so, but you are also aware of what I think of May. I was hoping that we should go back to the place where we left off, and, although she is kindness itself, this girl who is more to me than anything or anybody in the world, and who was prepared to marry me, and would have married me but for Jasper's machinations, was almost cold."

He was walking up and down the room, and now halted in his stride and spread out his arms despairingly.

"What am I to do? I cannot lose her. I cannot!"

There was a fierceness in his tone which revealed the depth of his feeling, and Saul Arthur Mann understood.

"I think it is too soon to say you have lost her, Frank," he said.

He had conceived a genuine liking for Frank Merrill, and the period of tribulation through which the young man had passed had heightened the respect in which he held him.

"We shall see light in dark places before we go much farther," he said. "There is something behind this crime, Frank, which I don't understand, but which I am certain is no mystery to you. I am sure that you are shielding somebody, for what reason I am not in a position to tell, but I will get to the bottom of it."

No event in the interesting life of this little man, who had spent his years in the accumulation of facts, had so distressed and piqued him as the murder of John Minute. The case had ended where the trial had left it.

Crawley, who might have offered a new aspect to the tragedy, had disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed him. The most strenuous efforts which the official police had made, added to the investigations which Saul Arthur Mann had conducted independently, had failed to trace the fugitive ex-sergeant of police. Obviously, he was not to be confounded with Rex Holland. He was a distinct personality working possibly in collusion, but there the association ended.

It had occurred to the investigator that possibly Crawley had accompanied Rex Holland in his flight, but the most careful inquiries which he had pursued at Montreux were fruitless in this respect as in all others.

To add to his bewilderment, investigations nearer at home were constantly bringing him across the track of Frank Merrill. It was as though fate had conspired to show the boy in the blackest light. Frank had been acting as secretary to his uncle, and then Jasper Cole had suddenly appeared upon the scene from nowhere in particular. The suggestion had been made somewhat vaguely that he had come from "abroad," and it was certain that he arrived as a result of long negotiations which John Minute himself had conducted. They were negotiations which involved months of correspondence, no letter of which either from one or the other had Frank seen.

While the trial was pending, the little man collected quite a volume of information, both from Frank and the girl, but nothing had been quite as inexplicable as this intrusion of Jasper Cole upon the scene, or the extraordinary mystery which John Minute had made of his engagement.

He had written and posted all the letters to Jasper himself, and had apparently received the replies, which he had burned, at some other address of which Frank was ignorant.

Jasper had come, and then one day there had been a quarrel, not between the two young men, but between Frank and his uncle. It was a singularly bitter quarrel, and again Frank refused to discuss the cause. He left the impression upon Saul Arthur's mind that he had to some extent been responsible. And here was another fact which puzzled "The Man Who Knew." Sergeant Smith, as he was then, had been to some extent responsible. It was Frank who had introduced the sergeant to Eastbourne and brought him to his uncle. But this was only one aspect of the mystery. There were others as obscure.

Saul Arthur Mann went back to his bureau, and for the twentieth time gathered the considerable dossiers he had accumulated relating to the case and to the characters, and went through them systematically and carefully.

He left his office near midnight, but at nine o'clock the next morning was on his way to Eastbourne. Constable Wiseman was, by good fortune, enjoying a day's holiday, and was at work in his kitchen garden when Mr. Mann's car pulled up before the cottage. Wiseman received his visitor importantly, for, though the constable's prestige was regarded in official circles as having diminished as a result of the trial, it was felt by the villagers that their policeman, if he had not solved the mystery of John Minute's death, had at least gone a long way to its solution.

In the spotless room which was half kitchen and half sitting room, with its red-tiled floor covered by bright matting, Mrs. Wiseman produced a well-dusted Windsor chair, which she placed at Saul Arthur Mann's disposal before she politely vanished. In a very few words the investigator stated his errand, and Constable Wiseman listened in noncommittal silence. When his visitor had finished, he shook his head.

"The only thing about the sergeant I know," he said, "I have already told the chief constable who sat in that very chair," he explained. "He was always a bit of a mystery—the sergeant, I mean. When he was 'tanked,' if I may use the expression, he would tell you stories by the hour, but when he was sober you couldn't get a word out of him. His daughter only lived with him for about a fortnight."

"His daughter!" said Mr. Mann quickly.

"He had a daughter, as I've already notified my superiors," said Constable Wiseman gravely. "Rather a pretty girl. I never saw much of her, but she was in Eastbourne off and on for about a fortnight after the sergeant came. Funny thing, I happen to know the day he arrived, because the wheel of his fly came off on my beat, and I noticed the circumstances according to law and reported the same. I don't even know if she was living with him. He had a cottage down at Birlham Gap, and that is where I saw her. Yes, she was a pretty girl," he said reminiscently; "one of the slim and slender kind, very dark and with a complexion like milk. But they never found her," he said.

Again Mr. Mann interrupted.

"You mean the police?"

Constable Wiseman shook his head.

"Oh, no," he said; "they've been looking for her for years; long before Mr. Minute was killed."

"Who are 'they'?"

"Well, several people," said the constable slowly. "I happen to know that Mr. Cole wanted to find out where she was. But then he didn't start searching until weeks after she disappeared. It is very rum," mused Constable Wiseman, "the way Mr. Cole went about it. He didn't come straight to us and ask our assistance, but he had a lot of private detectives nosing round Eastbourne; one of 'em happened to be a cousin of my wife's. So we got to know about it. Cole spent a lot of money trying to trace her, and so did Mr. Minute."

Saul Arthur Mann saw a faint gleam of daylight.

"Mr. Minute, too?" he asked. "Was he working with Mr. Cole?"

"So far as I can find out, they were both working independent of the other—Mr. Cole and Mr. Minute," explained Mr. Wiseman. "It is what I call a mystery within a mystery, and it has never been properly cleared up. I thought something was coming out about it at the trial, but you know what a mess the lawyers made of it."

It was Constable Wiseman's firm conviction that Frank Merrill had escaped through the incompetence of the crown authorities, and there were moments in his domestic circle when he was bitter and even insubordinate on the subject.

"You still think Mr. Merrill was guilty?" asked Saul Arthur Mann as he took his leave of the other.

"I am as sure of it as I am that I am standing here," said the constable, not without a certain pride in the consistency of his view. "Didn't I go into the room? Wasn't he there with the deceased? Wasn't his revolver found? Hadn't there been some jiggery-pokery with his books in London?"

Saul Arthur Mann smiled.

"There are some of us who think differently, Constable," he said, shaking hands with the implacable officer of the law.

He brought back to London a few new facts to be added to his record of Sergeant Crawley, alias Smith, and on these he went painstakingly to work.

As has been already explained, Saul Arthur Mann had a particularly useful relationship with Scotland Yard, and fortunately, about that time, he was on the most excellent terms with official police headquarters, for he had been able to assist them in running to earth one of the most powerful blackmailing gangs that had ever operated in Europe. His files had been drawn upon to such good purpose that the police had secured convictions against the seventeen members of the gang who were in England.

He sought an interview with the chief commissioner, and that same night, accompanied by a small army of detectives, he made a systematic search of Silvers Rents. The house into which Jasper Cole had been seen to enter was again raided, and again without result. The house was empty save for one room, a big room which was simply furnished with a truckle-bed, a table, a chair, a lamp, and a strip of carpet. There were four rooms—two upstairs, which were never used, and two on the ground floor.

At the end of a passage was a kitchen, which also was empty, save for a length of bamboo ladder. From the kitchen a bolted door led on to a tiny square of yard which was separated by three walls from yards of similar dimensions to left and right and to the back of the premises. At the back of Silvers Rents was Royston Court, which was another cul-de-sac, running parallel with Silvers Rents.

Mr. Mann returned to the house, and again searched the upstairs rooms, looking particularly for a trapdoor, for the bamboo ladder suggested some such exit. This time, however, he completely failed. Jasper Cole, he found, had made only one visit to the house since John Minute's death.

It is a curious fact, as showing the localizing of interest, that Silvers Rents knew nothing of what had occurred almost at its doors, and, though it had at its finger tips all the gossip of the docks and the Thames Iron Works, it was profoundly ignorant of what was common property in Royston Court. It is even more remarkable that Saul Arthur Mann, with his squadron of detectives, should have confined their investigations to Silvers Rents.

The investigator was baffled and disappointed, but by the oddest of chances he was to pick up yet another thread of the Minute mystery, a thread which, however, was to lead him into an ever-deeper maze than that which he had already and so unsuccessfully attempted to penetrate.

Three days after his search of Silvers Rents, business took Mr. Mann to Camden Town. To be exact, he had gone at the request of the police to Holloway Jail to see a prisoner who had turned state's evidence on a matter in which the police and Mr. Mann were equally interested. Very foolishly he had dismissed his taxi, and when he emerged from the doors there was no conveyance in sight. He decided, rather than take the trams which would have carried him to King's Cross, to walk, and, since he hated main roads, he had taken a short cut, which, as he knew, would lead him into the Hampstead Road.

Thus he found himself in Flowerton Road, a thoroughfare of respectable detached houses occupied by the superior industrial type. He was striding along, swinging his umbrella and humming, as was his wont, an unmusical rendering of a popular tune, when his attention was attracted to a sight which took his breath away and brought him to a halt.

It was half past five, and dull, but his eyesight was excellent, and it was impossible for him to make a mistake. The houses of Flowerton Road stand back and are separated from the sidewalk by diminutive gardens. The front doors are approached by six or seven steps, and it was on the top of one of these flights in front of an open door that the scene was enacted which brought Mr. Mann to a standstill.

The characters were a young man and a girl. The girl was extremely pretty and very pale. The man was the exact double of Frank Merrill. He was dressed in a rough tweed suit, and wore a soft felt hat with a fairly wide brim. But it was not the appearance of this remarkable apparition which startled the investigator. It was the attitude of the two people. The girl was evidently pleading with her companion. Saul Arthur Mann was too far away to hear what she said, but he saw the young man shake himself loose from the girl. She again grasped his arm and raised her face imploringly.

Mr. Mann gasped, for he saw the young man's hand come up and strike her back into the house. Then he caught hold of the door and banged it savagely, walked down the stairs, and, turning, hurried away.

The investigator stood as though he were rooted to the spot, and before he could recover himself the fellow had turned the corner of the road and was out of sight. Saul Arthur Mann took off his hat and wiped his forehead. All his initiative was for the moment paralyzed. He walked slowly up to the gate and hesitated. What excuse could he have for calling? If this were Frank, assuredly his own views were all wrong, and the mystery was a greater mystery still.

His energies began to reawaken. He took a note of the number of the house, and hurried off after the young man. When he turned the corner his quarry had vanished. He hurried to the next corner, but without overtaking the object of his pursuit. Fortunately, at this moment, he found an empty taxicab and hailed it.

"Grimm's Hotel, Jermyn Street," he directed.

At least he could satisfy his mind upon one point.



CHAPTER XV

A LETTER IN THE GRATE

Grimm's Hotel is in reality a block of flats, with a restaurant attached. The restaurant is little more than a kitchen from whence meals are served to residents in their rooms. Frank's suite was on the third floor, and Mr. Mann, paying his cabman, hurried into the hall, stepped into the automatic lift, pressed the button, and was deposited at Frank's door. He knocked with a sickening sense of apprehension that there would be no answer. To his delight and amazement, he heard Frank's firm step in the tiny hall of his flat, and the door was opened. Frank was in the act of dressing for dinner.

"Come in, S. A. M.," he said cheerily, "and tell me all the news."

He led the way back to his room and resumed the delicate task of tying his dress bow.

"How long have you been here?" asked Mr. Mann.

Frank looked at him inquiringly.

"How long have I been here?" he repeated. "I cannot tell you the exact time, but I have been here since a short while after lunch."

Mr. Mann was bewildered and still unconvinced.

"What clothes did you take off?"

It was Frank's turn to look amazed and bewildered.

"Clothes?" he repeated. "What are you driving at, my dear chap?"

"What suit were you wearing to-day?" persisted Saul Arthur Mann.

Frank disappeared into his dressing room and came out with a tumbled bundle which he dropped on a chair. It was the blue suit which he usually affected.

"Now what is the joke?"

"It is no joke," said the other. "I could have sworn that I saw you less than half an hour ago in Camden Town."

"I won't pretend that I don't know where Camden Town is," smiled Frank, "but I have not visited that interesting locality for many years."

Saul Arthur Mann was silent. It was obvious to him that whoever was the occupant of 69 Flowerton Road, it was not Frank Merrill. Frank listened to the narrative with interest.

"You were probably mistaken; the light played you a trick, I expect," he said.

But Mr. Mann was emphatic.

"I could have taken an oath in a court that it was you," he said.

Frank stared out of the window.

"How very curious!" he mused. "I suppose I cannot very well prosecute a man for looking like me—poor girl!"

"Of whom are you thinking?" asked the other.

"I was thinking of the unfortunate woman," answered Frank. "What brutes there are in the world!"

"You gave me a terrible fright," admitted his friend.

Frank's laugh was loud and hearty.

"I suppose you saw me figuring in a court, charged with common assault," he said.

"I saw more than that," said the other gravely, "and I see more than that now. Suppose you have a double, and suppose that double is working in collusion with your enemies."

Frank shook his head wearily.

"My dear friend," he said, with a little smile, "I am tired of supposing things. Come and dine with me."

But Mr. Mann had another engagement. Moreover, he wanted to think things out.

Thinking things out was a process which brought little reward in this instance, and he went to bed that night a vexed and puzzled man. He always had his breakfast in bed at ten o'clock in the morning, for he had reached the age of habits and had fixed ten o'clock, since it gave his clerks time to bring down his personal mail from the office to his private residence.

It was a profitable mail, it was an exciting mail, and it contained an element of rich promise, for it included a letter from Constable Wiseman:

DEAR SIR: Re our previous conversation, I have just come across one of the photographs of the young lady—Sergeant Smith's daughter. It was given to the private detective who was searching for her. It was given to my wife by her cousin, and I send it to you hoping it may be of some use. Yours respectfully, PETER JOHN WISEMAN.

The photograph was wrapped in a piece of tissue paper, and Saul Arthur Mann opened it eagerly. He looked at the oblong card and gasped, for the girl who was depicted there was the girl he had seen on the steps of 69 Flowerton Road.

A telephone message prepared Frank for the news, and an hour later the two men were together in the office of the bureau.

"I am going along to that house to see the girl," said Saul Arthur Mann. "Will you come?"

"With all the pleasure in life," said Frank. "Curiously enough, I am as eager to find her as you. I remember her very well, and one of the quarrels I had with my uncle was due to her. She had come up to the house on behalf of her father, and I thought uncle treated her rather brutally."

"Point number one cleared up," thought Saul Arthur Mann.

"Then she disappeared," Frank went on, "and Jasper came on the scene. There was some association between this girl and Jasper, which I have never been able to fathom. All I know is that he took a tremendous interest in her and tried to find her, and, so far as I remember, he never succeeded."

Mr. Mann's car was at the door, and in a few minutes they were deposited before the prim exterior of Number 69.

The door was opened by a girl servant, who stared from Saul Arthur Mann to his companion.

"There is a lady living here," said Mr. Mann.

He produced the photograph.

"This is the lady?"

The girl nodded, still staring at Frank.

"I want to see her."

"She's gone," said the girl.

"You are looking at me very intently," said Frank. "Have you ever seen me before?"

"Yes, sir," said the girl; "you used to come here, or a gentleman very much like you. You are Mr. Merrill."

"That is my name," smiled Frank, "but I do not think I have ever been here before."

"Where has the lady gone?" asked Saul Arthur.

"She went last night. Took all her boxes and went off in a cab."

"Is anybody living in the house?"

"No, sir," said the girl.

"How long have you been in service here?"

"About a week, sir," replied the girl.

"We are friends of hers," said Saul Arthur shamelessly, "and we have been asked to call to see if everything is all right."

The girl hesitated, but Saul Arthur Mann, with that air of authority which he so readily assumed, swept past her and began an inspection of the house.

It was plainly furnished, but the furniture was good.

"Apparently the spurious Mr. Merrill had plenty of money," said Saul Arthur Mann.

There were no photographs or papers visible until they came to the bedroom, where, in the grate, was a torn sheet of paper bearing a few lines of fine writing, which Mr. Mann immediately annexed. Before they left, Frank again asked the girl:

"Was the gentleman who lived here really like me?"

"Yes, sir," said the little slavey.

"Have a good look at me," said Frank humorously, and the girl stared again.

"Something like you," she admitted.

"Did he talk like me?"

"I never heard him talk, sir," said the girl.

"Tell me," said Saul Arthur Mann, "was he kind to his wife?"

A faint grin appeared on the face of the little servant.

"They was always rowing," she admitted. "A bullying fellow he was, and she was frightened of him. Are you the police?" she asked with sudden interest.

Frank shook his head.

"No, we are not the police."

He gave the girl half a crown, and walked down the steps ahead of his companion.

"It is rather awkward if I have a double who bullies his wife and lives in Camden Town," he said as the car hummed back to the city office.

Saul Arthur Mann was silent during the journey, and only answered in monosyllables.

Again in the privacy of his office, he took the torn letter and carefully pieced it together on his desk. It bore no address, and there were no affectionate preliminaries:

You must get out of London. Saul Arthur Mann saw you both to-day. Go to the old place and await instructions.

There was no signature, but across the table the two men looked at one another, for the writing was the writing of Jasper Cole.



CHAPTER XVI

THE COMING OF SERGEANT SMITH

Jasper Cole at that moment was trudging through the snow to the little chalet which May Nuttall had taken on the slope of the mountain overlooking Chamonix. The sleigh which had brought him up from the station was at the foot of the rise. May saw him from the veranda, and coo-ooed a welcome. He stamped the snow from his boots and ran up the steps of the veranda to meet her.

"This is a very pleasant surprise," she said, giving him both her hands and looking at him approvingly. He had lost much of his pallor, and his face was tanned and healthy, though a little fine drawn.

"It was rather a mad thing to do, wasn't it?" he confessed ruefully.

"You are such a confirmed bachelor, Jasper, that I believe you hate doing anything outside your regular routine. Why did you come all the way from Holland to the Haute Savoie?"

He had followed her into the warm and cozy sitting room, and was warming his chilled fingers by the big log fire which burned on the hearth.

"Can you ask? I came to see you."

"And how are all the experiments going?"

She turned him to another topic in some hurry.

"There have been no experiments since last month; at least not the kind of experiments you mean. The one in which I have been engaged has been very successful."

"And what was that?" she asked curiously.

"I will tell you one of these days," he said.

He was staying at the Hotel des Alpes, and hoped to be a week in Chamonix. They chatted about the weather, the early snow which had covered the valley in a mantle of white, about the tantalizing behavior of Mont Blanc, which had not been visible since May had arrived, of the early avalanches, which awakened her with their thunder on the night of her arrival, of the pleasant road to Argentieres, of the villages by the Col de Balme, which are buried in snow, of the sparkling, ethereal green of the great glacier—of everything save that which was nearest to their thoughts and to their hearts.

Jasper broke the ice when he referred to Frank's visit to Geneva.

"How did you know?" she asked, suddenly grave.

"Somebody told me," he said casually.

"Jasper, were you ever at Montreux?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye.

"I have been to Montreux, or rather to Caux," he said. "That is the village on the mountain above, and one has to go through Montreux to reach it. Why did you ask?"

A sudden chill had fallen upon her, which she did not shake off that day or the next.

They made the usual excursions together, climbed up the wooded slopes of the Butte, and on the third morning after his arrival stood together in the clear dawn and watched the first pink rays of the sun striking the humped summit of Mont Blanc.

"Isn't it glorious?" she whispered.

He nodded.

The serene beauty of it all, the purity, the majestic aloofness of mountains at once depressed and exalted her, brought her nearer to the sublimity of ancient truths, cleansed her of petty fears. She turned to him unexpectedly and asked:

"Jasper, who killed John Minute?"

He made no reply. His wistful eyes were fixed hungrily upon the glories of light and shade, of space, of inaccessibility, of purity, of coloring, of all that dawn upon Mont Blanc comprehended. When he spoke his voice was lowered to almost a whisper.

"I know that the man who killed John Minute is alive and free," he said.

"Who was he?"

"If you do not know now, you may never know," he said.

There was a silence which lasted for fully five minutes, and the crimson light upon the mountain top had paled to lemon yellow.

Then she asked again:

"Are you directly or indirectly guilty?"

He shook his head.

"Neither directly nor indirectly," he said shortly, and the next minute she was in his arms.

There had been no word of love between them, no tender passage, no letter which the world could not read. It was a love-making which had begun where other love-makings end—in conquest and in surrender. In this strange way, beyond all understanding, May Nuttall became engaged, and announced the fact in the briefest of letters to her friends.

A fortnight later the girl arrived in England, and was met at Charing Cross by Saul Arthur Mann. She was radiantly happy and bubbling over with good spirits, a picture of health and beauty.

All this Mr. Mann observed with a sinking heart. He had a duty to perform, and that duty was not a pleasant one. He knew it was useless to reason with the girl. He could offer her no more than half-formed theories and suspicions, but at least he had one trump card. He debated in his mind whether he should play this, for here, too, his information was of the scantiest description. He carried his account of the girl to Frank Merrill.

"My dear Frank, she is simply infatuated," said the little man in despair. "Oh, if that infernal record of mine was only completed I could convince her in a second! There is no single investigation I have ever undertaken which has been so disappointing."

"Can nothing be done?" asked Frank, "I cannot believe that it will happen. Marry Jasper! Great Caesar! After all—"

His voice was hoarse. The hand he raised in protest shook.

Saul Arthur Mann scratched his chin reflectively.

"Suppose you saw her," he suggested, and added a little grimly: "I will see Mr. Cole at the same time."

Frank hesitated.

"I can understand your reluctance," the little man went on, "but there is too much at stake to allow your finer feelings to stop you. This matter has got to be prevented at all costs. We are fighting for time. In a month, possibly less, we may have the whole of the facts in our hands."

"Have you found out anything about the girl in Camden Town?" asked Frank.

"She has disappeared completely," replied the other. "Every clew we have had has led nowhere."

Frank dressed himself with unusual care that afternoon, and, having previously telephoned and secured the girl's permission to call, he presented himself to the minute. She was, as usual, cordiality itself.

"I was rather hurt at your not calling before, Frank," she said. "You have come to congratulate me?"

She looked at him straight in the eyes as she said this.

"You can hardly expect that, May," he said gently, "knowing how much you are to me and how greatly I wanted you. Honestly, I cannot understand it, and I can only suppose that you, whom I love better than anything in the world—and you mean more to me than any other being—share the suspicion which surrounds me like a poison cloud."

"Yet if I shared that suspicion," she said calmly, "would I let you see me? No, Frank, I was a child when—you know. It was only a few months ago, but I believe—indeed I know—it would have been the greatest mistake I could possibly have made. I should have been a very unhappy woman, for I have loved Jasper all along."

She said this evenly, without any display of emotion or embarrassment. Frank, narrating the interview to Saul Arthur Mann, described the speech as almost mechanical.

"I hope you are going to take it nicely," she went on, "that we are going to be such good friends as we always were, and that even the memory of your poor uncle's death and the ghastly trial which followed and the part that Jasper played will not spoil our friendship."

"But don't you see what it means to me?" he burst forth, and for a second they looked at one another, and Frank divined her thoughts and winced.

"I know what you are thinking," he said huskily; "you are thinking of all the beastly things that were said at the trial, that if I had gained you I should have gained all that I tried to gain."

She went red.

"It was horrid of me, wasn't it?" she confessed. "And yet that idea came to me. One cannot control one's thoughts, Frank, and you must be content to know that I believe in your innocence. There are some thoughts which flourish in one's mind like weeds, and which refuse to be uprooted. Don't blame me if I recalled the lawyer's words; it was an involuntary, hateful thought."

He inclined his head.

"There is another thought which is not involuntary," she went on, "and it is because I want to retain our friendship and I want everything to go on as usual that I am asking you one question. Your twenty-fourth birthday has come and gone; you told me that your uncle's design was to keep you unmarried until that day. You are still unmarried, and your twenty-fourth birthday has passed. What has happened?"

"Many things have happened," he replied quietly. "My uncle is dead. I am a rich man apart from the accident of his legacy. I could meet you on level terms."

"I knew nothing of this," she said quickly.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Didn't Jasper tell you?" he asked.

"No—Jasper told me nothing."

Frank drew a long breath.

"Then I can only say that until the mystery of my uncle's death is solved you cannot know," he said. "I can only repeat what I have already told you."

She offered her hand.

"I believe you, Frank," she said, "and I was wrong even to doubt you in the smallest degree."

He took her hand and held it.

"May," he said, "what is this strange fascination that Jasper has over you?"

For the second time in that interview she flushed and pulled her hand back.

"There is nothing unusual in the fascination which Jasper exercises," she smiled, quickly recovering, almost against her will, from the little twinge of anger she felt. "It is the influence which every woman has felt and which you one day will feel."

He laughed bitterly.

"Then nothing will make you change your mind?" he said.

"Nothing in the world," she answered emphatically.

For a moment she was sorry for him, as he stood, both hands resting on a chair, his eyes on the ground, a picture of despair, and she crossed to him and slipped her arm through his.

"Don't take it so badly, Frank," she said softly. "I am a capricious, foolish girl, I know, and I am really not worth a moment's suffering."

He shook himself together, gathered up his hat, his stick, and his overcoat and offered his hand.

"Good-by," he said, "and good luck!"

In the meantime another interview of a widely different character was taking place in the little house which Jasper Cole occupied on the Portsmouth Road. Jasper and Saul Arthur Mann had met before, but this was the first visit that the investigator had paid to the home of John Minute's heir.

Jasper was waiting at the door to greet the little man when he arrived, and had offered him a quiet but warm welcome and led the way to the beautiful study which was half laboratory, which he had built for himself since John Minute's death.

"I am coming straight to the point without any beating about the bush, Mr. Cole," said the little man, depositing his bag on the side of his chair and opening it with a jerk. "I will tell you frankly that I am acting on Mr. Merrill's behalf and that I am also acting, as I believe, in the interests of justice."

"Your motives, at any rate, are admirable," said Jasper, pushing back the papers which littered his big library table, and seating himself on the edge.

"You are probably aware that you are to some extent under suspicion, Mr. Cole."

"Under your suspicion or the suspicion of the authorities?" asked the other coolly.

"Under mine," said Saul Arthur Mann emphatically. "I cannot speak for the authorities."

"In what direction does this suspicion run?"

He thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets, and eyed the other keenly.

"My first suspicion is that you are well aware as to who murdered John Minute."

Jasper Cole nodded.

"I am perfectly aware that he was murdered by your friend, Mr. Merrill," he said.

"I suggest," said Saul Arthur Mann calmly, "that you know the murderer, and you know the murderer was not Frank Merrill."

Jasper made no reply, and a faint smile flickered for a second at the corner of his mouth, but he gave no other sign of his inward feelings.

"And the other point you wish to raise?" he asked.

"The other is a more delicate subject, since it involves a lady," said the little man. "You are about to be married to Miss Nuttall."

Jasper Cole nodded.

"You have obtained an extraordinary influence over the lady in this past few months."

"I hope so," said the other cheerfully.

"It is an influence which might have been brought about by normal methods, but it is also one," Saul Arthur leaned over and tapped the table emphatically with each word, "which might be secured by a very clever chemist who had found a way of sapping the will of his victim."

"By the administration of drugs?" asked Jasper.

"By the administration of drugs," repeated Saul Arthur Mann.

Jasper Cole smiled.

"I should like to know the drug," he said. "One would make a fortune, to say nothing of benefiting humanity to an extraordinary degree by its employment. For example, I might give you a dose and you would tell me all that you know; I am told that your knowledge is fairly extensive," he bantered. "Surely you, Mr. Mann, with your remarkable collection of information on all subjects under the sun, do not suggest that such a drug exists?"

"On the contrary," said "The Man Who Knew" in triumph, "it is known and is employed. It was known as long ago as the days of the Borgias. It was employed in France in the days of Louis XVI. It has been, to some extent, rediscovered and used in lunatic asylums to quiet dangerous patients."

He saw the interest deepen in the other's eyes.

"I have never heard of that," said Jasper slowly; "the only drug that is employed for that purpose is, as far as I know, bromide of potassium."

Mr. Mann produced a slip of paper, and read off a list of names, mostly of mental institutions in the United States of America and in Germany.

"Oh, that drug!" said Jasper Cole contemptuously. "I know the use to which that is put. There was an article on the subject in the British Medical Journal three months ago. It is a modified kind of 'twilight sleep'—hyocine and morphia. I'm afraid, Mr. Mann," he went on, "you have come on a fruitless errand, and, speaking as a humble student of science, I may suggest without offense that your theories are wholly fantastic."

"Then I will put another suggestion to you, Mr. Cole," said the little man without resentment, "and to me this constitutes the chief reason why you should not marry the lady whose confidence I enjoy and who, I feel sure, will be influenced by my advice."

"And what is that?" asked Jasper.

"It affects your own character, and it is in consequence a very embarrassing matter for me to discuss," said the little man.

Again the other favored him with that inscrutable smile of his.

"My moral character, I presume, is now being assailed," he said flippantly. "Please go on; you promise to be interesting."

"You were in Holland a short time ago. Does Miss Nuttall know this?"

Jasper nodded.

"She is well aware of the fact."

"You were in Holland with a lady," accused Mr. Mann slowly. "Is Miss Nuttall well aware of this fact, too?"

Jasper slipped from the table and stood upright. Through his narrow lids he looked down upon his accuser.

"Is that all you know?" he asked softly.

"Not all, but one of the things I know," retorted the other. "You were seen in her company. She was staying in the same hotel with you as 'Mrs. Cole.'"

Jasper nodded.

"You will excuse me if I decline to discuss the matter," he said.

"Suppose I ask Miss Nuttall to discuss it?" challenged the little man.

"You are the master of your own actions," said Jasper Cole quickly, "and I dare say, if you regard it as expedient, you will tell her, but I can promise you that whether you tell her or not I shall marry Miss Nuttall."

With this he ushered his visitor to the door, and hardly waited for the car to drive off before he had shut that door behind him.

Late that night the two friends forgathered and exchanged their experiences.

"I am sure there is something very wrong indeed," said Frank emphatically. "She was not herself. She spoke mechanically, almost as though she were reciting a lesson. You had the feeling that she was connected by wires with somebody who was dictating her every word and action. It is damnable, Mann. What can we do?"

"We must prevent the marriage," said the little man quietly, "and employ every means that opportunity suggests to that purpose. Make no mistake," he said emphatically; "Cole will stop at nothing. His attitude was one big bluff. He knows that I have beaten him. It was only by luck that I found out about the woman in Holland. I got my agent to examine the hotel register, and there it was, without any attempt at disguise: 'Mr. and Mrs. Cole, of London.'"

"The thing to do is to see May at once," said Frank, "and put all the facts before her, though I hate the idea; it seems like sneaking."

"Sneaking!" exploded Saul Arthur Mann. "What nonsense you talk! You are too full of scruples, my friend, for this work. I will see her to-morrow."

"I will go with you," said Frank, after a moment's thought. "I have no wish to escape my responsibility in the matter. She will probably hate me for my interference, but I have reached beyond the point where I care—so long as she can be saved."

It was agreed that they should meet one another at the office in the morning and make their way together.

"Remember this," said Mann, seriously, before they parted, "that if Cole finds the game is up he will stop at nothing."

"Do you think we ought to take precautions?" asked Frank.

"Honestly I do," confessed the other, "I don't think we can get the men from the Yard, but there is a very excellent agency which sometimes works for me, and they can provide a guard for the girl."

"I wish you would get in touch with them," said Frank earnestly. "I am worried sick over this business. She ought never to be left out of their sight. I will see if I can have a talk to her maid, so that we may know whenever she is going out. There ought to be a man on a motor cycle always waiting about the Savoy to follow her wherever she goes."

They parted at the entrance of the bureau, Saul Arthur Mann returning to telephone the necessary instructions. How necessary they were was proved that very night.

At nine o'clock May was sitting down to a solitary dinner when a telegram was delivered to her. It was from the chief of the little mission in which she had been interested, and ran:

Very urgent. Have something of the greatest importance to tell you.

It was signed with the name of the matron of the mission, and, leaving her dinner untouched, May only delayed long enough to change her dress before she was speeding in a taxi eastward.

She arrived at the "hall," which was the headquarters of the mission, to find it in darkness. A man who was evidently a new helper was waiting in the doorway and addressed her.

"You are Miss Nuttall, aren't you? I thought so. The matron has gone down to Silvers Rents, and she asked me to go along with you."

The girl dismissed the taxi, and in company with her guide threaded the narrow tangle of streets between the mission and Silvers Rents. She was halfway along one of the ill-lighted thoroughfares when she noticed that drawn up by the side of the road was a big, handsome motor car, and she wondered what had brought this evidence of luxurious living to the mean streets of Canning Town. She was not left in doubt very long, for as she came up to the lights and was shielding her eyes from their glare her arms were tightly grasped, a shawl was thrown over her head, and she was lifted and thrust into the car's interior. A hand gripped her throat.

"You scream and I will kill you!" hissed a voice in her ear.

At that moment the car started, and the girl, with a scream which was strangled in her throat, fell swooning back on the seat.

May recovered consciousness to find the car still rushing forward in the dark and the hand of her captor still resting at her throat.

"You be a sensible girl," said a muffled voice, "and do as you're told and no harm will come to you."

It was too dark to see his face, and it was evident that even if there were light the face was so well concealed that she could not recognize the speaker. Then she remembered that this man, who had acted as her guide, had been careful to keep in the shadow of whatever light there was while he was conducting her, as he said, to the matron.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

"You'll know in time," was the noncommittal answer.

It was a wild night; rain splashed against the windows of the car, and she could hear the wind howling above the noise of the engines. They were evidently going into the country, for now and again, by the light of the headlamps, she glimpsed hedges and trees which flashed past. Her captor suddenly let down one of the windows and leaned out, giving some instructions to the driver. What they were she guessed, for the lights were suddenly switched off and the car ran in darkness.

The girl was in a panic for all her bold showing. She knew that this desperate man was fearless of consequence, and that, if her death would achieve his ends and the ends of his partners, her life was in imminent peril. What were those ends, she wondered. Were these the same men who had done to death John Minute?

"Who are you?" she asked.

There was a little, chuckling laugh.

"You'll know soon enough."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when there was a terrific crash. The car stopped suddenly and canted over, and the girl was jerked forward to her knees. Every pane of glass in the car was smashed, and it was clear, from the angle at which it lay, that irremediable damage had been done. The man scrambled up, kicked open the door, and jumped out.

"Level-crossing gate, sir," said the voice of the chauffeur. "I've broken my wrist."

With the disappearance of her captor, the girl had felt for the fastening of the opposite door, and had turned it. To her delight it opened smoothly, and had evidently been unaffected by the jam. She stepped out to the road, trembling in every limb.

She felt, rather than saw, the level-crossing gate, and knew that at one side was a swing gate for passengers. She reached this when her abductor discovered her flight.

"Come back!" he cried hoarsely.

She heard a roar and saw a flashing of lights and fled across the line just as an express train came flying northward. It missed her by inches, and the force of the wind threw her to the ground. She scrambled up, stumbled across the remaining rails, and, reaching the gate opposite, fled down the dark road She had gained just that much time which the train took in passing. She ran blindly along the dark road, slipping and stumbling in the mud, and she heard her pursuer squelching through the mud in the rear.

The wind flew her hair awry, the rain beat down upon her face, but she stumbled on. Suddenly she slipped and fell, and as she struggled to her feet the heavy hand of her pursuer fell upon her shoulder, and she screamed aloud.

"None of that," said the voice, and his hand covered her mouth.

At that moment a bright light enveloped the two, a light so intensely, dazzlingly white, so unexpected that it hit the girl almost like a blow. It came from somewhere not two yards away, and the man released his hold upon the girl and stared at the light.

"Hello!" said a voice from the darkness. "What's the game?"

She was behind the man, and could not see his face. All that she knew was that here was help, unexpected, Heaven sent, and she strove to recover her breath and her speech.

"It's all right," growled the man. "She's a lunatic and I'm taking her to the asylum."

Suddenly the light was pushed forward to the man's face, and a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder.

"You are, are you?" said the other. "Well, I am going to take you to a lunatic asylum, Sergeant Smith or Crawley or whatever your name is. You know me; my name's Wiseman."

For a moment the man stood as though petrified, and then, with a sudden jerk, he wrenched his hand free and sprang at the policeman with a wild yell of rage, and in a second both men were rolling over in the darkness. Constable Wiseman was no child, but he had lost his initial advantage, and by the time he got to his feet and had found his electric torch Crawley had vanished.



CHAPTER XVII

THE MAN CALLED "MERRILL"

"If Wiseman did not think you were a murderer, I should regard him as an intelligent being," said Saul Arthur Mann.

"Have they found Crawley?" asked Frank.

"No, he got away. The chauffeur and the car were hired from a West End garage, with this story of a lunatic who had to be removed to an asylum, and apparently Crawley, or Smith, was the man who hired them. He even paid a little extra for the damage which the alleged lunatic might do the car. The chauffeur says that he had some doubt, and had intended to inform the police after he had arrived at his destination. As a matter of fact, they were just outside Eastbourne when the accident occurred." "The Man Who Knew" paused.

"Where did he say he was taking her?" he asked Frank.

"He was told to drive into Eastbourne, where more detailed instructions would be given to him. The police have confirmed his story, and he has been released.

"I have just come from May," said Frank. "She looks none the worse for her exciting adventure. I hope you have arranged to have her guarded?"

Saul Arthur Mann nodded.

"It will be the last adventure of that kind our friend will attempt," he said.

"Still, this enlightens us a little. We know that Mr. Rex Holland has an accomplice, and that accomplice is Sergeant Smith, so we may presume that they were both in the murder. Constable Wiseman has been suitably rewarded, as he well deserves," said Frank heartily.

"You bear no malice," smiled Saul Arthur Mann.

Frank laughed, and shook his head.

"How can one?" he asked simply.

May had another visitor. Jasper Cole came hurriedly to London at the first intimation of the outrage, but was reassured by the girl's appearance.

"It was awfully thrilling," she said, "but really I am not greatly distressed; in fact, I think I look less tired than you."

He nodded.

"That is very possible. I did not go to bed until very late this morning," he said. "I was so engrossed in my research work that I did not realize it was morning until they brought me my tea."

"You haven't been in bed all night?" she said, shocked, and shook her head reprovingly. "That is one of your habits of life which will have to be changed," she warned him.

Jasper Cole did not dismiss her unpleasant experience as lightly as she.

"I wonder what the object of it all was," he said, "and why they took you back to Eastbourne? I think we shall find that the headquarters of this infernal combination is somewhere in Sussex."

"Mr. Mann doesn't think so," she said, "but believes that the car was to be met by another at Eastbourne and I was to be transferred. He says that the idea of taking me there was to throw the police off the scent."

She shivered.

"It wasn't a nice experience," she confessed.

The interview took place in the afternoon, and was some two hours after Frank had interviewed the girl; Saul Arthur Mann had gone to Eastbourne to bring her back. Jasper had arranged to spend the night in town, and had booked two stalls at the Hippodrome. She had told Saul Arthur Mann this, in accordance with her promise to keep him informed as to her movements, and she was, therefore, surprised when, half an hour later, the little investigator presented himself.

She met him in the presence of her fiance, and it was clear to Jasper what Saul Arthur Mann's intentions were.

"I don't want to make myself a nuisance," he said, "but before we go any further, Miss Nuttall, there are certain matters on which you ought to be informed. I have every reason to believe that I know who was responsible for the outrage of last night, and I do not intend risking a repetition."

"Who do you think was responsible?" asked the girl quietly.

"I honestly believe that the author is in this room," was the startling response.

"You mean me?" asked Jasper Cole angrily.

"I mean you, Mr. Cole. I believe that you are the man who planned the coup and that you are its sole author," said the other.

The girl stared at him in astonishment.

"You surely do not mean what you say."

"I mean that Mr. Cole has every reason for wishing to marry you," he said. "What that reason is I do not know completely, but I shall discover. I am satisfied," he went on slowly, "that Mr. Cole is already married."

She looked from one to the other.

"Already married?" repeated Jasper.

"If he is not already married," said Saul Arthur Mann bluntly, "then I have been indiscreet. The only thing I can tell you is that your fiance has been traveling on the Continent with a lady who describes herself as Mrs. Cole."

Jasper said nothing for a moment, but looked at the other oddly and thoughtfully.

"I understand, Mr. Mann," he said at length, "that you collect facts as other people collect postage stamps?"

Saul Arthur Mann bristled.

"You may carry this off, sir," he began, "if you can—"

"Let me speak," said Jasper Cole, raising his voice. "I want to ask you this: Have you a complete record of John Minute's life?"

"I know it so well," said Saul Arthur Mann emphatically, "that I could repeat his history word for word."

"Will you sit down, May?" said Jasper, taking the girl's hand in his and gently forcing her to a chair. "We are going to put Mr. Mann's memory to the test."

"Do you seriously mean that you want me to repeat that history?" asked the other suspiciously.

"I mean just that," said Jasper, and drew up a chair for his unpleasant visitor.

The record of John Minute's life came trippingly from Mann's tongue. He knew to an extraordinary extent the details of that strange and wild career.

"In 1892," said the investigator, continuing his narrative, "he was married at St. Bride's church, Port Elizabeth, to Agnes Gertrude Cole."

"Cole," murmured Jasper.

The little man looked at him with open mouth.

"Cole! Good Lord—you are—"

"I am his son," said Jasper quietly. "I am one of his two children. Your information is that there was one. As a matter of fact, there were two. My mother left my father with one of the greatest scoundrels that has ever lived. He took her to Australia, where my sister was born six months after she had left John Minute. There her friend deserted her, and she worked for seven years as a kitchen maid, in Melbourne, in order to save up enough money to bring us to Cape Town. My mother opened a tea shop off Aderley Street, and earned enough to educate me and my sister. It was there she met Crawley, and Crawley promised to use his influence with my father to bring about a reconciliation for her children's sake. I do not know what was the result of his attempt, but I gather it was unsuccessful, and things went on very much as they were before.

"Then one day, when I was still at the South African College, my mother went home, taking my sister with her. I have reason to believe that Crawley was responsible for her sailing and that he met them on landing. All that I knew was that from that day my mother disappeared. She had left me a sum of money to continue my studies, but after eight months had passed, and no word had come from her, I decided to go on to England. I have since learned what had happened. My mother had been seized with a stroke and had been conveyed to the workhouse infirmary by Crawley, who had left her there and had taken my sister, who apparently he passed off as his own daughter.

"I did not know this at the time, but being well aware of my father's identity I wrote to him, asking him for help to discover my mother. He answered, telling me that my mother was dead, that Crawley had told him so, and that there was no trace of Marguerite, my sister. We exchanged a good many letters, and then my father asked me to come and act as his secretary and assist him in his search for Marguerite. What he did not know was that Crawley's alleged daughter, whom he had not seen, was the girl for whom he was seeking. I fell into the new life, and found John Minute—I can scarcely call him 'father'—much more bearable than I expected—and then one day I found my mother."