. It's on the cards
that the Scarletts came part way with Kramm to wait for her news."

Whether they had done this or not, I don't know. But the effect on Terry
of the suggestion was good. And certainly the pair did arrive almost
before it seemed that Kramm's short legs could have carried her to Dun
Moat.

They gloomed into my sitting room like a pair of funeral mutes.

"My servant tells me you have seen my son," the woman I had known as
Lady Scarlett began.

"She has imagination!" I smiled.

"You mean to say you have _not_ seen him?" blustered Fox-face Pere.

"I say neither that I have nor that I haven't," I replied. "The little I
know about the child inclines me to believe he wasn't too happy at home,
so why----"

"Oh, you _admit_ knowing something!" The woman caught me up like a
dropped stitch in her knitting. "I believe you've got the child here. We
can have you arrested for kidnapping. The police----"

I laughed. "Have the police ever _seen_ the little lamb? If they have,
they might doubt the force of his attraction on a woman of my type. And
you have no _proof_. But I'll let the local police look under my bed and
into my wardrobes, if you'll let them search the suite you occupy at Dun
Moat on proof _I_ can produce."

"What are you hinting at?" snapped the late Lord Scarlett. "Do you
intimate that we've hidden our own child at home and come to you with
some blackmailing scheme----"

"No," I stopped him. "I don't think you're in a position to try a
blackmail 'stunt.' My 'hints,' as you call them, concerned the _real_
Lady Scarlett; the legitimate daughter of your elder brother Cecil, and
his namesake."

As I flung this bomb I sprang up and stood conspicuously close to the
old-fashioned bell rope.

The man and woman sprang up also. The former had turned yellowish green,
the latter brick-red. They looked like badly lit stage demons.

"So _that's_ it!" spluttered the German wine merchant's daughter, when
she could speak.

"That's it," I echoed. "Now, do you still want to call the police and
charge me with kidnapping? You can search my rooms yourselves if you
like. You'll find nothing. _Can you say the same of your own?_"

"Yes!" Scarlett jerked the word out. "We can and do say the same. Do you
think we're fools enough to leave the place alone with only Kramm on
guard, if we had someone concealed there?"

"Ah, the cap fits!" I cried. "I didn't accuse you. As you said, I merely
'hinted.'"

I scored