"Now what was his game, do you think?" Monty asked again.

"He was giving you a piece of wholesome advice," I answered promptly.

"But 'You stop adopting things; you might—ahem!—blow your fingers off.' He said it like that. I haven't put in the 'ahem.' That was his. It looks to me as if he knew about that pistol."

"It has very much that look," I agreed blandly.

"But how? I can't understand yet how Esdaile knew, but this Police Inspector——!"

"'Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,'" I murmured. "You never can tell, Monty."

"Oh, stop burbling. How do you suppose he did know?"

"Let me see. You told Philip it was his keys that made your pocket bulge so, didn't you?"

"Oh—if you're just going to rot me——"

"I'm not rotting you. I've a feeling that if you'd told Inspector Webster the same thing he'd have been happy and delighted to believe you."

"But how does he know anything about what's in my pocket?" said the bewildered Monty....

Should I tell him? Why not? I had studiously avoided anything that might have reminded him of Mrs. Cunningham. Pluckily as he had taken himself in hand, I did not think that that wound was healed. But the episode of the pistol was another matter. I felt singularly and perhaps not quite justifiably light-hearted about that. The mists of the Case were perceptibly thinning. What he had just told me about Inspector Webster let still a little more sun through them. To all appearances the Inspector had dismissed Monty with a quite characteristic admonition. And that being so, it was perhaps his due that I should not leave Monty altogether unarmed in the event of any contingency with Westbury.

And so I told him how his pocket had been fingered as he had descended that ladder.

He was furious. "Damned pickpocket!" he broke out. "I should have thought these sharks made enough out of their filthy premiums nowadays without putting their hands right into your pockets!"

"I didn't say he did that exactly."

"It's the same thing. And anyway, how did he know? What made him think——?"

"Perhaps he saw you pick it up. Could he have done that from down below?"

"Might. I shouldn't have thought so though. Of course, I was flurried."

"But you wouldn't have thought it in Esdaile's case either," I reminded him.

"No, that beats me," he admitted.

"And I wouldn't be too virtuous about it, Monty. In any case you'd no business with the thing, you know."

"Oh, stuff!" he scoffed. "It's you that's being virtuous."

And, with that ring in my waistcoat pocket that I had picked up with no more justification than he had the pistol, he might have added that I was hypocritical too.