his side.

"There goes fifteen hundred pounds," said the Greek, with a smile, "add
that to the two thousand I paid the warder and you have a tidy sum-but
some things are worth all the money in the world!"

CHAPTER VII

T. X. came from Downing Street at 11 o'clock one night, and his heart
was filled with joy and gratitude.

He swung his stick to the common danger of the public, but the policeman
on point duty at the end of the street, who saw him, recognized and
saluted him, did not think it fit to issue any official warning.

He ran up the stairs to his office, and found Mansus reading the evening
paper.

"My poor, dumb beast," said T. X. "I am afraid I have kept you waiting
for a very long time, but tomorrow you and I will take a little journey
to Devonshire. It will be good for you, Mansus--where did you get that
ridiculous name, by the way!"

"M. or N.," replied Mansus, laconically.

"I repeat that there is the dawn of an intellect in you," said T. X.,
offensively.

He became more serious as he took from a pocket inside his waistcoat a
long blue envelope containing the paper which had cost him so much to
secure.

"Finding the revolver was a master-stroke of yours, Mansus," he said,
and he was in earnest as he spoke.

The man coloured with pleasure for the subordinates of T. X. loved him,
and a word of praise was almost equal to promotion. It was on the advice
of Mansus that the road from London to Lewes had been carefully covered
and such streams as passed beneath that road had been searched.

The revolver had been found after the third attempt between Gatwick and
Horsley. Its identification was made easier by the fact that Vassalaro's
name was engraved on the butt. It was rather an ornate affair and in its
earlier days had been silver plated; the handle was of mother-o'-pearl.

"Obviously the gift of one brigand to another," was T. X.'s comment.

Armed with this, his task would have been fairly easy, but when to this
evidence he added a rough draft of the threatening letter which he had
found amongst Vassalaro's belongings, and which had evidently been taken
down at dictation, since some of the words were misspelt and had been
corrected by another hand, the case was complete.

But what clinched the matter was the finding of a wad of that peculiar
chemical paper, a number of sheets of which T. X. had ignited for the
information of the Chief Commissioner and the Home Secretary by simply
ex