the value of order and system. Every step
in the investigation of a crime is reduced to writing, collected,
indexed, and filed together, so that the whole history of a case is
instantly available at any time. He was carrying out the regular
routine.

Only two things of any consequence rewarded his search--one was a note
from Sir Ralph Fairfield confirming an appointment with Grell to dine at
the St. Jermyn's Club the previous evening; the other was a miniature
set in diamonds of a girl, dark and black-haired, with an insolent
piquant beauty.

"I've seen that face before somewhere," mused the superintendent.
"Green, there's a 'Who's Who' on the desk behind you. I want Sir Ralph
Fairfield."

Rapidly he scanned the score of lines of small type devoted to the
baronet. They told him little that he had not known before. Fairfield
was in his forty-third year, was the ninth baronet, and had great
estates in Hampshire and Scotland. He was a traveller and a student. His
town address was given as the Albany.

"You'd better go round to Fairfield's place, Green. Tell him what's
happened and bring him here at once."

As the chief inspector, a grim, silent man, left, Foyle turned again to
his work. He began a careful search of the room, even rummaging among
the litter in the waste-paper basket. But there was nothing else that
might help to throw the faintest light on the tragedy.

A discreet knock on the door preceded Waverley's entrance with a report
of the examination of every one in the house. He had gathered little
beyond the fact that Grell, when not concerned in social duties, was a
man of irregular comings and goings, and that Ivan, his personal valet,
was a man he had brought from St. Petersburg, who spoke French but
little English, and had consequently associated little with the other
servants.

Foyle subsided into his chair with his forehead puckered into a series
of little wrinkles. He rested his chin on his hand and gazed into
vacancy. There might be a hundred solutions to the riddle. Where was the
motive? Was it blackmail? Was it revenge? Was it jealousy? Was it
robbery? Was it a political crime? Was it the work of a madman? Who was
the mysterious veiled woman? Was she associated with the crime?

These and a hundred other questions beat insistently on his brain, and
to none of them could he see the answer. He pictured the queer dagger,
but flog his memory as he would he could not think where it might have
been