y to make him one.
Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the show, was desperately
against calling in the police under any circumstances. He assured me there
was no sign of bad blood about the house, until the small hours, and then
he saw your son make his escape. I told him he should have collared the
lad, but he lost sight of him in the night and preferred to keep an eye on
that poor desperate doctor."

Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence
which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their
case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance
against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his curiosity
on a very different point had not been gratified.

"Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?" he inquired, with
characteristic absence of finesse.

"I'm not very proud of it," replied Thrush. "It didn't come off, you
see."

"But whatever could the object have been?"

"I must have a damn-it if I'm to tell you that," said Thrush; and the
ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which he
suited to the oath. "It was one way that occurred to me of putting salt
on the lad."

"Tony?"

"Yes."

"You puzzle me more and more."

"Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, of
fine sensibilities, and yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by
accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the
news of an innocent man's arrest would bring him into the open as quick as
anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been
within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed,
the rest was elementary. But what's the good of talking about it? It
didn't come off."

"It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was going
to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn't accidentally satisfied
himself of his own innocence."

Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of fact
that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes blinked
keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose underneath
twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the drink with the
opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished.

"If only I could find that camera!" he cried. "It's the touchstone of the
whole thing, mark my words. If it's an accomplice who did this thing,
he's go