lat in Bayswater, where two or
three of his crowd in the illicit drug traffic are expecting him
to-morrow morning. That's the important one--the thick mauve paper."

And he drank more tea, while Finucane ran eager eyes over the letter.

"Good God!" he said, rising. "Go on with your tea, Mr. Bellamy--not your
story. Back in three minutes."

He pushed an electric button, and almost ran from the room.

"You see, sir," said Dick to Caldegard, "as we were coming home in the
train from our little day out, poor Miss Caldegard was so tired that she
said I must find her a fairy godmother directly we reached town. So I
took her straight to the only lady of that rank whom I know. I dare say
you know her too--it's Lady Elizabeth Bruffin. George Bruffin's an old
friend of mine--Mexico--and his wife's a connoisseur in pumpkins and
rat-traps."

Since all London that season was talking of the two Bruffins, and every
newspaper, in direct ratio to the badness of its paper and print, was
scavenging for paragraphs, true or false, concerning the "palatial home"
in Park Lane, neither Caldegard nor Randal Bellamy could conceal
round-eyed astonishment.

"But Amaryllis? Did she look--well, anything like----"

"Like me?" asked Dick, grinning all over the better side of his twisted
face. "Well, sir, she hasn't been knocked about, you know. But her rig
did her certainly less justice than mine does me. Nothing on earth could
make her look like a tough, and the sun-bonnet certainly had an----"

But Finucane was with them again.

"Excuse me behaving like Harlequin in the pantomime, gentlemen," he
said. "Now, Mr. Bellamy."

"Can you take advice?" asked Dick.

"From you, Mr. Bellamy," said Finucane, "who wouldn't?"

"I'm so sleepy that if I don't give it now, I may forget it. Properly
handled, that dirty thing in the chair there will give his show away.
Keep him to-night as a drunk and disorderly. Better have a doctor to
him. I tasted the stuff. Tomorrow I'll swear a dozen charges against
him--burglary, abduction, instigation to murder, attempts to kill; and
when he hears 'em read over, he'll be putty in your fingers."

"Thanks," said Finucane.

"Next: ring up the police and the station-master at Todsmoor. Tell 'em
to keep tight hold of the man who fell out of the train between
Harthborough and Todsmoor at five-forty p.m. and of the bloke that was
with him, suspected of throwing him out."

Finucane paid his guest the compliment of obe