. "I was
looking for something."

"You were looking for something?" she repeated. "What were you looking
for?"

"Three registered envelopes which were planted in your flat yesterday
morning," he said, "and what's more I found 'em!"

She put her hand to her forehead in bewilderment.

"Then you----"

"Saved you from a cold, cold prison cell. Have you had any lunch? Why,
you're starving!"

"But----"

"Bread and butter is what you want," said the practical Mr. Beale, "with
a large crisp slice of chicken and stacks of various vegetables."

And he hustled her from the office.

CHAPTER VI

MR. SCOBBS OF RED HORSE VALLEY

Mr. White, managing director of Punsonby's Store, was a man of simple
tastes. He had a horror of extravagance and it was his boast that he had
never ridden in a taxi-cab save as the guest of some other person who
paid. He travelled by tube or omnibus from the Bayswater Road, where he
lived what he described as his private life. He lunched in the staff
dining-room, punctiliously paying his bill; he dined at home in solitary
state, for he had neither chick nor child, heir or wife. Once an elder
sister had lived with him and had died (according to the popularly
accepted idea) of slow starvation, for he was a frugal man.

It seems the fate of apparently rich and frugal men that they either die
and leave their hoardings to the State or else they disappear, leaving
behind them monumental debts. The latter have apparently no vices; even
the harassed accountant who disentangles their estates cannot discover
the channel through which their hundreds of thousands have poured. The
money has gone and, if astute detectives bring back the defaulter from
the pleasant life which the Southern American cities offer to rich
idlers, he is hopelessly vague as to the method by which it went.

Mr. Lassimus White was the managing director and general manager of
Punsonby's. He held, or was supposed to hold, a third of the shares in
that concern, shares which he had inherited from John Punsonby, his
uncle, and the founder of the firm. He drew a princely salary and a
substantial dividend, he was listed as a debenture holder and was
accounted a rich man.

But Mr. White was not rich. His salary and his dividends were absorbed
by a mysterious agency which called itself the Union Jack Investment and
Mortgage Corporation, which paid premiums on Mr. White's heavy life
insurance and collected the whole or nearly the w