t be wholly clean.

The theft of the bonds had been hushed up in a way that savored of
unwillingness on Mortimer Fenley's part to permit the police to take
action. The man's tragic death might well be a sequel to the robbery,
and, granted the impossibility of his elder son having committed the
murder, there was nothing fantastic in the notion that he might be a
party to it.

Again, Hilton Fenley had deliberately misled Scotland Yard in regard
to the seemingly trivial incident of the telephone call. Had he told
the truth, and grumbled at the lack of discretion on some woman's part
in breaking in on a period of acute distress in the household,
Winter's subsequent discovery would have lost its point. As matters
stood, however, it was one of a large number of minor circumstances
which demanded full examination, and the Superintendent decided that
the person really responsible for any seeming excess of zeal on his
part should be given an opportunity to clear the air in the place best
fitted for the purpose; namely, the address from which the call
emanated.

Therefore, when the door was opened again by Mrs. Garth, she found
that the Napoleonic tactics of an earlier hour were no longer
practicable, for the enemy instantly occupied the terrain by leaning
inward.

"I want to see Mr. Hilton Fenley," he said suavely. "You know my name
already, Mrs. Garth, so I need not repeat it."

The sharp-featured woman was evidently sharp-witted also. Finding that
the door might not be closed, she threw it wide.

"I have no objection to your seeing Mr. Fenley," she said. "I am at a
loss to understand why you follow him here, but that does not concern
me in the least. Come this way."

Latching the door, she led him to a room on the right of the entrance
hall, which formed the central artery of the flat. The place had no
direct daylight. At night, when an electric lamp was switched on, its
contents would be far more distinct than at this hour, when the only
light came from a transverse passage at the end, or was borrowed
through any door that happened to remain open. Still, Winter could
use his eyes, even in the momentary gloom, and he used them so well
on this occasion that he noted two trunks, one on top of the other,
and standing close to the wall.

They were well plastered with hotel and railway labels, and when a
flood of light poured in from the room to which Mrs. Garth ushered
him, he deciphered two of the freshest, and presuma