self-possessed man of
business. Carlyle, in truth, betrayed nothing of the pessimism and
despondency that had marked him on the earlier occasion.

"You have only yourself to thank that it is a very poor one," he
retorted. "If you hadn't held me to a hasty promise----"

"To give me an option on the next case that baffled you, no matter
what it was----"

"Just so. The consequence is that you get a very unsatisfactory affair
that has no special interest to an amateur and is only baffling
because it is--well----"

"Well, baffling?"

"Exactly, Max. Your would-be jest has discovered the proverbial truth.
I need hardly tell you that it is only the insoluble that is finally
baffling and this is very probably insoluble. You remember the awful
smash on the Central and Suburban at Knight's Cross Station a few
weeks ago?"

"Yes," replied Carrados, with interest. "I read the whole ghastly
details at the time."

"You read?" exclaimed his friend suspiciously.

"I still use the familiar phrases," explained Carrados, with a smile.
"As a matter of fact, my secretary reads to me. I mark what I want to
hear and when he comes at ten o'clock we clear off the morning papers
in no time."

"And how do you know what to mark?" demanded Mr. Carlyle cunningly.

Carrados's right hand, lying idly on the table, moved to a newspaper
near. He ran his finger along a column heading, his eyes still turned
towards his visitor.

"'The Money Market. Continued from page 2. British Railways,'" he
announced.

"Extraordinary," murmured Carlyle.

"Not very," said Carrados. "If someone dipped a stick in treacle and
wrote 'Rats' across a marble slab you would probably be able to
distinguish what was there, blindfold."

"Probably," admitted Mr. Carlyle. "At all events we will not test the
experiment."

"The difference to you of treacle on a marble background is scarcely
greater than that of printers' ink on newspaper to me. But anything
smaller than pica I do not read with comfort, and below long primer I
cannot read at all. Hence the secretary. Now the accident, Louis."

"The accident: well, you remember all about that. An ordinary Central
and Suburban passenger train, non-stop at Knight's Cross, ran past the
signal and crashed into a crowded electric train that was just
beginning to move out. It was like sending a garden roller down a row
of handlights. Two carriages of the electric train were flattened out
of existence; the next two were br