ou, Jarvis? I'm told my
man wants to see me very particularly. Know where he is by any chance?
It's probably about that blue suit of mine. He worries more over my
clothes than any woman. In the courtyard? Thanks, very much. You coming
along, too, Mr. Narkom?"

"Don't mind if I do," returned the Superintendent off-handedly, "seeing
that there is nothing more to be discovered to-night. My man's in
charge, so we might go over to the Three Fishers and have a quiet smoke
in your rooms. That is, if you'd care about it?"

"Love to, my dear chap, love to. Through this door, eh, Jarvis? Nice
snug place you've got here, I must say. Family do you well, I suppose?"

"Yessir," Jarvis's voice bordered upon the confidential. "Tight-fisted
where the money is, sir, but--that's Scotch, you know."

"And you're London, eh?--and naturally generous! I understand. Well,
here's something to buy yourself a drink with." And Cleek dropped
half-a-crown into the butler's hands.

As the two men disappeared through the kitchen door and out into the
courtyard, the highly elated Jarvis turned to his fellow servants with a
genuine sigh of admiration.

"Amachoor detective or not," he apostrophized the absent gentleman, "an'
queer in the top story though 'e may be, that's what I calls a
right-down Lunnon gentleman!"

CHAPTER XXII

DAMNING EVIDENCE

They found Dollops waiting in the little squared-in courtyard which led
down to the dungeons, and in a state bordering upon hysteria from the
excitement of all those exciting things which had just come to pass.

He blurted out his story of Jarvis's practical joke and its ultimate
consequences in a helter-skelter fashion, anxious to get on to this new
development, and except for a "By James!" from Mr. Narkom and a nod of
the head from Cleek, pursued his course without interruption.

"And when we'd walked a mile or so over them 'ills and dahn inter the
dales, Minnie ups and says ter me, 'Come an' 'ave a drink, Ginger-snap!'
And er course I was nuffin' loaf, as they s'y (though what bread 'as to
do with it I niver could tell). So we comes upon a pub in a little bit
of a shanty built of timber dahn in the nest of the 'ills, and she tykes
me by the arm and pulls me inter it."

"And what did you find there, Dollops?" put in Cleek, with a smile for
the lad's poetical expression.

"A bit of a bar full of Scotties wot looked as though they'd come 'ome
from a funeril, from the h'expression of thei