shortly.

"You must please yourself," said Monsieur Dupont. "I cannot wait. There
are two lives to save--his and another. I came here to keep my word to
you. I promised that if I succeeded in solving the mystery, I would hand
the rest to you. I do not want credit from this affair. There is another
meaning in it for me. I am ready to hand the rest to you, if you will
come and take it. If you will not come--I must go on to the end myself.
The choice is to you."

Inspector Fay looked at him steadily for a moment. Then he turned back
to his desk, and locked up his papers.

"I will come," he said.

CHAPTER XXIX

ETHICS OF KILLING

They swung out from Scotland Yard into Whitehall.

"What has happened?" the inspector asked.

Monsieur Dupont leant forward, controlling his excitement with an
effort.

"_Mon Dieu_," he said, "I wish I knew!"

He took the telegram from his pocket.

"It is an hour only that I have returned from Richmond. I found the
house of George Copplestone in course of transformation. I found all the
windows open. I found men and women cleaning--painting--making new. I
found a hundred men ... making the crooked garden straight."

"Well?" said the inspector--"why not?"

Monsieur Dupont brought his hands together impatiently.

"Why not? There are a thousand reasons why not. But the reason why...."

"Is it an extraordinary thing for a man to open his windows, paint his
house, and straighten his garden?"

"It is!" exclaimed Monsieur Dupont. "It is more than an extraordinary
thing--it is a gigantic, a brain-splitting thing--if he has kept his
windows closed, his house unpainted, and his garden crooked for twenty
years. The house of a man is the reflection of his soul. It was the
reflection of George Copplestone's soul yesterday. But ... something
happened in it last night. And to-day...."

He broke off, and began to smooth out the telegram on his knee.

"The moment I entered that house," he continued, "I knew it was a wicked
house. And when that dreadful thing happened, I felt positively that the
wickedness of the house had some direct connection with the crime in the
garden. I felt that it would be impossible to solve one without solving
the other. I knew, also, that you would certainly be satisfied with the
evidence against James Layton, and would consider no other possibility.
That evidence, I admit, was unanswerable--but I, with some previous
knowledge to help me, knew that Layton w