ith all the ease and vigour he had expected.

Mr. Flexen was beginning, somewhat gloomily, to think it probable that
the problem of the death of Lord Loudwater would have to be set among
the unsolved problems which have at different times baffled the police.
Then, before he had quite lost hope, there came a letter from Mr.
Carrington. It ran:

"Dear Mr. Flexen,

"I received this morning a letter from Mrs. Marshall, of 3, Laburnum
Terrace, Low Wycombe, asking me, as the agent of the present Lord
Loudwater, to have some repairs made to the house in which she is his
lordship's tenant. We have never handled this property; we did not
even know that it belonged to the late Lord Loudwater. If you can find
the man who managed it for him, he may be able to give you the
information you want.

"Yours faithfully,

"C.R.W. CARRINGTON."

In ten minutes Mr. Flexen was at 3, Laburnum Terrace; in a quarter of an
hour he had learned that Mrs. Marshall had paid her rent to Mr. Shepherd,
of 9, Bolton Street, Low Wycombe; in twenty minutes he had learned from
Mrs. Shepherd that her husband was in Mesopotamia, and that she had not
heard from him for two months. In half an hour from the time he read Mr.
Carrington's letter he was in the train on his way to London. To get in
touch with Captain Shepherd in that distant and backward land was a
matter for Scotland Yard. No acting Chief Constable would do so without
considerable delay.

He drafted the telegram in consultation with one of the commissioners,
who himself set about the business of getting it through to Captain
Shepherd and receiving his answer to it. Then he returned to Low
Wycombe. Three days later came a letter from Scotland Yard to inform
him that Captain Shepherd was in an out-of-the-way district in the
north of Mesopotamia, and that there must be a delay of days before he
received the telegram and sent his answer to it. Mr. Flexen possessed
his soul in the patience of a man who was sure that he was going to get
what he wanted.

A few days later, on a Saturday, his work took him to Loudwater, and he
called on Olivia. He found her a different creature. She had lost her air
of being under a strain, and save that her eyes were at first anxious,
she showed herself wholly at her ease with him. He came away assuring
himself that she was one of the most charming women he had ever met. He
took it that she still met Colonel Grey in the pavilion in the East wood,
and that after a