ness_, is it?"

"Unless we could find out something on the quiet," thoughtfully
suggested Jim. "For instance, is there anybody in this neighbourhood
who's a pretty good artist and a smart copyist--anybody, I mean, who
could have had the run of the Manor while the house was unoccupied
except by a caretaker?"

"Yes, we might set ourselves to find out that," I assented. "And, by the
way--apropos of nothing, of course!--I think we might call on the
Jenningses, don't you?--as the doctor intimated that they didn't 'feel
grand enough' to call on us."

"I think we might," echoed Jim. "And why not to-day, while we're close
to Merriton?"

Quick as a flash I seized the speaking-tube and directed the chauffeur.
We had gone only a mile out of the way, and that was soon retraced.

Both the doctor and his wife were at home, in their rather ugly modern
villa, which was one of the few blots on the beauty of Merriton. But
there were no pictures at all in the little drawing room. The
distempered walls were decorated with a few Persian rugs (not bad,
though of no great interest) given to Doctor Jennings, it seemed, by a
grateful patient now dead. By round-about ways we tried to learn whether
there was artistic talent in the family, but our efforts failed. As Jim
said later, when the call had ended in smoke, "There was nothing doing!"

CHAPTER VII

SIR BEVERLEY'S IMPRESSIONS

Jim is not a bad amateur detective, and he didn't abandon his efforts to
get behind the portrait mystery. But we had decided that, for Murray's
sake, "discretion was the better part of valour" for us; and the care
with which he had to work added a lot to his difficulties. Besides,
there were a good many other things to think of just then: things
concerning ourselves, also things concerning the Murrays. And those
things which concerned them were a thousand times more important than
any faked heirlooms.

Sir Beverley Drake gave some faint hope that Ralston Murray's life might
be saved. There was a serum upon which he had been experimenting for
years, and in which he had begun enthusiastically to believe, for
obscure tropical maladies resembling Murray's.

We had asked him to motor on to the Abbey and luncheon, after his visit
to Ralston Old Manor, hardly daring to think that he would accept. But
he did accept; and I saw by his face the moment we met that the news he
had to give was, at the worst, not bad. I was so happy when I heard what
he had to sa