gh (if you'll allow
me the little familiarity) to put your ring on. What do you think of
that?"

A wild rush of ideas coursed through the hairdresser's head. Was this
policeman "after" the goddess upstairs? Did he know anything more? Would
it be better to give up the statue at once and get rid of it? But
then--his ring would be lost for ever!

"It's surprising," he said at last. "But what did they want to go and
burgle a plaster figure for?"

"That's where it is, you see; she ain't plaster--she's marble, a genuine
antic of Venus, and worth thousands. The beggars who broke in knew that,
and took nothing else. They'd made all arrangements to get away with her
abroad, and pass her off on some foreign collection before it got blown
upon; and they'd have done it too if we hadn't been beforehand with
them! So what do they do then? They drive up with her to these gardens,
ask to see the manager, and say they're agents for some Fine Arts
business, and have a sample with them, to be disposed of at a low price.
The manager, so he tells me, had a look at it, thought it a neat article
and suitable to the style of his gardens. He took it to be plain
plaster, as they said, and they put it up for him their own selves,
near the small gate up by the road; then they took the money--a pound or
two they asked for it--and drove away, and he saw no more of them."

"And was that all they got for their pains?" said Leander.

The inspector smiled indulgently. "Don't you see your way yet?" he
asked. "Can't you give a guess where that statue's got to now, eh?"

"No," said Leander, with what seemed to the inspector a quite
uncalled-for excitement, "of course I can't! What do you ask me for? How
should I know?"

"Quite so," said the other; "you want a mind trained to deal with these
things. It may surprise you to hear it, but I know as well how that
statue disappeared, and what was done with her, as if I'd been there!"

"Do you, though?" thought Leander, who was beginning to doubt whether
his visitor's penetration was anything so abnormal. "What was done with
her?" he asked.

"Why, it was a plant from the first. They knew all their regular holes
were stopped, and they wanted a place to dump her down in, where she
wouldn't attract attention, till they could call for her again; so they
got her taken in at the gardens, where they could come in any time by
the gate and fetch her off again--and very neatly it was done, too!"

"But where do y