on is a bigger scoundrel than I am, though you may
not think it."

"I accept your statement implicitly," David said, drily.

"Well, he is. And I got your letter. And I called.... And you nearly
killed me. And I dropped it down in the corner of the conservatory."

"Dropped what?" David asked, sharply.

"Nothing," said Van Sneck. "What do you mean by talking about dropping
things. I never dropped anything in my life. I make others do that, eh,
eh! But I can't remember anything. It just comes back to me, and then
there is a wheel goes round in my head.... Who are you?"

David gave up the matter as hopeless. This was emphatically a case
for Bell. Once let him get Van Sneck back to Brighton and Bell could
do the rest.

"We'd better go," he said to Enid. "We are merely wasting time here."

"I suppose so," Enid said, thoughtfully. "All the same, I should greatly
like to know what it is that our friend Van Sneck dropped."

It was a long and tedious journey back to Brighton again, for the patient
seemed to tire easily, and he evinced a marked predilection for sitting
by the roadside and singing. It was very late before David reached his
house. Bell beamed his satisfaction. Van Sneck, with a half-gleam of
recognition of his surroundings, and with a statement that he had been
there before, lapsed into silence. Bell produced a small phial in a
chemist's wrapper and poured the contents into a glass. With a curt
command to drink he passed the glass over to Van Sneck.

The latter drank the small dose, and Bell carried him more or less to a
ground-floor bedroom behind the dining-room. There he speedily undressed
his patient and got him into bed. Van Sneck was practically fast asleep
before his head had touched the pillow.

"I went out and got that dose with a view to eventualities," Bell
explained. "I know pretty well what is the matter with Van Sneck, and I
propose to operate upon him, with the help of Heritage. I've put him in
my bed and locked the door. I shall sleep in the big armchair."

David flung himself into a big deck lounge and lighted a cigarette.

"My word, that has been a bit of a business," he said. "Pour me out a
little whisky in one of the long glasses and fill it up with soda....
Oh, that's better. I never felt so thirsty in my life. I got Van Sneck
away without Henson having the slightest suspicion that he was there,
and I had the satisfaction of giving Henson a smashing blow without his
seeing me."

"