What a change for the better! He had shaved, his boots shone, the soft collar round his neck was a clean one and his gray tie was fastidiously tied. His face had a brightness again, he was engaged in the pleasant ordinary task of buying groceries, and Dadley had just told me that he was framing "paspertoos" for him. Was another of the clouds of the Case breaking up?... On the spot I decided to lunch with him, and told him so.

"All right, but the eggs are up to you," he said.

Inside his little den in Jubilee Place the improvement was no less marked than in his person and demeanor. There was not a spot on his little red-and-white checked table-cloth, his crockery shone, his bed was neatly made. He had faced the new situation and had ceased to mope.

In my waistcoat pocket was a ring he had once given to Audrey Cunningham. Seeing his cheerfulness, I had not the slightest intention of reopening matters by telling him anything about that ring. If Audrey dropped rings as casually as he picked up pistols, very well; it was not my business to mar this cheery new beginning.

"Lightly boiled, or how?" he said, my egg poised in a teaspoon over the saucepan on the gas-ring.

"Yes—lightly boiled—anything," I replied. "Got any mustard for this ham?"

That too he had, and he had taken care over the preparation of his jug of coffee. He was entirely the old Monty again.

I don't know when I have enjoyed a lunch more, not even excepting the washing-up, which he insisted on doing the moment we had finished. "If there's one thing I loathe it's coming in to a lot of unwashed things," he explained. "Not a ha'porth of trouble once you get the habit."

Then he showed me the work on which he was engaged. That too had energy and movement again. One small sketch I liked and bought on the spot—a little thing, neither black-and-white nor color, or both if you like—a crayon sketch of a couple of infants in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens, one of them with a shining round sixpenny balloon touched with a whiff of pink, the other with the doleful rag of one that had just exploded—the slightest, sweetest little bit of treasure-trove of the eye picked up in an afternoon's stroll.

"But not the copyright," he stipulated with a quick sideways glance at me. "I might be able to reproduce."

"Right; not the copyright," I agreed. I didn't mention it to him, in case it shouldn't come off, but I thought I might be able to help him with reproduction-rights. We have a good many side-shows on the Circus.

Then, in the middle of turning over further sketches, he broke suddenly into a gesture of remembrance.

"By the way—I knew there was something I wanted to tell you! A funny sort of thing happened the other day. You remember that police-sergeant or whatever he was, who came into Esdaile's place that night?"

"He was an Inspector."

"Inspector then. Well, I've seen him. Had a talk with him. Funny sort of talk too—I've been puzzled about it ever since. I was loafing round Sloane Square. There's a flower-woman there, interesting type of head—this sort——" He turned over one of the sketches and on the back of it his pencil flowed into a few swift assured lines. ("That's rather like her, by the way," he said in parenthesis, "regular cast-iron gypsy.")

"Well," he went on, "her face struck me as rather an interesting contrast with a lot of silly mimosa she had in her basket—I hate mimosa; so I was taking peeps at her, not sketching, you understand, when I heard somebody behind me say, 'Well, Mr. Rooke!' and I turned. I jumped rather. It was this Inspector fellow, and he'd a funny sort of expression on his face, not laughing exactly—sort of quizzing—I can't describe it——

"Then he said something that I thought the most infernal neck.

"'You aren't thinking of adopting a flower-woman's baby this time, are you, Mr. Rooke?'

"Damned impudence, wasn't it? Fancy the beggar knowing that!"

Monty was ruffling up at the recollection. I could not resist a smile.

"Chelsea knows that exploit of yours as well as it knows the Albert Bridge, Monty," I assured him. "Go on."

"Well, then he said, 'You'll have to get out of that habit of adopting things, Mr. Rooke. You never know where it ends.'

"'What do you mean?' I said. He was smiling now, but I felt a bit uneasy. We did stuff him up a bit that night, you know. He's a dark horse, that fellow.

"'It doesn't do, Mr. Rooke,' he said. 'Different men take different views of their duty, and you'll be striking one of the other sort one of these days!'

"'I don't know what you mean,' I said. 'Oh yes you do,' says he. 'I'm dashed if I do,' says I. 'Then you're lucky not to be dashed a good deal worse,' says he; 'you take my advice, Mr. Rooke, and stop adopting things, babies or what not. You might burn your fingers. You might—ahem!—blow 'em off'....

"And he nodded and marched off.

"Now what the devil do you think's his game?"

I know of no more exciting mental pleasure than that of finding your a priori guesses taking shape and substance in the realm of actual things. I suppose it is the triumphant cry of your deeper self telling the other self "I told you so!" Remember how little I knew of Inspector Webster, yet with what instinctive reserve I had hedged my impression of him. "A dark horse?" Yes, of quite the darkest kind. I recapitulated the degrees of his darkness. He had come round to Lennox Street that night, probably fresh from his talk with this fellow Westbury; he had put a whole series of questions, but of implications so guarded that in writing that portion of the story I had to itemize and underline what I surmised to be their real purport; and he had instituted a search of Esdaile's premises—twelve hours later! Why twelve hours later? Why not on the spot, there and then? Why give Philip this law, that as a matter of fact he had made use of to drop that pistol into the river?

Could it be that he knew his House and Estate Agent better than we did—knew his vanity, dullness, and the risks of basing a charge on his unsupported word? No doubt he had questioned Westbury in terms far more explicit than those he had used to us. Unless Westbury had actually put his hand inside Rooke's pocket, probably all he could swear to was that the pocket contained something heavy. Not until late in the same afternoon had the bullet been found. Suppose Webster had said to Westbury, "Not so quickly, my friend; you said nothing about a pistol at the time; it only became a pistol when the bullet was found; we can't go putting the cart before the horse like that; evidence is evidence; you can't let half a day pass and then remember things to fit the Case; you may feel sure of a thing, but could you make a jury sure?" Suppose he had said something like this? The police too are bound by the probabilities of conviction. It is no credit to them to fail on a charge.

And a man who can say, "Was it indeed, sir?" when informed of the identity of a distinguished King's Counsel who has expressly announced himself only a few hours before is emphatically not the man to think that he can make a jacket for a large gooseberry by skinning a small-sized flint.