red mark of a
bullet hole. He threw up his hands and fell with a crash to the
pavement.

'Heart failure' was the verdict of the coroner's jury.

8. _Lady Alicia's Emeralds_

Many Englishmen, if you speak to them of me, indulge themselves in a
detraction that I hope they will not mind my saying is rarely graced
by the delicacy of innuendo with which some of my own countrymen
attempt to diminish whatever merit I may possess. Mr. Spenser Hale, of
Scotland Yard, whose lack of imagination I have so often endeavoured
to amend, alas! without perceptible success, was good enough to say,
after I had begun these reminiscences, which he read with affected
scorn, that I was wise in setting down my successes, because the life
of Methuselah himself would not be long enough to chronicle my
failures, and the man to whom this was said replied that it was only
my artfulness, a word of which these people are very fond; that I
intended to use my successes as bait, issue a small pamphlet filled
with them, and then record my failures in a thousand volumes, after
the plan of a Chinese encyclopaedia, selling these to the public on
the instalment plan.

Ah, well; it is not for me to pass comment on such observations. Every
profession is marred by its little jealousies, and why should the
coterie of detection be exempt? I hope I may never follow an example
so deleterious, and thus be tempted to express my contempt for the
stupidity with which, as all persons know, the official detective
system of England is imbued. I have had my failures, of course. Did I
ever pretend to be otherwise than human? But what has been the cause
of these failures? They have arisen through the conservatism of the
English. When there is a mystery to be solved, the average Englishman
almost invariably places it in the hands of the regular police. When
these good people are utterly baffled; when their big boots have
crushed out all evidences that the grounds may have had to offer to a
discerning mind; when their clumsy hands have obliterated the clues
which are everywhere around them, I am at last called in, and if I
fail, they say:--

'What could you expect; he is a Frenchman.'

This was exactly what happened in the case of Lady Alicia's emeralds.
For two months the regular police were not only befogged, but they
blatantly sounded the alarm to every thief in Europe. All the
pawnbrokers' shops of Great Britain were ransacked, as if a robber of
so valuabl