age to your face?"

"Damn her!" he cried. "Damn her! I had never seen her without her
gloves, you understand, but she must have taken them off that night;
for _this_"--he indicated his plastered countenance--"is what she did
with her nails!"

He paused, staring at me dully, and then with a hint of the old
ridiculous vanity entering his voice:

"But I scored after all," he said, tossing the little amulet into the
drawer from which he had taken it. "If that's worth L50 it will more
than pay the doctor's bill, I think!"

Following a brief interval:

"Of course," I said, "you would recognize the woman again?"

"I am not so certain," declared the scarred man. "She always wore some
sort of veil; but you may be sure," he added in a tone of supreme
condescension, "that she was a very pretty woman, or I shouldn't have
been bothering with her."

"You are quite sure of that?" I ventured to remark.

"No doubt about it at all. Most extraordinary eyes--too damned
extraordinary by half!"

"Well," I said, "I am much indebted to you for your statement, and you
may be confident that it will materially assist the investigation now
in progress."

"Don't mention it," said Hines, airily. "If I can ever do anything
else for you, just let me know; but--I mean to say I rely upon you not
to bring me into it. You understand what I mean?"

"You may be absolutely certain," I replied, "that no hint of this
occurrence will ever be made public so far as I am concerned."

I took my departure from Leeways Farm fully satisfied with the result
of the first move in the plan of campaign upon which I had decided.
Returning to my quarters at the Abbey Inn, I spent the greater part of
the afternoon in writing a detailed account of my interview with
Edward Hines. Having completed this, I set out for the town, as by
posting my report there and not in the wayside box at Upper Crossleys
I knew that I could count upon its delivery at New Scotland Yard by
the first mail in the morning.

In leisurely fashion I performed the journey, for my next move could
not be made until after dusk.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NUBIAN MUTE

I returned from the little market town beneath a sky of tropical
brilliance. The landscape was bathed in a radiance of perfect
moonlight, and under the trees which thickly lined the way, the
shadows had a velvet quality rarely met with in England, their edges
showing more sharply defined than I ever remembered to have noticed