H.]

He looked as if he meant it, and we accordingly halted with remarkable
suddenness, while the inspector proceeded to parley.

"Now, what's the good of this, Mr. Haldean?" said he. "The game's up,
and you know it."

"You clear out of my house, and clear out sharp," was the inhospitable
rejoinder, "or you'll give me the trouble of burying you in the garden."

I looked round to consult with Thorndyke, when, to my amazement, I found
that he had vanished--apparently through the open hall-door. I was
admiring his discretion when the inspector endeavoured to reopen
negotiations, but was cut short abruptly.

"I am going to count fifty," said Mr. Haldean, "and if you aren't gone
then, I shall shoot."

He began to count deliberately, and the inspector looked round at me in
complete bewilderment. The flight of stairs was a long one, and well
lighted by gas, so that to rush it was an impossibility. Suddenly my
heart gave a bound and I held my breath, for out of an open door behind
our quarry, a figure emerged slowly and noiselessly on to the landing.
It was Thorndyke, shoeless, and in his shirt-sleeves.

Slowly and with cat-like stealthiness, he crept across the landing until
he was within a yard of the unconscious fugitive, and still the nasal
voice droned on, monotonously counting out the allotted seconds.

"Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three--"

There was a lightning-like movement--a shout--a flash--a bang--a shower
of falling plaster, and then the revolver came clattering down the
stairs. The inspector and I rushed up, and in a moment the sharp click
of the handcuffs told Mr. Percy Haldean that the game was really up.

* * * * *

Five minutes later Freddy-boy, half asleep, but wholly cheerful, was
borne on Thorndyke's shoulders into the private sitting-room of the
Black Horse Hotel. A shriek of joy saluted his entrance, and a shower of
maternal kisses brought him to the verge of suffocation. Finally, the
impulsive Mrs. Haldean, turning suddenly to Thorndyke, seized both his
hands, and for a moment I hoped that she was going to kiss him, too. But
he was spared, and I have not yet recovered from the disappointment.

III

THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AT LARGE

Thorndyke was not a newspaper reader. He viewed with extreme disfavour
all scrappy and miscellaneous forms of literature, which, by presenting
a disorderly series of unrelated items of information, tended, as he
considered, to