raph?" he asked.

Police photographs taken in gaol for purposes of future identification
are always far from flattering, and Henry Field, after looking at the
photograph handed to him, hesitated a little before replying:

"Yes, sir."

"So, Henry Field, in November 1909 you were sentenced to three years for
robbing your master, Lord Melhurst."

"Yes, sir."

"Let me see," said the inspector, as if calling on his memory to perform
a reluctant task. "It was a diamond scarf-pin and a gold watch. Lord
Melhurst had come home after a good day at Epsom and a late supper in
town. Next morning he missed his scarf-pin and his watch. He thought he
had been robbed at Epsom or in town. He was delightfully vague about what
had happened to him after his glorious day at Epsom, but unfortunately
for you the taxi-cab driver who drove him remembered seeing the pin on
him when he got out of the cab. As you had waited up for him suspicion
fell on you, and you were arrested and confessed. I think those are the
facts, Field?"

"Yes, sir," said the distressed looking man who stood before him.

"I think I had the pleasure of putting you through," added the inspector.

The butler understood that in police slang "putting a man through" meant
arresting him and putting him through the Criminal Court into gaol. He
made the same reply:

"Yes, sir."

"I'm glad to see you bear me no ill-will for it," said Inspector
Chippenfield. "You don't, do you?"

"No, sir."

"I never forget a face," pursued the officer, glancing up at the face of
the man before him. "When I saw you yesterday I knew you again in a
moment, and when I went back to the Yard I looked up your record."

The butler was doubtful whether any reply was called for, but after a
pause, as an endorsement of the inspector's gift for remembering faces,
he ventured on:

"Yes, sir."

"And how did you, an ex-convict, come to get into the service of one of
His Majesty's judges?"

"He took me in," replied the butler.

"You mean that you took him in," replied the inspector, with a pleasant
laugh at his own witticism.

"No, sir, I didn't take him in," declared the butler. He had not joined
in the laugh at the inspector's joke.

"Get away with you," said Inspector Chippenfield. "You don't expect me to
believe that you told him you were an ex-convict? You must have used
forged references."

"No, sir. He knew I was a--" Hill hesitated at referring to himself as
an ex-convict, though